Those 3D Magic Eye things! make your own with a text editor

[khronik]

A lot of people can't get those 3d magic eye things to work. and to you I say, sorry. but if you can see them, you can make your own using a text editor! Wordpad works best, but notepad works too if you change the font.

First, you type a bunch of different big, capital letters, leaving one or two spaces between each one. Two spaces will give you more flexibility, but one space gives you a better image. Big letters like "M" are better than small letters like "I". Making them bold helps too. The font doesn't matter much, but it works best with variable width fonts like Arial or Times New Roman. You should have 8 to 10 characters. It's best to have no repeats, but you can have one or two repeats if you want. For example:

Q W E R S G H M

Now, copy and paste these letters to form a line five or six units long. Your image will be one unit shorter than your line. For example:

Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M

Now make a bunch of lines of this. Your picture will be that high. For example:

Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H MQ W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M

If you know how to view those magic eye pictures, do that now to the letters. You should see those same letters now, but they should look like they're sunk into your computer screen. A few of the letters will stand out though. Do you see them?

If you don't know how to view them, the trick is to try to look past the screen, so that what you see separates into two images, one for each of your eyes. Then try and get the letters in the two images to line up. The letters should all line up at once, and when they do, it should look like they're sunk into your computer screen.

Anyway, once you're proficient at maintaining this illusion, try and edit the text, by adding and removing spaces. Deleting a space should make a unit of letters jump forward, while adding a space should make them sink back. Edit each line, treating the letters like pixels in your image. Sometimes though, you might have to delete more than one space to get it to look like you want, and this is where having two spaces between each letter can really help.

You will notice that as you edit the line to look like you want, it changes the way the rest of the line looks. That's normal, just go along the line, and keep editing it to look like you want. Do this for each line, until you have your picture. That's it! It can take a LOT of practice before you can edit your picture and look at it in 3D mode at the same time. When you're done, you can trim letters off the end of each line, as you like. Here's my picture, can anyone tell what it is?

Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G HM Q W E R S G HM Q W iE R S G HM Q W iE R S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R SG H M Q W E R SG H M Q W E R iSG H M Q W E R iS
Q W E R S G H M Q W E RS G H MQ W iE RS G HMQ iW iE RS iG HMQ iW iE RS iG
Q W E R S G H M Q W ER S G H MQ W iER S G HMQ iW iER S G iHMQ iW iER S G
Q W E R S G H M Q W ER S G H MQ W iER S G HMQ iW iER S G iHMQ iW iER S G
Q W E R S G H M Q WE R S G H M Q WE R S G H M Q WE R S G H iM Q WE R S G
Q W E R S G H M Q WE R SG iH M Q WE R SG iH M Q WER iSG iH iM Q WER iSG i
Q W E R S G H M Q WE R SG iH M Q WE R SG iH M Q WER iSG iH iM Q WER iSG i
Q W E R S G H M Q WE R S GH iM Q WE R S GH iM QWE iR S GH i M QWE iR S G
Q W E R S G H M Q W ER S G HM iQ W ER S G HM Q iW ER S G iHM Q iW ER S G
Q W E R S G H M Q W E RS G H MQ W E RS G H M Q W E RS iG H M Q W E RS iG
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S GH M Q W E R S GH M Q W E iR S GH M Q W E iR S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H MQ W E R S G H MQ iW E R S G H MQ iW E R S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S
Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S G H M Q W E R S

I'd really like to see if anyone else is able to do this. So far no one else I know can. One thing to note though; if you want to post your picture, you will need to use the replace tool to replace every double space with " i". That's a space, followed by a white i. For some reason, double spaces don't work here.

If anyone's interested, I can try and explain how it works later.

khronik Reviewed by khronik on 08-18-2007. Those 3D Magic Eye things! make your own with a text editor A lot of people can't get those 3d magic eye things to work. and to you I say, sorry. :( but if you can see them, you can make your own using a text editor! Wordpad works best, but notepad works too if you change the font. First, you type a bunch of different big, capital letters, leaving one or two spaces between each one. Two spaces will give you more flexibility, but one space gives you a better image. Big letters like "M" are better than small letters like "I". Making them bold helps Rating: 5

[the joint meister]

what the the fuck are you talking about?


peace out TjM

[khronik]

Autostereogram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[psteve]

Am I right?
(I know I am. I am an avid stereographer.)

[khronik]

yep, you got it! i'm glad someone knows what I'm talking about... seems like the type of thing you could really get into stoned.

[Purple Banana]

WOW!

That's freakin' awesome.

[khronik]

Glad you like it! I'm not sure if anyone's done this before... I invented this method of making stereograms while I was bored at work, and I was trying to come up with fun things to do with Notepad.

The nice thing is, unless someone was looking closely, it's hard to tell I'm not working, since I spend pretty much all day gazing blankly at repetitive lines of characters as it is.

[not_the_kitty]

I cant see those things but man have I tried. I paged for my dean in high school and would stare at one of those posters for like an hour straight and still see nothing....I feel like Willam off of Mallrats....I just want to see the goddamn sailboat!

[king of the world]

what the the fuck are you talking about?


peace out TjM

lol. i kinda have to agree with him. i dont know what the fuck you talking about? i read your whole post and the link and i still dont really understand. i dont like being kept out of secrets so could you please explain it again clearly. what am i suppose to see if im doing it correctly?

i appreciate the fact that you are trying to teach us something cool. i just have a hard time understanding.

[khronik]

Maybe it would help to post a normal stereogram? (this one is of a shark)



Anyway, a stereogram is an optical illusion that makes a 2D image appear 3D. If you can't see the 3D illusion, you'll never be able to tell what the picture is of, whereas if you can see it, it will be obvious. Incidentally, the image is of a smiley face:

To see them, you don't just stare at them, you have to assume a certain amount of control over your eyes. If you're nearsighted, it works better if you're not using glasses or contacts. You know how if you're not focusing on something near your eyes, it will sort of look like there are two of them? Touch your nose with your finger, and slowly move it away. If you focus on your finger, you only see one finger, but if you look past it, it splits into two. Anyway, you need to be able to control your eyes so that you can precisely move those two images apart and back together slowly.

Now, a stereogram consists of a repeating pattern. Find a point that repeats, like the black vertical stripe on the shark picture or the "Q" in my text stereogram. Now, use your eyes to split the image in two, and get that point to line up with the next matching point in the repeating pattern. Once they line up, just hold that for a few seconds, and you should be able to see a 3D effect.

If this isn't working, say where I'm losing you.