by tompainter | Sep 4, 2017 | 360video, Blog, VR
Mono vs stereo! One question we get asked a lot is what is the difference between monoscopic (mono) and stereoscopic (stereo) 360 videos. A matter of life or death Simply put, Stereo images provide a different image to each eye, whereas mono images show the same image to both eyes. In real life, obviously we see a slight different perspective from each eye. This gives us depth perception which has been critical for the evolution of many species of animals in order to be able to sense extra 3D information about their environments. Check out our handy video! If you check out the video below with any VR headset you will see the difference as we change between mono and stereo throughout the video. If you are watching on your computer, tablet or a phone without VR you won’t get the benefit as both your eyes will see the same image. Click and drag to view in 180° The world is flat! Most 360 video on the market these days is mono because it is cheaper and easier to produce, but it can look a little flat like the world around you is stuck to a giant ball. Stereo is better Stereo content provides a vastly better experience for the viewer because things look 3D like you could almost reach out and touch them. Your brain gets similar information to what it would expect so it is also more comfortable to view if correctly created. Just photoshop it! Producing stereo content is much more difficult however as we can’t simply retouch a single image to get the results we...
by tompainter | May 23, 2017 | Blog, VR
The steady evolution of film Cinematographers and film directors have been developing the visual language of film since its inception over 100 years ago, over the years we have been adapting this with new tools and techniques such as CGI and computer animation, both of which fitted nicely into the old frameworks. Throw the old rulebook out of the window! VR and other immersive media forms such as 360 video are an entirely new way to tell stories, and as such the old ways of thinking within a frame are completely outdated, VR needs a quite different way of thinking. Don’t know where to start? We have written this blog post to help anyone who is looking at commissioning, creating or directing VR content to get their head around some of the key things that make these types of media unique and exciting. You’ve been framed Probably the single biggest difference with VR is the lack of a frame, no longer do you have this funny rectangle where you control where people can look and where they can’t. Guided tour Giving people the freedom to look anywhere means you need to give up control of what they are looking at, but you might want to still encourage them to be looking at a certain thing. You might want to add a person or animated character to give them a guided tour. Light the way We can also use light, colour or movement in a subtle way to attract our audiences eyes to important areas in our scenes. Choose the 360 lens! VR also makes things like your choice of...
by tompainter | Nov 2, 2016 | Blog, VR
What is reality? Before we can understand virtual reality, it’s useful to think for a moment about reality, which might be harder to pin down than you think! According to wikipedia… Reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined. In a wider definition, reality includes everything that is and has been, whether or not it is observable or comprehensible. A still broader definition includes everything that has existed, exists, or will exist. So that is some pretty heavy stuff! Does anyone truly know? Great thinkers from history such as Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Timothy Leary or Bertrand Russell have put a lot of thought into it, but even the experts disagree on exactly what reality is, at best our knowledge is incomplete. Hmmm, how about the scientific view then? Reality as defined by science happens in our brains, we have our senses and from this sensory information we construct a model of reality in our heads. Reality is a model in our brains We don’t directly experience phenomena like light or sound, but rather our brains interpret the information it can gather in the best way that it can. Our reality is our environment As beings within a human body, our realities are informed by the environments in which we live, so it should come as no surprise that people from a diverse range of places have very different ways of ‘seeing’ the world. So…What IS VR then? Basically it’s a computer generated environment designed to fool each of our senses into thinking that we are elsewhere. A head mounted display...
by tompainter | Apr 21, 2016 | Animation Process, Blog
Collaborative communication In the CGI business concise communication is vital as our projects progress, both with our clients and internally. Email is a great tool but when we’re going back and forth with new ideas and changes to a project and the thread starts to grow it all becomes a bit unmanageable. We decided we needed a simpler, more organised and collaborative way to share our work and ideas. Enter RealtimeBoard… RealtimeBoard (RTB) is a giant online digital whiteboard that can be shared with anyone, no matter where they are and because updates happen in real time you will always be up to date. You do need an account to access any boards shared with you but you can login simply using Google or Facebook so it only takes a minute to get started. Once you’re in you can add new content and leave comments for other members. Below we’ve put together a quick how to guide explaining the main features and tools. Simple navigation Once you’re in it’s so easy to get around. The ‘Select’ tool allows you to move across the board by clicking on the background and dragging to different areas whilst holding the left mouse button. Incase you are worried you might disturbing something in the board as you are navigating you can also hold the space bar whilst clicking or hold your mouse’s scroll wheel (or middle mouse button). Moving objects With the ‘Select’ tool you can also move and scale objects on the board. For moving you just need click and hold on the item and move it across the board and once an item is selected you can drag the...
by tompainter | Apr 13, 2016 | Blog
Animation and CGI work is an extremely collaborative process that involves a lot of back and forth between our team and our clients. We found that our email chains were becoming unmanageable and inefficient, we needed a new, more visual way of doing things. That’s when we discovered RealtimeBoard. RealtimeBoard completely revolutionised our workflow and is a product we are really passionate about. You can find out more about how we use it and some of our favourite features here. We got to chat with the Head of Product, Anna Boyarkina, about how their idea came about and the future of the company. Where is the RealtimeBoard team based? Realtimeboard is a distributed team (Europe and the US) with a head office, located in Las Vegas, United States. What motivated the creation of RealtimeBoard? We started in 2011 with a small group of enthusiasts, made up of design lovers, programming addicts and native collaborators. The background of the founders includes advertising, project and event management. Analysing both our company demands and the experience our colleagues had from the web, advertising, events and publishing, we found that there was no simple solution for creatives to collaborate remotely. We were dreaming about an ideal world without endless e-mail chains, weighty attachments, damageable handmade mood boards — we were dreaming about limitless real-time collaboration! The idea of an endless online whiteboard was so necessary and applicable that almost the whole team became obsessed — it could help people, and we loved it for this! How old is RealtimeBoard now? RealtimeBoard is five years old, although the product was totally rebuilt in 2015 with HTML5. It got a new...
