FurryBall supports several modes of rendering stereoscopic images. Rendering from stereo cameras into viewport and into files can have some differences, this will be demonstrated in two tutorials.

Tutorial: Displaying Stereo in Viewport

Step 1: Preparations

First, you need to set up a stereoscopic camera. Create a Maya stereo camera by clicking either:

1. Create -> Cameras -> Stereo Camera, then select Panels -> Look Through Selected Camera, or
2. Panels -> Stereo -> Create Stereo Camera

A stereo camera rig will be created. Maya stereo camera actually consists of three cameras - left, center and right. You can tweak your stereo camera via attributes in the Stereo in Maya attribute editor. Consult the Maya documentation.

Maya Stereo camera perspective viewport display (Anaglyph)

FurryBall Stereo camera perspective viewport display (Default Anaglyph)

Step 2: FurryBall Viewport

Look via a stereo camera in a perspective viewport, select Renderer -> FurryBall -> Default (or another Render Settings Node). FurryBall will immediately start displaying a anaglyph (see image above). FurryBall supports all the stereo modes Maya supports; anaglyph modes, displaying only the left, center or right camera, the freeview modes and finally the interlaced mode. To change a viewport stereo rendering mode, refer to Render Settings Node section, part Stereo Camera.

FurryBall Render Settings node's stereo attributes.

Displaying stereo disparity

FurryBall can display stereo disparity. That can help with setup of stereo camera Separation and Parallax correctly.

To display disparity pass, select current render settings node, Find Render settings section and se outpus pass to Stereo Disparity. Stereo render should be set to Center eye to display Disparity pass correctly.

Disparity pass shows areas wich are ok with green, problematic areas orange and bad areas red.    

Tutorial: Rendering Stereo Images to Files

FurryBall can also output to files. Stereo can be output in two main ways:

1. The same as shown in viewport - Output image files will use the exactly same settings as viewport. This is the default setting of Stereo Output Type attribute in the Output Settings Node.

Stereo mode will be derived from the render node.

1. Each camera in a separate file, or separate channel of an OpenEXR file. To store views from several cameras in a single OpenEXR file, the Image Format must be EXR. To store views from several cameras in separate files, all image types can be used.

Save individual camera views into separate files (or OpenEXR channels).

NOTE: Do not forget to include the $STEREO token in the output File Name, in case you are rendering into separate files. $STEREO will be replaced by either "left", "center" or "right" in the final file name.

Rendering Stereo Sequences

In order to render sequences of stereo images into files on disk, you need to setup several parameters:

• Camera - Select the (center) stereo camera shape.

• Render Setting Node - Do not forget to select the desired Render Settings Node.

• File Name - Select the output directory path, you can add recognized FurryBall tokens, see Output Settings Node documentation.

• Image Format - Select OpenEXR, DDS or other format. OpenEXR has the advantage that it can hold several channels (for example R+G+B+A+SSAO+Depth) in a single file.

• Stereo Output Type - Decide whether the channels will be in separate files or in single OpenEXR files. Note the previous and next note.

• OpenEXR Channels - Select the rendered channels, here we will be rendering RGBA (color) and Depth.

• Sequence - Do not forget to enable this checkbox and set the next two parameters.

• Start/End Frame - Select the appropriate starting and ending frame of your animation. It is a good practise to render at least one frame before the actual start of animation. Frame numbers can also be negative.

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