For our 3D Camera Video Tour, we needed to show how to use the iPhone camera to take two photos, but we didn’t want to simply point a video camera at the screen and press record. The reflective iPhone screen makes it very difficult to get a high quality recording.
We decided to use the excellent SimFinger utility along with Snapz Pro X to capture video of the iPhone simulator. Unfortunately, the simulator doesn’t include any camera functionality. So, we searched the ‘net for someone who may have had the same problem, hoping to find an app/animation/resource/whatever that might make our lives a little easier. Sadly, we couldn’t find anything.
As these things go, we spent a bit of time building our own camera animations, and we’ve decided to share them with the community. It’s our hope that these animations will help anyone who finds themselves in the same situation we were in.
The thumbnail images are shown in the order that they should be used with the alpha channel represented as a gray checkerboard pattern. All of the media is at a resolution of 320 x 480, and the video files are 30 fps with 44 kHz audio.
To simulate the scenery, we recorded a short video with our iPhone 3GS. Then, we overlayed the four files on top of the video and paused the frame at the start of the Camera Shutter Animation.mov through to the Preview Toolbar.png.
It took some time to get it right, and while the animations aren’t perfect, they’re close enough…especially at the full playback speed.
We just published a short 4-minute video introduction to 3D Camera for iPhone. While not as comprehensive as the 3D Camera Manual, the video is a quick and convenient way to get up-to-speed with version 1.2 of the app (both the full and lite editions). The first half covers capturing, aligning, viewing, and sharing 3D photos, and the second half briefly describes the customizable settings. We hope you find it to be useful.
After a full month-and-a-half of waiting, we’re happy to announce that 3D Camera 1.2 has been approved and is now available in the App Store. If you own version 1.0 or 1.1, you’ll be able to update to the latest version for free. For those of you who have been using 3D Camera Lite 1.2, we apologize that it took this long for the upgraded functionality to make it into the full version.
As many of you know, Apple required that we remove the camera overlay functionality that was present in earlier versions of 3D Camera. The good news is that it looks like we’ll be able to add it back in the next update. For now, though, you’ll have to be extra careful when positioning the camera for the second/right image, and use the new alignment feature to compensate.
Great news! After a month of waiting, including a rejection from Apple, 3D Camera Lite is now available in the App Store. The Lite version is completely free, and it’s based on the upcoming 1.2 release of 3D Camera (which is still awaiting approval). While the Lite version is limited in its functionality, all of the 3D image types are supported, including color and grey anaglyphs, stereograms, and wigglegrams. There is no limit on the number of photos that can be created, but the only way to “save” the final result is to share it via Twitter/Twitpic.
