Making auto Stereograms - Magic Eye 3D pictures and games without glasses

Stereograms are pictures that are printed or displayed on 2D surfaces but with a special viewing technique can be visualized in 3D. That includes the technique of combining two images kept side by side to see in 3 D. Here we shall talk about Single Image Stereograms or autostereograms.

The above image has a hidden text in it along with a drawing behind the text. You can view it using the parallel or wall-eyed viewing method.

If you are in India, this paperback book of stereograms will be an excellent gift for a kid.

You should have 2 relatively normal(or corrected with glasses) eyes for stereograms to work.

The trick is to relax your eye muscles so that it focuses beyond the depth of the screen(or printed paper)

Practice so that the two black dots on the top become 4 and then merge the middle 2 to get [3 dots]

Here is a website which will help you to practice that :
http://www.vision3d.com/3views.html
They have various tips and tricks for first timers to get used to parallel-viewing and cross-eyed viewing. Once you get the hang of it once, it should come easily. Like riding a bicycle.

There are also Random Dot Stereograms, Animated Stereograms, ASCII stereograms, and more.
There's also a type of 3D picture called wigglegrams.

This should be easy - a dog made of blocks - like a minecraft dog

This is an instructable to make a quick secret ASCII stereogram message.
There's more :

Here's a animated Random Dot Stereogram of a Shark. It looks like random noise :

Animated Random Dot Stereogram

There are even videos which are autostereograms on youtube :
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=magic+eye+videos
It even includes a music video.
But make sure you keep them on the highest resolution for the effect to be seen properly.

There are free eBooks of stereograms available online in India too

There is an entire website by Dmiitriy Bessmertniy, an Ukranian dude who does by the nickname 3Dimka. His website has a HUGE collection of stereograms and even a couple of games based of stereograms. He also offers free software to make stereograms.

This is from 3Dimka's page - Excellent work !

If you want to quickly make a stereogram from the browser, try this Flash-based Stereogram creator.
It is very easy to use and you can simply draw a stereogram using the mouse, and change the 3D depth of each stroke you make. They background are limited, but it is very very easy and quick. The Save button was somehow not working for me, so I had to take a screenshot to save the output stereogram.



The 3D stereogram games are :
Stereogram Tetris - a 3D version of the classic tetris game but played in 2 dimensions
Stereogram Python - Similar to the Nokia Snake game, but the walls are safe, and you keep going into the next room through holes in the walls

How to make these Magic Eye Pictures ?

• This website seems to be the best online stereogram creator I could find if you want to 
• http://www.easystereogrambuilder.com/3d-stereogram-maker.aspx
• Pretty powerful to make your own depth map and stereograms.
• Go to this website and use your mouse to draw if you want to scribble a 3d picture
• The depth of the drawing can be set on the slider.

•  There is also an ASCII Stereogram Generator  for making ASCII stereograms.

• There is also a downloadable software called Stereogram Labs for making stereograms on your computer. It is much more customisable than the online stereo-paint version.

Enter the Stereogram Gallery Here !

• For a quick TEXT stereogram make use Secret message stereogram creator here !