Ian Wood's blog

There is now a beta for Pano2Movie 2.1 available, with full bezier curve path editing.

http://www.pano2movie.com/beta-versions

I've been pretty quiet on the blog recently, due to a combination of being away for much of February (I went to Australia for a wedding, and met up with Aaron Spence who turned out to live round the corner), re-doing my website (not finished yet) and a bunch of application programming.

Pano2Movie has been getting a bit of attention, with a new beta with bezier curve paths hopefully coming out in the next two weeks.

A nice, cryptic title... ;-)

Last week a colleague pointed me in the direction of an intriguing residency/installation at Plymouth Arts Centre (that's the 'original' Plymouth, not one of the thirty or so places named after it that are dotted around the globe).

Pano2Movie 2.1 Preview

This isn't really an alpha or a beta release, more a preview of what is on the way. Opening and saving of projects is not yet done, and neither is exporting of movies. However, the new curve-based timeline is nearly complete.

The keyframing in Pano2Movie has been rewritten to use bezier curves instead of the thumbnail system used in version 2.0.

http://ianjameswood.co.uk/p2m/files/downloads/p2m_21b62_osx.zip (4MB)
http://ianjameswood.co.uk/p2m/files/downloads/p2m_21b62_win.zip (3MB)

Not very busy so far, but the main film showing is tonight (the 250-person auditorium is sold out) and there'll be people coming to see the installation before and after the main showing.

Here's a rough-and-ready QTVR of the installation.

Ian

P.S. You wouldn't believe the size of the projector!

Yesterday I spent all day at the Phoenix centre doing a dry run for the installation, to check that it would definitely all work etc.

First up was testing different projection methods.
Front projection would have given a brighter image and allowed more space, but caused problems with people's shadows falling on the screen as I couldn't get the projector close enough and high enough.

Pano2Movie, the updated version of QTVR2MOV is now available, for generating QuickTime videos from your QTVR files.

http://www.pano2movie.com

Main new features:

Record paths through the panorama.
Edit and save paths.
Use the same path on multiple panoramas.
Export as a sequence of images.
Export to a QuickTime video file.
Use any installed QuickTime codec, or use losslessly-compressed PNG format.
Pick from a series of preset video sizes or use custom dimensions.

It may be a kludge, but it's working! A lash-up of Director Lingo and ~800 lines of XML which somehow merges together into an interactive timelapse panorama installation...

All twenty panoramas are loading up, the viewer is panning towards the side of the camera view with more movement and it's fading from one panorama to the next depending on whether there is more movement in the top of bottom half of the camera view.

In between everything else, I've managed to squeeze in a few hours on the bursary, mostly working with the images shot so far, seen previously here.

With some help from Aldo I've done an interactive version of the timelapse movie. Clicky link.

Next is working out how to do an interactive installation, with no need for mouse or keyboard...

It turns out that beta 1 saved the information in a way that wasn't very secure - updating the database by itself doesn't survive rebuilding the database, restoring from a Vault or exporting as a Project.... please update to beta 3 as soon as possible!
You should also go back to images that you edited with beta 1 and update them again using beta 3. :(

http://ianjameswood.co.uk/aperture/gps2aperture_beta_3.zip

In addition to storing the information in the XML files as well as in the database, beta 3 includes a few new functions: