A world built from a video is only as complete as the footage. The engine reconstructs what the camera saw, from the angles it saw it, so the job when filming is to show every part of the space from more than one direction — slowly, steadily and in one go.
What makes a good video for a splat?
- One uninterrupted take. Cuts and jumps break the continuity the reconstruction depends on.
- Slow, steady movement. Walk at half your normal pace and pan gently. Fast motion blurs frames, and a blurred frame is information lost.
- Overlap. Every part of the space should appear in several consecutive frames, from slightly different positions. Move sideways as well as turning, so the same wall is seen from more than one place.
- Even light. Avoid filming straight into windows or bright lamps; blown-out areas have nothing to reconstruct.
- A still scene. People walking through, moving cars and swaying screens confuse the reconstruction, because they are in different places in different frames.
- Hold the camera level. Tilting and rolling makes the job harder for no gain.
What should you avoid filming?
- Mirrors, glass and polished metal. The camera records the reflection, not the surface, and the world inherits the confusion.
- Plain featureless walls. Large blank areas give the reconstruction nothing to lock on to.
- Very dark spaces. Noise in dark footage becomes noise in the world.
How long should the video be?
Short. In Zetta 3D a world video can be up to 100 MB, as MP4, MOV or WebM, and the world engines read up to 30 seconds of it. Thirty seconds is enough for a careful pass around a room or along a street; for a larger area, plan the route before you start so the take covers it without rushing.
A single picture, or several, instead?
A world can also be built from one picture. That is faster to capture, but everything the picture did not show has to be inferred — the far side of the room is invented rather than observed. In between, the world engines take several pictures of the same space, each marked with the direction it faces, so more of the room is observed. A video is still the better choice whenever the space is real and you can walk it.