Stereoscopic Camera

Hello! I’m happy to be a part of this community! For me, Blender is the best program for 3D modeling and also for filmmaking in general. Right now I’m setting up the stereoscopic scene myself and I apologize for a few questions about the camera. I really appreciate your help and explanation.

  1. How far away should the Convergence Plane be? My camera settings are 7.28 and Interocular Distance is 0.065. I have simple anaglyph glasses for 3D work. And it seems that after prolonged use, the head begins to hurt. I hope it’s not from the camera settings. I try to keep objects in positive parallax and only sometimes when I need sparks to jump out of the screen do I use negative parallax.

  2. A year ago, before Blender, I tried to set up a stereoscopic scene in Cinema 4D. I noticed that I can not do the correct camera zooms on objects. Or when asteroids flew out from behind the camera. The eyes hurt too much. Perhaps the problem was in the correct placement of zero parallax, but it seems in Blender I can freely zoom in with the camera and my eyes do not hurt so much. Appreciate any advice on negative parallax.

  3. How far should the farthest background be placed in front of the camera in 3D? Any recommendations? Perhaps I am uncomfortable with the fact that the background is too far away and the background starts to double. Especially when the background is space with stars. It also puts pressure on the eyes.

  4. Not all objects in my scene are 3D. I set images as planes. These can be images and videos (ProRes444) with Emission without any light sources. Everything is fine, but there is no focus when Depth of field is enabled. The whole scene is completely blurred. I can’t focus on a specific plane. I even created an empty object and attached it to the camera. Focal Length of my camera is 35mm.

Thanks! :slightly_smiling_face:

Most of your questions are really a matter of creative choice, there’s no right answer, just whatever acheives your desired results.

However, with question 1, if you’re trying to match with footage from a 3d camera, you’re best switching your stereoscopic settings to parallel, as is the case with most 3d cameras. This will actually make convergence plane irrelevant & remove the option.

If your camera does have a convergence plane (I assume it’s the 7.28 number you mentioned) then you should set Blender to match. Likewise with your interocular distance.

Unfortunately, whatever your settings, anaglyph 3d is hard on the eyes, so headaches are probably just to be expected.

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Thank you for your reply, Vopiscus! Did you mention the corresponding inter-eye distance? Somewhere I saw information that it needs to be calculated in proportions with the Convergence plane? Any recommendations?

As I understand it, the number 0.065 of the inter-eye distance in Blender means 6.5 cm?

Hi Sewak,
welcome to the community. Please do not get me wrong, but i think you should check the usage of your avatar icon. As far as i know the blender logo is a registered trademark. To use it as avatar icon might lead to confusion. Maybe you want to check the situation on the blender main website:

If i got something wrong, please ignore this message.

Thanks to! After registration, the first thing that came to my mind was to put an avatar of the Blender logo. Nothing commercial and without any ill intent. Only from the delight of an excellent program. :wink:

Hi, sorry for the delay. Yes, if you’re trying to match footage with a camera you should get your interocular distance as close to the camera’s as you can.

Blender measures in metres by default, so 0.065 is indeed 6.5cm, which is pretty much the average for human eyes, but might not match your camera (mine is 5cm, for example). If you can’t find it in your camera’s documentation it might be just a case of using a ruler!

As previously mentioned, VR cameras don’t have a convergence plane as such because the lenses face directly forward, so parallel is a more appropriate setting.

Convergence planes are really only of use for matching high-end 3D (not VR) cameras, as the lenses on those can tilt in and out for purposes of composition, so I’d avoid using that setting in most circumstances unless you’re absolutely sure what you’re doing & why.