A lesson in 3D at Dreamworks HQ
By Benny Har-Even in Editorial
Posted in Dreamworks, 3D on
A couple of days ago I found myself sitting excitedly in the on-campus cinema of Dreamworks – the world famous animation studios - about to watch its new film Monsters and Aliens in 3D.
Indeed, as you can see, the well known studio boss Jeffery Katzenberg happened to be there at the time, and personally introduced the film, which was pretty cool.
The reason I was there was that I was on a press trip with HP, who are about to launch, well, something I’m not allowed to talk about as it’s under NDA – but come back to the IT PRO home page on Monday evening at 8pm and all will be revealed.
As I wrote here, HP and Dreamworks have a long working history and an obscene amount of HP’s computing horsepower is used to create these monster (if you’ll excuse the pun) CG animations.
What was great was that before the movie started we were treated to a technical demo from Dreamworks’ slightly bonkers, but fascinating 3D technical guru Phil McNally, a man so obsessed with three dimensional images he has, literally, changed his middle name to ‘Captain 3D’.
The demo started off with a flat image with a sphere at its centre, and as Phil pulled some switches the sphere suddenly and magically gained some real depth.
There was also words floating on the screen and he gradually made one move closer and closer towards us, until eventually it actually started to become uncomfortable to view.
Phil explained that a 3D image is made up of two frames overlayed and placed slightly apart and that the depth is created by moving the distance between these two frames. Effectively our eyes are like two cameras and the brain creates the image the same way.
The discomfort comes when the distance between the two images exceeds the distance between the left and right eye – making the eyes actually look in different directions. McNally explained that 3D artists were learning how far they can push the 3D depth to strike the right balance between depth and flatness.
What some might not realise is that while the technology has come on in leaps and bounds, glasses are still very much necessary to create the 3D image, telling the group that this was still the most effective way of creating an image. However, there are screens that can create a 3D image without the use of glasses.
I actually got a chance to ask McNally if films created for viewing with glasses would work in the future on these screens or whether they’d have to create a new version of the film and his view was that they would.
As for the film itself, the 3D effects, using Real D technology, is absolutely eye popping and though it’s fun, if truth be told, in my opinion the script lacks the charm and wit that rival Pixar manages to infuse its screenplays with. Even so, it’s still fun and from a technical standpoint I’d say it’s worth the price of a ticket to see this simply amazing looking film.
On the way out, there was also a large TV connected to a Blu-ray deck also showing a 3D version of the film though the blurriness immediately showed that like in the cinema, special glasses are again required to view. . The Blu-ray play appeared to be standard but was connected to a box with a Real-D label on it that was feeding the screen. This external box is clearly processing the image, applying the 3D effect and sending it to the custom 3D screen.
This is clearly a prototype system and while there was genuine 3D depth, it did lack the pop and sheer impact of the movie version. Of course, I had just walked out of Dreamworks’ own custom movie theatre and nothing is going to top that, so I’ll put the difference down to one of scale. Even so it was a fascinating glimpse into a possible future for home cinema.
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