Using PanoWorx to Create QTVR Panoramas

Note: VR Toolbox is a company that split off from Roundaboutlogic with legal claims to the same computer code used for making Nodester. VR Toolbox won the suit, and now has sole rights to the code. Nodester and Widgetizer are no longer for sale. VR Toolbox has an upgrade offer through mid-August, 1999 for registered owners of the Roundaboutlogic products. I am leaving my Nodester instructions on this web site for those who have that software an wish to continue using it.

The VR Toolbox software is available on both Windows and Macintosh computers. This lesson is based on using the Macintosh version, but the steps will be the same or very similar on a Windows computer.

This part of the tutorial illustrates how you would stitch and compose a QTVR Panorama taken with a Sony Mavica FD81 camera, using 18 frames to capture a 360 degree view. Creating QTVR Panos from different sources is done in much the same way. (the Nodester instructions illustrates the use of the Kodak DC 50)

1. You should create a new folder for the panorama you are about to create. Unlike most digital cameras, the Mavica writes its shots to a PC-formatted floppy disk in JPEG format. All you need to do is copy the pictures to your project folder.
   
   PanoWorx accepts pictures in a number of graphic formats, including JPEG, TIFF, PICT (on the Mac), BMP (on Windows). Some cameras download thier pictures in a proprietary format (such as Kodak and Casio), so you may need to convert them before use in PanoWorx. Your digital camera software will enable you to make an appropriate conversion, if necessary.

Alphanumeric ordering of file names

Ordering corrected by putting 0 in front of single digit numbers

2. Fortuately, the Sony Mavica numbers the files it creates in so that they order in the correct manner. Some cameras (eg. the Kodak DC50) do not number the files correctly for ordering on the computer.
   
   The file names of your pictures need to be in "alphanumeric" order so that PanoWorx will know what order they were shot in. Notice that 10 comes directly after 1 in alphanumeric ordering. To get the pictures correctly ordered, you need to put 0 in front of the single digit numbers. Then, 10 will come after 09--the correct order for your purposes. (Note: some QTVR software may be smart enough to not be fooled by alphanumeric ordering and will put 10 after 9.)

3. After preparing your pictures for stitching, start PanoWorx. PanoWorx begins at the "Setup" page, where you have to input information about how your Panorama was shot and about the files the program will work with. PanoWorx includes a large number of convenient "Stationary Templates" that have such input information preconfigured. To access the stationary template for your camera, select "Open..." from the "File" menu. A dialogue box will appear. Below the list of file names, click on the radio button on the right to access the stationary templates. Scroll down the list of templates until you find the one for your camera. Select it and click "Open".

4. The settings for that template will appear on a new PanoWorx document. In this case, we did not have a template for the FD81 model, so we need to adjust some values in the current Input page accordingly. (Later we will save a new template that we can use for future panoramas.) The critical information PanoWorx needs here include:
   • Source Format: For this example we are using "Multiple Images." It is also possible to create a QTVR Pano movie from a "Single Image."
   • Acquire From: Here we are using "Image File," referring to digital pictures already on the computer hard drive. With a video input card, you could also get images from a video tape using "Video Digitizer."
   • Node Sweep: This is how many horizontal degrees your panorama represents. Usually, we take 360 degree panoramas, but partial panoramas of fewer degrees is possible.
   • Max. Frames: This is how many pictures you took in your panorama. The stationary template for the Mavica FD71 was set for 20. Here we changed that to 18 to reflect how the Pano was actually shot.
   • Lens Param: This refers to the focal length of the lens, which relates to the Field of View (F.O.V.) in degrees that the pictures cover vertically. This is sometimes a difficult number to ascertain, making the preconfigured stationary templates particularly handy. By looking at the camera specs for the Mavica FD81 we find it has the 35mm camera Equivalent of a 37mm lens. (The actual focal length of the lens is very different, but it is focusing on a small CCD.) The "F.O.V.:" (50.63 degrees here) is calculated from the "Length:" of the lens (or visa versa depending on which field you input the data into).
   • Input Size: The pixel dimensions of your pictures. A number that is too easy to forget, but easy to find in a stationary template.
     
     NOTE: The Input Size can be different from the actual dimension of the source pictures. For example, you could have 480 X 640 source pictures resized to 240 X 320 as they are acquired by PanoWorx. All you have to do is put 240 and 320 in the Input Size fields. This can be handy when you want to create a pano from smaller pictures so that the final file size of the pano will be smaller. Media file size should always be a concern when creating web pages.
   
   After you have entered all of the required information, click on the "Acquire" tab to go the Acquire page of PanoWorx.

5. At the "Acquire" page you bring in the shots of your panorama for stitching. Click on the "Multiple" button. A dialogue box will appear. Navigate to the folder containing your pictures. Click on the first picture in your panorama to highlight it. A "Preview" of the picture will appear to the left. (If one doesn't appear, click on "Create".) In this case the pictures are not right-side up. To get PanoWorx to rotate all of the pictures, click on the drop-box in the lower left hand corner and select the rotation needed to make the picture right-side up. (In this case 90 degrees counterclockwise, or -90 degrees). A pair of pictures illustrate the rotation you have chosen.
6. Select the first picture from your pano shoot and click on "Add 18." The file names of the selected file and the next 17 in alphanumeric order will move to the lower window. (If your pictures are not in sequence you can add them one at a time by clicking the "Add" button.) When all of the pictures in your panorama have been selected, click on "Done".

7. After PanoWorx loads the pictures from your pano shoot, the "Acquire" page display will show thumbnails of the shots as they were taken around the horizon. If you examine this display carefully, it is possible to determine if any of the shots are out of place. If so, you can reacquire the pictures. You may find you need to renumber them to get them in the correct order. When the pictures have been successfully acquired, click on the "Stitch" tab to go to the next step.

8. On the "Stitch" page, PanoWorx attempts to match the details in the overlapping pictures of your panorama. Click on the "Stitch" button to start the process. When PanoWorx is finished, it will display its guess as to how the pictures should fit. You can refine these guesses manually. Click on "Transparent". This will allow you to see through the overlapping parts of the picture, to help you judge the accuracy of the fit.

9. If you find that there are any image matches you wish to refine, click on the frame you wish to move to select it. Then click on the arrow buttons on the left to move the selected image in that direction. (Your computer arrow keys also move the image.) When you are satisfied with the image matching, click on the "Blend" tab to go to the next step. NOTE: Numerous errors in placing images in the Stitch step often means that you have set up the wrong lens parameters in the Setup. Another source of placement errors can occur if you moved the camera inconsistently between shots when taking the pano. Clicking on the "Tolerance" button will bring up a window where you can tell PanoWorx to look further left and right and up and down for matching detail.

10. On the "Blend" page, PanoWorx will blend together the pictures from your pano shoot, making one long, panoramic picture. Click on "Calculate" to begin the process. When finished, your panorama will be displayed, with all of the overlapping areas blended together seamlessly. If you want, you can save this still picture as a PICT (on the Mac), BMP (on Windows), or JPEG file. Select "Export..." from the "File" menu. A PICT that is more than 5000 pixels wide must be rotated 90 degrees before saving. When you are finished with the Panorama step, click on the "Compress" tab to go to the next step.
    
    NOTE: At the "Blend" page you can also add hot spots to your QTVR movie. See the Making Hot Spots with Nodester and VR PanoWorx part of this tutorial to see how.

11. On the "Compress" page, you set up PanoWorx for creating a QTVR Pano movie from the panorama you have just stitched. First, you need to select a Codec for your movie. Codec stands for compression-decompression, referring to ways digital images and movies may be reduced in file size (compressed) so they take up less disk space. Later they can be decompressed for display. For more information on codecs for QTVR Pano movies, see the discussion, "Selecting a Codec for Your QTVR Pano Movie." Click on "Set" to select a codec. A "Compression Settings" window will appear. Click on the drop-box below "Compressor" to select the codec you wish. Cinepak, Photo-JPEG, and Sorenson are the most common codecs used for QTVR Pano movies. You also select a "Quality" setting using the slider. You'll get a smaller file size with a lower quality for a given codec.

12. Another setting you might wish to make on the "Compress" page is the Tile array: setting in the "Dicing" section. Before your panorama is turned into a QTVR Pano movie, it is diced into a number of tiles. These tiles are loaded into the computer memory one at a time when you scroll through a QTVR Pano. Some QTVR authors prefer a smaller number of tiles for small panoramas destined for the web because it reduces the file size a little bit. This pano is fairly large, so we leave the default, 1 X 24. For a small file size pano stitched from pictures around 320 pixels in height, the 1 X 12 tiling would be better. Click on the "Compress" button to create the QVTR Pano movie. Then click on "Preview" tab to go to the next step.

13. At the Playback page, you can try out your QTVR Pano movie and make important settings for your exported versions of the movie. To play the movie within PanoWorx, place your cursor in the movie window and hold down the mouse button. The panorama will scroll in the direction you move the cursor, as if you were turning to look that direction (left, right, up, down). With the cursor still the window, holding down the Shift key will zoom in on the Pano. Holding down the Control key will zoom out from the Pano.
14. The most common settings you might wish to make that affect the appearance and behavior of your exported versions of the Pano movie include:
    • Window Size The default setting is 320 X 240 pixels (1/4 a standard Macintosh display). You can change this so that the movie shows up in a different size window. Some QTVR authors like a wider aspect ratio, like 400 X 200 to give a more panoramic feel to the movie. Window size does not affect the file size of the QTVR Pano movie.
    • Under Attributes, the "Annotate" button brings up a window that allows you to put information into a "Name" field, a "Copyright" field, and a "Comment" field. This information becomes embedded in your exported movies, and may be accessed in MoviePlayer and other programs that play QuickTime movies.
    • Under Constraints and Initial: you can set the appearance of your QTVR Pano when it is initially opened. Pan and zoom your movie to where you would like its initial view to be and click on the "Set" button. The "Res" button will reset the initial view to the default. The "Go" button with bring the Pano movie to the currently set initial view.
    • Under Constraints and Min. Zoom: you can set a limit as to how far a user may zoom into you Pano movie. Usually, you don't want users to be able to zoom in so far that only a few pixels fill the window. Zoom in as far as you would like viewers of your movie to go and click on the "Set" button. the "Res" and "Go" buttons work as they do for Initial:.
    • Under Constraints and Max. Zoom: you can set a limit as to how far a user may zoom out. Usually you want to allow this to be to the full angular view of the Pano, which is the default.

15. When you are ready to create a standalone version of the QTVR movie, Select "Export..." from the "File" menu. A dialogue box will open. Give your movie an appropriate file name, but be sure to keep the .mov extension, because it is required if you want the movie to be used on a web page and helps Windows computers recognize that it is a QuickTime movie. Also, click on "Optimize for Web Playback". This is required if you want to include the movie on a web page or if you would like the movie to play on Windows computers. The drop-box next to Format: allows you to select either QuickTime VR version 1.0 or 2.0. Version 2.0 has more features, but may not play on computers with older versions of QuickTime. Therefore, version 1.0 will play on more computers. QuickTime 3.0, which supports the 2.0 version, came out in spring of 1998. QuickTime 4.0 became available in June, 1999. In time, most computers will have the newer versions of QuickTime, making this choice less critical. If you are going to use the pano on a web page, it is a good idea to make it a "fast start" pano movie. To do this, click on "Settings."

Make sure that "Create Preview" is selected. The default settings give a good result, but you can experiment with them if you like. This will make your pano display a coarse, low resolution version of itself after less than 10% of the movie has downloaded to a web page. The user will be able to get an idea of what the full panorama will look like as full-resolution panels fill in for the rest of the download. When you are done, click on "OK." Then click on "Save."

17. You may wish to come back to PanoWorx to create different versions of your QTVR Pano movies. For example, you may wish to add hot spots on the movie or use a different codec. To save all the work you have done as a PanoWorx document, select "Save..." from the "File" menu. Give the document an appropriate name and click on "Save". You can do this at any time during the QTVR creation process, even when it has been only partially completed, such as right after the "Frames" step. PanoWorx files can be quite large (10-20 MB or larger), because they contain all of the stills from your panorama shoot and the long stitched panorama as well.

17. If you have done anything special in setting up your pano creation, you may wish to save those settings so you don't have to enter them for future panoramas. For instance, you may have had to figure out how to set up a panorama for a camera or lens that is not among the list of stationary templates. Once you have found the appropriate settings, you can save your own stationary template. Select "Save..." from the "File" menu, and make sure that the radio button on for the right icon on the bottom right of the dialog box is selected. Give your stationary template an appropriate name and click on "Save". Now, when you want to create a new Pano using the same settings, you can load your custom settings as shown in step 3 above. You can save these settings at any time in the Pano creation process, but usually you want to do it after you have all the relevant information entered on the "Input" page.

Escanaba Lighthouse (141K)

Here is the way the finished QTVR Pano movie looks when opened in MoviePlayer.

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