Collecting Image Sets for Object Movies

Introduction

Image developers can create some excellent interactive applications using object movies. The simplest way of thinking about object movies is to think of them as a "flip-book." Some of the earliest movies were created by a series of pictures that viewers could flip through at a specific rate. The faster the person would flip, the faster the action would take place.

This is the method animators use, creating one frame at a time and flipping through them at a specific rate. The drawings below were created by Luke Esposito to illustrate the use of QTVR to create movies.

If we were going to create a flip-book, we would print the images on paper, cut them out, overlay the images on top of one another in sequential order. Click on the images below to view an object movie which illustrates the flipping through each frame at two different rates.

The movies below will be playing automatically after you click on them. To stop the movie, click on it. To move through it stepwise, use the two arrow keys on the right-hand side to move the slider a step at a time.


10 frames per second	20 frames per second

Object movies are not the same as regular movies on the web. You can grab the image and flip through the images at your own pace by moving the cursor from side to side or up and down. You can also use the control panel at the bottom of the movie to zoom in and out of the image. Hot spots can be embedded into the movie to send the user to other movies, pictures, or web pages.

Images for object movies can be graphics, scanned images or images taken by digital cameras. The object movies can show motion using the "flip-book" method. Motion can also be illustrated using "claymation" techniques by capturing the image, moving the objects slightly, and capturing the next image. Views can be made of still objects by capturing the image, rotating the object, and capturing the next.

Collecting an Image Set

A set of images can either be captured in photographs for scanning, or captured using digital cameras. Sequential images can also be downloaded from the web to be used in creating object movies.

The examples shown below are object movies. Each object movie illustrates sequential image motion, images moving to consecutive frames in the "row."

Gertie the Dinosaur

This object movie was created from drawings by Winsor McKay in 1909. He created these pictures for a children's flip book. Ten thousand drawings later, he created what some believe as the first animated "movie."

Rotating Globe

The images for this object movie were obtained from a website which enables the user to select a point of view over the earth at a specific latitude and longitude. 36 images were downloaded for this object movie.

Select Earth and Moon Viewer on the website.

Hurricane Floyd (1999)

Weather Satellite images can be downloaded and used to make time-lapse movies. This movie was made from infrared images produced from the GOES-8 satellite.

Images are downloaded from the GOES Image Search Engine.

Bonehead Science

Images of a skull were taken as the skull was rotated 360 degrees. The background of each image was filled in black, so the image appears to be rotating in space with no visible means of support.

Shooting Your Own Image Set

The steps for creating your own image set to create a sequential movie is simple:

1. Position your object.

2. Capture the image either with a film-based camera or a digital camera.

3. Reposition the object.

4. Return to step 2 until the image set is complete.

5. Edit the images.

6. Use software such as QT VR Authoring Studio or VR Worx to create an object movie.

If you are using the object movie to enable users to rotate a solid object, a turntable is useful. It could be as simple as a kitchen turntable or a more elaborate setup that is specially made for creating object movies. For larger objects, instead of rotating the object, the camera could revolve around the object for image capture.

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