Create Instant EXR on Nokia Camera Phones

[Tea Vui Huang]

Tea Vui Huang's Instant EXR
http://teavuihuang.com/instantexr

Tea Vui Huang's Instant EXR mobile phone application allows you to create a High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) in the form of ILM's (Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucas Digital Ltd. LLC) OpenEXR latitude-longitude environment map from a sequence of mobile phone photos.

The OpenEXR files it creates can be imported directly into SOFTIMAGE|XSI & Autodesk Maya to render photo-realistic 3D scenes and animation. The Instant EXR generated environment maps can be used with Final Gather or Global Illumination to perform Image-Based Lighting (IBL).

http://teavuihuang.com/instantexr/InstantEXR_Nokia6600.jpg

[lexluthor]

anyone tried this ?

[GeneCrucean]

I'm not trying to diss anyone with this I promise. But what's the point of trying to create a highend picture from an extremely low end camera?

Maybe it's just because you can... but I can't imagine any usable quality EXR's coming from a crappy little cell phone camera.

$.02

[kim aldis]

some phones come with quite decent cameras. All the same I have to agree, I'd want to do this where I could see and control what's going on.

[GeneCrucean]

Yeah I agree... but no phones come with DSLR's built in :)

[kim aldis]

SLR or not isn't a good criteria for deciding if a camera is suitable for taking pictures. The quality of most phones on the market today is perfectly adequate for what this software will do.

[ajcgi]

Unless you're doing oodles of chrome spheres or flight of the navigator style ships, environment maps don't need to be perfect images. It's about providing something to reflect that will make the object look closer to life.
The Nokia I have takes reasonable images all things considered. Not as good as my old Olympus compact of the same res, but given the choice of carrying two things around or one, one sounds better atm. Gonna stop using my old mp3 player for the same reason.

[GeneCrucean]

What you are talking about is perfectly doable with "LDR" images. HDR, imo, needs to be decent quality or why bother.

I agree any old image can be used for reflections and whatnot... but there are steps and requirements to take advantage of an EXR (or HDR).


Just my 2 cents. Speaking of 2 cents, am I the only one with the same 2 cents? lol

[ajcgi]

I've had fairly decent results using 8-bit images in HDR Shop. True enough it isn't true HDR, but if it makes the object fit in the scene...
Course you have a point though. It's easier to take a decent HDR image in the first place and use that without fiddling about.

[ThE_JacO]

What you are talking about is perfectly doable with "LDR" images. HDR, imo, needs to be decent quality or why bother.


Because you need the extended range, and creating it artificially simply isn't the same.
Plenty case where I've seen 512 and 256 maps looked up (which a multisnap from a nokia can easily provide at the needed quality), those maps didn't need much in terms of fine detail, but the range needed to exceed the 0-1 scale.

Oh and ftr, LDR doesn't mean your old school standard pictures since you still have a D for dynamic (which they aren't) in there. It's WSR for half float or float and NSR for 8bit if you really can't live without acronyms for those.
That people are starting to use LDR as non HDR is irritating to say the least "take a random word from the acronym, use its opposite, and you're good" kinda irritating :)

[GeneCrucean]

Yeah I guess I should have explained further. And thanks for the explanation about the D :) I never really thought about it to be honest and just considered any old jpg an LDR. Either way however, I was just trying to say that any "non-hdr" image would do what he was saying.


Cheers