Stereo Toolbox

About Stereo Toolbox

When working with Stereo3D content, it may happen that certain elements of the scene are present in one eye but not the other. When this is the case, you can apply a Floating Window that crops part of Stereo3D content that is only displayed in one eye, preserving the 3D illusion.

Specifically, the Floating Window tool has two main uses:

• To manipulate the Z-axis position of the 3D scene, without changing the overall depth bracket of the scene.
• To shape and position a floating window to mask out elements in the 3D scene.

Note: You must be viewing the Stereo3D footage on a 3D monitor or on a 2D monitor in Anaglyph mode, in order to view the results of the Floating Window properly.

The controls allow you to position the corners of the floating window in Z-space. It also allows one, two or all four corners to be manipulated simultaneously.

There are 3 sets of parameters in the Floating Window menu:

1. The first set of controls consists of the Convergence slider. The convergence slider is used to set the initial horizontal offset between the left and the right eye. A higher convergence value results in a 3D scene with more depth along the Z-axis. A lower convergence value results in a 3D scene with less depth along the Z-axis.
2. The second set of controls consists of four numerical sliders labeled Top/Left, Top/Right, Bottom/Left and Bottom/Right.
   These controls allow you to "pull in" or "push out" the corresponding corner of the Floating Window. This translates to a black mask being drawn on the edges of the image in the left or the right eye. Depending on whether the slider value is positive or negative, they affect each eye's mask differently. For example:

   • Increasing the value of the Top/Left slider results in the Floating Windows's corner being "pushed out" away from the viewer. The mask is applied on the left edge of the right eye in that case.
   • Decreasing the value of the Top/Left slider results in the Floating Window's corner being "pulled in" towards the viewer. When the values are negative, the corner is in theater space (i.e. virtually in front of the monitor) and a black edge becomes visible on the left edge of the left eye.
   • The other controls affect the Floating Window in the same way. Increasing the value of a slider "pushes out" the corresponding corner of the Floating window, whereas decreasing the value results in the corner being "pulled in".
3. The third set of controls will affect the Post-Render-Shift (PRS) value, which effectively displaces the whole scene (including the Floating Window) along the Z-axis.

   The PRS is implemented as a horizontal translation of one, or both eyes. You can select which eye remains fixed by selecting a value from the Alignment box. 'Align Left' applies the PRS entirely to the right eye, while Align Right applies it to the left eye and Center applies it to both eyes.

   Aux and Offset values are simply additive extensions of the PRS value. For example, if you have PRS=1, Offset=2 and Aux=4, the overall PRS value is 7.

All the slider values can be animated.

Accessing the Stereo Toolbox

To access the Stereo Toolbox use:

• Batch, then select a node from the Node bin.

• Timeline, then use Batch FX (see Creating Batch FX).

• Timeline, then add Timeline FX from the Effects ribbon (see Adding Timeline FX).

• Tools, then select from the menu (See Accessing Tools).