Best cubeface generator software?

[popunonkok]

Iv been looking for a light, good cubface software but havent found one that Im pleased with... What do you guys use???
Pano2qtvr i belive is too big and heawy just for generating cubfaces...

//Peter F

[cheathamlane]

Pano2VR is good, as well as CubicConverter (Mac only).

I forget if the PanoTools plugins for Photoshop will let you output cubefaces from an equirectangular. You might check PTMac's Web site for the plugins and see.

Another good source for links to all sorts of hard/software is:
http://ivrpa.org/vr/links

HTH

[phberlin]

Hello popunonkok,

given you work with a PC and not a MAC, I'd recommend you DOSUP (http://www.pinlady.net/vr/#anchor3) (DOS Utilities for panos). It's a collection of excellent free scripts. One of them can convert an euquirectangular image to cubes. I've put a link in my sendTo-folder in windows, so my workflow is: Make the equirect pano with Hugin, then rightclick the resulting equirect image in the windows explorer, chose "Send to: cubes", and voilа: you have your six cubes already in the order FPP expects them without any hassle. It's simple, fast and leightweight. Just the way at least I like to work with images :-)

I hope that helps :-)
Regards, Ph.

[popunonkok]

Phberlin: That realy sounds like a prog for me...
Do you have any negative about the program? Quality? or anything else?

Sounds great.

[phberlin]

Hhm, just try it it out -- it's free :-)

The only thing I haven't managed yet is to have it convert my 16bit-TIFFs (the output file are bad), so I have to convert to JEPG before the cube conversion. Since there is a panotools-modification (new pano12.dll) that support 16bit, a full 16bit workflow should be possible though. I personally don't need this because I convert the cubes to JPEGs anyway...

Regards, Ph.

[popunonkok]

Phberlin: It works great but it generates .tiffs is that what you use??? I would like to get the faces in .jpg format since this is what I would like to put on my page...

Regards, Peter F

[phberlin]

Yes, it generates TIFFs to preserve the 16bit workflow: When you stitch your images with Hugin or any other panotools frontend, normally you would generate a TIFF file anyway (with RAWs as sources), so you have a wider range of colors available for retouching. After conversion to cubes, I do the retouching stuff (nadir and so on) and the convert it to JPEGs. This conversion can also be done via SendTo and imageMagick, for example, or in the windows explorer context menu with XNView, if you don't want to do with in your photo software.

The TIFFs have to be saved without alpha channel, otherwise the conversion won't work as it is suposed to; this was also the problem I mentioned earlier in this thread.

Besides, I've recently mailed with Eric Gerds, the author of DOSUP, and he put up a new version yesterday: You can now define how the file suffixes should be, so you can directy get pano_0, pano_1 and so on instead of pano_11, pano_22 and do not have to rename it for FPP.

Regards, Ph.

[popunonkok]

OKi... Thanx for all you help. In my workflow i do all my editing, nadir ect, in the equirectangular (spelling?) in fotoshop using superrune (http://www.superrune.com/technical/software_spheretocubic.php) and Im really pleased with this workflow...

I am ashamed to say that I actually shoot with jpg and generate jpg (or psd) from Ptgui... =) I have nikon d50 and sigma 8mm so I actually should go raw but I havent had the time to "get into that" yet...

Thanx again

Ps PhBerlin, I belive I seen one of your panos and was quite impressed, I might have som .xml question later on... =) (hope Im not mixing you up with someone else) Ds

[phberlin]

Wow, "superrune" really is a great hint! Thanks a lot, this will increase my workflow spead a lot!

So I'll take Superrune for Nadir patching and DOSUP for cube conversion of the whole pano. I think there is a way to have DOSUP convert directy to JPEG (it is capable of command line options, and I guess it should be possible to have it directly create JPEGs with a given compression factor. If not, this can still easily be done via ImageMagick also through the SendTo menu).

You should really try out a RAW workflow -- it's just a new dimension regarding the higher colordepth. For example if you shoot night panos, you can fix under- or over-exposure until a certain degree which with JPEG just is impossible.

About XML: I'm afraid I am the wrong one, since I didn't get very deep into the possibilities of FPP yet. See some of my panos here (http://pano.philippkoch.com) if you like. Still, if I could help you out with something (also I'm afraid there won't be anything you don't already know compared to my XML skills :-) I would be glad to help).

Regards,
Ph.

[visionman]

Hi there, am new to all this and am good at taking pictures but not so good at all this technical stuff!

I have a whole bunch of equirectangular images and am looking for a simple and quick to use offline software to convert to cube faces. The DOSUP utility by Eric Gerds (http://www.pinlady.net/vr/#anchor3) sounds perfect (Pano2Faces.bat) but I see that for this to work I also need PTStitcher.

I have downloaded PanoTools from http://www.all-in-one.ee/~dersch/ which I understand contains PTStitcher. However, I really don't understand how I get this to work. Also, DOSUP says I need to show it where the file PTStitcher.exe is but I can't see this anywhere in my PanoTools download.

Can anyone help please, preferably in plain and simple terms?!

Thanks

[phberlin]

Hey Visionman,

you simply have to find out where the PTStitcher file is located on your harddrive (e.g. if you don't know, you can search it with <WINDOWS-key>+<F>). Then, just open a second window with the pano2faces.bat in it. Just drag and drop the PTStitcher file onto the pano2faces.bat and you are done! (pano2faces.bat will open an text window telling you that it's no9w ready for use).

Hope that helps?

Ph.

[ericob]

Anything you downloaded from a ~dersch archive mirror site is probably several years old.

For current information on panotools, check http://panotools.sourceforge.net/ (scroll down for information about getting binary versions). See also http://sourceforge.net/projects/panotools/.

Depending on how geeky you're feeling, you may also be interested in Bruno Postle's Panotools-Script ("A perl module for reading, writing and driving Panorama Tools and hugin script files"), available at http://search.cpan.org/~bpostle/.