Creating cubefaces. Weird interface.

[HansNyberg]

I bought Pano2VR for 2 options.
1. Creating Cubefaces directly to JPG with good quality.
2. Doing single Flash9 files for fast delivery.

I start selecting my equirectangular file, but at the bottom there is still a path directing to a place I have used before.
What does it mean. No explanation. I can only change the path manually
Weird.

I close and in the right side I choose remap but there is no option at all for sets of cubefaces.

Then I see an option in left side for Convert Input.
I select it and find that it has cubefaces which I choose and than select my size and compression.
But the output file is a tif and there is no option for selecting jpg or other filetype.
You now still have a New Path which goes to my earlier used one and there is a path to the full path tif file in Output. No explanation.
I choose another place and now the New path changes to this place and I just get the filename, but still a tif.
A Tif with 70% compression????

I give up but after a couple of hours I get the weird idea that I am supposed to change the name to .jpg myself and that this will be enough to create jpg.
AND IT WORKS. Very very weird interface.

Questions?
Why is the cubefaces output not in the right side.
Why can I not choose the type of cube names I need. It creates numbers but that is not much used, I need u d l r etc. I need to do a lot of extra work with renaming.
I look for interpolators and finally find them in the preferences.
They should be in the output area.
And what hack are these interpolators. I never heard of most of them.
Only known are Lanczos and Mitchell
Where are all the common ones we use in PTGui.

Hans

[ericob]

I am suffering the same pain.

If I hover over the "Convert Input" button I see the tooltip "Convert the input for retouching." Clearly, this is not the way to produce compressed cube faces.

But currently it is the only way to get cube faces out of Pano2VR.

It seems to me that "cube faces" clearly needs to be added as an output option. Rather than hide it under "Remap/Thumbnail" I'd really prefer it to be at the top level along with "QuickTime" and "Flash." Like: "QuickTime" "Flash" "Cube Faces" "Remap/Thumbnail."

And yes we do need a way to customize the naming.

As an aside: yes the compression slider preferably should simply not display when it is not applicable to the chosen codec. An explanatory message in a tool tip isn't a good solution.

[thomas]

Ok, I have implemented your suggestions and they will be in the next beta version expect for the separate output format "Cube faces" in the output format.
This sounds like a good idea but I want to think a little about it, if I should combine this with other features that I plan in the near future.
For what purpose are you using the cube faces? For Flashpanoramas or SPI-V player? What is the proper naming convention for your needs?
Currently I have added:

'_0','_1','_2','_3','_4','_5'
'11','22','33','44','55','66'
'front','right','back','left','top','bottom'
'front','right','back','left','up','down'
'f','r','b','l','u','d'
'ft','rt','bk','lf','up','dn'

Maybe I should add a "other players" format to the output box where you can also change the quality per cube face.

[ericob]

Ok, I have implemented your suggestions and they will be in the next beta version expect for the separate output format "Cube faces" in the output format.

Fabulous!

This sounds like a good idea but I want to think a little about it, if I should combine this with other features that I plan in the near future.

That is certainly something to consider. You don't want to do it one way right now, then discover later that that approach doesn't "fit" well with some new feature(s)! If you tell us what those "other features" are ... you're sure to get lots of opinions on how cube face output might/should/could fit with them.

For what purpose are you using the cube faces? For Flashpanoramas or SPI-V player?

For me, just now, Flashpanoramas. But I have a license for SPi-V also, so I might use cube faces for that too. I suppose there might be other uses for compressed cube faces too... 3D modeling programs??

What is the proper naming convention for your needs?

Currently I have added:

'_0','_1','_2','_3','_4','_5'
'11','22','33','44','55','66'
'front','right','back','left','top','bottom'
'front','right','back','left','up','down'
'f','r','b','l','u','d'
'ft','rt','bk','lf','up','dn'

Well, Flashpanoramas defaults to using a suffix of '_f', '_r', '_b', '_l', '_u', '_d' -- that option in Pano2VR would allow someone to use Flashpanoramas without customizing the cube face names. Flashpanoramas can also quickly use '_0', '_1', '_2', '_3', '_4', '_5' or '_1', '_2', '_3', '_4', '_5', '_6' (note the initial face is named either '_0' or '_1'). I can't recall what form SPi-V prefers. For fun, Goggle cube face naming conventions. It seems to me that adding an underscore before the suffix makes reading the filename easier, but I suppose some people would prefer no separator, or one other than an underscore. Maybe you should pull that out as something the user can pick or specify. (yeah, more coding.0

Maybe I should add a "other players" format to the output box where you can also change the quality per cube face.

However you do it, since you can set individual cube face quality elsewhere, you certainly want to provide it here too!

Thanks!

[ericob]

Ok, I have implemented your suggestions and they will be in the next beta version expect for the separate output format "Cube faces" in the output format. ...

Umm... so which "next" next beta were you referring to?

In the current "next" beta (2.0b3) I don't see such an option.

[thomas]

Hmm.... select "convert input" and "Cubfaces". Now you can select the naming and the output format + the quality slider is disabled. As I said the special export for FPP will follow in one of the next betas.

[ericob]

Ah! I didn't look there... was expecting it to be in the "Output > New Output Format" section, not the "Input > Convert Input... Type: Cube faces" section.

I haven't tried it yet, but is it true that this will convert the project so that the source file ("Input") actually is the set of cube faces produced? That is not the preferred thing to do with compressed cube faces, but at least we can now get them out of FPP. Thanks!

I notice (here anyway) that the "Compression" controls are dimmed unless the output format is jpeg. Good show!