Beginners Guide to Depthmaps (Depthmaps 101)

This is a tutorial which covers the basics of creating a depthmap for converting 2D images to 3D. It uses the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org) and 3DCombine (http://www.3dcombine.com) to explain and illustrate the entire process of converting a 2D image to a 3D one.
View my other videos for more advanced depthmap tutorials including 2D to 3D video conversion.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• Stereoscopic
• Depthmap
• 3D
• GIMP
• Beginner
• Tutorial
• Tips

[GerdaDunckel]

thanks for the tut. Can you also use depth maps to make lenticular animations ? You know... 3D without glasses, as GIF animation ?

[RScullion]

@GerdaDunckel Yes, you can. Either generate a series of images with different depth settings or use the 9 tile output to perform multiple conversions at the same time. Most interlacing programs will take a 9 tile image.

[RScullion]

I use the GNU Image Manipulation (GIMP) tool.It's free and pretty good. I guess other programs are Paint Shop Pro and Photoshop.

[clamo636]

thanks man that really helped make more sense of this. question? to convert a 2d movie to 3d one must manually create a depth map for each scene of the given movie?

[RScullion]

@clamo636 No, if you use the manual video conversion in 3DCombine it will ask you to provide depthmaps for a certain number of frames and generate the rest automatically.

[clamo636]

can you recommend a good simple tool similar to paint, to create depth maps?