Stereogranimator: transform historical stereographs from NYPL archives into animated gifs and 3d images

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Above, "Dixon crossing Niagara below the Great Cantilever Bridge," U.S.A., 1895-1903. And you can make your own, with Stereogranimator, a new project from NYPL Labs. Stereogranimator is " a tool for transforming historical stereographs from The New York Public Library's vast collections into shareable 3D web formats."

(thanks, Mikael Jorgensen!)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

MORE: 3d • animated gif • History • library • stereograph

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

In this particular case, it looks like the poor tightrope walker is dealing with an earthquake. “Whoa-WHOA! Oh SHIT Shit shit . . .”
xzzy

Wouldn’t it result in a better illusion if they just scaled down the original so it’s easy to do the cross-eyed trick?

I’d much prefer that to looking at a shimmering gif.
- http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones
  
  A LOT of people simply can’t do that trick.
  
  Hell, I have a hard time explaining it.
- http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis
  
  I can’t do cross-eyed at all, but I can do parallel easily.
theophrastvs

“Stereogranimator a new project from NYPL Labs” sounds impressive indeed. But isn’t it just taking two stereopticon images and making a two frame animated gif out of ‘em? (sort’ve convolved in time instead of in visual field)
- http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin
  
  yeah, but the website automates that process for you, so it’s instant and fun and you have a huge repository of cool historical images with which to do so.
  - theophrastvs
    
    well ok. you had me at “fun”.
http://twitter.com/CoolLikePie Cool Like Pie

Wow…that guy is really wobbling up there…huh? Scary!
M_Annetta

On the site, you can also view the stereograms as anaglyphs, which is a bit handier than the animated GIF option if you have the glasses. However, the website is designed with red buttons over the anaglyph, which are VERY painful to look at with red/cyan glasses, especially when you’re going through a huge portion of the collection. It would be nice if they consider a change of color palette for the site, or at least for buttons that float on top of anaglyph images.
pjcamp

Saw it elsewhere. I hope NYPL is aware it is violating a patented technology — Visidep — invented by a couple of professors I had in graduate school. See e.g. here:

http://cultureandcommunication.org/deadmedia/index.php/3D_Television

and the March 1983 Popular Mechanics in Google books.
- xzzy
  
  The patent was granted in 1990, which I believe means it’s expired.
- CLamb
  
  The Visidep process involved alternating images offset vertically.
charlesj

Here’s a test of your hand-eye coordination: spread the fingers of both hands slightly apart, hold one hand in front of each eye, and wave them up and down in alternation – if you get the frequency and phase just right, you should be able to recreate the stereo illusion. For a second or two I thought I had it….
jay kusnetz

It’s kinda frustrating that we don’t have access to the higher rez images. Some of us have 3D monitors and TV’s, and the free http://stereo.jpn.org/eng/stphmkr/ software could convert the side-by-side for display. Even without a 3D monitor an inexpensive Loreo or wheatstone viewer would do a nice job. They are also missing out on making an iPhone compatible site, which you can use the Hasbro My3D to view.
terry childers

guh, i’m feeling old and far too self-promote-y, jeez, i am starting to regret this but it’s my birthday, so why the hell not. i explored stereogram manipulation waaaay back in 2007 after i saw a horrible post on rotten.com. i am attaching my video for a horribly recorded version of hybrid moments by the misfits. http://youtu.be/k6Pb4v-5fJo
http://twitter.com/Sooper8 Sooper8

That’s puke inducing for me
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  3 seconds to headache.
Stahlbrand

I loathe stutter 3D gifs.
I would much rather cross my eyes.
bjacques

I’ve posted a lot of stereophotos on Flickr, but lately what I’ve done is post the best picture of the two. Otherwise, you can’t tell from the thumbnail what it’s a picture of. There’s always a flaw in the camera that makes one pic in the stereogram better than the other.
mookontheboing

you want headache? try http://www.sixty40.com/battlestar/ (another disclosure… i made this!)
- mookontheboing
  
  also… it’s a whole film clip shot in “wigglevision”. It’s been tested on the Harding Test, so epileptics should be fine, but keep it in mind. The technique works great for some shots, but may cause mouth foaming.
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

Look at the z-axis roll in the images. That’s not a great stereo pair.
- Logolepsy
  
  Yeah, I noticed that too. Some original photographs are slightly rotated, for instance:
  http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=736170&imageID=G91F039_031F&total=1&e=w
  It would be nice if they add a rotation feature on their “create” step…
howaboutthisdangit

Seeing all of those animated GIFs at once on the Stereogranimator website, I immediately thought of a quivering mass of Jello.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

I guess the name welcometoheadachecity.com was already spoken for?
lava

I’ve made these with my architectural models before – cool effect
http://www.lamidesign.com/blog/imgs/0404prog02.gif
http://www.lamidesign.com/plans/planscat/0357/0357SteelCaseMetal3d.gif
Earthquake! Be prepared to buick!
Robert Cruickshank

What’s really interesting about wiggle-gifs is that if you close one eye, they suddenly get more 3D-your brain seems to know to stop looking for stereopsis cues, and to rely entirely on parallax.
http://forresto.com/ Forrest O.

I made a Flash+JS project which adds one feature to wiggled 3D images: focusing. If you move the mouse over the image, it changes which point in the frames overlap, like focusing through the image. http://wiggle.sourceforge.net/

(This was coded 7 years ago, and I have learned plenty since then.)