Fixing vertical parallax for VR 180 Stereo3D (AM button)

Fixing vertical parallax for VR 180 Stereo3D (AM button)

The AM tool (Alignment Mode tool) , is represented with an icon with cyan/magenta arrows. The main purpose is in fixing vertical parallax issues in Stereo3D workflows. While in theory it could work for many types of rigs, it is only easy to use for VR180 parallel pair rigs. 


With this new tool, you can selectively drag 3 different vertical areas of each camera:  Center, Left, and Right.  While doing it, MistikaVR will modify a combination of camera parameters: Yaw, Pitch, Roll, OffsetX and OffsetY to  affect the selected area,  while affecting the other two areas as minimum as reasonably possible.    


  • First, always center the crop circles for both cameras as best as you can, as these are the main source of misalignments and are always the  base for good results. 

  • Enter the B&W anaglyph mode to see the vertical misalignments

  • Preferably choose a frame where there is no object near the exact center. 

  • To enter or exit the Alignment Mode, toggle the “AM” button in the toolbar, (the icon with cyan/magenta arrows next to the overlay modes)

  • Please note that the mode will only work correctly if the output camera is unmodified. If you aligned the horizon, use “bake in output camera” first. 

  • Select the camera to move by shift+clicking on its center. (If the camera is too much overlapped with other then remember that you can also select the cameras in the camera list panel on the left). 

  • Move the camera center into alignment: In B&W anaglyph, the image should become black and white, without any color fringing. Only for the center area you will be able to align in both axis (yaw and pitch). 

  • Follow the horizon line to one side (left or right) and drag the mouse up/down until it aligns vertically. Best strategy is to look for horizontal objects, or clearly defined objects where you can easily notice if they are at the same height. Try to align on objects that are closer to the horizon line, as the upper or lower objects can be misaligned due of the “interaxial distance” phenomena. Usually, some horizontal parallax will still remain as colored fringing, as the sides are not necessarily at the same distance as the center. 

  • Do the same for the other side (left or right)

  • You may re-check and realign the center and both sides again: while this tool tries to move the zones as separately as possible, it is not perfect.  

An example of use is in this video at 1:28 :  https://vimeo.com/267796061


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