Hello everyone,
I have been working on a new stereo rendering mode for the BGE, implementing the so-called “autostereography”.
Not sure what it is? Simply a 3d rendering method that doesn’t anything but your eyes to work: a frame consists of a tiled random pattern, with each tile being a little bit different from the others. When you look at the image crossing (or parallelizing) your eyes in such a way that each tile seems to overlapp with one of its neighbours, the differences make you feel there’s a “depth”, and so you can “see” objects.
You can find info about this at many different places on the web, including on Wikipedia. A well-known company named Magic Eye has also created many books about this technique (and as a result, autostereograms are often referred to as “magic-eye images”).
My version is implemented as a custom filter, but the menu button is in the properties (see below). I completely created the algorithm by myself. It has been kind of hard, as it has to work “per-pixel” to be used in a GLSL shader. After a massive rethinking and rewrite from the first Python script I had created to demonstrate the idea, it now runs smoothly at 60fps.
The patch code and some info are on developer.blender.org. There is also a build (Win64 only, for the moment…) on GraphicAll.
Images:
The stereo panel with new option (switch to Game Engine Render to see it)
The default cube
What’s in there? Can anyone see it?
As always, comments & feedback are much appreciated.