Alain Hamblenne, an independent graphic designer and teacher of visual communication and panoramic photography at the École Supérieure d’Infographie (Haute École Albert Jacquard) of Namur (Belgium), has just created a stunning 360° virtual tour in 3D and in high definition of the Liège-Guillemins train station (red/blue filter glasses needed).

This station, imagined by architect Santiago Calatrava (who also conceived the impressive Opera of Valencia (Spain) and the Lyon Saint-Exupéry train station) is perfectly suitable for this kind of exercise: the architectural lines and the station furniture make the 3D view really gripping.

Alain Hamblenne used two Nikon D90 carrying Nikkor 18-200mm lenses and mounted on a Maxwell MP-101 motorized head driven by a Photo-Jinn controller. Hamblenne used Kolor Autopano Giga 2.5 software to stitch the images together (2 panoramas of 125 photos) and Kolor Panotour Pro 1.5 software to transform the panoramic images into an interactive 360° virtual tour.

Interview

Alain gives hereafter some details on how he created this nice image:

Alain, how did you get the idea of creating 3D virtual tours?

The origin of my first projects is actually quite simple. Fascinated by panoramic photography and anaglyph images since 1997, it was natural that I sought to combine the two techniques in a cubic panorama. This would not only enable to move at 360 x 180° but also to feel the relief of the scene.
Without really realizing it at the time, it seems that I was the first to incorporate this anaglyph relief effect in a cubic panoramic sequence right from the spring of 2002.
It was after a series of research and various tests carried out in cylindrical panoramas (example 1, example 2) that I published the panorama of the church of Saint-Jacques de Liège, which became a classic of its kind.

For more information about my work on the relief, you can view this page (in French).

Why did you choose the train station of Liège-Guillemins ?

Over the last 10 years technology has changed dramatically. Digital cameras and software are much more efficient. The speed of access to information published on the Web is unmatched with regard to the early 2000s. So I wanted to make a new panoramic image in relief, but on a much larger image. The question therefore arose of choosing a location of interest to showcase this new challenge.
I did not have to think very long… the new TGV station in Liège-Guillemins, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava, was the perfect place because of the architectural interest of this building. I had to get the necessary permissions from Eurogare and SNCB, then I could achieve the necessary shots.

Why did you choose Kolor Autopano Giga software to stitch the images together ?

I used to work on Stitcher software since its version 3.1. As you might know, the latest version is called Stitcher Unlimited 2009 and as its name shows, it has not evolved for about 2 years!
I talked with Arnaud Frich about more powerful software during his visit to our school. Then I decided to switch to Kolor Autopano Giga, discovering a new philosophy of work.
After a few tests to get my bearings and try the different tools, I was definitely conviced by Kolor Autopano Giga with regard to the amazing speed of execution in image analysis, the automatic or manual placing of links between images, the opportunity to work on multiple views at the same time and to easily edit a multitude of alternatives, the stitching quality and harmonization of colors and lights and the other unique features of this software.

Why did you choose Kolor Panotour Pro software to create the virtual tour?

I am very far from mastering this part of the job of transforming the panoramas into virtual tours. I often admire the virtual tours that manage to give value to panoramic contents. In this instance, apart from a vortex effect worthy of the most amazing roller coasters;-) Kolor Panotour Pro especially helped me to publish the panorama of Liège-Guillemin in high quality thanks to its integrated multi-resolution function.

Is this virtual tour your first one in 3D? What are your other projects?

Apart from the first sequences in relief mentioned above, I have only created few others and always as personal research.
That said, I had a good surprise when I won the “First International Digital Anaglyph Contest – Dabiri Award” held in Iran in 2005, with a flat cylindrical version of the Saint-Jacques church.
> Top 10 of the contest (click on the blue dots)
> The flat image

Another test conducted in 2004 at the Blanc Gravier University Sports Centre at Sart Tilman (in QTVR).

For my participation in the WWP (World Wide Panorama) in September 2004, I made a panorama from the underside of the bridge Fragnée (Liege).

A family pano… when visiting my daughter at my parents in 2005.

In 2009, a nearly spherical pano made at the Historic Marine store in Brussels (QTVR).

That same year, the House of Science (Liège) ordered me a relief image in a “View-Master” type (2 separate views) for the exhibition “Diversity of Primates”. Here is the anaglyph version.

I would add that apart from these few productions in relief, I also create traditional panoramic views of course, for a range of culture or business customers, with a soft spot for the comic strip world;-) (examples: The workshop of Christian Binet, the father of the Bidochon, the exhibition The World of Franquin (in QTVR) and a tribute to my friend Tibet gone too soon a year ago).

Finally, I work on a little stranger job for a while now. The digitization of the collection of anatomical jars of University of Liège (Department of Anatomy) as VR Objects sequences which are then used as educational tools in anatomy courses in medicine.

Thank you Alain for these detailled answers ; we wish you good success in both photography teaching and your other projects!

You can contact Alain Hamblenne via the website of his photo studio Outline.

Already known for his video “24 hours of eternity in Atacama“, Serge Brunier has recently made a 360° image of the vault of heaven, entitled “One thousand billion worlds – the sky of Earth”, with the help of the European Southern Observatory (ESO).

The photographer shot the photos within a period of time of about one year, from 3 different places poor in light pollution:

- The Acatama desert, Chile, for the images that were to be shot in the Southern hemisphere (La Silla and Cerro Paranal observatories, and mount Cerro Ventarrones).
- The peaks near Castellane, France, to shoot some images near the polar star.
- Palma island, Canary, Spain, for the rest of the photos (Roque de los Muchachos observatory).

1200 photos were needed to create this giant panorama of the heaven vault: 300 frames of 4 bracketed images. The exposure of each image was 6 minutes, thus the global exposure time was about 120 hours.

Hardware

The shooting was made with a Nikon D3 and a 50mm lens. Within the 6 minutes of exposure, the Earth moves enough to create an apparent motion of the sky. This was corrected thanks to a small equatorial mount, moving in the opposite direction and making a whole circle in 24 hours precisely around the Earth’s axis of rotation.

Software

Frédéric Tapissier, a friend of Serge Brunier, was in charge of assembling the images together. He chose our software Autopano Giga to stitch the 300 frames. The result is an image of 800 million pixels, representing the entirety of the heaven vault. He then used Autopano Tour to create the interactive version of the image in Flash format, into which you can dive in and navigate in the galaxy: a totally new experience.

Learn more

Web page of the image “One thousand billion worlds”

The image was presented in an exhibition that took place in the Casino of Monte-Carlo in September:

Marc Walser created this big image of Feldkirch, a small town in Austria. This image is not only interesting because of its artistic aspect, but also because it shows a useful application of high-resolution photography. Autopano Giga 2 and KrPano were used, and the image combines gigapixel photography and embedded virtual tours.

It was a student project for Marc Walser. Here is a résumé of his work:

“Feldkirch360 was a project to obtain my academic degree. Kolor supported me, so that I could create this panoramic photo with Autopano Giga 2. I want to thank the people of Kolor because without their software it wouldn’t have been easy to create this tour in such a quality.
Feldkirch360 allows both tourists and interested citizens to dive into the city of Feldkirch (western Austria).

The virtual tourist walk into this major middle-ages city gets started with a GigaPano – a photo with a resolution of over one GigaPixel. This makes possible not only to see a large-format panorama of the city, but also to zoom into the picture and see small details of Feldkirch.

Clicking on the arrows or on the map allows visitors to enter one of the 50 viewpoints of the historic city of Feldkirch and thereby rotate the 360-degree images in all directions.

In order to increase the realistic effect of the virtual walk, ambient noise as well as specific sounds have been embedded with a special 3D-Surround technique.

Interested visitors can display info-boxes about historic buildings, and even switch the views to be part of the crowd of the Saturday morning market or discover the city at night. Other nice features, like a real-time-clock on the church , are included too.”

We thank Marc for sharing this amazing project and wish him other successful projects in the future.

Visit the website: http://www.Feldkirch360.at