With the forthcoming release of Stitcher 4.0, due in January 2004, VRMAG thought it would be a good time to ask REALVIZ CTO Luc Robert and Product Manager Stephane Negri some questions about the new release. We asked photographers Charles Evans, of www.digitalpanos.com and Scott Highton, VR pioneer and editor of www.vrphotography.com, to lend their expertise and provide some questions for this first and exclusive interview (via email) on Stitcher 4.0.

(REALVIZ is currently running a promotion: Buy Stitcher 3.5, with a free upgrade to 4.0, until December 31, 2003 and save 50.00 USD/Euro 50 for a price of $449.00. After December 31st, buy Stitcher 4.0 for the standard price of $499.00. VRMAG is offering readers another 15% discount, click here for more info.)

Please explain the main new features of REALVIZ Stitcher 4.0.

Central to version 4.0 are a number of significant high-end features, which have been developed to meet the demands of professional photographers. These include:

·Interoperability with image editing software and especially Adobe® Photoshop® through the psd file format, enabling each of the computed panoramas to be exported with each image being a separate layer for maximum editing control.

·The possibility for expert users to select their preferred interpolation method to render their images.

·A ‘Best Rendering’ option enabling users to achieve the best-possible output with the resolution available to them, without fear of impairing the final results.

·Interactive QuickTime VR previewing - to interactively adjust QuickTime default parameters.

·Improved interface and workflow enhancements at each stage of the creative process, ensuring that users achieve outstanding results quicker and easier than ever before.

Would it be beneficial to buy a G5 for Stitcher 4.0?

Digital cameras are becoming more and more powerful, with ever increasing resolution sensors. Panoramas need substantial resources to complete. It’s clear, that to run Stitcher 4.0 in a professional way a G5 will enable users to achieve the very best results.

Is Stitcher 4.0 performance optimized for G5 and panther?

Not yet, but it’s definitely in our plans to get the best out of this platform in the near future.

Editing support to add features like Squamish Media's tools SoundSaVR and MapsSaVR ?

Not for the moment, but this may be something which will appear in future versions.

Will Stitcher support projects to create multinode scenes?

I'm afraid not...

Will Stitcher 4.0 allow for multi-row stitching of fisheye images? An example would be images shot with the Nikon 16mm full-frame fisheye lens, which can capture approximately 140 degrees vertical fov. Two rows of 6 shots each (12 shots total) would be all that's necessary for a full spherical capture, greatly reducing the number of images necessary for both capture and stitching. A similar result can be accomplished with the Nikon Coolpix cameras and FC-E8 (or equivalent) fisheye adapter. This fisheye stitching feature has been requested repeatedly in the past. Can we look forward to it in Stitcher 4.0? If not, why not? (Scott Highton)

Because of patents owned by various companies (Ipix is one of them), for the moment we still cannot provide our customers with a solution for stitching fish-eye images... unfortunately!

I hear the new version of Stitcher outputs layered PSD files. Is this true? What are the advantages? (Charles Evans)

Yes it’s true. This enables each of the computed panoramas to be exported with each image being a separate layer for maximum editing control. The main advantage is the freedom it gives the user to change completely and directly/visually their panorama. It solves parallax problems and enables artifact removal and color changes for each image.

Is it possible with the new Stitcher to open and view a [create new link] panoramic image so that you can output user defined images (e.g. render a planar image having numerically specified field-of-view and resolution). (Charles Evans)

It’s not yet possible to visualize within Stitcher pre-existing panoramas not created within Stitcher, but it is possible to read them and convert them to another projection mode or image format.

Has the "Artifact Removal Tool" been updated? The current tool uses a polygon to mask off regions of an image. It would be nice to use a Photoshop style brush tool to prevent edges from appearing and make it easier to mask out complex shapes. (Charles Evans)

The artifact removal tool has totally changed and is now called the ‘Stencil Tool’. It allows users to mask off regions of an image or the opposite, to keep only a specific region of an image. The user also has the option to choose to exclude all other images contributing to this region. To allow more stencil efficiency, Stitcher 4.0 also allows you to choose the size of the blending region for the polygons.

Converting a pre-existing panorama into a QuickTime movie can be frustrating in Stitcher. There is no way to preview the output (e.g. to check max/min field of view, default direction of view, etc). Is there a way to do this in the new Stitcher? (Charles Evans)

Yes, now you can directly show a QTVR preview in Stitcher to allow the user to find visually the correct pan, tilt or fov for their QTVR panorama.

A lot of people seem to be confused about the relationship between the resolution of the source images and the optimal resolution of the final panorama. This is a simple calculation. Does Stitcher do this automatically? (Charles Evans)

This is not so simple since there are a lot of factors to take into account, but Stitcher 4.0 now provides a ‘Best Rendering’ size option, which estimates the optimal parameter values

question_Stitcher often crashes when I delete and restitch multiple images while working on the same project. This process of stitching and removing images frequently results in a corrupt .rzs file (a file that always crashes when you try to render it). Have any bugs been fixed in the .rzs file generation process? (Charles Evans)

We’re not aware of this problem, but if we can find out what causes this, it will be corrected.

One of the biggest problems people have creating seamless panoramas results from "dark bands" that result from light fall-off in the lens (i.e. the edges of the image are darker than the center of the image). I always pre-process my images in Photoshop to remove light fall-off. Any plans to incorporate such a utility in Stitcher? (Charles Evans)

In Stitcher 4.0 this is called Vignetting, and there is a facility within the Stencils Tool, which allows the user to place masks on each image on the four corners in a very quick and efficient way.

Some people have suggested that Stitcher currently uses a simplistic blending method, which results in distortion, blurring, or superimposed regions in the final panorama. Has Stitcher changed its blending options? (Charles Evans)

No, not yet.

Has memory management been improved? For example, I can render a 10,000 pixel wide panorama in Stitcher with 512mb of RAM. But with a total of 1.5 gigabytes of RAM installed in the same computer Stitcher crashes with an "out of memory" error when I try to render a 13,000 pixel wide image. (Charles Evans)

This appears to be a platform-based issue. On Windows XP, for example, memory problems do not seem to occur.

What are you working on for the next version?

For the present, we’re not revealing details on forthcoming features, but we should have more news in Spring 2004. However, what we can say is that there will be significant engine improvement, greater distortion management and additional authoring capabilities ... Watch this space!

More Stitcher Articles and Examples:
Parma Baptistery and Duomo in VR

A Conversation With Greg Downing

Tito Dupret's World Heritage Virtual Tour
About REALVIZ
REALVIZ is a leading developer of image based creation software based in Sophia Antipolis, France, with U.S. operations in San Francisco, CA; and a satellite sales office in London & Paris. REALVIZ develops a suite of image-based content creation solutions for the film, broadcast, gaming, digital imaging, architecture and Internet communities. REALVIZ’ award-winning products are in use by leading production and effects houses, web design, game development and architectural companies worldwide including Cinesite, Framestore CFC, Sony Imageworks, Warner Brothers Animation, Electronic Arts, Buf Compagnie and many others.