How to make a 360-degree panorama

360 panorama is not created out of thin air. To do a 360 panoramic view, we need to have the original image material. The source of the original image material can be:

A, fisheye images obtained by using the panoramic shooting function of the camera in real scenes.

B, modeling and rendering the obtained virtual image.

The following table compares the fisheye images that can be obtained under different equipment, shooting position, stitching method and shooting difficulty.

To shoot panoramic material, we need to use some professional equipment, as follows:

Digital Single Lens Reflex Camera

360 Panoramic Shooting Hardware-Digital SLR Camera

First of all, let's learn what a digital SLR camera is. To put it bluntly, a digital SLR camera is a digital camera adopting new SLR technology. As a professional digital camera, the photos taken with it are incomparable in definition and quality. These are the high performance of digital SLR cameras made by SLR technology. Single lens reflection. The camera using this technology has only one lens, which is responsible for photography and framing. This can basically solve the problem of poor photo quality caused by parallax. Moreover, when taking a view with a SLR camera, the light from the object is focused by the lens, reflected by the inclined reflector to the focusing screen for imaging, and then reflected by the "roof prism" with ridges on the top, so that the photographer can observe the scene through the eyepiece, and it is the same image as the scene, which is very convenient for taking a view and focusing. When shooting, the mirror will bounce up immediately, the lens aperture will automatically shrink to a predetermined value, and the shutter will open to make the film sensitive; After the exposure, the shutter is closed and the reflection and lens aperture are reset. This is the SLR technology in cameras. Now digital cameras have become professional digital SLR cameras after adopting this technology.

The role of digital SLR camera in shooting panoramic photos

Theoretically, both digital SLR cameras and traditional SLR cameras can be used, but the image files obtained by using digital SLR cameras can be used directly, while traditional cameras need film and need to be developed and scanned after shooting, so digital cameras are recommended. For example, Nikon's D90 and D300s, Canon's EOS5D, 450D and 1DS cameras. In addition, a major feature of digital SLR cameras is that they can change lenses of different specifications, which is an inherent advantage of SLR cameras and incomparable to ordinary digital cameras. In the process of panoramic shooting, you only need to match different fisheye lenses according to different models of cameras. In addition, SLR digital cameras are now positioned as high-end products of digital cameras, so the area of photosensitive elements (CCD or CMOS) related to the photographic quality of digital cameras is much larger than that of ordinary digital cameras, which makes the photosensitive area of each pixel of SLR digital cameras much larger than that of ordinary digital cameras, so each pixel can show more detailed brightness and color range, which makes the photographic quality of SLR digital cameras significantly higher than that of ordinary digital cameras.

Wechat housekeeper recommended equipment

Janicon series Nikon D700 Nikon D3S Nikon D3X

Nikon APS frame series Nikon D300S Nikon D90 Nikon D7000 Nikon D3 100 Nikon D5 100

Canon Quan Huafu Series Canon 5D Mark II

Canon APS frame series Canon 7d Canon 60D Canon 600D Canon 550D Canon 1 100D

Other models of cameras Fuji Finepix S2 Professional Fuji Finepix S 1 Professional Sigma SD9 Kodak DCS 760

The above models are all mainstream models.

fish-eye lens

360 panoramic shooting hardware-fisheye lens

The fisheye lens is a lens with a very short focal length and a viewing angle close to or equal to180. A lens with a focal length of 16mm or less. It is an extreme wide-angle lens, and "fisheye lens" is its common name. In order to make the lens reach the maximum photographic angle, the front lens of this kind of photographic lens protrudes to the front of the lens in a parabolic shape, which is quite similar to the fish's eyes, hence the name "fisheye lens". Fisheye lens belongs to a special super wide-angle lens, and its viewing angle strives to reach or exceed the range that human eyes can see. Therefore, the fisheye lens is very different from the real world scene in people's eyes, because the scenery we see in real life is regular and fixed, and the picture effect produced through the fisheye lens is beyond this category.

The position of fisheye lens in panoramic shooting

Fisheye lens is a super wide-angle lens. A lens with a general viewing angle of 180 degrees is called a fisheye lens. On a camera with 135 frame, a lens with 16mm can reach a viewing angle of 180 degrees, so we have long called a lens with a focal length below 16mm as a fisheye lens. The biggest function of fisheye lens is its wide viewing angle, which creates conditions for shooting large-scale scenes at close range; Moreover, the fisheye lens has a long depth of field, which is beneficial to show the long depth of field effect of photos. It takes only a few shots to make a 360-degree panorama with a fisheye lens. In addition, using a digital SLR camera with millions of pixels, we can easily import images into panoramic mosaic software, which can easily generate 360-degree high-definition panoramic images.

Fish-eye lens recommended by microchannel

Sigma's 8MM fisheye lens can produce a round picture of surreal images with a viewing angle of 180 on a 35mm full-frame digital DSLR and a traditional SLR camera. Suitable connectors are Sigma, Canon, Nikon Sony and Pentax.

This lens is Nikon's first fisheye lens, specially used for digital SLR cameras, and it is the first time to cover the whole range of 180. The ultra-wide-angle lens with the focal length of 10.5mm makes the drawing angle range of a digital camera equivalent to a 35mm camera with a frame of 135 connected to a fisheye lens of 16mm. This lens is mainly used in Nikon DX digital SLR camera, which enables users to capture unique image effects.

equivalent focal length

The lens focal length of a digital camera is always based on the lens of 135 film camera. The size of the photosensitive surface (CCD or CMOS) of a digital camera varies from camera to camera (the photosensitive surface of 135 camera is fixed). If it is difficult to compare the shooting ranges of different cameras with the real focal length of the camera lens, all of them are converted into the lens focal length of the equivalent 135 camera, and then compared, and the converted focal length is the equivalent focal length. 135 film cameras all use the 35mm film shown in the above figure, while the CCD/CMOS size of digital cameras is often relatively small. For the same lens, the viewing angle of digital camera is smaller than that of 135 camera, and the decrease of viewing angle can be equivalent to the increase of focal length (the viewing angle is inversely proportional to the focal length). There is such a simple method to calculate the zoom factor of a digital camera. For example, the CCD size of Nikon D40 is 23.7 x 15.6 mm (this size can be obtained from camera parameters). We divide the width of the imaging plane of 36mm film by the width of the CCD of Nikon D40 of 23.7mm, and get the zoom factor of 1.5. When we add an 8mm fisheye lens to Nikon D40, the equivalent focal length of this fisheye lens is 8 * 1.5 = 12 mm, and the zoom factor of Nikon digital SLR cameras is mostly 1.5, while the EOS series of Canon is mostly 1.6. On Nikon or Canon digital cameras, the equivalent focal lengths of these two lenses are about 16mm and 12mm respectively. The images obtained by different focal lengths are also very different.

Effects of different fisheye lenses

Panoramic pan-tilt

360 Panoramic Shooting Hardware-Panoramic Pan/Tilt

Panoramic pan/tilt: It is a kind of high-end shooting equipment different from ordinary camera pan/tilt, such as JTS- rotator and Manfutu 303SPH, all of which belong to panoramic pan/tilt, as shown in the left picture, and are JTS- rotator. It is called panoramic pan/tilt mainly because this pan/tilt has two functions: 1. It can adjust the rotation of camera nodes on the vertical axis; 2. The camera can rotate horizontally on a horizontal plane; So that the camera shooting node can shoot at a fixed position in the three-dimensional space, and the images shot by the camera can be spliced with the landscape designer software.

The role of panoramic pan/tilt in shooting panorama

Pan-tilt is a device that carries cameras and other shooting equipment, and Pan-tilt is a pan-tilt dedicated to shooting panoramic images. The key function of the panoramic camera is to fix the lens nodes on the rotating shaft of the camera, so as to ensure that every image is shot at a point when the rotating camera is shooting, and the spliced panoramic image will be perfect.

Working principle of panoramic pan/tilt

First of all, the panoramic pan-tilt has a horizontal rotating shaft with a scale of 360 degrees, which can be installed on a tripod, and the bracket part where the camera is installed can rotate horizontally 360 degrees; Secondly, the bracket part of the panoramic pan-tilt can move the camera forward, so as to achieve the perfect effect of adapting to different camera widths. Because the width of the camera directly affects the position of the panoramic pan-tilt node, if the horizontal movement position of the camera can be adjusted, it can basically be called panoramic pan-tilt

At present, the mainstream panoramic Yuntai.

Operation of panoramic pan-tilt

Take JTS rotating body SPH as an example.

1. First, install the tripod shaft and bracket as shown in the figure.

2. Install the expansion board (as shown on the left) and the digital SLR camera (as shown on the right).

3. Install the digital SLR camera on the bracket (as shown in the figure below).

4. The effect after installation (as shown below).

tripod

360 panoramic shooting hardware-tripod

Whether amateur users or professional users, the role of tripod can not be ignored. Its main function is to stabilize the camera to achieve some photographic effects. The most common method is to use a tripod for long exposure. If users want to take pictures at night or in the case of surging trajectory, they need to increase the exposure time. At this time, the digital camera can't shake, so it needs the help of a tripod. There are many choices for tripods. In fact, the main purpose of buying a tripod is to provide a stable shooting state for some shooting situations. However, there are many situations that will cause the tripod to be unstable. For example, using a light tripod or a so-called portable tripod, the tripod is not balanced or buckled properly when it is opened, or the middle shaft lever is excessively raised when it is officially used, which will make the tripod's angle shake.

The role of tripod in panoramic shooting

Because it is necessary to keep the node position unchanged, panoramic shooting requires very high stability, so a stable tripod is also very important. It is suggested to choose a tripod that can bear a certain weight and has high material strength, and the tripod must support the loading and unloading of the tripod head. Because the special tripod head must be used when shooting the panorama, instead of the ordinary tripod head at home, the loading and unloading of the tripod head must also be consistent.

Classification of tripods

Tripod can be divided into wood, high-strength plastic, alloy, steel and carbon fiber according to material classification. The most common material is aluminum alloy, and the advantages of aluminum alloy tripod are light weight and firmness. The latest tripod is made of carbon fiber, which has the advantages of better toughness and lighter weight than aluminum alloy. People who often go out to take pictures with their tripods on their backs attach great importance to the weight of tripods, hoping that the lighter it is, the better. According to the largest diameter of the big foot pipe, it is divided into 32mm, 28mm, 25mm and 22 mm. Generally speaking, the larger the foot tube, the greater the load-bearing capacity and the stronger the stability of the tripod.

Wechat housekeeper recommends tripod

Finally, let's take a look at how to generate a 360 panoramic picture from the picture material.

Step 1: Shoot the original material of the panorama.

Professional photographers use professional cameras, fisheye lenses and tripods to shoot cars, rooms or other objects that need 360 panoramic display.

Let's take a look at three backup raw materials.

Step 2: Use "PTGui Pro" software to synthesize panoramic pictures.

Download and install the "PTGui Pro" software, and then open the software:

According to the prompt, click "load image" to import the original material of panorama, as shown below:

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Next, click Align Images.

If the position of the image is accurate, the software will directly enter the panoramic editing process.

Usually, we don't want to change the picture here, just close the editor and go to the next step "create panorama".

Sometimes the image is not very accurate, so we need to adjust the image manually.

As shown in the figure:

We need to compare the left and right pictures and find the overlapping points (at least three points) on the images to mark them.

As shown in the figure:

In the above picture, we have found some overlapping points of the two pictures and marked them. In this way, we need to mark at least three "control points" for all possible overlapping pictures.

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After adjusting the image, we can create a panorama.

Set the output file directory, click "Create Panorama", and we will get the processed panoramic image.

Let's take a look at the panorama we got:

This picture is the so-called "panorama". Faint. It doesn't matter. It's just a semi-finished product. Through the third step, we will further process this picture to generate a beautiful 360 panoramic display effect.

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Step 3: Use "Pano2VR" software to achieve 360 panoramic effect.

Download and install the "Pano2VR" software, and then open the software:

In the above figure, click "Select Input" to import the panoramic image generated in the second step; At the same time, click the "New Output Format" drop-down box, select the "HTML5" option, and then click the "Add" button.

draw

Click the Add button to get it.

Set the cube patch size to 700.

After setting the output directory of the output file, click OK to start generating 360 panoramic effect.

Open the output directory, and we see

At this point, the browser will open automatically. Html file, and enjoy 360 panoramic effect.

Please remember to upload the six pictures in the "Pictures" directory to the server of WeChat housekeeper through the location where the panoramic pictures are uploaded in the background, so as to view the 360 panoramic effect through the mobile phone.