I wasn't sure what heading to use for this one.

What I want to do is create 360-degree panoramic digital prints of
objects. That is, relatively small rotating objects rather than
landscape panoramas, which I already do.

Examples of such snaps are on Andrew Davidhazy's pages at 

http://www.isc.rit.edu/~andpph/

Ideally, I would like to find software which will emulate the
photographs created with strip cameras, using a number of normal still
photographs - in the same way that panoramic software stitches
lanscapes.

I have contacted a number of software houses offering programs which
create 3D rotating images for web sites but they do not allow prints.
One of the companies referred me to this site:

http://www.clanbeowulf.org/skinyourface.htm

which offers some good advice on how to cut and paste one of these
images. I will give that a try, but it is not the 360 degree stitching
solution I am looking for.

If I were not so constructo-technically inept, I might try making one
based on the ideas available on the web. I am prepared to have a try,
but any such solution would have to be simple and produce a digital
output.

Thanks in anticipation,

Nick Blackburn
London

---

Clarification of Question by blackrat-ga on 28 Jun 2002 06:24 PDT

Hi yawfle

I think the principles are different with objects. With a landscape
pano, you can take a series of snaps while you rotate (or use more
sophisticated hardware - a tripod, a special mount so that the point
of rotation is centred in the lens etc.) and when the film is
processed you can physically lay out the shots at the overlaps to
construct a panorama. The software reduces the effort, smooths out the
joins and gives a single picture.

If you take a series of snaps of, say, a statue on a turntable then
you cannot lay out the results to produce a simple pano because the
subject is always "occupying the same space". The example I gave at
skinyourface just involves lining up and blending a straight-on
portrait shot and a profile. I will be trying that, but it is a long
way short of the sophistication of the better landscape panorama
stitchers.

I can't think why anyone would want to create software to do this,
just hoping someone might have to make my life easier.

Cheers

Nick

i could be misunderstanding, but if you want to use a series of photos
taken from different angles to create a 2-D 'unwrapped' object picture
rather than an 'object movie', isn't the principle very much the same
as using stitching software to create a landscape pano? it probably
just involves a little more artistic fudging, but in general, wouldn't
something like PanoTools:

http://www.fh-furtwangen.de/~dersch/

possibly used through the friendly PTGUI interface:

http://www.ptgui.com/

do the trick? or maybe that's what you've already tried and found
unsuitable?

just curious. :)

Here's some people who have done something similar to what you are
looking to do.

The Digital Michelangelo Project 
http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/

http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/mich/david/david.html

Instead of taking a picture, however, they are mapping the object for
computer digitization. If, instead of a laser range finder, they had
used an optical line scanner, they would have instead created exactly
what you are looking to make.
 
Briefly, unwrapping a 3d object onto a 2d picture takes almost exactly
the opposite approach as does making a panoramic image.

For the panoramic image, you need only a few images, with a wide field
of view. The small distortions can be compensated for by currently
available software.

For a 3D Unwrapping however, you need many images, with as narrow a
field of view as possible. As narrow as a laser beam would be ideal,
and taking several thousand "strips" as was done for the statue of
Michelangelo.

You mention Andrew Davidhazy. I've seen his work before, but took the
opportunity to review his site again. As you can see, he uses two
entriely different setups for Panoramas, and "unwrapping" images.

Panoramas:
http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-better-scanner-cam.html

"unwrapping"
http://www.rit.edu/~andpph/text-demo-scanner-cam.html