360 Photo of cars (idea)

Discussions on race preparation, race management, sound effects, and other race related software. This is only for software provided by our sponsor, GrandPrix Software Central.
Post Reply
mytholibar
Apprentice
Apprentice
Posts: 7
Joined: Tue Mar 02, 2010 12:32 pm
Location: Portlan, Or

360 Photo of cars (idea)

Post by mytholibar »

greetings, as stated before I run a lot of races and have a great time doing it. I have dreamed for some time to create a rig in which I can pass all the cars that are going to race through. In which once they get to Spot X it fires off 4 camera's to take a 360 shot of the car. I can then add that to the web site as a historical view of the cars that have raced on the track. I don't think it could be easily done with in the racing portion of the event but could be part of the inspection process. I can kind of see and assembly line for the cars to go through for inspection, where this would be one station in the process. I know and have never used the driver photo but it might be cool to be able to capture the top view of the car for this if wanted. Would be another quick way to find/validate correct cars on track?

Just tossing out some ideas here.
User avatar
Stan Pope
Pine Head Legend
Pine Head Legend
Posts: 6856
Joined: Sat Jul 05, 2003 7:01 pm
Location: Morton, Illinois
Contact:

Re: 360 Photo of cars (idea)

Post by Stan Pope »

Neat idea!
Stan
"If it's not for the boys, it's for the birds!"
knotthed
Master Pine Head
Master Pine Head
Posts: 169
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2011 9:01 pm
Location: Northeast, Illinois

Re: 360 Photo of cars (idea)

Post by knotthed »

Jeff Piazza
Pine Head
Pine Head
Posts: 83
Joined: Thu Apr 10, 2008 12:49 pm
Location: Wellesley, Massachusetts

Re: 360 Photo of cars (idea)

Post by Jeff Piazza »

A full 3D model isn't necessary, just a collection of views on the car.

Apple used to offer QuickTime VR, which let you integrate multiple images into a navigable 3D view. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QuickTime_VR#Objects. I understand HTML5 and CSS3 have some 3D/VR-oriented features, but I don't know any particulars.

http://www.ajax-zoom.com/examples/example15.php gives an idea of what might be possible with just discrete photos. All you'd really need is a turntable and a camera support. The biggest challenge would be managing/organizing the multiple images of each car.

Less ambitiously, we currently capture a single view of each car as it's checked in, using a tabletop "studio" (http://www.merax.com/products/photo/PhotoStudio.html in our case, but there appear to be lots of options in this space.) I built a simple jig to hold each car in the same place, with a place to receive a car-number label to ease identification.

Here's the jig itself: Image
and here it is in use: Image.

As the photos are taken at check-in, an Eye-Fi card (http://eye.fi) transmits them wirelessly to a laptop running a live slideshow by the track. Seems to be a real crowd-pleaser!

/JEP
Post Reply