Experimentation

I have been experimenting further with the use of the apple and an additional item, again overlapping images to create impossible art pieces. Again the idea is that they look good 2D or 3D. I think this piece works well., the apple seems to be a good solid form and with the transparency adjusted creates and interesting container for the guitar.



I would like to do a sequence of apple pictures with various objects contain within it, I think it would make a nice collection.

A bit of history

I though it was important to give you and small background history of who invented the anaglyph.

The anaglyph method of stereoscopic photography was invented /patented by Louis Ducas Du Hauron in 1891. He was the first person to produce a print of an anaglyph image in red and blue colours.
Louis was a french scientist who published a book in 1869 called 'Les Couleurs En Photographie' which made some major theoretical proposals to aid the advancement of using colour in photographs.

The idea of the anaglyph's whilst specifically linked and patented by Louis Ducas Du Hauron, was made by W. Rollman in 1853. He theoretically illustrated the idea in a line drawing using red and blue lines on a black field, he used red and blue glasses to demonstrate the effect.

Information taken from http://www.rleggat.com/photohistory/history/du_hauro.htm

Anaglyph Artists

I've been searching the internet for interesting anaglyph artists to see what kind of content is out there. Here are a few links to good anaglyph art work.

Jonathan Fesmire

Deviant Art

Arthur Girling and L.P. Futo

After looking at some of the art work by other people I realise that perhaps I should be a bit more technical in the taking of my photographs. At the moment I'm guessing the distance and convergence of the two photos, I think it would possible make better results if I worked on measuring the distance with more accuracy.

I quite enjoyed my last picture of the apple inside the apple and I think I might do some kind of composite piece again in anaglyph format. Perhaps I could create a realistic 3D piece with a person or guitar trapped inside the apple and see how that works. This idea is appropriate as I'm hoping that my second etude idea will cover forced perspective photographs.

Overlapping Experimentation part 2

I have desaturated the picture I took in Photoshop, I also decided that four angles (eight photos) of photography is too much. It causes too much of a wash of colour. I have taken the 4 de-saturated images and played with the size and positioning to produce an art piece. I took out a lot of the scene and focused on one major item, the apple.

Here are the results.



I think it works very well, it give the illusion in 3D of one apple being inside the other and in 2D it is a very interesting work in it's own right. Again it may well work better in 2D with Photoshop filters on. I did sharpen the edges in Photoshop to make the fruit stand out more.

Overlapping experimentation

Well I've done a still life with a few objects to experiment with mixing the anaglyph idea with overlapping several images. The method I used was to take two photos from the front, the side, the rear and the other side. Make each set of two photos into a fully merged anaglyph and then overlap each anaglyph one by one, using the multiply colour blend function in Photoshop and then merging each picture down on to the other until all four anaglyph are incorporated.

I set out to produce a piece of art work that will function as a 2D piece and a 3D whilst wearing coloured specs. Here are the results of my work. I think critically this piece works better in 2D with Photoshop filters on than it does with the 3D specs on. I think the difficulty is that if you get the subject correct then the specs makes the outcome of the work very effective, but if you don't it all looks like a bit of a blur, the specs also make you go a little crossed eyes if you wear them for too long. I'm losing the ability to see straight.

Here are the results of my experimentation:-



This is with a dry brush filter



This is with a glass filter



I think maybe I've got the similar problem to before in that the scene is too busy, the most effective of my pieces so far is the chilli peppers picture. The only other relevant point is that I haven't de-saturated the pictures that I have done, I think I will try this with the photos I have already taken and see if there is any improvement to the overall look of the piece.

Alternative test footage

Here are a few other tests of moving footage that I have done.





I'm not sure they work too well, I'm finding it quite difficult to get the cameras in the correct place.

As I mentioned earlier in this study I would like to do a still picture with either a lot of blue or red on to see what happens. I thought I'd do a picture with some red objects to see what the outcome is, I think the result is quite interesting. If you add some standard Photoshop filters to the picture it makes some interesting results. I think the piece below works quite well as a 2D and 3d piece. I would still like to experiment with the overlapping several anaglyphs to see what happens.





I think it is important to look for some anaglyph artists to compare their art works to mine to see if I can get any insight into the type of subject matter that they might use. Maybe this will give me some helpful pointers.

Etude 1 - Experimentation

I have decided to experiment with producing art in an anaglyph style. I worked on another picture using one of my 3D models from Maya, whilst I haven't finished rigging the character I wanted to see whether the 3d character would jump out of the screen more if modified to suit the dual colour specs.

The next idea that comes to mind is that I can animate in Maya and pull the footage into After Effects which is a composition software, theoretically if I can adjust the footage colour as I have with the stills in Photoshop I should be able to produce a moving film which appears 3D when the specs are worn. I had a few problems producing the correct colour footage in After Effects, whilst having similar settings to Photoshop, because it is live footage there doesn't appear to be a merge down facility for squashing the cyan and the footage together into one layer. Unless this is merged into one piece switching the blend colour selection to multiply mode instead of screen doesn't work. I though it might be possible to get round the problem by starting a new composition and importing just the cyan layer in as one already composited piece, rather than two separate layers. It worked the only problem with it is that now that it's one piece the state of the footage is starting off with the colour selection as normal instead of screen as it was set in the previous composition. I tried to change the blend mode to multiply but that doesn't appear to be working, again I think the best way will be to merge the red layer as well and make a one piece and import that in too. I did this and changed the setting of the layer to multiply, it appears to be working although I think that because I used footage I already had and just offset it, I need to use two cameras and separate render footage with a slight convergence to get better results. I'm going to try again but this time set up the cameras properly, I am also going to use one of my moving characters and keep the scene more simple. I don't know whether I can get round any of these problems by using the Alpha channels, I don't know much about alpha channels but I know that I can use this facility to turn off the separate colour channels, maybe this will be helpful for the next experiment. My first footage attempt is below, I think the objects that I have chosen don't work too well.