7 Ways to have Fun with Stereograms.

Stereogram is a three cool things in one: Optical Illusion, Puzzle and Art. And that makes it inexhaustible supply of fun. For some unknown reason people don't view stereograms as much as they used to in 90's, probably because they forgot or worse, never knew how to have fun with it.

So here is 7 ways to have fun with stereograms.

1. Fun solving a puzzle. Lots of puzzles are hard and not fun at all because they make you think too hard to solve them. Stereogram is a different story, there's actually no need to think, your brain resolves hidden image naturally, without any brain strain. And the more you stare the more details you see.

2. Fun seeing someone else solves a puzzle. It's quite amusing to look at person's facial expressions when the magic happens. Usually people smile in this moment, and because their attention mostly goes to the hidden picture, the smile comes up pretty naturally and beautifully. You don't usually see this kind of smile in a real life.

3. Fun seeing someone else can't solve the puzzle. Do you remember that funny episode from Mallrats? "It's not a schooner, it's a sailboat!". Same is in real life, when you can clearly see the picture but someone don't no matter how he or she tries, that looks kind of amusing. And it becomes a comedy if the person claims that it all is a conspiracy, as different people tell the same things they see in the stereogram.

4. Fun seeing the same that others see. And feel yourself a part of conspiracy. No really, who could imaging a dolphin in this messy picture? But I can see the dolphin, and my cousin Frank said he sees a dolphin, and the UPS driver said it's a dolphin, and even that cute girl in hot mini dress sees the same damn dolphin in this messy picture! Now let's go and make fun of someone who can't see the dolphin, let him think we all a part of crazy conspiracy!

5. Fun seeing the Illusion. We usually don't like when someone lies, but we have fun when our eyes do this to us. It's like a Magic, there's nothing, and there's something, and there's nothing again, and look, there's something. Isn't it fun?

6. Fun seeing through the walls. It's like being a superhero, look, there's a strange picture on the wall with undescribeable pattern. But I can see through it into a behind-the-wall world. Can you do it? Are you a superhero too? Well let's then have fun together!

7. Fun to be finding out how it works. You can see the repeating pattern, you can see in some places the pattern brakes, stretches and squeezes, there's definitely some logic behind these changes. You dive in to see the hidden picture again, and here is the object's edge which breaks the pattern. And these are floating objects, the closer they are to each other the closer they appear to you. Isn't it called reverse engineering? Whatever it's called, it's fun. And if you are so good in it can you tell what's hidden without looking into the stereogram?

So you are not having fun yet? Get a book with stereograms or stereogram posters and have much fun!

3Dimka ;)

I'd like to introduce new Stereogram Python Game. You need to be able to see the Magic Eye pictures in order to play this game.

1. Use control keys to turn moving python or to stop it. It's ok to hit walls and itself.
2. Collect food balls, they will make python to grow. Fresh food balls give more points.
3. When certain number of food balls collected, you will be given an exit to next level.
4. When you find exit, the points made in the level are doubled.
5. Don't get the python into a deadend, it will kill Python.
6. Don't hit spiky traps, they'll kill Python.
Make 100+ points and feel free to submit your score to hi-score table. Good luck!

It's been a long start but now, after two years of working and 3 months of testing, I'm happy to announce that the website is open for visitors.

So what's new?

Finally Stereogram Tetris got it's own hi-score table.

Stereogram of the Day google gadget is a nice little window into the world of hidden 3D on you iGoogle page.

New gallery of Gary W Priester is added.

Almost all Stereogram Books are listed, feel free to buy them on amazon for just few bucks.

Make your own magic eye pictures using Stereogram Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop

Draw your own stereogram using online Stereogram Paint

Reveal the Magic Eye!

If you have never been able to see hidden images inside the Magic Eye posters, try this tool. You won't need to diverge or cross your eyes, animation will help you to see it. Even if you have depth perception difficulties or binocular vision problems, you can discover hidden 3D world with this method.

click here: Reveal the Magic Eye!

I used very simple idea borrowed from "wiggle stereo" to animate Single image stereogram by shifting it horizontally. Shifting offset (it's called Focus in the utility) defines parallax and "unhides" certain level of depth. Change the "focus" smoothly to discover whole hidden scene

3Dimka ;)

Animated Endless 3D-Chess

Here's my new animated Object Array Stereogram. Look through it to see the chess in 3D, same as Magic Eye picture. Looped sequence of 20 frames, 948 Kb, no preloader.

3Dimka ;)

Stereogram Tetris
The idea is not that new, but this might be the first flash version of Magic Eye Tetris. There's no preloader, so please be patient while whole thing being loaded.

Flash itself does not have ability to render stereograms so I had to prerender all 256 combinations of cells in a row. That's why the file is pretty big ( 1.4 Mbytes).

Playing tetris in Magic Eye mode is quite a challenge, so I really appreciate your try. And please drive responsible after ;) LOL

As for me, I can play this legendary game for hours and hours. Oh yeah, some creds to the creator of tetris Alexey Pazhitnov (thanks man!)

Have fun!
3Dimka

Link to the game:
Magic Eye Tetris

Here's my very first animated 3D-Stereogram of my very first animated character.

3D-Pink Animated 3D-Stereogram
You need to look through, it works same as a Magic Eye picture. It's a looped sequence of 19 frames, 700 Kbytes.

I finally modeled the character and animated it by myself. Making a 3D movie was another challenging effort. I improved my hidden image renderer so that it can automatically map textures on a hidden scene. Otherwise it would take year to make same stuff manually. Unfortunately it has some bugs (you may see some artifacts in the movie).



Have fun
3Dimka ;)