Interactions and Limitations

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‌Interactions and Limitations

SynthEyes has many different features and capabilities; not all make sense for stereo shots, or have been enhanced to work with stereo shots. Following is a list of some of these items:

 User interface – on a stereo shot, the “important” settings are generally those configured on the left camera, for example the solver’s Begin and End frames. You might find yourself changing the right-camera controls and be surprised they seem to have no effect, because they do not! Generally we will continue to add code to prevent this kind of mishap when a stereo shot is active.

 Lens distortion – should be addressed before solving as part of camera alignment.

 Zoom vs Fixed vs Known – Both lenses must be fixed, or both must be zooming. It is far preferable if both lenses are Known, from calibration, to produce a more stable and reliable solve.

 Tracker Cleanup and Coalesce Trackers are not stereo-aware.

 Hold mode for camera paths – in a hold region, the camera is effectively switched to tripod mode, which doesn’t make sense for stereo shots. With an inter-ocular distance, any change in orientation always produces a change in position. In the future, might be modified to make the dominant camera (only) stationary, as a way to reduce chatter, but this should be achievable with axis locks instead.

 Object tracking with no camera trackers – with a single camera, it is sometimes useful to do an object track relative the camera, with the camera disabled. The same approach is not possible with stereo – if the cameras are disabled, they can not be solved or moved to achieve the proper inter-ocular distance. You can solve the shot as a moving-camera, store the stereo parameters on the Known tracks, reset the cameras, transfer the stereo parameters to the secondary camera via Set 1f or Set All, then change the setup to moving-object (see the tutorial) and solve as a moving object.

 Some exports may export only one camera at a time. In the future, we will probably have modified stereo exporters that parent the cameras to assemble a small rig. In any case, if you want to use some particular rig in your animation package, you will need to use some tool to convert the path information to drive your particular rig.

 Moving stereo objects will produce the export for both objects, which may be unnecessarily redundant. You can use the usual control from the 3D panel or Hierarchy view to disable the export of one of the two if you like.

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