learnin' ya

These 3D Magic Eye things are called AutoStereograms. You see them because both eyes see something in the pattern from different angles that your brain tries to put together and make into a 3D image. For this

example, I borrowed a hideous baby model. Then I rendered out a separate depth map channel. The depth map is just a grey scale image that has lighter values indicated as closer to you in relative Z depth, and darker values being further away. Theoretically, you could make your own depth maps without any 3D software.

Anyway, after making the 3D depth map, I moved to autostereogram software, which then combines the depth map with a texture image. The texture image is just some random pattern-it can be most anything. This one was a bunch of faces from the parade photo.

The software takes that image, tiles it, and shifts pixels according to which side of the image it is, and how deep the depth map tells it to go. After all that magic, you look at the thing cross-eyed or wall-eyed (depending on how it was set up), your eyes focus beyond the actual image plane, and VIOLA! 3D!!! As such:

And, No, I can't see it. I figure it's there because someone told me it looked like a face. If you look at the small version here, instead of clicking on it and making it larger, it will probably look wrong, since the image was de-res'd by blogger for the thumbnail. It messes up the pixel shift and all that stuff.

I didn't get innoculated as a child or adult. I miss out on things like this all of the time. I never read Catcher in The Rye, and never saw the how sex works films in High School. I don't know how I missed out on this stuff. My parents couldn't have cared less about me-or what I was exposed to. Just an oversight, I'm sure. Or maybe part of some diabolical plot. Never can tell.

yeah, I know that it's voilå-and I don't know how to make it show up with the proper accent mark.