Stereo Conversion - Harrison Ford in Raiders of the Lost Ark

The process of converting a 2d image into a 3d image always starts with a 2d image and a sparse depth map (painted in Gimp or Photoshop).

Sparse depth map on top the 2d image.

In the following, I am gonna show depth maps generated by DMAG4 using 1 scale and 3 scales. Note that the more scales you use, the slower DMAG4 runs but the fewer iterations needed.

Depth map generated by DMAG4 using 10000 iterations and 1 scale.

Depth map generated by DMAG4 using 1000 iterations and 3 scales.

Clearly, the depth map obtained using 3 scales is better than the one obtained using 1 scale. At this point, it's not a bad idea to smooth the depth map while preserving the edges using, for instance, EPS9.

Depth map generated by EPS9 using the depth map generated by DMAG4 as the input.

Animated gif created by WiggleMaker using the 2d image and the generated depth map.

DMAG4 and EPS9 are available at 3D Software. WiggleMaker is WiggleMaker.