Does anyone have any experience using the Omnivirt 3D Photo Creator? I've been using it to create 3D images for Facebook. Their website says that text can be included as an overlay. But I've tried exporting a PNG from XDP with an extra layer and also ticking the "Export each layer into a file of it's own" option but without success. Is this something that's exclusive to Photoshop? The tool is here:
I just had a look. Is the user supposed to create the depth map? I do this for my stereograms. But building a depth image from a photo is much more difficult.
I tried several photos and each one was rotated 90 degrees.
10 April 2019, 11:57 PM
Jimi King
Re: 3D photo creation
Yes I figured this might be your department Gary. Yes it only really works if you create your own depth map.
It works quite well for me. It's quite important for the physical dimensions to be 4:3 or 3:4, or at least if you're going to use it for Facebook, which is the only outlet unless one is going to start embedding code.
You have to have a compatible iPhone to be able to upload to Facebook and get the 3D element to work though. And the only way to feature text or logos though is to overlay them. Hence the my question.
11 April 2019, 12:11 AM
gwpriester
Re: 3D photo creation
Well, let us know if you discover anything.
11 April 2019, 02:27 AM
Egg Bramhill
Re: 3D photo creation
Had a look at this but the upload to face book is very limited. It's easy to create the greyscale image if the origin source is vector.
11 April 2019, 08:19 AM
Jimi King
Re: 3D photo creation
Hi Egg. I've found that it's not too much bother to trace a photo to get a usable depth map.The results can be quite good with practice. However as you can see any text gets pretty much destroyed. I don't have much knowledge of Photoshop, so I'm wondering if there's some element about PNGs created in it which enables the Omnivert software to correctly identify the overlay and treat it differently. Certainly their examples have great text overlays. Their short instruction video shows somebody adding an overlay but the whole thing was being done in Photoshop.
I'd post a link to one that I made but it would be a link to a photo on Facebook obviously. Does that contravene any rules on here?
Having to borrow my wife's iPhone every time I want to put something up is a bit of a pain too but I'm stuck with that for the foreseeable future.
17 April 2019, 03:21 PM
Jimi King
Re: 3D photo creation
Just in case anyone else is interested in this, here are a couple of links relating to further development with 3D photos on Facebook. The first talks about the ability to use Samsung Galaxy phones to take and upload 3D photos (up until now it's only been possible with iPhones), and also the ability to create and upload them without a compatible mobile phone:
The second link is to an article about depth map creation. It suggests Gimp as a free alternative to Photoshop, but still doesn't help on my original question about overlays:
Thanks for the links Jimi, they create very good affects with not too much manipulation.
24 April 2019, 08:48 PM
DavidDB
Re: 3D photo creation
I have had mixed results, creating a depth map informs me to not to go too dark - back or too white foreground - softening everything off a little helps
Thing is if you have retail clients - they go nuts for anything that engages customers - so persevere :)
24 April 2019, 09:44 PM
Jimi King
Re: 3D photo creation
Yes, it would seem that black or white is a no no. I have also found that using Xara's Gaussian Blur helps to soften things up quite well. I had tried feathering the shapes but that wasn't so successful. I still haven't figured out the overlay part for lettering and logos, etc. I have an old copy of Photoshop but quite frankly I'd rather do it all in Xara if it's possible as it'll will save me a lot of time and a rather steep learning curve. I'm seeing a few impressive examples turning up in the Facebook 3D groups and pages now (and some absolute horrors!). So far personally, I'm not managing to better a quick snap on my wife's iPhone just yet. Here's one I took yesterday: