  There are a number of dedicated 3D capture devices in the market, but
generally they are unaffordable and do not make use of existing smartphone
cameras, which are generally of decent quality. Due to this, while there are
several means to consume 3D or VR content, there is currently lack of means to
capture 3D content, resulting in very few 3D videos being publicly available.
Some mobile applications such as Camerada enable 3D or VR content capture by
combining the output of two existing smartphones, but users would have to hold
the cameras in their hand, making it difficult to align properly. In this paper
we present the design of a system to enable 3D content capture using one or
more smartphones, taking care of alignment issues so as to get optimal
alignment of the smartphone cameras. We aim to keep the distance between the
cameras constant and equal to the inter-pupillary distance of about 6.5 cm. Our
solution is applicable for one, two and three smartphones. We have a mobile app
to generate a template given the dimensions of the smartphones, camera
positions and other specifications. The template can be printed by the user and
cut out on 2D cardboard, similar to Google cardboard. Alternatively, it can be
printed using a 3D printer. During video capture, with the smartphones aligned
using our printed template, we capture videos which are then combined to get
the optimal 3D content. We present the details of a small proof of concept
implementation. Our solution would make it easier for people to use existing
smartphones to generate 3D content.
