Facebook 3D (Patreon)

I posted a quick quick test of the Facebook 3D feature earlier today. I've seem some pretty amazing uses of it and wanted to try it out. You can see my quick attempt here:

https://www.facebook.com/steamkittens/posts/2082871255096066 

Basically it used a bump map to relate it to old school 3d rendering Facebook call it a Depth Map and it almost identical to a layer mask in Photoshop but instead of transparency the grey tone representing depth where Black is the background and White is the foreground. 

So with my image you can see the explosion is on the back layer, the characters are in the mid-ground and sparks in the foreground. I did try to bring the disc forward and this had the odd effect of giving the character wiggly arms where you can see the gradient.

I think with particular images with distinct levels of depth and where you spend time to get the masking precise this could be a really powerful (but somewhat gimmicky) tool if done right.