- 559
With GT4 Photo Mode, it's a heck of a lot easier to collect a bunch of images from the game than it used to be (using a TV tuner, for example). The pictures are also wonderfully high-res. Seeing the amazing quantity and quality of pictures on GTP, I thought it would be cool use a project that I had been working on for a different reason to create a GT4 Photomosaic.
For anyone who doesn't know, a photomosaic is an image composed of a grid of many smaller images. When viewed from a distance, the larger image becomes clear. There are plenty of programs available on the web for creating these (none commercial, since it's patented technology...long and funny story that I won't go into). However, I thought it would be an interesting project to write my own piece of software for creating a photomosaic. It worked out much better than I thought it would and I put it to good use rendering this. The actual size is 6400x4800 pixels, so it'd be hard to post, but here is a zoomed-in section.
I could use the same program to render a GT4-themed photomosaic. (Again, there are plenty of other programs out there but it'd be more fun to do it "in-house," I think.) I believe it would come out really nice. One of the keys to getting a good photomosaic seems to be color variety in the small images, and, aside from an underlying asphalt gray tone, I think the variety of car colors in the photos would make it interesting. Since the program takes into account sub-sections of images for "shapes," (look at the bullet in the picture linked above) the contrast between car and road, road and grass/dirt/wall, or track and sky would probably fill spots really nicely too.
The best way to ensure that it comes out good is to get a TON of images to choose from. The one above samples from about 1,000 images, and that is considered a small amount. (Which is why there are some repeats.) Ideally, I'd like to do it with as many as 5,000 images. Of course, that presents a problem since at the moment I have about 75 on my hard drive. That's where you all come in (if you want). I could collect images from anyone who is interested in contributing to the photomosaic. Once I have a folder with enough images in it, the rest is easy...I can render a photomosaic of just about anything. A huge GT (or GTP) logo made of little screen shots would come out very nice, since the shapes are very simple. But with thousands of images, even a complex picture (like another screen shot, for example) should look pretty good as the large image. And once the small images are all collected, I can keep rendering different large images from that collection as many times as needed.
With a small amount of tweaking, I can also get the program to log which pictures are used and make some kind of legend grid showing the usernames of who contributed what pictures. I've got enough web space to host one (or at most a few) of these and maybe there could be some kind of "Official GT4 Photomosaic Contributor" link to the image for people's signatures. They could also make great desktops or (if you have a way of doing it) poster prints.
All this is only possible if you want to do it...I don't have the time to collect thousands of photomode images from my own game. I kind of just wanted to see if there would be interest in something like this. If there is good response, we can figure out the details of how to start organizing the image collection. Sorry for the long post, and thanks for your input!
For anyone who doesn't know, a photomosaic is an image composed of a grid of many smaller images. When viewed from a distance, the larger image becomes clear. There are plenty of programs available on the web for creating these (none commercial, since it's patented technology...long and funny story that I won't go into). However, I thought it would be an interesting project to write my own piece of software for creating a photomosaic. It worked out much better than I thought it would and I put it to good use rendering this. The actual size is 6400x4800 pixels, so it'd be hard to post, but here is a zoomed-in section.
I could use the same program to render a GT4-themed photomosaic. (Again, there are plenty of other programs out there but it'd be more fun to do it "in-house," I think.) I believe it would come out really nice. One of the keys to getting a good photomosaic seems to be color variety in the small images, and, aside from an underlying asphalt gray tone, I think the variety of car colors in the photos would make it interesting. Since the program takes into account sub-sections of images for "shapes," (look at the bullet in the picture linked above) the contrast between car and road, road and grass/dirt/wall, or track and sky would probably fill spots really nicely too.
The best way to ensure that it comes out good is to get a TON of images to choose from. The one above samples from about 1,000 images, and that is considered a small amount. (Which is why there are some repeats.) Ideally, I'd like to do it with as many as 5,000 images. Of course, that presents a problem since at the moment I have about 75 on my hard drive. That's where you all come in (if you want). I could collect images from anyone who is interested in contributing to the photomosaic. Once I have a folder with enough images in it, the rest is easy...I can render a photomosaic of just about anything. A huge GT (or GTP) logo made of little screen shots would come out very nice, since the shapes are very simple. But with thousands of images, even a complex picture (like another screen shot, for example) should look pretty good as the large image. And once the small images are all collected, I can keep rendering different large images from that collection as many times as needed.
With a small amount of tweaking, I can also get the program to log which pictures are used and make some kind of legend grid showing the usernames of who contributed what pictures. I've got enough web space to host one (or at most a few) of these and maybe there could be some kind of "Official GT4 Photomosaic Contributor" link to the image for people's signatures. They could also make great desktops or (if you have a way of doing it) poster prints.
All this is only possible if you want to do it...I don't have the time to collect thousands of photomode images from my own game. I kind of just wanted to see if there would be interest in something like this. If there is good response, we can figure out the details of how to start organizing the image collection. Sorry for the long post, and thanks for your input!
)
![[empty space]](/forum/data/avatars/m/47/47550.jpg?1277426423){kind=avatar}
