Art of stereo conversion: 2D to 3D

This article has been updated. We keep this version here for historical reference, but a newer version updated for the latest films, techniques and companies is here. We recommend referencing the new article that contains much of this original article but a lot more in addition to this. Thanks.

 

Stereo conversion, or dimensionalization as it is sometimes called, is the process of making stereo images from non-stereo traditional 2D images.

Many people argue that if you want a film in stereo you should shoot it in stereo. Yet many studios are warning post houses that if they work on stereo projects, even ones shot in stereo, there may well be a need to convert some footage and that high quality conversion is an important tool in the box of any effects house.

Stereo conversion is also needed for converting older films – such as the Star Wars franchise. John Knoll (ILM) is overseeing the stereo conversion of every Star Wars film for director George Lucas and in a recent AWN article he expressed the view that, “You can’t rush it and it’s an iterative process, and if you’ve got a gun to your head and you’ve got eight weeks to convert a 2,000-shot show, it’s not possible to maintain the level of quality control that you need.” In the case of Star Wars conversions for which Lucasfilm “will be (mostly) using outside vendors,” he also pointed out that he had been vocal in saying that past efforts “were victims of a too rushed production schedule and a too low budget.” Few people doubt that Knoll will deliver anything but cutting edge results.

3D animated films, such as Toy Story 3, Tangled and others find it easy to correctly generate stereo imagery from either stereo-RenderMan use or just rendering the entire scene from two similar but offset virtual cameras. For everything else live action, normal stereo production is hard. Even Avatar required tiny amounts of stereo conversion, for example the opening macro eyeball shot was far too close for a stereo camera rig to film, and this first shot of the film was converted stereo from 2D.

One of the leading company in this area today is Prime Focus, who after a battering of critical opinion on the conversion of Clash of the Titans, recently converted the film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which stands today as perhaps the best stereo conversion done thus far. For the last Narnia film, the decision to go stereo was made after principal photography but before the visual effects were completed. This allowed a partial hybrid approach of the some 1900 edits in the film. Some 10% or 190 odd shots were fully stereo generated 3D shots. The rest were converted mainly by Prime Focus. Interestingly, for some shots this conversion was not done by Prime to the final shot, but in partnership with the relevant effects house.

Issues

The problems with generating a second view or second ‘eye’ for stereo conversion are:

•  The parallax effect. That means a second eye will see around things the original eye won’t and thus there is missing background information to be replaced.

• A depth map is needed of the scene to determine the correct distribution of the objects for the second eye. While amazing work has been done with programs such as Ocula by the Foundry (see below), the process is far from automated.

• Cardboard cutouts and the need for roto. Not only is a roto required for the outline of any character in shot, if they are closer than say a wide shot, internal mattes are also required to generate different depths for different parts of their bodies. A character could easily have 7 rotos in addition to their outline for features such as nose, eyes etc and all of these must be conceptually and logically correctly placed based on z depth.

• Projection. While some shots respond well to re-projecting or ‘camera mapping’ the mono footage over 3d models and then filming the stereo by rendering the 3D scene from two virtual cameras, this rarely works well for people in movement as the difficulty of generating accurate 3d models to map onto, renders the approach extremely expensive. The technique works well for building, hall ways and other regular and mostly rigid body solutions but most films are about people – normally with soft edges such as hair etc.

• Shot design. Most stereo films are shot with an understanding and consideration of the stereo nature of the experience. A mono film may be poorly composed from a stereo point of view. For example, most staging of a stereo scene would have a distribution of the objects over the immediate foreground, avoiding the clumping that may seem odd when all the props are at the back of a room. Yet in mono although this shot may be extremely creatively valid, it is only when the shot is converted does it seem empty or oddly distributed.

• Singular depth resolution. One of the trickiest problems is say glasses on a live action character. While the glasses have a depth from the camera, the eyes behind them are further away. If incorrectly dealt with, the eyes of the character would appear to be printed on the glasses, not behind then glasses, but conversely the reflections on the glasses should not appear to be drawn on the actual eyes of the character. Add to this one tends to focus on the eyes of character in a close up and one could guess that this is perhaps a contributing factor as to why there was scheduling concern that led to a film starring a certain famous glasses wearing boy not being stereo converted recently. Similarly, hair is extremely complex and in a single close up may require extremely complex and fine roto work.

Key to good conversion

• A strong working relationship with the overall supervisors.

• A strong relationship with the vendors, so that relevant files such as keys and mattes can be provided.

• Pre-production planning. As with all vfx work, the earlier the conversion company can be involved the better.

• Time. Given the huge volume of work, ensuring the schedule allows time for roto and volumizing is vital.

• Speed of camera moves, framing and staging can all affect conversion. If you can isolate the key stereo moments in the script and shoot those knowing how they will be converted, you can produce a more impactful final conversion.

• Good asset management and asset tracking.

• If Titans taught the industry any overall lesson, it is that stereo conversion should not be a process ‘tacked’ on the end of a film’s production. Sometimes a film is converted years after principal photography, but if the conversion team can be involved before principal photography it can aid the creative, schedule and the budget.

• Make a good film in stereo not a good stereo film.

CASE STUDY:

In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader the character of Lucy finds a magic book and casts a spell that makes it snow.

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The shot was filmed mono as you can see from the behind the scenes clip. The snow sequence was handled by The Senate in London. While a clean plate of the room with no snow was shot, it was of little use as the camera move was not motion control.

The Senate’s job was to add some more snow and also do some work on the ceiling of the room.

Rather than just finish these shots, The Senate did the ceiling repair as normal but rendered out passes of snow as seen by a stereo camera. These various elements, un-composited, were then handed to the team at Prime Focus who converted the mono plate and matched it in with the new stereo foreground snow.

Ed Marsh was the overall show stereo consultant and supervisor, who was brought in by Walden Media when the show was decided to be converted. Visual effects supervisor Angus Bickerton could not be more positive on the role Ed Marsh played in both working with the production and educating the team on the subtle stereo issues involved.

Director Michael Apted with Lucy played by Georgie Henley

On this scene, Ed Marsh worked out the convergency and disparity and passed this information to Prime Focus. “It was such a team effort this sequence,” says Matthew Bristowe, senior producer at Prime Focus. “It was a team effort to deliver the effect and quality that Ed Marsh wanted, we had eight or nine people working on that sequence to introduce just the right and sincere fall and movement of the snow.”


Chris Brown and Johnathan Banta (3DCG) were hired by Walden Media and were the interface between Walden and Prime Focus. Both Brown and Banta ended up spending considerable time in Mumbai at the end of the project as well as working with Ed Marsh. Richard Baker, Prime Focus’ senior stereographer said of the stereo design of Ed Marsh: “I am a fan of the way Narniawas converted (from a creative stand point)…nothing too extreme, it is comfortable on the eyes, but with moments when things do come out of the screen, and they are effective.”

Bickerton was initially concerned that this multi-facility approach would be problematical, but in the end he felt the stereo conversion worked very well, actually improving the look of the effects, ‘adding’ to them in a way he had not expected.

This snow scene was visually extremely complex, given how much of the frame is moving. “That shot in particular,” says Baker, “is a matter of keying, rotoing, extracting areas, placing things in different places in depth and a lot of that comes down to the skill of the artists, and I think that is where we have come a long way in the last 6 months, the skill and techniques of the artists, the software has advanced – I would put a lot of that down to the skill of the artists.”


Tools of the trade

Roto:

Roto is the primary tool used for stereo conversion by volume. While the actual roto itself just prepares the material it is some of the most time consuming work in any conversion process.

Ocula:

The Foundry in London, long time image processing and compositing experts, makes Ocula for stereo post production. Ocula produces some of the highest quality disparity maps allowing for a range of high quality solutions. Ocula was not prmarliy developed for stereo conversion. It was actually more developed for stereo production correction and adjustment. Filmed stereo footage can be analyzed and the stereo properties very accurately adjusted to aid matching and camera/rig imperfections, as well as accurate stereo roto. This is roto that object matches left and right eye rotos in each eye, not rotos designed for stereo conversion.

Several major effects houses use Ocula. Recently, ILM decided to invest in a significant number of Ocula seats after a successful evaluation period using it to tackle common stereo problems. MPC, London, has also made a major Ocula purchase for their upcoming work on Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. They’ll be employing Ocula to resolve vertical alignment issues and to colour match plates.

India’s Prana Studios are now renting a large number of Ocula seats in response to an increased demand for stereoscopic effects and Australia’s Animal Logic also recently plugged Ocula into their stereo workflow.

In-painting:

Once footage is stereo converted, the missing information due to parallax must be replaced. Several approaches to this are used, including in-painting, often a proprietary tool that effectively smears into the gap the colours from the surrounding gap. This is only needed for one eye and only on one edge as the other side of the same object would move in the opposite way and fractionally cover some part of original image.

Rubber mapping:

This is an approach whereby the image is projected over a depth map calculated point cloud. If the objects in a scene move or the camera moves, it is often over a set of frames to use optical flow style techniques to produce a disparity map. If this process is inaccurate, an edge of a persons hair, for example, can appear to not be where the character’s face is, but rather projected on the wall or building behind the character.

Projection:

Several vendors use projection techniques to re-project imagery over stand-in geometry. This combination of scene reconstruction and roto has proven very popular in Nuke. The Foundry’s Nuke is now the mainstay of feature film compositing for many companies but it has also been one of the most popular tools for doing short form TV show or commercials stereo conversion. Nuke naturally works closely with Ocula, as it is currently the only visual effects compositing tool that supports the software. Nuke’s latest release will also support RenderMan rendering.

Note there is a Nuke Stereoscopic Course on offer in the January 2011 term of our sister site www.fxphd.com.

Specialist Tool: Dimensionalization by In-Three

In-Three’s similar tool is called Dimensionalization, which was launched in 1997. It uses Imagineer’s Mocha tools to help produce the roto isolation. Ross Shain, CMO of Imagineer points out that not only have they seen a lot of growth in Imagineer’s products for Stereo Conversion, with a huge demand for interchange between say Mocha and Nuke. “What we have seen is that Mocha to Nuke is a really successful pipeline and popular workflow for companies building 2D to 3D pipelines,… and we are working with a lot of companies, In-three of course but also Legend, ICO-VFX – they are doing a big ramp up, also Stereo-D, Pixel Magic and others”. The main reasons he believes Mocha has been popular is the company’s planar tracker, links with Adobe’s After Effects and the ease of learning the software – “as many of these companies are ramping up quickly at the moment, and having to train a lot of artists”.

In 2008, Disney and Bruckheimer films turned to In-Three to handle the live-action 2D to 3D conversion of G-Force, while Sony Pictures Imageworks (SPI) handled the conversion of the CG animation integrated scenes. “This was our opportunity to go full scale with our newly developed workflow. With all the pieces in place with our proprietary solution, and with mocha integrated nicely into our pipeline, we could confidently take on this challenge,” explained In-Three.


The results were a success with the G-Force 3D team recognized by the International 3D Society, winning the 2D to 3D Conversion Project of that year. It was so successful, Disney came back to In-Three for Alice In Wonderland. In-Three was assigned that task of converting scenes from the prologue and the epilogue of the film that were primarily live action. Elements created at Matte World Digital and Café FX were integrated into some shots as well.


In November of 2010, Digital Domain Holdings (mothership of Digital Domain, Vencie) bought the Thousand Oaks, Californian based In-Three Inc. and announced that it was moving it to Port St. Lucie, Florida, where Digital Domain Holdings has its HQ. A small team from In-Three will shift to L.A., where it will work on business development and work with clients. The 11-year-old In-Three had most recently worked with Digital Domain on some sequences on Tron: Legacy. Digital Domain, for which filmmaker Michael Bay is co-chairman, began building a production site in Port St. Lucie last year. The Orlando Sun Sentinel reports the move should bring about 70 jobs to Florida, making the facility relatively small for stereo conversion or the hub to outsource from to perhaps other offices or companies around the world.

“Pretty much all the movies we’re working on have a stereo aspect,” Digital Domain CEO Cliff Plumer told Daily Variety. “Our preference still is shooting in stereo, if you can. But a lot of films are still shot flat, and the post schedules are getting much tighter, which forces visual effects companies and stereo companies to work together.” Plumer and In-Three CEO Neil Feldman cited the concept of “digital production,” including both visual effects and 3D conversion, as central to the union of the two firms.


Specialist Tool: View-D by Prime Focus

The Prime Focus team review a View-D shot

View-D 2D to stereo 3D conversion tool is a typical example of the specialist tool used after roto for the actual second camera/eye stereo compositing and repair work. This tool was developed in house at Prime Focus from an initial technology concept by Chris Bond (then President of Prime Focus Film VFX, North America). The tool allows artists to take the roto work that has been done to identify the separate elements and then expand and build from that the second eye and stereo effect.


For example, on Dawn Treader, the comp team using View-D converted the roto files of the mono shots to final stereo shots in about 8 weeks (after roto was done). As with most pipelines, general tools are incorporated in the workflow and Prime Focus’ workflow includes Fusion which has been modified and expanded with custom plugins. While the software is evolving, the process is not an automated one. The techniques are still very manual. It is not an automated 2D-in / 3D-out process, so artist skill is as vital as workflow R&D tools.

On Clash of the Titans, the roto was done in Mumbai but the composting team was small and relatively new to View-D. In fact at the time, View-D was version 1.0. In contrast, on the completion of The Dawn Treader the software had progressed by several major versions and changed and expanded considerably. Instead of a relatively new compositing team, – on Narnia the team included, according to Prime senior producer Matthew Bristowe, “85 experienced artists in the Los Angeles facility, 65 out of the London facility and the Mumbai facility had 40 experienced compositors plus another 100 artist in training, and this is before you get to the roto team.” In regards to the combined software and artist workflow approach, Bristowe explains: “This is version 3.0 and we are already working on version 4, 5 and 6 of this technology, it is not finished being improved.”

The size of the operation you need to mount to handle Stereo Conversion

 

Case Study: Prime Focus

Following the success of the new Narnia, Prime Focus has signed several new international orders and is now riding high on the expanded opportunities that stereo conversion offers, so much so that it is opening a 50,000 sq. ft. studio facility in Chandigarh for 2D to 3D conversion, creating employment for over 3000 local artists.

Chandigarh, in northern India, is the tenth Prime Focus facility in India. The company also operates studios in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Goa and Mumbai, in addition to international facilities in London, Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver and Winnipeg.

The 50,000 square foot facility, will hold 3000 artists and will be dedicated to working on global projects, utilizing Prime Focus’ global digital pipeline which connects India to North America and the UK. Merzin Tavaria, co-founder and chief creative director (India), Prime Focus, commented: “Our new facility in Chandigarh is a major expansion of our View-D 2D to stereo 3D conversion capacity. Prime Focus has always wanted to mark its presence in Northern India, considering its existing strong presence in Western and Southern India. Chandigarh is an ideal location due to its huge student population, many of whom are looking to establish a career in animation and VFX.” The Chandigarh facility will be under the supervision of Prime Focus’ existing expert team of stereographers.

Prime Focus had a great working relationship with the vendors such as MPC and Framestore. In fact, Richard Baker joined Prime from MPC (vfx team) at about the time of the end of Clash of the Titans. Baker worked closely to try and get depth maps, lens distortion grids, and any mattes that may exist for any digital or green screen characters. While edge mattes especially for fur or hair is extremely useful as already mentioned above, these existing mattes only make up part of the set of mattes needed for a stereo conversion for each character in a scene. “The big benefit for us is if we can get say a clean background, and a character matte. But within that there is still a lot of work, when we rotoscope say a character – live action or cg we are not just doing an outline. Say if we were doing an arm, it is not just the arm outline – it is fingers to wrist, wrist to elbow, elbow to shoulder and so on. So when the View-D artist gets the roto they can start to sculpt a depth map,” explains Baker.

Even so, the Prime team found on Narnia that if they could get the various characters with the correct grades, with separate mattes and a clean plate of the background, then it would reduce the conversion process time by about half, so it is still very much worth doing. They worked very closely with the vfx vendors to streamline the process, thus allowing more time for the director to creatively stereoscopically adjust shots and not be rushed. Overall, 20% of the shots that had clean plates, the rest had to be extracted and repaired from the source material.

Key historical timeline

Siegfried & Roy: The Magic Box (IMAX)

(1998)

First use of projection mapping for stereo conversion of matte paintings – Sassoon Film Design, Metrolight Studios.

Haunted Lighthouse

(2003)

Displacement mapping and projection mixed for stereo conversion of selected scenes – Sassoon Film Design


Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon in 3D

(2005)

Conversion of original lunar mission photography as set extension, and as full frame images in a stereo film – Sassoon Film Design, Digital Dimension and others.


Chicken Little

(2005)

First big digital animated 3D stereo film, kicks off the start of the modern digital stereo era.


Lions 3D

(2006)

Stereo conversion of Roar: Lions of the Kalihari to 3D. First full live action feature conversion using hybrid displace/projection methods.


Nightmare Before Christmas

(2006)

Converted by Industrial Light & Magic.


Monster House

(2006)

Sony Pictures Imageworks.


Sea Monsters 3D

(2007)

Combination of full 3D and conversion shots (by Sassoon Film Design).


G-Force

(2009)

In-Three  and SPI conversion (plus some original stereo generated animation).


Avatar

(2009)

Minor conversion done by companies including Prime Focus.


Alice in Wonderland

(2010)

In-Three conversion for the start and end of the film. The Wonderland section was SPI.


Clash of the Titans

(2010)

Prime Focus converted the film in just 10 weeks.


The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

(2010)

Major conversion by Prime Focus. Stereo consulting by 3D CG.


Jackass 3D

(2010)

Stereo-D Stereo conversion


The Last Airbender

(2010)

Stereo-D Stereo conversion


 

Gulliver’s Travels (2010)

Major conversion by Stereo D, Rocket Science 3D and I.E.Effects.


The Phantom Menace

(set for a 2012 theatrical release)

John Knoll supervising conversion. Lucasfilm working with other vendors.

25 thoughts on “Art of stereo conversion: 2D to 3D”

  1. The first full stereo conversion of a live action film, as far as I can find out, was “Lions 3D”. An IMAX release. Sassoon Film Design did the work. Sassoon was also a contributor on Alice and G-Force. They have been in the conversion game since 1998.

    They may have been the first to use projection mapping for stereo conversion.

    1. Everyone has forgotten :”Polar Express”. This movie proved that 3d/stereo could make more money than 2d. Express made aprrox 80% of its profit from IMAX stereo sales. This led to In-three working on Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” for one year, 2005. In-three was overly confident about the conversion process. They refused to hire VFX professionals and hoped their custom software would do everything needed. Simple things like film grain were ignored until the client complained. About an hour of the ,”king Kong” was completed. DD’s purchase of In-Three will finally give them a leg up to finish future projects…

  2. I worked on the Chicken little conversion at ILM. Disney provided a host of assets, including pre-comp render layers, and we were able to automate much of the work.

  3. I worked on G-Force 3D at SPI. Most of the show was converted in-house, with the other vendors helping out with over flow. Great experiences and great techniques were used in the conversion process!

  4. I worked at Sassoon film back in 06 through 07, I was part of the Lions, Sea Monsters and the U23D films…all of which were 3D, you should include Sassoon Film Design in this list.

  5. Wait, it’s The Phantom Menace that is going to be converted first? Not A New Hope? I suppose that makes sense, but there is no way I’m going to go to a cinema to see Phantom Menace again; 3D or no. I maybe would for ‘A New Hope’.

    If Lucas thinks people are going to line up to see Phantom Menace in droves, they must be crazy. Sure, 3D is a draw, but not that much of a draw.

  6. I assume they are doing Phantom Menace first because it has a lot more digital elements and perhaps a little easier to perform the conversion than say A New Hope or Empire’s old print.

    1. Rob,

      I am 98% sure that who ever is doing the conversion is not receiving digital elements for Menace.

  7. Fletch, exactly what I think. Very surprised to see they will release the phantom menace first… Let’s see how it goes at the box office

  8. Hi Matt, seems your right if you read the article.

    Prime focus opens in india, 3000 students – first timers. Now they’ll get about 300us a month. 12 hours of roto’ing a day.

    Now 24 fps x 2hour movie = 172800 frames / 3000 = 58 frames per person. So in one month you get the movie converted.

    And Prime Focus make a boatload of money, they aint going to sell at 300us per person.

    As for Nolan = rip off artist. Really? Watch “Paprika” and tell me that he didn’t rip it. Actually he’s not that good either “Paprika” was better … lol. Like wise Thomas Crown affair (original) + SAW = TDK. Wonder what he’ll pirate next for TDR…lol

    1. Hi Joey
      u were right, Prime Focus takes jus 1 or 2 month to convert a whole movie 2D-3D bcoz of its huge man power
      They pay really less to Artists, US $150 a MONTH for 8hrs a day, 6 days a week
      but its the only Production house/Studio which offers jobs to Freshers
      So either sit idle at home or work for less
      We don’t have any other choice 🙁

  9. “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which stands today as perhaps the best stereo conversion done thus far.”

    Really? G-force won an award for the conversion. I for one think the conversion on G-Force was way better that Narnia. And before you get up in arms, I worked on the conversion of both movies at SPI and Prime Focus.

  10. Now the need of the hour is Stereoscopic QC (Quality Control). Even with it being made easy to do conversions, with pre-supplied elements and mattes from vfx vendors, there were some Pseudo stereo 3D shots that made it through in Narnia.

    http://realvision.ae/blog/2010/12/3d-qc-quality-control-for-stereo-3d-films/

    and just for the record, G-Force may have got awards, but there were glaring errors in the conversion.
    http://www.slideshare.net/clydd/2dto3dconvertedmovies

    Regards.

  11. To date, there has not been a “perfect” 2D to 3D conversion and I would hope that this discussion does not turn into some mudslinging match as to who made the worst conversion.

    Clyde, I have read your comments about G-FORCE (a film on which I supervised the 3D release) and agree with some of your assertions and disagree with others. In general, I also agree with your general assessment that conversion is best when considered a tool to be used when appropriate rather than to be used to produce whole movies.

    That said, there are plenty of advantages to synthesizing the 3D experience using digital techniques and I think that G-FORCE demonstrates many of those advantages. I think a good way to characterize conversion is to think of it as taking digital stereography techniques which have been explored at length in the CG feature realm and applying them to live-action.

    I take exception to the use of the term “glaring errors” with respect to G-FORCE. The anomalies which are mentioned in your text that are real (you mention some that don’t exist in the film) we identified during production and determined that they were not essential to either the storytelling or 3D experience of the film. They certainly did not affect the primary subject of the shots in question and most viewers would not have noticed them.

    The bottom line is that this is a growing field and (almost) every film advances the state of the art and what we are capable of achieving with our tools. This is true for native photography, CG films and conversion. For those who are interested in exploring stereoscopic film making I continue to recommend finding people with experience in the field and asking their opinions. You will get as many answers as people with whom you talk but you will learn something in the process.

    Rob

    1. Hi Rob,
      You are well respected in the stereo3d community (my respect included). I was addressing the previous poster who said that the conversion itself won an award.

      In that context, (conversion being a technical achievement) there were errors. Glaring, I agree now in hindsight, is too harsh a word.

      However top of my head (and as I keep mentioning, I do not have the luxury of a pause button, but only view and report from whats shown during final Cinema release)… that document has many of the errors listed.

      Your right it was state-of-the art at that time in 2D to 3D conversion, for that I’d say it deserved an innovation award, however it’s very subjective as to what comprises “essential to either the storytelling or 3D experience of the film”…

      In 2D matte paintings and set extensions there are trivialities that need to be looked into, regardless of whether the entire audience spots any of these background anomalies or not.

      Just to put this into further perspective, yesterday I finally saw Tron. My review…three words. Excellent, inspirational, motivating (as far as use of stereo3D is concerned).

      However, I did notice *some* stereo compositing anomalies in scenes with the girl and the main character in the white house / hideaway. There were some scenes where it looks like the composites were not depth registered properly. Again, no luxury of pause button to confirm, so on this I will only speculate. (ON G_Force I could confirm many)

      Again in Narnia, scenes in the cabin of the ship during the storm, entire back panels of the fireplace looked flat, did they have to be “dimensionalized”? probably not as they did not lend to the immediate story, yet they do distract.
      Another big pseudo-3D shot I’d mentioned already of the boy hitting his captor with the boat paddle.

      In Narnia, close-ups of people had sunken eye sockets, very un-natural, (some shots in G-force exhibit this as well) Do these detract from the story? To me they do, and slowly as audiences begin to savor 3D (after the ticket price they pay), they will become more aware.

      I agree with you completely that it is the way forward to explore techniques, what I’d like to see is attention to detail, in what’s being done.

      Stereoscopic QC is the need of the hour. Just as Color-Grading, Film resolution, are of the highest standards, so should stereoscopic 3D (converted or native captured).

      Un-intentional film grain, noise and low dynamic range in frowned upon in a movie, I’d argue that partly converted scenes should be too.

      Granted, I’m a lone (but loud) voice, far away from Hollywood to make a difference… but we have to remind ourselves as 3D artists everytime we green-light an let these anomalies slip by. It some cases,(pseudo 3d shots) it can cause harm to the audiences.

      Most people, even big time cinematographers can’t spot these errors as they are not stereo 3D experienced. the power and responsibility to pass the shots rests with the 3D supervisors!

      Best Regards.
      Clyde

  12. I am an MBA student at University of Chicago Booth School of Business. We are working on creating a business plan for a new company offering 2D to 3D conversion, and have some questions.

    Rob Engle or Clyde, would you be able to spare a little time (may be 20-30 mins) for a conversation?

    If that is hard, I’ll greatly appreciate it if you can provide an email where I can send some questions.

    Thanks
    Madhav

  13. A bit late on this thread but anyway, i would like to say my point off view.
    I just saw this summer my first 3D movie, till now i don’t wanted to see any 3D movie because i was afraid of some things witch could destroy connection between audience and the movie world and unfortunately this movie have done exactly that. I’m a total beginner 101 lvl so to speak in stereo 3D but i have very good knowledge of traditional way. Anyway, the fact is that the stereo totally killed the immersion and the “magic” of the film. Manny times i was having the impression of watching a traditional theater stage from a far window, and in other aerial shots was like watching some miniature stage, like looking at ants. This is not only my impression but many of my friends and people who have no idea about this industry have notice this things. This is from my point off view the biggest problem today, the movie as we know and the story telling technique was developed to show a 2D projected story, and the colors and vfx are used to bring the viewer in this world.
    Stereoscopic as is done today, at least as i saw on this big franchise name, is a total mess in my opinion. Yes i would go and see more and i am currently learning about stereo composting and everything because i think is the future but i think it needs other way off thinking the movie not only from the technical point off view but from the story and viewers to. This are just some off my thoughts and i do not wanted to say the movie name because i do not want to offend anyone who worked on this. I am totally aware of the amount of work needed to make a movie but i think specially directors need to rethink the story telling process a bit. Regarding the conversion from 2D to 3D i have not seen yet one, but i do not think is a good thing to convert live action to stereo, if was not shot for that.

  14. To a technophile movie goer, this is a fascinating article and discussion. Thank you. I’m curious, however, with regard to the decisions to not convert to stereo because the conversion is “not essential to either the storytelling or 3D experience of the film”, the discussion reminds me of something I heard attributed to George Lucas and ILM’s work on his films – he was extremely budget conscious, so although the CGI folks would have worked endlessly to ‘perfect’ an effect, his MO was that no effect was to be any more sophisticated than absolutely necessary to tell the story. Isn’t that a major part of the equation? Clyde may notice something that could have been done “better” or detracts from his experience, but isn’t there a budget consideration also at play? Are stereo quality decisions more comparable to cost-benefit of special effects quality, or more akin to color-grading quality?

    1. >” Are stereo quality decisions more comparable to cost-benefit of special effects quality, or more akin to color-grading quality?”

      Stacy, you’ve kind of nailed it with this question.

      It is my belief that with S3D movie making, one of the major goals is to truly “immerse” the audiences in the scene and achieve that all important :suspension of disbelief: which is the corner stone of sophisticated visual storytelling.

      Well, S3D allows you to achieve that in ways that was not possible before with 2D tools and a 2D medium. It records the spatial depth of an environment.

      Although still an illusion (yet a very very powerful one) and to illustrate just how powerful it is, how come S3D imagery is able to activate our primal self preservation reflexes like no 2D visual can? (even experienced stereographers duck is taken unawares by something coming off screen)

      so the point being… that unlike SFX or VFX where a space ship blown up is not bump mapped/ dirt mapped/ volumetrically rendered explosion effect etc…. if there are *any* anomalies in a Stereoscopic 3D scene, the viewers eyes will instantly be directed to it.

      This is the negative side effect of suspending the feeling of disbelief. In S3D because everything is so real, the small anomalies is what will detract from the scene.

      It’s like a tiger well camouflaged, and then having zebra stripes on his tail.
      That’s where my arguments stem from.

      Regards
      Clyde

      Self plug: Stereoscopic 3D QC service: http://bit.ly/sEhgIR

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