Triaxes StereoTracer is designed for rendering multiview images out of one original image or a stereo pair by using so called depth map* to create a stereo (3D) image. StereoTracer generates a number of frames, which all have slightly different viewing angle. This process models the shooting of a scene from different points across the horizontal line. The resulting series of frames is used for creating a 3D (stereo) image in the 3DMasterKit application or any other program for 3D generating.

Note: A depth map (disparity image or Z-image) is a gray-scale image which resolution is equal to the original image.

Figure 1.1. Original picture and it's depth map

A Depth map serves to convert the original image into a three-dimensional one. Brightness of a pixel in a depth map shows the distance from the same pixel in the original image to the viewer. The lighter areas in depth map correspond to the areas nearer to the viewer, the darker ones correspond to more distant areas. A white pixel in a depth map means that the pixel of the original image has the smallest distance to the viewer (foreground), a black pixel in a depth map means that the pixel of the original has the biggest distance to the viewer (background).

A depth map can be created automatically from a stereo pair in StereoTracer or manually out of one original image by means of any graphic editor.

The procedure of a multiview series generation includes several operations:

  • open source images (original image + depth map or stereo pair)
  • create and correct the depth map (if necessary)
  • generate a frames series
  • save generated multiview frames for further encoding or export them to Triaxes 3DMasterKit