Autodesk 551A1-05B111-1001 - Stitcher Unlimited 2009 User manual

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Introduction _______________________________________________________________ 2
About Autodesk®Stitcher™ Unlimited 2009_________________________________________ 2
Goal of this tutorial ___________________________________________________________ 2
1. Loading Images _________________________________________________________ 3
The Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 interface ____________________________________ 3
Loading your shots ____________________________________________________________ 4
2. Stitching _______________________________________________________________ 6
Auto-Stitching________________________________________________________________ 6
Manual-Stitching _____________________________________________________________ 7
3. Alignment ____________________________________________________________ 12
4. Equalization ___________________________________________________________ 14
5. Render _______________________________________________________________ 15
Render area and rendering options______________________________________________ 15
Load a Spherical panorama and convert to QTVR® _________________________________ 20

Autodesk®Stitcher™ Unlimited 2009
Getting Started Tutorial
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Introduction
About Autodesk®Stitcher™ Unlimited 2009
Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 is the way to build high-quality panoramas for the Web, film, print,
and 3D.
With advanced features, Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 gives photographers and artists the
power to deliver the most impressive panoramas in the formats they need. Autodesk Stitcher creates
wide-angle, high-resolution 360° × 180° panoramic images in seconds from horizontally and vertically
overlapping photos. You can create new image sets from the panorama using a virtual camera with
zoom, pan, and roll motion. Results can be rendered as a cube, plane, cylinder, sphere projection,
and as a QuickTime®movie (Cylindrical QTVR and Cubic QTVR), and in VRML format for creating high-
impact Web pages, definition mattes, environment maps, and 3D models.
Goal of this tutorial
This 5-step tutorial will guide you through the creation of a full spherical panorama image in 360° and
a QTVR interactive file. This complete project will take you step by step through the main workflow
and features of Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009.
This tutorial was prepared and illustrated using Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009.

Autodesk®Stitcher™ Unlimited 2009
Getting Started Tutorial
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1. Loading Images
The Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 interface
Toolbar Stitching window Live Preview General Information
Thumbnail View Status Indicators

Autodesk®Stitcher™ Unlimited 2009
Getting Started Tutorial
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Loading your shots
The first step in the creation of a Stitcher project is to load the image files that you will use to
create the panorama.
To load the pictures:
1. Select File > Load Images from the main menu or click the Load Images icon in the toolbar.
The Load Images browser opens.
2. Select all the files you will use for your panorama.
3. Click Open.
When the images are loaded, Stitcher tries to read the EXIF data and proposes the
appropriate camera lens type. The following dialog lets you choose between keeping the
settings and adjusting them manually.
The current example use images with EXIF data so Stitcher correctly detects all the
parameters. Click Yes to keep the settings Stitcher has read.
NOTE If for any reason you need to change the parameters you can right-click anywhere
inside the Stitcher interface and open the Properties dialog.

Autodesk®Stitcher™ Unlimited 2009
Getting Started Tutorial
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Your images will be loaded into the Thumbnail View, as demonstrated in the screen shot
below.
Open the loaded.rzs file to see the image files already loaded for this project.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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2. Stitching
Auto-Stitching
Autodesk Stitcher Unlimited 2009 has a fully automated stitching engine. Run the Stitch Shots
function by either:
•clicking the icon in the toolbar, or
•press ENTER (make sure no images are selected),or
•Stitch > Stitch Shots
The Stitching Window is a 3D environment in which you can navigate around using the navigation
controls (see “Navigating in Stitcher” in the Stitcher User Guide for more information on navigation).
NOTE The display can appears smoother in the Stitching window if your graphic card allows real time
linear blending; the GPU options can be set from the preferences. The icon is a status indicator to
specify that the GPU blending is activated.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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Manual-Stitching
In this example almost all the pictures are automatically stitched, but one is missing. For situations
like this, you can use the Manual Stitch tool to complete the panorama.
To manually stitch the missing image, you need to find a stitched image which overlaps it. You will
use the overlapping features in the shots to match the images one to each other.
1. Select the unstitched image
2. Add to the selection by holding down the Shift key and clicking an already stitched image
which has features that overlap the unstitched image (in our example use the venitian08.jpg)

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Getting Started Tutorial
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3. Do one of the following:
•Click Manual Stitch in the Toolbar, or
•Select Stitch > Manual Stitch, or
•Right-click and choose Manual Stitch from the contextual menu
When stitching images manually, you need to find at least two common points in both images.
The points should not be on the same line, but be distributed in the image for greater precision.
The manual stitch workflow is:

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Getting Started Tutorial
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1. Click and place a marker on a particular detail in the first image
2. Click to add the same marker inside the second image, then repeat step 1 and 2 to create 3
points inside each image as shown in the screen shots.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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3. After you have placed the three matching points, click Stitch and your image will be
positioned correctly inside the panorama.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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NOTE Manually stitched images have a yellow highlight to distinguish them from auto-stitched
images.
Load the Stitcher project file, stitched.rzs,to see this step completed.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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3. Alignment
Before rendering the panorama, you can change the viewpoint to determine what you see in the
final panorama. Stitcher automatically aligns the panorama.
You can align the panorama by clicking the Auto-Align icon or by selecting Tool > Automatically Align
Panorama, or pressing “A”.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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NOTE the status indicator is displayed when the panorama is aligned.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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4. Equalization
When you click the Equalization icon, the Equalization tool launches in all of the images. This step is
significant and makes it possible to correct certain differences in exposures, especially in the levels of
blue in the sky.
NOTE The Equalization process can be reverted at any time by selecting Render > Unequalize. The
equalization factor can be defined in the rendering preferences.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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5. Render
Render area and rendering options
If you need to render only a part of the panorama, do the following steps:
1. Select Render > Render Area > Set Render Area tool.
2. Right-click in the panorama, and choose Spherical View from the contextual menu
NOTE the contextual menu in the fully-stitched panorama lets you choose the projection you
want to use for rendering.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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3. Now draw a rectangular area in order to define and adjust the borders of the final image.
4. To quit the Render Area tool, press the Space key or Render > Render Area > Set Render
Area.
5. Click Render Panorama to set the render parameters.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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6. The last step before launching the rendering process is to define the parameters for the
image.
Stitcher gives you the option of the following rendering types:
•Cubical or cylindrical QuickTime®VR (QuickTime Player installation is required)
•Images with a spherical, a cylindrical, or a cubical projection
•Snapshot image
•3D formats such as VRML or Pure Player®projection
When rendering a panorama as an image, you can choose between the following file
formats:
•Jpg
•TIF
•PSD Photoshop®
•…
Each file format has specific options which can be adjusted in the related tab.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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Before rendering, you must define:
•The path and filename where you want to save the image file
•The size in pixels (for this tutorial you will set the width to 2048, the height value will
update automatically).
NOTE The size of the panorama will have an impact on the rendering time. The optimal size is
calculated as a function of the original image size that you have loaded in Stitcher, in order to
maximize quality.
•The image format.
Now verify that the Type is set to Spherical and that the Use Defined Viewport option is
checked. The Use Defined Viewport option is active when a render area is set.
7. Click Render.

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Spherical panorama 360° with render area.
Load the Stitcher project file, render_area.rzs,to see this step completed.
You can also see the result with the file Venitian_area.jpg.

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Getting Started Tutorial
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Load a Spherical panorama and convert to QTVR®
This part of the tutorial guides you through loading a full 360° panorama in Stitcher, using the
authoring control tool to set the viewing parameters of your movie and then converting the
panorama to a QTVR®file.
1. Select File > Load Panorama
The browser dialog opens.
2. Select the image file you want to load and click Open.
In our example load Venitian_Spherical.jpg.
NOTE If you are working with a cubical panorama, select one of the 6 face files.