Cross Polarized Photography resources

Dylan Brady

Leslie's post got me thinking we should list any available resources for cross-polarized photography.
I find them extremely useful for both reference and texturing and anything thats freely available would be a great boon to have on my HD

please no pirated stuff.

Explanation of the process for getting these types of photos:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TakingBetterPhotosForTextures.html

Ravenslayer wrote: »

and if you`re really set on using pictures you might want to look into cross polarized photography



http://www.cgfeedback.com/cgfeedback/showthread.php?t=1854

Surface mimic:
Adam_Fullface_Seventies
Isabella_Fullface_Twenties

EDIT: Throwing this onto the initial post since its too early for a bump:
http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/DigitalEmily/


So, im sure theres more resources out there. can you guys help me find them?

MM

Dylan Brady wrote: »

Surface mimic had some for sale a while ago. seems their blog is down at the moment but ill be sure to bump this once its back up, heres their original facebook post

http://www.surfacemimic.com/gallery/

their main site seems to work fine

almighty_gir

the only ones i could find for characters right now, originally found on http://ir-ltd.net/

leslievdb

Good idea Dylan!
havn`t really found any good ones myself yet

Gir: those are great

Dylan Brady

MM wrote: »

http://www.surfacemimic.com/gallery/

their main site seems to work fine

Ahh, right you are. Wasnt able to use the search to find them earlier but I tried a different keyword and they popped up. Thanks!

Leslie: Thanks hopefully you and I both can discover some more.

Lee: Good stuff. in that similar vein you reminded me of ten24's stuff:
http://www.3dscanstore.com/index.php?route=product/category&path=70

fatihG_

I was always interested in these kind of photo's, ever since I saw that UDK tutorial with the head texturing stuff.

Does this work with any kind of camera? Do I need to get a special one?
From what I have gathered, what most people do with DIY projects, they just slap a Polarized piece of plastic, I guess, on the lens and lightsource(flash).

For example, would this work with my sony cybershot DSC-W380?

EarthQuake

bb0x wrote: »

I was always interested in these kind of photo's, ever since I saw that UDK tutorial with the head texturing stuff.

Does this work with any kind of camera? Do I need to get a special one?
From what I have gathered, what most people do with DIY projects, they just slap a Polarized piece of plastic, I guess, on the lens and lightsource(flash).

For example, would this work with my sony cybershot DSC-W380?

Thoeretically yes, though you generally want a DSLR/mirrorless interchangable lens camera with manual controls and a hot shoe for triggering the flash, as well as a high quality lens.

Doing it with a point and shoot like that cybershoot will probably be a pain.

fatihG_

Cheers,

Yeah I don't expect to get great results for a P&S like I have, but would it be decent enough to do some studies with? I guess I already know the answer to that question, though.

I'll be doing some experiments later when I got myself some polarizing filters.

Also, I read that there are two kinds of polarizing filters, linear and circular.
How do I know what I need?
Looks like most DIY projects use polarized glasses. Are those linear?

radiancef0rge

http://filmicgames.com/archives/233
this is a pretty great resource.

Mask_Salesman

o_0 Fanfappingtastic...

fatihG_

Awesome link radiancef0rge!

Did a bit more research and apparently LCD screen have these polarizing screens on em as well. So for the DIY'ers out there.. you could take apart your old broken LCD screen.

I got one laying around that doesn't work anymore. Will experiment with that. =]

radiancef0rge

bb0x wrote: »

Awesome link radiancef0rge!

Did a bit more research and apparently LCD screen have these polarizing screens on em as well. So for the DIY'ers out there.. you could take apart your old broken LCD screen.

I got one laying around that doesn't work anymore. Will experiment with that. =]

yeah i actually used the information from my own photos to base the physically accurate textures for my tb2 beta scene using this setup

Dylan Brady

bumping this thread because jfletcher pointed out that ten24 is having a sale right now. everything is %50 off
http://www.3dscanstore.com/

leslievdb

oh yeah i bought a few of the colored ones , them seem to be great reference for skintextures

Mask_Salesman

So it occurred to me that those cheap 3D glasses you get free at the cinema actually have polarized lenses. So I popped em out of the frames, rotated them vertically and Bam! It works. No more shiny noses.

marks

Anyone have any detailed info on the difference between CIR and linear polarizers for the use of cross-polarized photography..? This info is super god damn useful to me right now!

ZippZopp

There really isn't s difference between a linear and circular polarizer. Both do the same thing. A circular polarizer is generally only used on the camera lens and is comprised of multiple pieces of glass which allows you to rotate it around to change the polarization. A linear polarizer is one piece of film or glass and you'd have to rotate it manually to change the polarization effect. Typically you'd use a linear polarizer on the lights and a circular polarizer on the lens so you can quickly dial in the proper polarization, however, a linear polarizer on the lens would work fine as well. The benefit of the circular polarizer is that you can fine tune the polarization of light entering the lens quickly and easily

I'm planning on buying two studio softbox strobes with large linear polarizing film to put over them so I can shoot some nice head references. I've been thinking of getting this elinchrom kit to use with my nikon D810. I think I can get some great soft polarized light with this setup. Thoughts?
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home/search?N=10906651&InitialSearch=yes&sts=pi

I found this site which sells polarizing film in large sizes. http://www.apioptics.com/linear-polarizers-spec.html

I've had trouble finding large enough film to place over a softbox that is 24"x32"

almighty_gir

Mark, you need both.

linear polarizers to cancel out direct light bounce, and circular to cancel ambient light bounce.

ZacD

Kinda tempting to play with polarizer, but only have non professional cameras.

marks

almighty_gir wrote: »

Mark, you need both.

linear polarizers to cancel out direct light bounce, and circular to cancel ambient light bounce.

Elaborate please.

ZippZopp

Some good info here

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/technical/polarizers.html

ZippZopp

i finally got a cross polarized setup working. i had a bunch of gear already, but I invested another $300 to get it setup.

i'm using one camera, a nikon d810 with a nikon 105mm macro lenes along with a nikon sb700 flash and a nikon sb900 flash. i already had this gear so the cost to get the polarized setup wasn't all that much more for fairly entry level equipment.

i could only find 12" x 17" linear polarizing film at my local camera store so i purchased 2 of those along with 2 Photoflex small softboxes that are 16" x 22" I also had to grab the mounting equipment to fit my flashes into the softboxes.

I'm triggering the flashes with nikon's CLS on camera flash which is nice because I didn't have to buy any other hardware to trigger the flash units.

I mounted the linear polarizing film onto some matboard. I cut out a 17"x22" hole and used gaffer's tape to tape the polarizers down. I still need to come up with a solution to easily mount the polarizer onto the front of the softbox.

the setup works pretty well, but does have its limitations. there is a decent amount of light loss due to the polarizers and because the softboxes are very small and the flash heads aren't extremely powerful they have to be placed very close to the subject. I'd ideally like larger softboxes with more powerful lights to get some more even lighting on the subject, but that would have cost at least 3 or 4 times more money.

the resolution of the d810 is fantastic, i get some great high resolution raw files. i've attached a 100% crop from one of the images.

photo projecting these onto a mesh is great, there is far less cleanup work needed which is a huge time saver. i also do all my work at 16bit so that after i do the initial projection i still have room to adjust the texture's contrast and saturation.

Dylan Brady

LOL reviving this dead ass thread with a new resource I just found.
http://texturing.xyz/
https://www.facebook.com/texturingxyz/?fref=ts

BTW never saw Zippzops last post, good stuff man

Tadao215

I was reading up on that udn page: https://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TakingBetterPhotosForTextures.html
But i'm a bit confused..
won't cross polarizing make your images darker if you're shooting with a single speed light like this?
How did this author compensate for that?

ZippZopp

polarizers will cause some light loss...you can compensate by opening up the aperture a bit ...but at the cost of losing a little bit of depth of field.  also, I always shoot in RAW format and it allows me to tweak the exposure a bit if i feel the image is too dark.   

Tadao215

I seee... thanks! I'll post my results when I can

artquest

Hey all, just wanted to necro this thread since there have been some official sites with cross polarized photography for games popping up lately.

http://texturing.xyz/

and of course this awesome site:

http://www.3dscanstore.com/index.php?route=common/home

(although I don't think they offer photos for projecting, the photos have already been projected on the scan.)

Does anyone know of any places offering cross polarized photos of  African Americans for characters? I've looked around but still can't find any.

Sidney Eliot

Here's a good cross polarized reference https://www.artstation.com/artwork/zWma2

Can anyone tell me if that's makeup on her face below her eyes on the last image.

okidoki

You may have alook here:

https://www.healthline.com/health/dark-circle-under-eyes

..also women often "suffer" from all the chemicals in the make-up and so without.. the just look like this..