The most challenging conversion that I’ve done to date is this shot of Flushing Meadows Park, which had plenty of details to work on, but wow that see-through globe was tricky! More complicated depth maps can handle a variety of shapes… here’s a Moon conversion:Īnd here’s a postcard I converted to 3D for a friend’s video project (I like the rough texture): Some geometry was involved in intersecting 4 different gradient layers & finding the correct ‘blending mode’, but I think it was still better than trying to paint a perfect depth map by hand! Brightness levels represent ‘distances’ into the scene. What follows is the solution I came up with:Ībove, on the right is the depth map I created from the original 2D hallway image (on the left).

If the photo was taken from the XY center, I could’ve simply used a single square gradient tool spun to 45º & stretched to match dimensions. It’s very difficult to re-create all of the realistic levels of depth & detail in a 2D conversion that you could’ve gotten by just shooting it in 3D in the first place, not to mention all the time spent doing the conversion! Of course that’s not possible with previously shot material, or maybe due to some limitations while filming, so there’s a growing demand for converting 2D to 3D if done well, it’s amazing!įor my first-ever attempt at doing a 2D to 3D conversion, I decided to try a “depth map” so I chose a seemingly simple hallway shot, but the fact that it was taken closer to the ceiling than the floor (at standing human height) led to creating a more complicated depth map. A few years back, when the practice of converting movies from 2D to 3D became common, I figured I’d embrace the technology rather than fight it.

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