How to transform an image's area into a cube - with photos

Question

I am doing a project for a client and I need to manipulate a photograph; either by photoshop or by taking the shot at a specific angel/lens.

My goal is to turn all the quadrants of photos into a cube (6 faces) while constraining to client demand.

Here are the photos aligned as an open faced cube:

http://prntscr.com/avdj9t Now if you already figured it out, this folds and becomes a box.

Another thing that the client wants is to have the edges of every face connect perfectly so in this photo all the faces are interconnected:

This image when rotated, can fit any of it's neighbouring faces, as you can see: http://prntscr.com/avdk45

So essentially, the question is: how do I create a photo like this where the end result would be a folded cube that all its faces interconnect forming a printed cube with a person inside it. Thanks

Sorry for not posting more photos here since stack has a limit of 2 photos until get 10 points (sheesh)

thanks again :)

Answer 1

The only way to get the cube faces is to cover the cube by shooting a spherical 360ºx180º pano, first. This is non-trivial.

See: How are virtual tour photos taken?

There are cameras that can create this type of image in a single shot (e.g., Ricoh Theta), but the image quality and resolution of these types of cameras tends to be very low and you have no control over the stitch, so panorama stitching is how most professionals do these types of images. But it does tend to take a few months to years to amass both the equipment and shooting/processing skillz to get good at this, and the specialized equipment (fisheye lens, panorama head, stitching software license) is not cheap.

Creating and working with this type of panorama is most typically done in equirectangular projection. This format is most convenient because it contains the entire panorama in a single 2x1 image, and is going to be the format for packages like Pano2VR, or Flexify (commercial Photoshop plug-in) or Hugin to remap to other projections, such as cube faces or origami balloon (i.e., print it out, fold it as an origami balloon, and get your printed cube).

My personal recommendation for your specific situation would be the Flexify plugin for the ease-of-use, the ability to preview the results, and the large number of remappings, which include making a box with tabs to fold and glue, but YMMV as it only does still-image remapping and requires a Photoshop license. Pano2VR is much better if you also need to deliver an interactive pano in HTML5 or Flash.

Similar remapping issue: How are "Little Planet" photos created?

Answer 2

So essentially, the question is: how do I create a photo like this where the end result would be a folded cube that all its faces interconnect forming a printed cube with a person inside it.

You're basically creating a spherical image -- one that spans 360° horizontally and vertically. You obviously can't take such an image with a normal camera, so the usual thing to do is to take several photos and stitch them together. There are various pieces of software that will do the stitching; searching with terms like spherical photo stitcher will turn up several.

But you're not really talking about doing the usual thing. In your case, you really just need six square images that align at the seams. Conceptually, you'd want to take six square images (north, south, east, west, up, and down) that each span 90° horizontally and vertically. On a full frame DSLR, an 18mm lens will give you 90° horizontally at a 3x2 aspect ratio, but you'd need to go even wider to get a square image that gives 90° in both directions. So you may need to take more than six photos, or you could cheat a bit and stretch the images vertically.

I can't think of a way to automatically align the images in Photoshop, so there may be some hand work there.

Alternatively, you could create a spherical image using one of the stitching programs above, and then figure out how to extract square images in each direction from the spherical image.

Answer 3

Turn all the quadrants of photos into a cube (6 faces)

Ok That specific thing is a cubical projection. It is very common on 3D rendering and virtual tours.

Here is a little explanation on the diferent projection types: http://www.otake.com.mx/Apuntes/Imagen/EnviromentMaps/

You in theory can make a direct cubical projection but the distorsions are veeeeeery specific, so the best aproach is to make first a sperical projection and then transform it into a cubical one.

In fact on that same page there is an explanation on how to take the photos for a spherical projection (1st step).

I need to manipulate a photograph; either by photoshop or by taking the shot at a specific angel/lens

The second step is to take thoose photos and make a spherical projection. You need a diferent program than Photoshop. Use Hugin http://hugin.sourceforge.net/

The third step is to transform that into a cubical one. Take a look at this How do I make cubemaps with Hugin?

Answer 4

Stiching multiple image, probably shot on a fisheye lens and remapping using Pano2VR, or Flexify will do the purpose.