[STEREO BOY]

Hi everyone,

just to shorten the waiting time for M.K.’s patch a little bit … 😉

DaumenKinosaurier: an awarded stereoscopic flip book – now officially released on Virtual Boy

Today, KR155E and me are very proud to release this little project, which kept us having fun for a couple of months now. It’s based on “DaumenKinosaurier” – a 3D short movie that I’ve made as a student back in 2009. So basically, this ROM is a 3D movie player … for the Virtual Boy!

About the movie

DKS was a visual experiment made for a stereoscopic contest in 2009. The visual idea was to create a hand drawn, stereoscopic flipbook. Fore more detailed information and full movie credits, please check the videos’s description on YouTube.
You can find different 3d versions of the original movie on YouTube (duration approx. 1 minute):

small parallax version – for bigger 3d screens like cinemas
medium parallax version – for medium size 3d screens like TVs and PCs
large parallax version – for smaller 3d screens like mobile devices
zero parallax version – flat 2D version (but full 720p resolution instead)

About the VB port

On March 8th I received an e-mail from KR155E – Jorgeche and him experimented with video playback using VUEngine at this time. DKS seemed to be very suitable for this approach, so he asked me if we want to port it to the Virtual Boy … well … OF CAUSE!! I immediately started to optimize the original footage for a Virtual Boy presentation and provided the images to KR155E, who did the development on this. Togehther, we tried out different things, realized and discarded many ideas. My favorite feature in this ROM is the “Animation Gallery”.

One challenge due to this project also was to fit a full minute of film onto a standard 16 MBit FlashBoy! To achieve this, we had to optimize animation loops, reduce the sound design to a minimum and also shorten one of the scenes. The good thing about this is: you don’t have to care for padding modes at all – this ROM will fill up your FlashBoy with pure animation till the last byte!

Very special thanks also go out to jorgeche, who especially helped KR155E a lot with debugging and even implemented a new VUEngine animation method due to this project!

We also decided, to release this as open source! So please feel free to download the project files and use them as a template for your own VBDE projects – KR155E is going to post the source code in this thread soon …

DKS: VUEdition – CONTROLs:

Play Flipbook: standard movie playback
[A] – toggle play/pause
– (while paused) quit playback and return to main menu

Animation Gallery: browse the movie’s animations and frames
[A] – toggle play/pause
– quit browsing and return to main menu
[L/R-Triggers] – scene browsing
[D-PADs] (while paused) – frame browsing

About: read some project info & the credits
[A] – continue reading
– quit reading and return to main menu

DKS is one player only and has no saving functions.

DKS: VUEdition – CREDITs:

Programmer: Christian Radke
Graphics: Marten Reiß
Development Support: Jorge Eremiev

So please – grab your FlashBoys, start your (VU)Engines and enjoy! We’re very curious to read your feedback on this homebrew!

[The screenshots attached to this post are optimized for cross-eyed 3d viewing]

• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by STEREO BOY.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by STEREO BOY.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by STEREO BOY.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by STEREO BOY.

Attachments:

1. 

   dks-vue_box-draft.jpg
   

2. 

   dks-vue_mainmenu_cross-eyed.png
   

3. 

   dks-vue_movieplayer_cross-eyed.png
   

4. 

   dks-vue_credits_cross-eyed.png
   

5. 

   dks-vue_animation-gallery.gif
   

1. dks-vue_v1.0.zip

Very cool – but the Youtube videos don’t work. 🙁

Hey, this is really cool! I really like how well done everything is, how the title screen seamlessly blends in with the start, and the nice looking credits. The animation and just everything looks really nice on the Virtual Boy displays. Very cool! I wonder if we were to get a larger Flashboy in the future, if there could be longer more fleshed out animations for the VB!

This looks really neat! I can’t wait to give it a try when I get home.

Thank You guys! 😀

pinmagic wrote:
Youtube videos don’t work

Youtube 3D unfortunetly sucks since it was last “updated” – for me (firefox v.54 on windows) it only works with red/green glasses and I also have to flip them. It doesn’t support my 3D monitor any longer 🙁
Luckily, it still works on the Nintendo 3DS! Not in the official YouTube app though (that also sucks) but in the 3DS’ built-in internet browser (you probably have to adjust the 3D settings).

speedyink wrote:
a larger Flashboy

I actually heard some very exciting rumors about a bigger flash cart lately! I don’t know any details or who’s developing it, but I believe we can look forward to some bigger content on VB in the near future :thumpup: 🙂

Beautiful. Very nice job!

[STEREO BOY]

Thanks! You do a lot of Japanese translation – can you tell me, if the Japanese lines on the box draft make sense?
I just used google translator (and Japanese wikipedia) to get them … 😉

VUEngine を使用しています (“using VUEngine”?)
3次元 パラパラマンガ (“3D Flipbook”?)
ステレオグラム (“Stereogram”)

• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by STEREO BOY.
• This reply was modified 6 years, 9 months ago by STEREO BOY.

You really should consider writing a book or at least tutorials on how you did this. I mean I can draw in 3d in Pro Motion NG But what you have here is off the map! How ever did you do this just by drawing freehand?

This does indeed look very cool.

StereoBoy wrote:
Thanks! You do a lot of Japanese translation – can you tell me, if the Japanese lines on the box draft make sense?
I just used google translator (and Japanese wikipedia) to get them … 😉

VUEngine を使用しています (“using VUEngine”?)
3次元 パラパラマンガ (“3D Flipbook”?)
ステレオグラム (“Stereogram”)

Yes, I do conclude that the first line translates to:
I (or we) am/are using the VUEngine

And the second line translates to:
3D Flipbook

And the third line translates to:
Stereogram

To be sure, my experience with the Japanese language only lets me translate Japanese that is already in its proper form into English, but I cannot necessarily take English and put it into proper Japanese form. Nevertheless, the Japanese really does look to me like it is in its proper form for the above English translations.

Thanks guys, I am glad you like our little flipbook! As promised, here’s the source code. Make sure you get the latest VUEngine from the repo (https://bitbucket.org/jorgeche/vuengine), since this will not compile with the version that is included in the 1.2.0 VBDE release.

Also, here’s the DaumenKinosaurier git repository: https://bitbucket.org/KR155E/daumenkinosaurier

Morintari wrote:
You really should consider writing a book or at least tutorials on how you did this. I mean I can draw in 3d in Pro Motion NG But what you have here is off the map! How ever did you do this just by drawing freehand?

Check the About pages in the demo, they explain how the graphics were done. It’s actually rotoscoped 3D models.

Attachments:

1. daumenkinosaurier.src_.7z

Very nice!

Great work guys. Looks fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for your feedback, everyone! Very glad you like it. Seems like the good old DaumenKinosaurier is in good hands here 🙂

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
Nevertheless, the Japanese really does look to me like it is in its proper form for the above English translations.

Thank you very much – then it’s good enough for me too :thumpup: 🙂

Morintari wrote:
How ever did you do this just by drawing freehand?

KR155E wrote:
Check the About pages in the demo, they explain how the graphics were done. It’s actually rotoscoped 3D models.

That’s right – rotoscopy does the trick, combined with 3d animation. I didn’t want to make the release post too long, so I referred to the YouTube description. But of cause that’s the interesing part to the graphics people, so here’s some more detail:

1. 3D ANIMATION
The first step was, to create the complete animation with a 3d cgi software and render out a 2D draft image sequence (without caring for final textures or shading).

2. ROTOSCOPING
Then you can use these draft renderings, to redraw them by hand. Still in 2D, but you consider to draw some hidden layers in the background separately for regions that later may be revealed by parallaxe.

3. STEREO RENDERING
Finally, you map these drawings back into your origin 3d cgi scene. You’re using the camera (same one that rendered the drafts) as a projector for the hand drawn textures. Then just pin some shifted cameras (or a 3d camera) to your projector to finally render out all the desired stereo views … that’s it!

Looking at the final ROM, I think KR155E’s idea to port it to VB was a very good one. I wouldn’t have had that idea my self – one reason is, I wouldn’t have expected that it’s possible to play video sequences on a nintendo device of that age (even if it’s just 5 fps).

Another reason is, I wouldn’t have expected that the drawing style of DKS still looks good in VB format – too low resolution and too few colors for the drawing details, I would have thought. But viewing the first test images, I was suprised how nice it looks.

I really think 3d is a main reason, why these images still look so nice in lower resolutions …

fantastic work gents ! Truly awesome to see this in action

Stereo Boy your work is incredible! and I’m not taking anything away from that. However just to let you know that through ProMotion NG “smart drawing”
by drawing curves you can do real 3d animations,and game graphics without the need of modeling in 3d or rotoscoping. Just to let you know. still incredible work!

Youtube 3D unfortunetly sucks since it was last “updated” – for me (firefox v.54 on windows) it only works with red/green glasses and I also have to flip them. It doesn’t support my 3D monitor any longer 🙁
Luckily, it still works on the Nintendo 3DS! Not in the official YouTube app though (that also sucks) but in the 3DS’ built-in internet browser (you probably have to adjust the 3D settings).

Looks awesome! Unfortunately I couldn’t watch the video on my New 3DS (clicked on the large parallax version along with the others, but all of them said “this video is not available.”)

Thaaanks! 😀

Morintari wrote:
However just to let you know that through ProMotion NG “smart drawing” by drawing curves you can do real 3d animations,and game graphics without the need of modeling in 3d or rotoscoping.

I know – You already showed me :thumpup: 🙂
I surely will use it when a find some time to do some 3D pixel art!

MegaSilverX1 wrote:
“this video is not available.”

Strange … it’s working on my new 3DS (with system software version 11.4). Region settings doesn’t seem to be the problem – all 4 videos are available worldwide, my Youtube account says.
– Which 3DS system software are You using?
– Did you try other Youtube/Youtube3D videos?
You can find more 3D videos here: https://www.youtube.com/user/3D

Stereoboy wrote:
Strange … it’s working on my new 3DS (with system software version 11.4). Region settings doesn’t seem to be the problem – all 4 videos are available worldwide, my Youtube account says.
– Which 3DS system software are You using?
– Did you try other Youtube/Youtube3D videos?
You can find more 3D videos here: https://www.youtube.com/user/3D

I’m using a New 3DSXL with version 11.5.0-38U. I was able to watch the 3D videos you linked no problem along with VectrexRoli’s 3D videos.

MegaSilverX1 schrieb:
I’m using a New 3DSXL with version 11.5.0-38U. I was able to watch the 3D videos you linked no problem along with VectrexRoli’s 3D videos.

OK, thanks for the info! Happy to tell that 11.5 isn’t the problem – still runs on my new 3DS XL (EU) after updating :thumpup:

I’ve made a new ‘offtopic’ thread (including a poll) and suggest to continue the discussion on Youtube 3D problems there:
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6791&forum=4