Picolay : Create 3D Images from Many 2D Images

These days you can buy a digital 3D camera without spending too much money. These cameras come with multiple lenses that capture the same object from different angles and then combine the data together to create the 3D image. While these cameras do it automatically and accurately, you can also do the same using any other regular digital camera. You can snap the same object or person from slightly different angles and the combine these images using a special software called Picolay.

Picolay is an application that can intelligently compute a 3D image using several individual two dimensional images by calculating their color values. For creating a 3D image using Picolay, you will need at least two images but with just two images you won’t get good results. For good results you have to snap the same object/place/person with slight variation in angle and use at least 20 to 30 of these images.

Picolay

You have to add these images in Picolay by using the hotkey Ctrl+A and selecting the image files. After this you can choose to create a 3D resulting image and it will quickly calculate the color values of all the images and produce the results. The source images and the 3D image results  are displayed in two separate windows side-by-side so that you can see the effect visually.

Apart from the GIF animation, Picolay can also generate red-green images or stereoscopic photos. These images appear 3D when you wear the 3D glasses (the ones you find in the movie theaters when watching 3D movies). If you have a 3D ready screen, then you can enjoy the 3D images without using the glasses. With the help of stacking, Picolay can also create all sorts of three-dimensional images. For example, rotating 3D photos, holograms, red-green images and even stereoscopic images.

You can download Picolay from http://www.picolay.de/index.html