3D Displays Plugins

Components and Copyright

The following components are essential parts or add-ons to TRIDELITY’s Stereo Renderer for Maya

Component	Copyright and ownership
TRIDELITY StereoRenderer for Autodesk Maya	TRIDELITY, www.tridelity.com
Multi-View Jockey (MVJ)	TRIDELITY, www.tridelity.com
TriView Previewer	TRIDELITY, www.tridelity.com

System requirements

·         Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7 (for MVJ)

·         Mac OS 10.7 or later (for TriView Previewer)

·         Autodesk Maya 2012 or newer*

 

*TRIDELITY StereoRenderer was developed under usage of Autodesk Maya 2012. Earlier versions might work, but are not tested yet.

Installation

Maya Plug-in: TRIDELITY StereoRenderer

Windows:

Close all Maya Instances and start the Setup-File (TTY_SRfM.exe). After choosing the language of the installer you will see some important notes where to install the plugin. After that you’ll have to choose the maya folder in your documents-folder (e.g. c:\users\<username>\documents\maya\2012-x64). Confirming the installation’s settings on the next step will install TRIDELITY StereoRenderer automatically.

 

 

Mac OS:

Close all Maya Instances and copy the files you have received to the following locations:

 

File	Location
TRIDELITY_StereoRenderer.pyc	~/Library/Preferences/Alias/maya/<version>/prefs/scripts
Shelf_TRIDELITY.mel	~/Library/Preferences/Alias/maya/<version>/prefs/shelves
/fileadmin/user_upload/Software/Icon.png /fileadmin/user_upload/Software/reload.png /fileadmin/user_upload/Software/trilogo.jpg	~/Library/Preferences/Alias/maya/<version>/prefs/icons

 

 

License for TRIDELITY Stereo Renderer

A license is needed to get access to TRIDELITY Stereo Renderer. If you have not yet a license file you will get an error like the one below if you try to start Maya having the plug-in installed.

To get a valid License-File send a Screen-Shot with the ID to us and we will create a personal license for you. When you have got the file, put it on your Computer and set its path in the “Path Settings” of the Plug-in.

Multi-View Jockey (MVJ)

 

Copy the following files to your Computer.

 

·         MultiViewJockey.exe

·         libx264-115.dll

·         MediaInfo.dll

·         MediaConverter.dll

 

Later you can define in the plug-in where MVJ is located.

 

Usage

Settings

TRIDELITY Stereo Renderer is found in a custom shelf named ‘TRIDELITY’ in Maya. If the plug-in is installed correctly, it will be there with starting Maya. Nothing special is to be done here.

TRIDELITY StereoRenderer is basically subdivided into 4 parts:

Camera Settings
Plane Settings
Rendering and MV
License and Application

 

 

Camera Settings:

This is the main part of TRIDELITY StereoRenderer. Here the Settings concerning the cameras are made.&xnbsp; Each camera in the scene has its own Tab where the settings can be made independently for each camera. If you later add or delete a Camera you will have to update these tabs. This is done by clicking on the reload-Button.

 

To create a MV-Camera-Rig you just have to activate the ‘Camera is MV’-Checkbox. A rig will automatically be created. NOTE: Changing the camera-type (adding an aim or up-vector) while having this activated may cause errors. Make sure you did this before activating MV.

 

If you do not want the additional 4 cameras to be visible, just uncheck ‘Cameras Visible’.

 

The ‘Separation’-slider will define the amount of space between two neighbored cameras.

Changing it will directly affect the near-&xnbsp; and front- plane because it will change the total depth of the scene in relation to the zero-plane. It is also possible to change this amount over time with keyframes. To set, delete, or navigate between the different keys just right-click on the ‘separation’-label.

 

&xnbsp;

 

 

 

The ‘Zero-Plane’-slider sets the distance of the screen-plane to the camera.&xnbsp; Objects on this plane will appear as if they were on the screen in 3D-space. Changing this distance will also affect the near- and farplane. Of course this setting is keyframable, too. Just as with the separation, just right-click on the label and you can do as described above. Additional to that you can link the zero-plane to the camera’s aim. Doing this will set both values to the same.

 

 

 

 

You may also want to have a different visibility of the planes. The slider on the bottom of the camera-tab will allow you to set the plane’s visibility from non-transparent to totally invisibile. NOTE: If your viewport is in wireframe- mode you obviously will not see anything but the frames of the planes.

 

 

Plane Settings:

Here the settings for the front- and backplane are given.&xnbsp; It affects how the distance of those planes is calculated in relation to the screen-plane. The default value is working good for all TRIDELITY Screens. But maybe for your scene there are values that could be optimize the results. Feel free to test a little bit.

 

NOTE: Changing the values will not change the depth in your scene. It will just change the position of the front- and far-plane which are just helpers for placing the objects or setting the stereo-parameters in your scene.

Rendering and MV:

Single Views

To render Single Views, select Single Views in the Rendering Options and press the Render button.

 

As result, the frames of the cameras will be rendered as separate pictures to the corresponding view’s subfolder.

 

 

 

Multi Views

To render a Multi View Image Sequence, select Single Views and Multi Views in the Rendering Options and choose your target layout (e.g. 5-Tiled) in the Multi View options, then press the Render button.

 

 

IMPORTANT NOTE: if you already rendered the Single Views in a previous render step, you can uncheck the Single Views checkbox. This can save you an enormous amount of time as rendering the Single Views takes up most of the time. You can e.g. render the Single Views once, and then render different layouts of Multi Views without re-rendering the Single Views. However, be aware that Multi Views always depend on the Single Views: You must make sure to re-render the Single Views at least once after a change in your scene before rendering Multi Views!

 

Multi View Video

To render a Multi View Video, select Single Views, Multi Views and Video in the Rendering Options, choose your target layout (e.g. 5-Tiled) in the Multi View options and your desired frame rate and quality in the Video Options, then press the Render button.

 

 

IMPORTANT NOTE 1: if you already rendered the Single Views in a previous render step, you can uncheck the Single Views checkbox. This can save you an enormous amount of time as rendering the Single Views takes up most of the time. You can e.g. render the Single Views once, and then render different layouts of Multi Views without re-rendering the Single Views. However, be aware that Multi Views always depend on the Single Views: You must make sure to re-render the Single Views at least once after a change in your scene before rendering Multi Views!

 

 

IMPORTANT NOTE 2: if you already rendered the Multi Views in a previous render step, you can uncheck the Multi Views checkbox. You can e.g. render the Multi Views once, and then render different Videos without re-rendering the Multi Views. However, be aware that the Video always depends on the Multi Views: You must make sure to re-render the Single Views and Multi Views at least once after a change in your scene before rendering a Video!

License and Application:

Here you can set the path to the license file which can be located anywhere on your computer. Once set this path will be remembered. Having no license set will activate the trial-mode where it is only possible to preview single frames.

 

If you want to do preview and/or multiview (picture and video) rendering you will have to set the path to the application used for this, too. Using windows you have to search for the MVJ application file and for mac it is the TriViewPreviewer.&xnbsp;

 

Looking through TRIDELITY Multi-view cameras

The Cameras are named automatically in the rig. The one on the left is always View1.

In order to look through any of the cameras, simply click on ‘panels’, choose perspective and the camera you want to look at. The one named which isn’t named as ‘Satellite’ is the central camera (view 3).

 

 

Rendering Setup

Using the plugin’s render-button TRIDELITY StereoRenderer automatically sets the output format to *.png. If you want to render more than one Frame, you have to change it in the rendersettings of Maya, it will then be set in TRIDELITY StereoRenderer automatically.&xnbsp; The Plugin uses the renderer which is set in the settings to render the frames on the local machine.

 

The Frames will be saved in the projects path as it is set in the render settings. In this given folder TRIDELITY Stereo Renderer will create a Folder for each view, the 5-tiled pictures and for the video file (if activated in the plugin).

 

If you want to render with Batch Render, on a separate machine or renderfarm, you will have to render each camera separate (just as you would do without using the plugin) and combine the views later with MVJ, or AE (or any tool that works for that).

 

Previewing on a TRIDELITY Screen

To preview a rendering on a TRIDELITY Screen, follow these steps:

 

Make sure you have attached a TRIDELITY Screen as your 2^nd Screen on your GPU output. In case it is a Portrait Screen, enable the Portrait Option in the settings of your display adapter (e.g. Nvidia Control Panel).

 

In TRIDELITY StereoRenderer, enable Single Views, Multi Views and use 'Preview MV' (or ML/MP depending on your screen) as Multi View option, then click on the Render button.

 

 

If your Maya Rendering Settings are set to render a single frame, the Preview will appear on the TRIDELITY Screen. To stop the Preview, you can press any key, click on the Preview or click the Close button on the window that appears on your primary screen.

 

If your Maya Rendering Settings are set to render multiple frames, the Preview of the first frame will appear on the TRIDELITY Screen. To stop the Preview, you can press the Esc key or click the Abort button on the window that appears on your primary Screen. To proceed with the next frame, you can press any key, click on the Preview or click the Next button in the window that appears on your primary screen.

About 3D

Understanding 3D settings

Separation: The Separation defines the distance between the cameras (distance between neighbor cameras). It correlates to the distance of human eyes (6.5cm (or 2.4”) are mostly set as standard). Changing the range also changes the position of the Near- and Far-Planes and has an effect on the max Multi View Pixel shift between the nearest and furthest object in the scene. To get the max possible overall depth, you should change the Range (together with the camera position) until all important objects are between the near- and Far Plane. (All objects which should not be in front of the screen or are not completely seen by the Camera should be between Screen- and Far Plane)

 

Screen Plane: This is distance between the cameras and the one point that all 5 cameras are looking through. This point is part of the Focal Plane, which is always between the Near- and Far-Plane.

 

Link to Target: If enabled, for a target camera the Focus (Focal Plane) follows the Target of the camera and automatically adjusts the Range parameter.&xnbsp; For a free camera the activation of this option will set the cameras target-distance to the value which is set for the Screen Plane.

 

Understanding near- far- and screenplane

Objects between the screen- and nearplane will pop out of TRIDELITY screens.

Objects behind the screenplane will be recognized as 'behind the screen'.

Objects behind the farplane should be avoided, as they result in a pixel offset that is hard to catch for the viewer of a TRIDELITY screen.

 

Hint: To get the best 3D results lots of testing is required. The given values for the near- and farplane are just guidelines for what works for most purposes. But it depends on the used display, the distance of the viewers, the scene, the type of motion you are doing and even on every individual itself how much 3D there is possible. Feel free to test out the best values for your needs.

Post Processing outside Maya

To apply post processing effects outsideMaya, follow these steps:

·         From within Maya, render to a Multi View Image sequence. The 5-Tiled and Stacked layout will be fine for that.

·         Import the Multiview-Image sequence to the application used for the post processing (e.g. Adobe After Effects)

·         Apply the post processing Effects and video cuts.

·         Export again to an image sequence.

·        
As a last step, manually use MVJ to encode the exported Multi View image sequence as a Multi View video:

 

 

Note: You can either use the […] button at the right to define Src1, but also directly drag n' drop the first image of your Multi view image sequence to the textbox.

Manual Video Conversion

To manually transcode existing videos (avi, wmv etc.) into a H.264 mkv video, you can do that with MVJ at the touch of a single button with the following settings:

 

 

Important note: converting a video that way keeps the Multi View Layout. E.g. if the input is 5-tiled, the output will also be 5-tiled. In order to change the Multi View Layout of a video, follow these steps:

 

 

Convert the Video to an Image Sequence

 

Convert the image sequence to the Multi view Layout of your choice, e.g. Combined:

Appendix A: Multi View Formats

The following 5 images were the 5 different views of one frame; they will be combined as follows in the corresponding Multi View format:

 

View 1	View 2	View 3	View 4	View 5

 

5-Tiled&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp;&xnbsp; Stacked

 

 

 

Combined

Frame A	Frame B

 

Pro and Contra of the different Multi View Layouts

 

MV Layout	Pro	Contra
5-Tiled	Quasi-standard in the industry, everybody seems to use it.   It's easy to get a quick impression of the look of a video even on a normal 2d screens with a normal video players   (This is the only format supported by TriView)	The split view mode may lead to problems in post processing and makes the real-time sub pixel encoding formula during playback slightly more CPU/GPU demanding. DXVA2 (GPU accelerated decoding of H.264) is limited to 1920x1080, which results in a max resolution of 5x960x432.   Resolutions above 5x960x432 can't be played perfectly fluid on Nvidia ION based players (best in price)
Stacked (Supported by CMS only)	Simply the best and most unproblematic for post processing e.g. in Adobe After Effects.   It's easy to get a quick impression of the look of a video even on normal 2d screens with normal video players.	DXVA2 (GPU accelerated decoding of H.264) is limited to 1920x1080, which results in a max resolution of 5x1920x216.   Resolutions above 5x1920x216 can't be played perfectly fluid on Nvidia ION based players (best in price)
Combined (Supported by CMS only)	The ultimate winner in performance.   Using TRIDELITYs Player, it is the only format that can be played perfectly fluid (+ sub pixel encoding) on Nvidia ION based players (best in price)	Not useful for post processing because the 5 views are spread over 2 frames.

 

Appendix B: Supported Image Formats

The MVJ supports all media formats supported by .Net. Currently these are:

·         Bmp – Bitmap image format.

·         Emf – Enhanced metafile image format.

·         Exif – Exchangeable Image File format.

·         Gif – Graphics Interchange Format image format.

·         Icon – Windows icon image format.

·         Jpeg – Joint Photographic Experts Group image format.

·         Png – W3C Portable Network Graphics image format (Recommended)

·         Tiff – Tagged Image File Format image format.

·         Wmf – Windows metafile image format.

 

System requirements

•                     Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7

Please note that the 3ds Max specific parts also work on Mac, but Multi-view and video transcoding related parts are handled by MVJ (Multi-View Jockey), which is an independent tool developed for Windows only.

•                     3d Studio Max version 2008 or newer

 

Installation

3ds Max Plug-in: TRIDELITY Stereo Renderer

 

Close all 3ds Max Instances and copy TRIDELITYStereoRenderer.mse file to the 3DS Max Startup Script folder. To determine the correct folder, check out in the 3ds Max menu: "Customize"->"Configure System Paths"

 

Multi-View Jockey (MVJ)

 

Copy the following files to C:\

•                     MultiViewJockey.exe

•                     libx264-115.dll

•                     MediaInfo.dll

•                     MediaConverter.dll

 

Usage

Basics

•                     Open 3ds Max and create a scene with a camera.

•                     Select the camera

•                     In the Utilities Tab, in the TRIDELITY Stereo Renderer, tick the 'Enabled' checkbox.

Looking through TRIDELITY Multi-view cameras

To show any of the 5 cameras in the 3ds Max Viewports, click on the 1 2 3 4 5 camera buttons. Note that camera 3 is the middle camera and can't be disabled. In case that the cameras are not updated in the 3ds Max viewport according to your expectations, click the Update cameras button.

To look through any of the 5 cameras, make sure the corresponding camera is enabled and then right-click on the text on the upper-left of a 3ds Max Viewport and select the corresponding camera.

Rendering Setup

To correctly setup the rendering, follow these steps:

•                     Open the 3ds Max Render Setup (press F10)

•                     Scroll down to Render Output, enable Save File and define a file path and png file.

•                    
Please note that the image sequences of the 5 different Views will be rendered into corresponding View1, View2, View3, View4, view5 subfolders. In the example shown above, folders containing the 5 separate image sequences will be c:\test\View1\, c:\test\View2\, c:\test\View3\, c:\test\View4\, c:\test\View5\

•                     IMPORTANT NOTE 1: Using the Render button from the 3ds Max Render Setup Window won't work, as it only ever renders one camera.

•                     IMPORTANT NOTE 2: The 3ds Max Render Setup Window must be closed before rendering.

•                     IMPORTANT NOTE 3: Make sure production (and not iterative!) is chosen in render settings, and that View is not locked (which results in identical images being rendered for all 5 camera views).

Rendering

Single Views

To render Single Views, select Single Views in the Rendering Options and press the Render button (make sure you also selected all 5 cameras by pushing the 1 2 3 4 5 camera buttons).

As result, the frames of the 5 cameras will be rendered as separate pictures to the corresponding View subfolders.

Multi Views

To render a Multi View Image Sequence, select Single Views and Multi Views in the Rendering Options and choose your target layout (e.g. 5-Tiled) in the Multi View options, then press the Render button.

•                    
IMPORTANT NOTES: if you already rendered the Single Views in a previous render step, you can uncheck the Single Views checkbox. This can save you an enormous amount of time as rendering the Single Views takes up most of the time. You can e.g. render the Single Views once, and then render different layouts of Multi Views without re-rendering the Single Views. However, be aware that Multi Views always depend on the Single Views: You must make sure to re-render the Single Views at least once after a change in your scene before rendering Multi Views!

 

Multi View Video

To render a Multi View Video, select Single Views, Multi Views and Video in the Rendering Options, choose your target layout (e.g. 5-Tiled) in the Multi View options and your desired frame rate and quality in the Video Options, then press the Render button.

•                     IMPORTANT NOTES 1: if you already rendered the Single Views in a previous render step, you can uncheck the Single Views checkbox. This can save you an enormous amount of time as rendering the Single Views takes up most of the time. You can e.g. render the Single Views once, and then render different layouts of Multi Views without re-rendering the Single Views. However, be aware that Multi Views always depend on the Single Views: You must make sure to re-render the Single Views at least once after a change in your scene before rendering Multi Views!

 

•                     IMPORTANT NOTES 2: if you already rendered the Multi Views in a previous render step, you can uncheck the Multi Views checkbox. You can e.g. render the Multi Views once, and then render different Videos without re-rendering the Multi Views. However, be aware that the Video always depends on the Multi Views: You must make sure to re-render the Single Views and Multi Views at least once after a change in your scene before rendering a Video!