Re: [Chimera-users] 3D movies for projects

Hi Kenward, There are various movie outputs from Chimera that could be viewed in a VR headset, none of them will produce the 360 degree stereoscopic movie that ChimeraX can for an immersive view with depth perception. Here are the lesser Chimera options. 1) Just record a normal mono movie and play it in the headset. This is pointless — just a low resolution way to view a normal (narrow field of view, no depth) movie. 2) Record left eye and right eye movies separately using the Chimera camera modes "stereo left eye” and “stereo right eye” in the Camera panel (menu Tools / Viewing Controls / Camera). Probably also should set the field of view pretty wide. I have made this type of movie pair and played them on a stereo capable flat panel or projector using the Bino 3d video player or Stereoscopic Player (from 3dtv.at http://3dtv.at/). They can probably be played on a VR headset — you would need to find an app that can take the two eye views as separate movies. I have not played left/right movie pairs. 3) You can try to make a side-by-side left/right eye movie. Recording a wall-eye movie in Chimera 1 might work but I have not tried. Alternatively you can use ffmpeg or some other video compositing software to join separately recorded left/right eye movies into a single side-by-side movie. VR headset players handle SBS movies. I have used Virtual Desktop for desktop VR and MobileVRStation for cellphone VR. None of the above Chimera options make use of the wide field of view in VR and the ability to look to the sides and behind you. For that you need 360 degree recording which Chimera 1 does not do but ChimeraX does do. This isn’t quite true, Chimera 1 can do fish-eye dome recording, and some of the VR players can handle that I think, and you could probably make a monoscopic dome movie that could be played on a VR headset where you can look in all directions with no depth. A stereoscopic version won’t be possible in Chimera 1 because the two eye views depend on the direction you are looking in — Chimera 1 is not able to render that, while ChimeraX can do that. So you possibly can record movies with depth and limited field of view, or wide field of view without depth in Chimera 1, but since we can have both features in ChimeraX I have only worked on it in ChimeraX. Tom

On Jan 28, 2017, at 2:25 PM, Kenward Vaughan wrote:

On 01/27/2017 09:46 AM, Tom Goddard wrote:

...

Hi Kenward,

We have been trying virtual reality headsets (HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, cellphone) with ChimeraX our next generation version of Chimera. Here's a description

http://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/data/vr-dec2016/vr.html

With the desktop systems you can walk through the scene and move it and zoom it with hand controllers. For cellphone VR you can record stereoscopic 360 degree scenes or movies in ChimeraX for playback with a cellphone headset. I've been exploring cellphone VR the last few weeks - I found my iPhone 5 (2012) is not up to the task (can't play 4k movies)-- it probably takes a high-end modern (> 2014) phone like a Samsung Galaxy S6 or S7 do get smooth playback, don't have one to try, I get nauseating latency and jerkiness looking around a scene using my old phone. The main limitation of prerecorded scenes is you don't control the view point, whereas with desktop VR with ChimeraX doing the rendering on the fly you can walk around inside the molecule.

Tom

Thanks for the input, Tom. I've been playing with ChimeraX now and find that there are features still missing (understandably) which will limit the presentation, such as not having zone selection with extend, hbonds, and something equivalent to focus.

While I may be able to come up with their rough equivalents to achieve the desired results, I'm not sure my students would be up to the task. The idea is to make it a bit of a challenge but more importantly to be fun seeing things come together relatively quickly.

Back to Chimera itself--can a side-by-side movie be generated which would work in a VR setup? If so, what sorts of changes might we look for in the settings for the camera (eye separation, screen distance, etc.)??

This moves away from the immersion experience but still could easily bring a student's presentation outside to the masses to view...

Kenward

On Jan 26, 2017, at 9:11 PM, Kenward Vaughan

...

...

t mailto:kay_jay@earthlink.net>> wrote:

Hello,

I'm developing a project for my class which feels like it's taking on Chimera (as in the creature) like proportions for the students. The thought is to have presentations of their visualization studies presented in a conference like setting at our school, open to all students.

The question that has pounced into my thoughts is the possibility of using some settings within Chimera allowing them to record a movie (even as simple as a screen capture) which can then be played using an Oculus headset (or similar) with a phone.

This would be a simple way to get the technology out into the street, so to speak.

I do not yet have one of these myself so really don't know this first hand, but thought using wall-eye stereo made sense...??

Has anyone tried this, hopefully successfully?

Kenward

ps. Is there a way to use the phone as a monitor so one can manipulate the images via an external device, or use a Bluetooth hand controller? (I expect this is not possible given the graphics constraints of phones...) -- In a completely rational society, the best of us would aspire to be _teachers_ and the rest of us would have to settle for something less, because passing civilization along from one generation to the next ought to be the highest honor and the highest responsibility anyone could have. - Lee Iacocca

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