Is it possible to make a Virtual Reality 'ride' Rendered in Carrara?
Jonstark
Posts: 2,738
I saw there is a product on Rendo for a VR camera for Carrara which allows rendering either an image or an animation in Carrara into a VR format that can be viewed using Google Cardboard (which btw, that's very cool that someone created that for Carrara).
I've been spending lots of fun time playing games on the Oculus Rift, and some of my favorite VR isn't games at all, but rather several 'rides' that are essentially rendered animations, like virtual roller coasters, a walkthrough of an ancient temple, a ride inside of an old-style jules verne submarine through a lost city complete with dinosaurs swimming by, etc. I immediately wondered if I could create something similar in Carrara (or better, actually since I think Carrara can render even better than some of what's already out there), so I was excited to see the plugin sold at Rendo.
However I suspect that while you can 'look around' in all directions with an animation rendered like that, part of what makes the VR experience so realistic for the Oculus Rift or Vive is the ability for motion tracking movement of the head, not just rotation, for example being able to lean out over the side of the roller coaster and look down, as opposed to being fixed in one place and only being able to swivel/rotate to look around.
I wonder what format something would have to be rendered in so that you can actually 'move' slightly within the animation as it's proceeding along the ride, and whether it's possible to create something like that in Carrara.
I know there's lots of smart people here, so thought I would ask. 
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Wendy might know, she does weird stuff ;)
Welcome back by the way!
Yes, welcome home! The author of that VR camera made a thread in here about it - probably only a few pages in. It's certainly a good start in this direction and Wendy (and others) share some thoughts in there. The author is really nice and explained the product pretty well - and seems outgoing to answer any questions we might have. If you don't find it before I come back tomorrow, I'll find it and post a link to the thread
Wow... what you're using your Oculus Rift for sounds like a blast! ILM is working towards making a real movie experience using that format
I only do 360 videos that follow the camera movement, you can look around
to make it follow the viewer's movements like in a game environment it would need to either be an actual 360 skybox, doable using Unreal or Unity or a faked one of still renders that follow set paths but the action of the viewer determines which frames get played giving the impression of a realtime environment, neither can be uploaded to Youtube though but both could be cooked into a game with scripting, using the video idea one need not worry about game developers licesenses etc as still 2D renders just scripted to play in certain ways creating a 3D illusion.
I have no idea how to make either!
Not sure if this is what you're trying to do, but here's a spherical render I made.
To do this, render with a spherical camera 2 to 1 aspect ratio, then use you tube's "spatial media metadata injector"
then it must be uploaded to youtube or facebook to be viewed spherically...
Hmm... Doesn't seem to be playing right on my ipad, and I can't find a "go to youtube link".
But if I hit the share button I can see the address.
https://youtu.be/TUi6tBcmD7A?list=PL403UZF5-5dIRzfe0i4NVT-GyicTfVvpE
my playlist
It's playing fine on my machine. Looks cool! Nice work!
These are cool. Just fly that camera around, and I steer my view to the direction the camera is moving... makes me feel like I'm running my arse off!
Carrara and Luxrender can render out a 360 panoramic video, that can be played in all VR headsets with headtracking, but they suck because they are not stereoscopic 3D 360 videos which addes depth and a "being there feeling".
Luxcore is missing the panorama camera in the official build, but it is in the development build, again not stereoscopic 3D 360 videos
As far as I know, only Octane has a stereoscopic 3D 360 camera that can be used from Carrara.
Also Blender has stereoscopic 3D 360 camera which they call "Multiview Spherical Stereo"
Some more info here: https://code.blender.org/2015/03/1451/
There is a paper in there that describes the camera needs to be quite complex to create proper 3D 360.
jonstark, as promised, here's the link: Spherical cameras and 3D in Carrara
I'm quite sure that Wendy's right. While you might be able to use Carrara to assist in its creation, you'll need to have a specific game engine or similar system which can detect the motions (input) of the user in order to direct what is seen.
Good luck on this. I hope you end up unlocking something! There are some really cool new sites popping up rgarding getting into VR technology. I've been too bust to bite, so unfortunately I don't have any links.
3drendero, I think the Carrara VR plugin from Rendo is what will allow the stereoscopic 360 rendering you refer to, but I could be wrong about that.
Scarecrow, that embedded video works/plays just fine and looks great, I was able to click on it and rotate all around the scene.
Thanks for all the feedback on this guys, I'm thinking I'll pick up that plugin and first do a little testing rendering in Carrara, even if we are restricted to only rotation and not head tracking translation movement, just knowing that it has to be put into a game engine like Unity points me in the right direction to eventually get there. I think there is some way of putting Carrara scenes and objects into Unity right? Seems like I've seen threads on that before. I can't help but think that several of the 'roller coaster'-type rides I've seen in Oculus so far, while they were awesomely fun, weren't rendered all that well, and that's immediately what got me thinking 'hey, I could render something like this in Carrara with far more detail and realistic looking textures/lighting'. I also have the Octane for Carrara, so could conceivably render in that too.
What I noticed about rendering this is you need higher than normal resolutions. I rendered that at 2000x1000 pixels, but since at any moment you are only viewing a small portion of the image it appears lo rez.
No, it is only 180 stereo 3D, not 360 stereo 3D and unlike the Blender camera and paper, the stereoscopic effect is only good in the centre.
https://code.blender.org/2015/03/1451/
Yes, because you are only viewing a small part of the rendered image in VR, the resolution should be 4x higher than you think.
8K is probably what you need...
I can render stereoscopic images with Octane and have side by side top bottom and analogue red/cyan but cannot get it to work on youtube with the metadata injection
well I could do red/cyan ones but thats not really the point, my top bottom or side by side ones get wrapped around the same a a flat one I tested it even adding stereoscopic in advanced ( which kills the metadata)
Back in the day of Ray Dream Studio, Metacreations included metastream, which allowed us to do flythroughs and just general exploring of 3d scenes on the web.
One nice thing was that metastream had LOD (level of detail) way back then!....as the video stream loaded, and as you moved the image would get more detailed.
Wikipedia:
In 1999 MetaCreations invested itself heavily in the newly developed '3d on the Web' technology "MetaStream" and began restructuring from graphics applications to Internet technology. MetaCreations formed a subsidiary company called MetaStream, acquired Viewpoint Digital, and ultimately merged all operations together to become the Viewpoint Corporation. (The name Viewpoint derives from Viewpoint DataLabs International, Inc. which was a 1988 founded enterprise that specialized in the area of digitalisation and modelling for the movie industry like for Star Trek, and it got under the hood of Computer Associates in 1998.[3]) The newly formed Viewpoint Corporation divested itself of all former MetaCreations graphics products to push MetaStream technology.
In 2000 Eliven bought all not-yet possessed shares of Viewpoint Digital Inc. from Computer Associates International Inc. which held about 17.7% of the full daughter Metastream Corporation at that time.[4] In the process of this Viewpoint got declared the Consumer Products division of the Enliven Marketing Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ENLV). Further Viewpoint’s NASDAQ stock ticker symbol changed from VWPT to ENLV to reflect the Company’s name change in January 2008.[5][6]
In 2008 with the merger between Enliven and DG FastChannel, Inc.[7] the former MetaCreations got a part of DG, an advertising technology company, in its Online business segment. Viewpoint Corporation was best known for the Viewpoint Media Player installed inside AIM/AOL packages to help provide better 3D visualization for product tours and configurators on the web. On February 7, 2014, DG's TV advertising business was acquired by Extreme Reach, Inc. and its online advertising business was spun off into the new company Sizmek, Inc. (NASDAQ: SZMK).[8]
Products
Amazing. I wonder if that would still work today? Every once in a while, I see Ray Dream for sale on Amazon!
Hi,
do U know this place ? https://blog.sketchfab.com
It's a web site wher you could show your 3D creations : see my cake (french madeleine) here : https://sketchfab.com/models/749f63cd1b6140c2bb8e78e093be22fd
But it's also a good way to create VR scene, built a virtual reality scene and see it with Google glasses or other. : https://sketchfab.com/vr
I,ve no try yet with a big Carrara scene, but I think it could be a good way to have some fun with that.
Enjoy
Jamy,
That seems to work just like the metastream, although you would need to download the Viewpoint player to see the metastream. Sketchfab appears to work without a separate player!
I may have to give it a try!