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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. 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. 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. Cardboard cutouts and the need for roto.
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While amazing work has been done with programs such as Ocula by the Foundry (see below), the process is far from automated. A depth map is needed of the scene to determine the correct distribution of the objects for the second eye.That means a second eye will see around things the original eye won’t and thus there is missing background information to be replaced. The problems with generating a second view or second ‘eye’ for stereo conversion are: Interestingly, for some shots this conversion was not done by Prime to the final shot, but in partnership with the relevant effects house. The rest were converted mainly by Prime Focus. Some 10% or 190 odd shots were fully stereo generated 3D shots. This allowed a partial hybrid approach of the some 1900 edits in the film. For the last Narnia film, the decision to go stereo was made after principal photography but before the visual effects were completed. 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. 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. For everything else live action, normal stereo production is hard. 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.ģD 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. Stereo conversion is also needed for converting older films – such as the Star Wars franchise. 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. Many people argue that if you want a film in stereo you should shoot it in stereo.
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Stereo conversion, or dimensionalization as it is sometimes called, is the process of making stereo images from non-stereo traditional 2D images. We recommend referencing the new article that contains much of this original article but a lot more in addition to this. We keep this version here for historical reference, but a newer version updated for the latest films, techniques and companies is here.