Domes, Planetariums, Fisheye, Spherical mirror

Some of material here relates to the projection into a hemispherical dome using a spherical mirror, a projection technique developed by the author in 2003 and variously referred to as "sphemir" or "mirrordome".

Please note that I am available to assist you with your fulldome projection projects. This can be on an informal basis (just email me your questions) all the way to formally quoting, personally doing onsite installations, providing training and ongoing support. I provide the FAQ below which aims at covering common questions, I am available for further consulting at a charge, please email for details.

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions
Primarily targeted at those contemplating creating their own dome projection system based upon the spherical mirror.

Photographic gallery of some fulldome installations using both spherical mirror and fisheye lenses.

The original paper presentation: Using a spherical mirror for projection into immersive environments
Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and South East Asia. pp 281-284.

Early presentation given to the Australasian Planetarium Society. and OzViz in 2004

The original web page created late in 2003.

One of the early articles

One of the early presentations given on this approach.

While the author developed this technique for current digital projection, it has been used in the past for film, see Patent 2,299,682.

"The brain is an enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern. A.S. Byatt

iDome

Image gallery of the iDome, specifications and various applications
Exhibition in Doha at the innovation showcase at the 2013 WISH (World Innovation Summit for Health) forum.
Ngintaka exhibition at the South Australia Museum
iJiao exhibition (2011)
Exhibition by: City University of Hong Kong (CityU), Applied Laboratory for Interactive Visualization and Embodiment (ALiVE).
Exhibition as part of the "Expanding sphere of innovation @ CityU", Hong Kong.
Wollongong Science Centre iDome Exhibit
Interactive installation at the Wollongong Science Centre largely using 360 degree footage from the LadyBug-3 camera.
Using Blender games in the iDome
Sketchup to iDome.
Moving Sketchup models to the iDome, via the Unity3D game engine.
iDome as a preview environment for fulldome movies.
Using the Unity game engine and spherical mirror projection

The surest sign of the existence of extra- terrestrial intelligence is that they never bothered to come down here and visit us! Calvin

Fisheye mappings

Creating fisheye projections from spherical maps and panoramic images
Converting fisheye images to .... Panoramic images, perspective projections, (partial) spherical maps.
Converting dual fisheye images into a spherical (equirectangular) projection
Exercise to convert images from a 4 fisheye camera rig to equirectangular
Fisheye "rectification". Correcting for radial non-linearity in a fisheye.
Tilting and rotating fisheye images. Compensating for dome orientation and or clipped fisheye lens capture.
cube2fish. Creating fisheye images from cubic maps.
Angular fisheye projections. Including offaxis fisheye projections. Summary of the mathematics.
Extreme fisheye projection. Fisheyes greater that 360 degree field of view.

A triangle was an improvement to the square wheel. It eliminated one bump. BC comics

Warping for dome projection

Why warp?
Is there a reason for planetarium display software to be able to warp fisheye images even if they are not using a spherical mirror?
Technical information for developers .. warp mesh files.
meshmapper
A calibration tool that creates precise map files for spherical mirror projection.
EarthDesk in the dome.
Display current Earth globe interactively in a dome.
Screen Capture and Warping with an example using SkySafari.
Warping fisheye application images with QuartzComposer using screen capture.
tgawarp
An image warper to create prewarped movies.
Amateras full dome movie player, and much more
World Wide Telescope and spherical mirror projection support.
Software Bisque and spherical mirror projection support.
A real time "warp-on-the-fly" movie player for Windows and Apple Mac
A real time "warp-on-the-fly" movie player for Apple Mac.
Includes navigation modes that was originally designed for spherical mirror projection (mirrordome) but also supports many other movie projections that just fisheye.
warppatch.
A Quartz Composer patch that implements the warping of images and movie frames suitable for novel projection problems into immersive spaces, including the spherical mirror based methods.
Vuo, from version 0.8, now support warp meshes
Stellarium
Notes on the use of Stellarium or Nightshade with spherical mirror projection.
Direct rendering of warped fisheye views for spherical mirror projection
An interactive panorama viewer for domes including support for warping for the spherical mirror.
Image warping for offaxis fisheye lens/projectors

DomeLab

Documentation
Workshop 2016, RMIT, Melbourne
APS 2016 presentation
Workshop 2015
Presentation 2015: Capturing assets for fulldome
ANAT

Seamans mission, Melbourne

Presentation at the Western Alliance Planetarium Conference by Bentley Ousley: Spherical Mirror Projection for Large Domes

Immersive gaming: a low cost projection environment. JMM (Journal of MultiMedia), Volume 3, Issue 1, May 2008, pp 41-46.

Two very simple show controllers based upon Quartz Composer.
One based upon keystrokes and support for some alternative interface devices. Another designed with a graphical user interface and able to be run on a single computer or remotely using a separate playback and GUI computer.

Stellarium landscape from the Australia outback

Wide field of view projection in a rectangular room

Rendering molecules for immersive environments

Creating fisheye image sequences with Unity3D

Image slicing for fulldome (and other applications).

Report on small dome technology
Summary of single and dual fisheye systems in common usage.

Magic Planet display

Unity3D. Creating fisheye images in the Unity3D game engine.

spheremapper.
Geometric correction of fisheye images for direction projection into a hemisphere.

Classification of fisheye mappings
Common types of fisheye and their respective mappings between distance on sensor and angle.

Testing various fisheye capture options.
Includes low end cameras such as the Oneshot and Lomography still camera, mid range such as the Canon HV20 (with Nikon FC-E9 fisheye lens) for video capture, high end SLR cameras such as the Canon 5D range, up to high end cameras like the Red Scarlet.

Conversion of footage from the Lucy camera
Tests of various fisheye lenses and the Red Scarlet 4K video camera
Canon 5D MkII + Canon 8-15 zoom fisheye + iDome
Fisheye circle for Panasonic Lumix GH5 and Sigma 4.5 fisheye lens

Fisheye and spherical capture using the LadyBug camera.
Including an exercise to capture footage of iron ore ship loading fir a remote operations prototype.

Wii + MacBook Pro + Dome Example using the Wii to navigate within an immersive environment.

iSphere. A proposed immersive environment.

Image panels on a fisheye projection.
Various ways of mapping perspective projections on fisheye images.

Interactive fisheye image generation. Multipass texture approach.

Fulldome content creation with the Drishti volume rendering software

Fisheye lens comparisons. Comparisons specific to dual projection and Fisheye lens options as they apply to the iDome

Full dome projection with three digital projectors

Solar system simulator

Geometry warping for realtime dome graphics

Creating content for the SkyVision full dome projection

A wise man can see more from a mountain than a fool from the bottom of a well. Anon

Fulldome productions

Dark - A Fulldome production explains and explores the nature of Dark Matter, the missing 80% of the mass of the Universe. (2012)
Distributed internationally. Peter Morse, Paul Bourke, Alan Duffy, Cathie Travers, Trevor Hilton, Carley Tillett.
Plant Energy Biology - A fulldome production.
Volume visualisation under the Dome, October 2009
Fulldome show reel of volume visualisation datasets. Ajay Limaye, Tim Senden, Alexander Mitchell, Paul Bourke.
Digital Visualisation in the Dome.
Presentation at Horizon - The Planetarium. November 2008. Presenters: Peter Morse, Paul Bourke, Carley Tillett. Contributors: Karen Haines, Ajay Limaye, Glenn Rogers
Treasures of the Great Barrier Reef, November 2008
Fulldome video based upon underwater fisheye photography by Karen Haines. Audio by Peter Morse and Trevor Hilton
Artforms Of Nature: A New Way Of Seeing, October 2008.
Ajay Limaye, Peter Morse, Paul Bourke.
Fulldome Geometry Series: Part 1, October 2007.
Paul Bourke, Peter Morse.
6dF Galaxy Survey: Beyond the Crux, October 2006.
Paul Bourke, Peter Morse, Glenn Rogers.
Cosmological Simulation, October 2005.
Paul Bourke, Evan Hallein, Dr Chris Power.
Fulldome animation of a flight over the surface of Mars based upon the 1/32 degree topology data from MOLA.
Created for SkySkan for the planetarium show "Infinity Express". October 2000.
Experiences With My First 8K Fulldome Production Pipeline

Contents : ( Index ) ( All pages )	Papers, Articles, Seminars, Workshops Data Formats: 3D, Audio, Image Geometry, Surfaces, Curves, Polyhedra Fractals, Chaos, Self similarity	Domes, Planetariums, Fisheye, Spherical mirror Stereographics, 3D projection Miscellaneous: Projection, Modelling, Rendering Fun, Puzzles, Travel
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Copyright :	The contents of this web site are © Copyright Paul Bourke or a third party contributor where indicated. You may print or save an electronic copy of parts of this web site for your own personal use. Permission must be sought for any other use. Any source code found here may be freely used provided credits are given to the author. Purchase of credit free licenses of material found on this site can be negotiated with the author. The author can also quote for unique variations and/or higher resolution versions of the images found on this site.