Creating Quicktime VR Panoramas

QuickTime VR allows you to take a 360° panoramic image, and make it into a VR Movie; this unique movie will display a 2D panoramic representation of your 3D world, and allow point and click navigation through the world. You can look up, down and around your rendered scene as though you were a camera on a tripod.

Further, QuickTime VR lets you create "Nodes," or hotspots in the movie where you can click and go to another linked movie. This means you can look around a landscape, and seeing an interesting rock formation in the distance, click on it to view the entire landscape from that new vantage point.

These nodes can also contain "Object Movies;" another specialized technology from Apple that allows you to click and drag to, in effect, "pick up" any object in the VR movie and examine it from all sides, as if you literally picked it up and turned it around and around in your hands.

The process of creating a panorama involves completing a few easy steps.

To create QuickTime VR Panoramas:

1. Choose Default in the Document Setup dialog.
2. Click on the uppermost Views Memory Dot in the control palette, to make sure your camera is level.
3. Set up your scene. The important thing to remember is that for a successful 360° scene, you need interesting objects all around your camera. The best way to work on this is to go to the Top View, and position objects all the way around the camera.
4. Keep the Nano-Preview in Camera View mode to check your view while you are working in Top View.
5. Drag the tip of the camera around in the Working window to check the view of your scene from all directions.
6. Once you have a good distribution of objects in a visually interesting scene, switch back to Camera View and do a quick test render.
7. After the render, make any required position changes.
8. Choose File > Document Setup and select QTVR Panorama. This aspect ratio is optimized for use with Apple's Make QTVR Panorama tool, though many aspects will work. The preferred aspect is 13:4. Width must be divisible by 96, and height must be divisible by 4. The QTVR Panorama option ensures that your image meets these criteria.
9. Click the triangle icon next to the Render Controls and choose 360° Panorama from the menu.
10. Click the Render button to do a quick test render. The panoramic render mode necessarily introduces some distortion into your image, and this may change the way you want your objects to appear.
11. Make any position changes you like. When you do a panoramic render, your wireframe scene will bear little resemblance to the rendered scene. This is why you should work on your scene in standard Default mode and switch to Panoramic rendering after everything is set up.
12. Choose File >Render To Disk. The Render to Disk dialog appears.
13. Leave the default settings. The Output Size in Pixels was set by the QTVR Panorama option in the Document Setup dialog. The Print Resolution defaults to 72dpi, which is the only acceptable setting for the screen-resolution VR movies; and the Output Size in Inches is extra information. You can, however, use these features to your benefit if you need to print out a 2D version of your VR scene.
14. Click the OK icon.
15. In the Save dialog, choose QuickTime VR, then click the Save button.
16. Specify the location and file name for your rendered QuickTime VR panorama.

To export a QuickTime VR Panorama:

1. Follow the steps above through step 11.
2. Click the Render button if you made any changes after your test render.
3. When the rendering is done, choose File > Export Image and choose QuickTime VR from the list.
4. Specify a location for the saved panorama, then click Save.

Further VR Exploration

This is a quick way to get started with simple, single-node QTVR movie-making. To create movies with other embedded nodes, or to get deeper into the world of QuickTime VR, contact Apple Computer.

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