Create Quicktime VR Panoramas

Step 6 PanoCube

Move (or copy) the pano.jpg you have to the folder that PanoCube is in, also, make sure you moved the PanoTools things to that folder. And, just a reminder, that folder should be on the path "C:\PanoCube" or something similar. PanoCube is very finicky, and doesn't like spaces in file-paths.

Grab PTStitcher.exe, and drag it into PanoCube.exe, so PanoCube will know where it is. You only need to do this once.

PanoCube doesn't have a GUI, but it's settings are in a file called Script.txt. It's contents look like this:

			#### COMPRESSION RATIO ####85	# This is JPEG quality. Valid values from 1(worst quality, smalest size)	# to 100 (best quality, largest size). Default (without this script) is 90. 			#### QT VIEWER WINDOW SIZE ####360	# Viewer window width. Valid values up to 800 pixels. Default is 360.240	# Viewer window height. Valid values up to 600 pixels. Default is 240.			#### INITIAL VIEW ####0  # Initial pan angle. Valid values between -180 to +180 degrees. Deafault is 0. 0  # Initial tilt angle. Valid values between -90 to +90 degrees. Default is 0.70 # Initial field of view. Valid values from 5 to 140 degrees. Default is 70   # All three numbers from above may be found with PTViewer. Pan your panorama to   # the desired initial view and press "v". From the status bar you could read now   # pan, tilt and fov values.			#### VIEW LIMITS FOR PARTIAL PANORAMAS ####-180	# Min pan angle. Default is -180.180 	# Max pan angle. Default is 180. -90	# Min pitch angle. Default is -90.90	# Max pitch angle. Default is 90.10	# Max zoom in. Default is 5. You could also set this value to -1, -2, -3 or -4 then	# program calculates values for 1x1, 2x1, 3x1 or 4x1 magnify ratio. You can get	# error message here if you whant to use small panorama in big window. 120	# Max zoom out. Default is 120.	# Six numbers above you need to change only if you wanna to get partial panorama.			#### HTML CODE TO EMBED YOUR MOVIE ####1	# Generate html. 1 = Yes, 0 = No. You could use generated html code to embed	# your movie in to a page. Default is 0.# You could also use the program without this script - then default values will be used.# To use the script you need to move it to the source images folder.

This will tell you how your movie will be outputted. Notice the viewing size of 360 by 240. This is the size my example is in. You can set it higher, if you want a bigger final result, though.

Incidentally, you can rename your panorama to anything you want, and now would be a good time to do it. Say that you rename the picture "myawesomepanorama.jpg," for example.

Now, you should just take your pano.jpeg, and drag it into PanoCUBE.exe. If it tells you something like "Bad JPEG Structure" or "No Pano Found," then check to make sure that your JPEG's dimmensions are at a 1:2 ration. If you don't get this error, then PanoCUBE should think for awhile, then create two files: myawesomepanorama.mov, and myawesomepanorama.htm. Open up the htm document, and as long as you have the QT plugin on your browser, TA-DA! You have yourself a brand-spanking new virtual reality panorama.

You can view the movie through the htm file, as long as you have the .mov and the.htm file in the same folder. Go ahead, and put them both in your web-host of choice, and share it with your friends and family.

Here's my final product, again: http://home.graffiti.net/kabukistar/OLDMAINLAWN.htm