Author: Ozy
Original Thread: How to make a Panorama




How to make a Panorama
Hey,

So, here it goes (sorry if it is kind of fast and not explaining everything on detail, I'm just not a good teacher. Just post a comment and Ill try to help and add more details to the explanation):

To make the panorama, you need to use the movie cam on the game you want to use, and load a saved battle replay.

The only 2 keys you will use when taking the panorama are the left and right control keys, which in both rtw's and m2tw's Moviecam turn the camera's view to the left and right. This means that the camera will turn in a circle (in theory) and will allow you to take several shots from almost the same spot.

To take the pics for the panorama, you will have to take a group of pictures by turning either to the left or the right. Now, here I recommend that you just turn the camera one third of the area covered on the first pic would be covered in the second one (doing this makes it easier to merge the images later, as the less you turn, the less the second image will distort from the original one). Here's 2 of the pics I took from a battle of rtw:





Once you get the pics, you have to use some sort of photo editing software to merge them. This is actually the part of the process that can get kind of tricky sometimes. To edit/merge my pics I use photoshop, so I'll explain this for photoshop, as I dont know how to use any other tools. To make the panorama, you simple have to open the pics you want to use, and create a new document, which should be very long, so that all the pics will fit in it.

There are 2 ways you can get a panoramic picture:

-Get software that does it for you.
-Do it yourself.

Programs like photoshop come with an included photomerging tool.

This tool is in the task bar, then click file, then automate, and finally click on photomerge.



A small window will popup, and you will be able to load pics from your hard drive. Once that is done, simply drag the pics together and photoshop will merge them.



You can use tools like setting and advanced blending (both of them found on the right side of the merging window) to make them look better.

However, there are some small flaws sometimes, and the images might not merge perfectly, or the images will be too distorted (ie the image is no longer a rectangle, but an irregular figure), which may make you have to cut parts of it to make it rectangular again.

For example, this is what happened when I tryed to merge the 2 pics from upthere:



It doesnt always happen like that (in fact, this is the first time thatit modifies the pic so much with me) but you get the idea.

There are other programs outthere that really work perfectly, such as PTGui, but the only problem is you have to pay for them (if you want to get PTGui, i truly recommend it though).

The other way, as I mentioned before, is doing it yourself.
I'll explain it for photoshop CS2, as it is the software I have.

It is very easy to do once you get the idea (probably 1-2 mins per merging). It is necesary to use some very basic tools: the free transform tool (ctrl+T with photoshop), and the eraser tool (E key, with photoshop as well). every pair of pics you try to merge will (or should) require only this 2 tools to look as a continous long picture.

The first thing you need to do is paste the two pics in the same document.



Once they are there, move the pics togheter, and try to see in which point the pics should merge togheter. As will see in the pics below, the pics have been modified.


At this point, you will have to use the free transform tool to make the zones to merge as much as posible (it's not necesary to make them merge 100%, as you'll see later). In this case, the pic required to be resized slightly, however it may require of more modifications or less.



Once the pic is close to merging, you have to use the eraser tool. For this you have to lower the opacity to around 50%, and then...erase . The idea of this is that every point of the pic will merge with the other pic at a certain point, and therefore you must erase the extra part of one pic until the pics look continous. You simply have to erase parts of the pic that is on the layer above, and try to get them to a point in which they merge practically perfectly. Decreasing the opacity to 50% makes the borders smoothen, and helps creating the ilussion that the pics are just one. You have to apply the same tool to get the desired final result.

Here is the pic once the necesary parts have been erased:



As you can see, now there is no longer a line in the middle, and the 2 pics now look like 1 long pic. Once you get this, I recommend that you merge both layers to avoid the posibility that ypu accidentally moveon of them and ruin what you just did.

The making of a panorama, or even a 360 shot is basically the same thing I just explained, but repeated the necesary number of times. A simple panorama may need only about 3 or 4 pics to be merged, and a 360 shot may need you to do this like 10 or more times.

A finished 360 shot ( I had to make it "shorter" because it was too big to be uploaded to photobucket) :
Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 




So there you go.

In certain ocassions you might need to use some extra tool or tools apart from what I mentioned here to get the pics to merge, so of course having a wider knowledge of the photo editing tools will always come handy. If you don't know how to get your pics to merge you can post your pics here and I will try to help you, but I must say I am by no means any photoshop master, but I'll try to help.