How I created my first 3D video for the Rift

Cool. Thanks for putting this together.

Great! I really liked your approach. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Have you tried 360 degree Movie creation with your rig? Please share if you can.

Thanks

No, I haven't tried the 360° rig yet. That's going to require more cameras, some special software to stitch the images together and a way to bring it into the rift. I don't think it'll be as easy as my first test. But as soon as I do, I'll post my experience as well.

Thanks for putting this together! I just received my Oculus and I would like to create immersive 360 videos. I looked at your article in which you say that to record a 360° videos you may need 14 GoPro, that seems huge...and expensive! I've looked at a company named Kolor that sells manufactured mount to record 360° videos - http://www.kolor.com/360-video/record - I'm interested in the Freedom360 but I don't now if 5 GoPros will be enough to create a real 360° immersive videos, what are your thoughts about that?

Thanks!

Unmodified GoPro to capture the entire sphere requires 6 cameras arranged in a cubic format with adjacent cameras rotated 90 deg.

To capture the entire sphere in 3D with GoPro requires 6 pairs mounted in portrait just to cover the horizon. The cameras pairs need to be side by side like the human eye. Then more cameras to fill in the zenith and nadir.

The problem with using pairs of GoPro to capture in 3D is the distance between Left of one pair to the left of the next pair is greater than the distance between left and right of a pair. The seams become a problem.

I tried to solve the seam problem by interweaving the pairs of cameras. Samsung Project Beyond used the same idea.
http://photocreations.ca/3D/mobius_camera_rig.html

A simpler method is to use modified GoPro with wider FoV lenses. Fewer cameras means fewer seams to deal with. With just 6 cameras you can capture the entire sphere in 3D.
http://www.izugar.com/index.html#products

Thanks j1vvy! I'm going to check out the Izugar lenses. That's a super cheap way to get 360 degrees, and it'll make it easier to stitch the videos together.

What software do you use to stitch the videos and export it out?

I use PTGui for aligning the video. You can batch process a sequence of images but can not handle correcting changes that might happen though the entire video.

I use VideoStitch to stitch together all my 360 Video. Stitching in 3D is a bit of a pain right now but improvements are happening.

genlock genlock genlock.

No genlock between cameras and your 3D is going to be unwatchable. Don't shoot with BMPCC unless you know what you are doing.
http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/10902/bmd-pocket-cinema-camera-stereoscopic-collaboration/p1

That's a cool set up Russ!

I'm curious how the 3D effect looked using gopro's standard 3d case?

I felt the lens separation may be too narrow to give a human realistic effect, so I trimmed off the wifi button on the side of the + case and bolted 2 cameras onto 5mm rod (this was the cheapest way I could think of to get started)

I've linked this to 1min in to skip my waffling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmVUKet_aCI#t=60

I've only got the DK1 so far and vrplayer worked nicely on that, I might try the other you mention on your page.

Thanks