Chromadepth 3D

Is anyone making chromadepth 3D canvas content? Should be quite easy with the Color Change By Position. I’ll get on testing it soon enough. I found an old pair of glasses from my last LD club gig - umpteen years ago. I’ve only ever seen one chromadepth 3d laser show, at the end-of-day celebration at a large amusement park. TBH, I think that’s when I first decided I want to work with lasers. The Chromatek URL is no longer good. If you want a free pair, hit up a manufacturer ( I think I used American paper optics) and they sent me a huge sample pack of their offerings.

1 Like

I’ve done things with anaglyphic glasses before and have always wanted to try polarised ones but this looks super interesting.

I’ve ordered some chromadepth glasses to play with!

Yeah you should be able to use a colour change by position node to make things further away blue and closer up red. You just need to rotate around the Y axis 90º first, then rotate back again after.

I’ve set up a couple of example clips for you to try : Download clips

You need to tune the wavelength and offset of the Colour Change By Position node but apart from that it seems good! Now I just need to check it with glasses. :grinning:

Seb

1 Like

Thank you! I am afl (away from lasers) for the day but will give a go tonight. I went live after posting this yesterday and suspect rear projection is the best way with doing this on a certain type of projection material. That is how it is was done at the amusement park. I didn’t get the best result because of glare (which is akin to the red dot trails in the picture, mirrored out from centre to the edge of glasses frame). I hope to have access to a more laser friendly space in the very near future to put my theories to test.

OK I tested it out and it doesn’t work with laser images unfortunately. They’re just too bright and it creates a smear of ghost images that ruins the effect :

It’s sad because it looks AMAZING when I try it on my monitor, but yeah as you suspected, too much ghosting with high brightness lasers.

Best option for 3D is polarised glasses and 2 x lasers I think!

Seb

Can you elaborate more on the polarized glasses & 2x lasers? What’s that setup need to look like?
Do you think the chromadepth might work better if you project onto a scrim rather than a reflective backdrop?

It’s not something I’ve ever tried but I know it’s been done before. In fact I just met up with Michael Sollinger, who has basically done everything that could ever be done with lasers, and he mentioned he’d done 3D like this before.

The set up would be identical for how 3D in cinemas works. Two projectors, each polarised at a different angle. Each one shows a slightly offset view.

Then polarised glasses that only let one image through.

I’m not sure what filters you need for the lasers but I would think any glass and heatproof ones would do.

I found this thread discussing how to do it with traditional projectors. If anyone tries it let me know - I have some experience setting up the 2 views for stereographic imagery so can probably help.

Seb

I’ll explore the chroma-depth more and see if can get the expected results. I have 2x scrim, a cheap projector screen a one more piece of welding curtain to try through. Hopefully a combination of these will work, at least good enough. It’d be nice to find a front projection surface that works since the color by position tool is already made to 3D-ify any content. It would make setup, content design and barrier to use almost non-existent. Taking white out, and sticking to primary and secondary colours may help a little too.

My challenge is exploring the rear projection aspect in my small space with high power lasers. Experimenting on untested materials is a real gamble in confined spaces. If feel I can do it safely, I’ll do it.
Looking to join my local hacker space in the next few weeks- 24 hr access to a decent sized room- 10x10x3m room. $40 (minimum donation)/month. Access to electronic service tools, 3D printers and like-minded people.

Did a second layer of the welder curtain followed by the 2 scrim. Thought light absorption would go down. Not enough. If you bring brightness way down and squint it’s 9/10s there. It’s too much of a pain to test rear at home. Will revisit in the future.

The layered mesh approach yields another form of 3d too. In my photos, mesh is pinned together at top and is draped forward. Downstage piece is 1m longer. In person and video looks way better. I’ll try to get a fresh reel soon after further content design and software canvas stretching experimentation

*Refresh rate and masking doesn’t help photo quality.