title Soccer Ball Cam user gregr ip 68.62.121.45 vol 1 lock ******** This is a log of gregr's project to build a soccer ball style camera (see http://wiki.yak.net/574). / I posted a gallery of test images and QTVR files here http://wiki.yak.net/832 . /b I was asked to put up some pictures of the completed project. Here they are: /gallery( * /imagefile DSC02664sm.jpg * /imagefile DSC02663sm.jpg /gallery) The idea is that you can shoot a picture of the whole world in one shot if you had enough cameras jammed into a ball. The soccer ball idea originally would use 32 webcams (one webcam per face). That many cameras would quickly become cumbersome, and who wants to carry around a laptop with a enough usb hubs to take pictures with such a device. Because of these issues I decided to simplify the design. Im going to use four old point and shoot digital cameras each with a fisheye lens. I began my search for a camera that was low price, 2 or more megapixels, and readily available. I also had to find a fisheye kit specifically for the camera I chose or find a lens and mount it myself. |/imagefile ptgui_6.0.1_smartblend_ready_to_fold_sm.jpg | Step 1. Print. Step 2. Cut out. Step 3. Fold a copy of my world! (See bottom of this page for a sample.) I found on ebay Olympus was selling a bunch of old-stock fisheye kits. I checked all the cameras that the kit was compatible with and one of the cameras was a 2 megapixel point and shoot that was easy to find used. I bought 4 of the cameras and 4 of the fisheyes. /gallery( * /imagefile fisheye.jpg * /imagefile c304_1.JPG /gallery) I decided with 4 cameras putting each camera on the face of a tetrahedron would be the optimal configuration. Each fisheye captures 180 degrees of the world, so with a tetrahedral arrangement I will have plenty of overlap between my 4 images. So, there will be one camera pointing straight up and three pointing down at a 60 degree angle spaced 120 degrees apart. The 120 degree spacing should give me about 30% overlap on the edges of each image (10%-50% overlap is necessary to stitch images together accurately). /b Update: I finally received all of my gear! Four of the above cameras ans four of the fisheye lenses. Prototyping time... I cut out four 8 inch equilateral triangles out of foam and taped them together. To the resulting tetrahedron I attached 3 of the 4 cameras and shot some pictures with the rig... /gallery( * /imagefile P1010002a.JPG Straight from the camera. * /imagefile P1010002b.JPG Straight from the camera. * /imagefile P1010002c.JPG Straight from the camera. /gallery) /b Update: I am having a damn hard time stitching fisheye images. My favorite stitching software is Autopano Pro and it will not stitch fisheye images until the next release version ( 1.4). I have made some attempts to undistort the fisheye images in such a way that Autopano Pro will stitch them properly. None of this worked well. I am testing some other software to stitch images. So far every other piece of software is harder to use, and I have not gotten great results yet. /gallery( * /imagefile P1010002a_copy.JPG Attempted removal of distortion. * /imagefile P1010002b_copy.JPG Attempted removal of distortion. * /imagefile P1010002c_copy.JPG Attempted removal of distortion. * /imagefile Pano_-_b1_-_6320x2293_-_SLIL_-_Blended_Layer.jpg Test stitch. * /imagefile Pano_-_P1010002a_copy_-_2766x1730_-_SLIL_-_Blended_Layer.jpg Test stitch. * /imagefile Untitled-1.jpg Stitched using a different piece of software. Slightly better... * /imagefile untitled32.jpg This is projected onto a cylinder instead of a sphere. This projection makes it a bit easier to check for stitching issues. /gallery) /b Update: I shot this next part with all four cameras. I have gotten some very nice stitches. Check out /file NewProject.mov And check these beautiful stitches out: /gallery( * /imagefile 1b_crop.jpg * /imagefile 2b_crop.jpg * /imagefile 3b_crop.jpg * /imagefile 4b_crop.jpg * /imagefile untitled44.jpg * /imagefile untitled22.jpg * /imagefile ptgui_6.0.1_smartblend_sm.jpg * /imagefile ptgui_6.0.1_smartblend_little_world.jpg /gallery) /b Update: Fold this image into a ball! /gallery( * /imagefile ptgui_6.0.1_smartblend_ready_to_fold_sm.jpg * /imagefile origami.jpg * /imagefile origami_2.jpg * /imagefile origami_3.jpg /g