Flaming Pear Flexify Manual

What it does

How to Install

Quick Start

Projections

Polyhedra

Other Controls

Globemaking

Brick spheres

Cube maps

FAQ

Versions

How to Purchase

Questions

Flexify

What it does

Flexify is a plug-in filter for paint programs. It warps full-sphere photos -- those showing a full view of a scene in every direction -- into new shapes that are more attractive or useful. It can also transform maps.

How to install

Illustrated installation instructions are online.

To use this software, you need a paint program which accepts standard Photoshop 3.02 plugins.

Just put the plug-in filter into the folder where your paint program expects to find it. If you have Photoshop, the folder is Photoshop:Plugins:Filters or Photoshop:Plug-Ins. You must restart Photoshop before it will notice the new plug-in. It will appear in the menus as Filters->Flaming Pear->Flexify.

Most other paint programs follow a similar scheme.

If you have Paint Shop Pro: you have to create a new folder, put the plug-in filter into it, and then tell PSP to look there.

PSP 6:

Choose the menu File-> Preferences->General Program Preferences... and choose the Plug-in Filters tab. Use one of the "Browse" buttons to choose the folder that contains the plug-in.

The plugin is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From the menus, choose Image->Plug-in Filters-->Flaming Pear->Flexify.

PSP 7:

Choose the menu File-> Preferences-> File Locations... and choose the Plug-in Filters tab. Use one of the "Browse" buttons to choose the folder that contains the plug-in.

The plugin is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From the menus, choose Effects->Plug-in Filters->Flaming Pear->Flexify

PSP 8 and 9:

Choose the menu File-> Preferences-> File Locations... In the dialog box that appears, choose Plug-ins from the list. Click "Add", then click "Browse" and choose the folder that contains the plug-in.

The plugin is now installed. To use it, open any image and select an area. From the menus, choose Effects->Plugins->Flaming Pear->Flexify.

Quick start

When you invoke Flexify, a dialog box will appear:

To get a quick idea of what Flexify does, load a full-sphere panoramic image into your paint program (there's a small example panorama here). If the image is circular, the selection should graze the edge of the circle.

Invoke Flexify, and tell it what kind of input image you're using via the "Input" popup menu. Choose a different projection from the Output popup. Click the dice button a few times until you see a result you like; then click OK.

Flexify's capabilites and controls are explained below.

selection should graze the edge of the circle

Projections |  |

A projection is a way of unwrapping and warping a spherical surface so that it will lie down flat. It's like making a flat map of the Earth – you have to make a choice about how to deform shapes.

Flexify can accept as input spherical panoramas in any of fifteen projections and can output them in more than fifty. Some of the projections are practical; some are weird and are meant to emphasize the bizarre, vertiginous nature of ultra-wide-angle photography.

Flexify can output these projections:

name |  | remarks |  |  |
equirectangular a.k.a. cylindrical equidistant or plate carée |  | The panorama fits into a rectangle. Meridians are vertical, parallels are horizontal, and the north and poles are stretched out to lines at the top and bottom. Scanning panoramic cameras produce this kind of image. |  |  |
mirror ball |  | The reflection seen in a mirrored ball |  |  |
polar a.k.a. azimuthal equidistant |  | Angular distance from the center of projection increases uniformly toward the edge. |  |  |
orthographic |  | The image sphere as seen from the outside |  |  |
tetrahedron |  | An unfolded 4-faced shape |  |  |
cube |  | An unfolded 6-faced shape |  |  |
octohedron |  | An unfolded 8-faced shape |  |  |
dodecahedron |  | An unfolded 12-faced shape |  |  |
icosahedron |  | An unfolded 20-faced shape |  |  |
Hammer |  | A 2:1 wide ellipse |  |  |
Werner |  | A heart-shaped projection |  |  |
sinusoidal a.k.a. Sanson-Flamsteed |  | A pointy shape |  |  |
rectilinear a.k.a. gnomonic |  | Like a regular view from a normal lens. Straight lines stay straight. The FOV slider controls the zoom, which can go all the way to a 180° field of view. |  |  |
hyperbolic |  | Produces views balancing naturalness with vertigo. The FOV slider controls the zoom, which can go all the way to a 360° field of view. |  |  |
cylindrical |  | This is the format needed for some panorama viewers, including QuickTime VR. The view is infinitely stretched toward the top and bottom, so the vertical view is determined by the rectangle's proportions. |  |  |
Wetch |  | An unusual projection with a finite height and infinite width. The FOV slider controls the zoom, which can go all the way to a 360° field of view. |  |  |
pinwheel |  | Polar with a swirl. |  |  |
lozenge |  | A wide diamond shape with a crease at the equator. |  |  |
square |  | A square full of creases. Good for scenes containing lots of straight lines. |  |  |
curvy |  | Labrys-like shape with limited distortion. It's the central portion of a mirror ball projection. |  |  |
goggles |  | Goggle-shaped view which presents the whole sphere in a style like the hyperbolic projection, but with less extreme size changes. |  |  |
quasar |  | Weird projection with inside and outside regions bounded by a circular black-hole-like discontinuity. |  |  |
14 faces |  | An unfolded cuboctahedron. |  |  |
24 faces a |  | An unfolded deltoidal icosatetrahedron. |  |  |
24 faces b |  | An unfolded pentagonal icosatetrahedron. |  |  |
26 faces |  | An unfolded small rhombicuboctahedron. |  |  |
30 faces |  | An unfolded rhombic tricontahedron |  |  |
soccer ball |  | An unfolded truncated icosahedron. |  |  |
32 faces |  | An unfolded icosidodecahedron. |  |  |
38 faces |  | An unfolded snub cube. |  |  |
60 faces |  | An unfolded deltoidal hexecontehedron. |  |  |
62 faces |  | An unfolded small rhombicosidodecahedron. |  |  |
gores: 6 |  | A shape for globemaking. |  |  |
gores: 12 |  | A shape for globemaking. |  |  |
gores: 24 |  | A shape for globemaking. |  |  |
gores:36 |  | A for globemaking. |  |  |
gores: 6/12 |  | A shape for globemaking. |  |  |
loop |  | The scene repeats endlessly toward the horns of the loop. |  |  |
two circles |  | Each half of the scene gets it own hyperbolic projection. |  |  |
balloon |  | A popular origami pattern with folding instructions. |  |  |
paperlock |  | An obscure origami pattern with folding instructions. Fun to write letters on the reverse and fold them into concealment. |  |  |
Omnimax |  | The format of Omnimax 70mm film frames. |  |  |
spikeball |  | A tetrahedron 5-compound, and Flexify's most difficult-to-construct polyhedron. It prints out as ten sawtooth shapes. Each sawtooth folds up into a pair of peaks, and you assemble them all to get the finished shape. Because the shape is so complex, you should start with a very bold, simple picture. |  |  |
brick preview |  | The image sphere built from Lego® bricks. Flexify can create builiding plans for these spheres. It's explained in the brick sphere part of this guide. |  |  |
Mollweide |  | A 2:1 wide ellipse with parallel lines of latitude. |  |  |
icomap |  | An icosahedron unfolded in a way suitable for planetary maps. |  |  |
star 3 |  | A polar-Werner hybrid. |  |  |
star 5 |  | Another polar-Werner hybrid. |  |  |
magnipolar |  | A polar projection emphasizing the center. |  |  |
beanbag |  | Shapes suitable for printing on fabric and sewing together into a beanbag. |  |  |
swoop |  | Rectilinear in the center, blending to hyperbolic at the left and right sides. |  |  |
dodo |  | An unfolded dodecadodecahedron. |  |  |
GID |  | An unfolded great icosidodecahedron. |  |  |
oculus |  | Rectilinear in the center, blending to hyperbolic at the top and bottom. |  |  |
triptych |  | Three 120° rectilinear views side by side. Great for scenes with lots of straight lines. |  |  |
tetraptych |  | Three 90° rectilinear views side by side. Suitable for presenting rectangular rooms. |  |  |
annulus |  | A ring shape. The FOV slider controls the size of the hole. |  |  |

Flexify can accept eight of the above projections as input: equirectangular, mirror ball, polar, orthographic, cylindrical, ellipsoid, Mollweide, and gores:12. Some more projections are for input only: |  |

circular fisheye 180° |  | A circular image showing a 180° field of view across its diameter. |  |  |
fullframe fisheye 180° |  | A rectangular image showing a 180° field of view across its diagonal. The rectangle may have any proportions. |  |  |
one cube face |  | A square showing a 90° rectilinear view. |  |  |
tiling cube face |  | One cube face with all edges alike and symmetrical so that six tiles can seamlessly cover a sphere. You can make these with MakeCubeTile. |  |  |
half-equi |  | The left or right half of an equirectangular image. If your input image is too big for Flexify, you can use this mode to process it in halves. |  |  |
Nicolosi |  | A Nicolosi projection, a popular globular form found in antique world maps. |  |  |
stereographic |  | Another projection commonly found on antique world maps. |  |  |

View |  |  |

You can change the center of projection -- the point in the input image that winds up at the center of the output.

Latitude moves the center of projection north and south.

Longitude moves the center of projection east and west.

Spin spins the view around the center of projection.

an off-center
hyperbolic view

Flexify can also set the center of projection automatically in three ways:

The reset button sets latitude, longitude, and spin to zero. This gets you back to the normal view.

The axis button sets latitude, longitude, and spin to multiples of 90°. This usually gives symmetrical-looking views.

The dice button generates totally random views. Click it as much as you want to see different effects.

reset

axis

dice

2. Polyhedra |  |  |

Flexify has some projections that you can print, cut out, fold, and glue together to make a three-dimensional printout of your panorama.

If you use a map of Earth as your input image, you can make a crude globe.

Tabs sets the width of "glue tabs" that make the polyhedron easier to glue together.

The Tab color button sets the color of the tabs.

color button

The Faces checkbox shows each face of the polyhedron in a single color, to make it clearer how the shape should be folded together. The Edges checkbox draws a black outline around each face, to help with folding. |  |  |
The Export Faces button writes a multi-layer Photoshop document with one face of the current polyhedron on each layer. Extra tabs will be added to each face so that everything can be glued properly. |  | export faces |

3. Other controls |  |  |

The Flip checkbox flips the input picture left-for right. If you are starting with a mirror-ball photo, this will correct backward text.

The Sharpen slider makes the image crisper. Sharpening is done in the output image space, so you get the right result even where the picture is strongly warped.

The Transparent gaps checkbox tells Flexify what to do with undefined regions of the input. When this is checked, such areas appear transparent (or black if you're working in the background layer). When it's unchecked, they get a solid color halfway between the background and tab colors.

The Better preview checkbox improves the appearance of the preview at the expense of speed.

The Grid checkbox places a latitude-longitude grid over the output.

The Background color button lets you choose a background color.

Plus, % and minus buttons: If the selected image area is larger than the preview are, these buttons will let you zoom in and out. You can also reposition the preview by dragging it around; your cursor will turn into a hand.

Auto Preview When this box is checked, the preview automatically updates whenever you move any control. Turn it off if you want to save time.

Load preset Flexify comes with some presets, which are files containing settings. To load one, click this button and browse for a preset file.

Save preset When you make an effect you like, click this button to save the settings in a file.

Undo backs up one step.

Brick button shows settings for the brick sphere, explained below.

Glue lets you combine the result image with the original, instead of replacing it. The next-glue button advances to the next glue mode.

Three more buttons:

OK Applies the effect to your image.

Cancel Dismisses the filter, and leaves the image unchanged.

Register Allows you to type in a registration code and remove the time limit from the demo.

load preset (top)
and save preset

undo

brick button

next glue

Globemaking

Flexify can warp maps into new shapes for making globes. You can use any of the polyhedron modes, explained above, to make faceted fold-together globes.

You can also make a conventional round globe. First, get a spherical object to use as a form. Traditionally, a plaster sphere is used, but a toy ball will do. It has to be exactly spherical: measure its girth in several places and verify that all measurements are the same.

Next, use Flexify to make "gores" -- the lens-shaped strips of map that form a globe's surface. Print these out so that the width of the gores is equal to the diameter of the sphere. Glue the gores onto the sphere, carefully making them conform to the curved surface.

The Tabs slider adds solid-colored "glue tabs" that make the gores easier to glue together. It also fattens the mapped part of the gores slightly too, so that you need not align them perfectly on the sphere.

The Tab color button sets the color of the tabs.

If you don't want tabs, but do want the gores to be slightly fattened, set the tab color to the same as the background color.

Flexify can also acccept gores as input and turn them into a conventional map. Use the input mode "gores:12".

12-gore shape

color button

Brick spheres

Flexify can create plans for building an image sphere from Lego® bricks. Use the output mode called 'brick preview' to see what you can build.

To change settings, click the brick button. A new dialog box will appear.

Layers

To correct for the proportions of the bricks, Flexify plans a sphere with a diameter 6/5 of the height. For best results choose a height that's a multiple of 5.

Plates

Builds the sphere from 1/3 height plates instead of bricks.

Colors

The best input images have vivid colors and strong, simple shapes.

For output you can choose among 12 colors: black, blue, brown, green, dark grey, light grey, red, sand red, tan, white, yellow, and sand green.

If your input image is doesn't cover the whole sphere, light grey bricks will represent the undefined regions.

Results

You can make three kinds of output:

-a multi-layer Photoshop document where each layer of the document is the plan for one layer of the sphere

- an LDraw model

- a text file with counts for each color of brick

In the Photoshop document, parts that aren't visible from the outside are marked with black dots, so you can substitute other colors there. The sphere plan is hollow and just thick enough form a solid surface so you'll need to build supports inside as you go.

The plan doesn't specify exactly what bricks to use, just what colors go where.

There are some related links below.

brick preview

brick button

Cube Maps Flexify can split a panorama into six cube faces. Some panorama viewers want this format, and it's often used to make "sky boxes" in 3D action games. Click the cube map button and a new dialog box will appear asking for the size of the faces. Flexify will write a Photoshop document containing one face per layer. |  | cube map button |

Frequently Asked Questions

I want to make maps and globes with Flexify. Where can I find suitable input maps?

Here are some places to start looking:

NASA's Blue Marble imagery

Virtual Terrain project links to many map sources

NASA Jet Propulsion Lab maps of most Solar System bodies

Ars Technica earth map

Living Earth maps of Earth, Moon, and Mars

Björn Jónsson's planetary maps

LunarCell synthetic worlds

You can use Flexify's polyhedron and gore modes to make cut-and fold globes.

How do I make a spherical photo without expensive special equipment?

Get a plain silver spherical Christmas-tree ornament and photograph it.

How do I improve photos of ornaments?

Panoramas made with the mirrored-ball technique always have a flaw at the point opposite the camera. You can either paint this out, or you can photograph the ball twice from two locations about 90° apart around the ball's equator. Unwrap both reflections; their flaws will be in two different places. Use the good part of one image to replace the flaw in the other.

Since the reflection in the ball contains the whole scene, the sun or another light source will probably appear in it, and this can cause your camera's auto-exposure to darken the whole picture. To avoid this use a manual exposure setting appropriate for a typical part of the scene.

The best ornaments to use are blown-glass ones from eastern Europe, but there are other kinds of mirrors you can use:

Gazing balls. These are garden decorations originally popular in Victorian England, and they can be found at some garden-supply stores.

Safety/security mirrors. These are the dome-shaped mirrors sometimes seen at busy corridor intersections at airports and warehouses. These are usually not hemispheres but ellipsoids with proportions of about 1 : 0.85, so you should use the 'ellipsoid' input mode.

Large steel ball bearings. The makers of HDR Shop have hints on where to get them.

Hemispherical mirrors from "whole sky cameras." These are hard to find since meteorologists now use fisheye lenses for sky photography.

Large steel or copper mixing bowls don't give sharp reflections, but they are inexpensive and can produce soft, tinted views with streaky blurs around the highlights.

Using a mirrored ball you can make a wide horizontal view panorama with no flaw. Place the ball on the ground and photograph it from directly above; or hang it from something and shoot it from below.

Use a zoom or telephoto lens to get far from the mirror and minimize the size of the camera in the picture.

To enable a telephoto lens to focus closer, use it together with a close-up lens. That this will reduce depth of field, making focussing trickier.
For higher resolution, zoom in all the way and take four photos of the mirror -- one for each quadrant -- then stitch them together with your stitching software.

How do I make a cylindrical QuickTime VR panorama?

Make an cylindrical projection, then turn it sideways so that the bottom is on the right. Convert it with QTVR Make Panorama 2(Mac) or VRMakePano (Windows). You can find more detailed instructions here.

How do I make a cubic QuickTime VR panorama?

Make an equirectangular projection that's exactly twice as wide as it is tall, then convert it with MakeCubic PPC (Mac) or PanoCube (Windows).

What other panorama viewers are there?

Many; click here for a list.

How else can I (ab)use Flexify?

Straighten out the horizon in panos shot off-level.
Use it on non-panoramic photos to make them weird.
Distort the same image twice or more in a row to make it weird.
Photograph safety mirrors and security-camera bubbles in public places. De-warp the reflections to see what they see.
Extract a normal (rectilinear) view from the input.
Take a photo of a spherical object like an orange or the Earth and see what it would look like from a different point of view. Use orthographic input and orthographic output.
Make many-sided dice for role-playing games. Use only polyhedra whose sides are all the same shape; otherwise the die will be biased.
Make weird graph paper: start with a blank white image and turn the grid on.

What are some panoramic photo resources on the net?

Panoguide.com – info for beginner to semi-pro panoramic photographers

Panorama Tools – software to view, create, edit and remap panoramic Images

Evermore QTVR links

International Association of Panoramic Photographers
Panoramic Network – galleries & info

Panoscan – high-end scanning cameras

Apple's QuickTime VR developer tools

Where can I get Lego® info and bricks?

eBay – good for used bricks

BrickLink – extensive selection

Virtual Lego – a book about Lego® software

Lego Shop – the official source

LDraw – model-planning software

LUGNET – users' group with extensive resources

Version History

Version 1.97 November 2004

Adds the GID, oculus, triptych, tetraptych, and annulus projections; sharpening; transparent gaps; polyhedon edges; two new glue modes.

Version 1.96 July 2004

Adds the dodo projection and face exportation.

Version 1.95 May 2004

Adds the 6/12 gores projection, and Nicolosi, stereographic, and half-equi input.Works with 16-bit-per-component color.

Version 1.94 January 2004

Adds the swoop projection and more glue modes.

Version 1.92 December 2003

Recordable as a Photoshop action; adds the beanbag projection.

Version 1.9 September 2003

Adds globe gore input, more brick options including LDraw; the star 3, star 5, and magnipolar projections; and six new glue modes. Improves globe gore output.

Version 1.86 May 2003

Adds a button for creating cube maps. Adds a six-gore mode and changes gore shapes slightly for better results. Fixes the appearance of previews in presets from version 1.85.

Version 1.85 March 2003

Adds two input modes: circular fisheye 180° and full-frame fisheye 180°. Fixes tabs on the '24 faces a' shape.

Version 1.84 February 2003

Adds Mollweide input and output, and icomap output.

Version 1.82 February 2003

Adds more glue modes and fixes a crash that could happen when using the menus under Windows XP.

Version 1.81 Deecember 2002

Adds the ellipsoid input mode. Adds new glue modes: Color, Luminance, Linear Light, and Pin Light. Fixes the appearance of text in the interface when running under Mac OS X 10.2.3 .

Version 1.8 August 2002

Adds the brick sphere.

Version 1.75 June 2002

Adds the spikeball. Fixes the sizes of the half-polar, Hammer, lozenge, and two-circles projections, which were too small in version 1.7. Changes the tabs on the 'gore' projections to simplify printing them at the right size.

Version 1.7 June 2002

Adds the paperlock and Omnimax projections, and origami instructions.

Version 1.6 May 2002

Adds the grid checkbox.

Version 1.5 February 2002

Adds the "24 faces b" shape.

Version 1.4 December 2001

Adds the loop, two-circles, and balloon shapes.

Version 1.3 August 2001

Adds the 12-, 24-, and 36-gore shapes for globemaking.

Version 1.2 June 2001

Adds the 30-faces polyhedron shape; adds two new input modes, cylindrical and orthographic; and fixes a bug where some polyhedra would not display correctly.

Version 1.1 June 2001

Adds eight new polyhedron shapes.

Version 1.0 May 2001

The first public release.

How to Purchase

You can place an order online here. A secure server for transactions is available.

Questions

Answers to common technical questions appear on the support page, and free upgrades appear periodically on the download page.

Trouble with your order? Orders are handled by Kagi; please contact them at admin@kagi.com .

For bug reports and technical questions about the software, please write to support@flamingpear.com .