go here:
www.nlc.org.uk/proofs/popup...
then turn round nearly 180° and observe.
how did they DO that??
Pity they didnt line up the desk properly. And how on earth did they know what I look like, to project me into the mirror? This monitor doesnt even have a webcam on it!
Actually that would be a neat idea.
i think that initial angle is deliberate. all the other VRs in the series seem to start on an angle or image they regard as striking and/or giving a good overall impression of the room. and the technical quality generally is excellent. look up at the roof and down at the floor -- they've done the full 360°x360°
eg, check out the very first one, rather surreal at first:
www.nlc.org.uk/proofs/popup...
they've taken 6 wide angle photos and just sticthed them. look directly up and you can see
Hah! I looked straight up and made the room spin and sure enough I got dizzy...
But how do you photograph a mirror with no reflection of the photographer? That's the initial question, right? I'm sure there are actually many methods employed by magicians and that but I'm guessing witchcraft or photoshoppery.
Posted by
Grim..., 10th January 2007:
Or having a hole instead of the mirror and building the set twice.
no set -- i was there this arvo.
all i can think is that they photoshopped/etc'd in the appropriate corresponding shot taken from near that point but in the opposite direction, and then pasted that in over the mirror.
but still, the professionalism required to do that, or rather, to even *think* of that, is what i find impressive.
but props to cal to spotting that particular image's artefacts. but note that that image is not typical of the others. eg, this image: 
( www.nlc.org.uk/proofs )
(hmph. "nifty" javascript linking + much alcohol means i can't link neatly to the VR i mean. it's #10, the 2nd-last one in the "proofs" screen i linked to just above)
(i spent most of my time this arvo sitting at the tables you can see by the window under the sword's point. and the only other people were 2 montypython-type "women" parked over by the left and one guy immediately to the right of the statue sleeping in front of the roaring fire. and that ceiling is way way wayyyyyy higher than it looks in the image. i'd guess 30 feet or a bit higher. comfortably over 3 storeys.)
and i guess i was wondering/asking if any of the graphics gurus here had come across that before and/or knew of any standard techniques/practices for doing that.
"but still, the professionalism required to do that, or rather, to even *think* of that, is what i find impressive."
Pretty standard technique. Put the camera close to the mirror looking outwards, and you get a picture of what the mirror will "see". Then photoshop any joins or gaps. Although in this case it's a real shame the desk is wonky. (It's funny because when i read your initial post "how did they DO that??" I thought you were joking or being sarcastic, I guess peoples brains see the world in different ways though. I'm sure I would be amazed at plenty of stuff you considered obvious.)
The pictures are great, however, so thanks for putting the link up.
Posted by
bumdog, 11th January 2007:
Best thing about it is how there is a bit of Old Mirror Dirt in the bottom left corner of the mirror, giving the impression that it's legit (of course this bit may be from the 'actual' shot). Great attention to detail.
It's a shame that some of the actual stitching work itself is a bit on the shoddy side though (look at the top-left of the mirror frame and the front edge of the desk).
i didn't really elaborate there - only the middle of the mirror is stitched in - the edges are real mirror, hence the mirror dirt. i assume it's as alfie said - took a photo from just in front of the mirror, corrected a little for angle, and glued it in (quite shodily)
Posted by
bumdog, 11th January 2007:
I had a feeling that was the case.
Another thing, would you be able to see that much of the ceiling (i.e the whole light fittings) in the mirror in a 'normal' shot, or is this yet another case of perpective etc going awry as a side effect of the process?
The mirror dust was indeed a nice touch.
re "the mirror dust" bottomleft -- looking at it: don't you think it looks more like silver decay on the mirror-back? i've seen the same pattern (starts at the edges) on a number of other mirrors. well, those of advanced age.
>Pretty standard technique. Put the camera close to the mirror looking outwards, and you get a picture of what the mirror will "see". Then photoshop any joins or gaps.
oh.
right.
i was thinking there might be some trick whereby they did it without intermediate photoshoppery. and in fact my first reaction was that they had done it without even any physical camera trickery because the perspective in-mirror pretty much matches the perspective out-mirror.
plus (or rather: more importantly)
actually:
MOST importantly: i'm naturally lazy and the idea of manually plodding thru digi images as an Exception in a VR sequence to replace a single small 2D panel is fundamentally alien to the way i think.
damn me and my assumption of elegance!
>Although in this case it's a real shame the desk is wonky.
i dunno about wonky. i think the initial-position alignment is intentional, rather than sloppy. c.f. the other VR that starts you out (very disorientingly) looking at the floor.
but yeah: your first impression in THIS vr is: who paid these idiots?
>(It's funny because when i read your initial post "how did they DO that??" I thought you were joking or being sarcastic, I guess peoples brains see the world in different ways though. I'm sure I would be amazed at plenty of stuff you considered obvious.)
yeah, prezackly. i wasn't being sarcastic, i was genuinely hoping you digi.graphic gurus might know of some standard nifty technique that avoided the only method i knew of to do that: manual creation of that image by combining additional 2D photos.
i'm highly non-graphical, as far as the "standard" digi.graphical artefacts are concerned. i have fuckall experience in that arena.
worse: unless it's important, i tend to get sucked into the implication of the image rather than look at the digi.detail of the image. this is why i gave up multiplayer quake & so on: because i tend to go "ooh WOW! look at THAT! and THAT! and oooh, if i zip down here and look up i can see sky! and over here you can see through a crack that goes into the ... why am i dead? oh piss off for a minute you bastards."
i love to explore too much.
i mean, yesterday i had to LOOK at cal's "6 stitching" observation re the ceiling before i twigged how he worked that out.
duh
even now, i can't see what you're seeing, cal, to flag that the mirror is 2 images stitched centrally. apart from a very slight hiccup near-centre at top and a grey spot vertically below it on the wood trim (which you'd think would not be part of any Manually Created image for the Mirror), i can't see any obvious potential left.vs.right giveaways.
on the other hand (now that i've put my digi-graphic artefact analysis hat on), no one has pointed out that there was a water jug or similar in (at least) two of the images used to create the image pasted in over the mirror.
so i don't feel _quite_ so half-witted now ;)
of course, one of you digi.experts is probably going to say "actually, sal, you dill: that's not 2 pics including the shadow of a jug that was rotated: that's a t3400 LDS mega lightpod. and EVERYONE uses those for this sort of work.."
ok, so i still feel stupid...
i just really thought there might be some nifty professional technique that didn't involve people manually creating a 2D pic to paste in over the mirror.
ahhhh..... for some reason my tiny mind failed to fully register the last few posts before i posted. i blame the 7 hour lunch and the following followup drinkies.
cal, bumdog: i still can't pick the 3 image base from the mirror image, but the front of the desk, and to a lesser extent the upper wooden mirror surround, DOES make it very obvious.
duh II
Ok I think I've found the joins that everyone can see. But just so I'm clear on this. Does it look as though they've stiched it at the corners of the reflected room? As I see it, it looks dodgy running down from the breaks in the frame to the bottom of the mirror which also looks dodgy. Pretty impressive getting the lighting the same.
Edit: Just to be be even more clear. I can see the obvious joins throughout the room. It's within the mirror I mean.
"obvious" joins?
i swear to god i must be going mad. what i see is individual non-standard chairs, of a quality regarded with awe by most people in most countries, requiring custom work by combination carpenters and leather upholsterers, handmade tiles made with a nod to the old london east end traditions, handmade doors built in heavy heavy hardwood to fit individual oddsized doorways, the surreality of extraordinary expense laid into the room and the entire remodelling of this centuries-old building overlaid with the extraordinary laziness/stupidity of the new (1880s) ceiling not matching the previous/existing upper floor and windows, and of the trashy light fitting jammed into a highset powerpoint rather than, for the sake of an extra £5, being made part of the room's fixtures. contrast that trivial-to-do nicety with the extraordinary effort (and presumably expense) implicit in the fact that this densely woven intensely patterned carpet has been CUSTOM WOVEN for THIS room and this room only. scratch your head at the weirdity of the tiling jammed in at apparently random semi-symmetric intervals around the room. note the custom wallpaper (which is actually a lot denser in person than you can see in this pic). note that the cost of the handmade custom curtains would be more than the cost of covering up the random electric excrescence next to the main doors, let alone removing the need for an IKEA lamp jammed into the opposite wall.
having said that, if i step back from the semantics of the picture, i CAN see a couple of syntactic glitches...
gahhhh no i'm stopping that. i prefer seeing what it's representing, rather than seeing a monitor image.
Fuck off. I've seen that carpet in at least 20 boozers. Drop a lit fag-end and watch it disappear like magic.
"why am i dead? oh piss off for a minute you bastards."
That sounds like my experience of playing Halflife II.
"Stop hitting me with stun sticks, I'm trying to enjoy the detail in that wall texture. Yes you, AI bastard. Now I'm going to enjoy the rag doll physics on your corpse"
