Hey Guys,
Im wondering if anyone can give me some info
regarding Stereoscopic 3D using Polarized Lenses
opposed to Red/Blue Glasses.
I want to make a commercial for my local 3D Cinema.
Im using 3D Studiomax 2010. Im looking for Stereoscopic Plug-in
though they all seem to be for the Red and Blue glasses.
Can anybody recommend a Plug-in which renders Stereo 3D for the
new lenses?
Thank you for your time.
Regards,
Glen
Hi Glen,
I cant offer you too much except to say I used to work at Regent Weribee, the sister cinema for one in Ballarat! woo
AFAIK, there aren’t really plugins that will automate this. Basically you need to set up a dual stereo camera, and cinemas display a dual sequence. The projected images go through a polarizing filter, which are picked up by the according lens of the glasses.
If they use real D (which I cant remember off the top of my head) It works slightly different.
Here at work when we render stereo stuff, its seen on computer monitors, so tis interlaced for stereo in nuke.
Not sure it that helps, but I was just excited how small the world is ha ha.
An oldie but goodie! This script works really well…
http://www.burningpixel.com/Max/StereoG.htm
You have the options of Anaglyph, interlaced (polarized), top/bot, ect.
Thank you very much for your reply. Small world! haha.
We use RealD 3D in Regent Ballarat. Ive had a look at
there projecters and they gave me a run down on there
side of the 3d. They use a Cube projecter.
Im just worried that ill buy a program and it will only be
good for the red and blue glasses.
I have used the script in 2010 64-bit. AFAIK it doesn’t support netrender. Definitely would be handy if it did. 
I should also mention…
You could drop some bucks for Spatial View stereo plugin…I have only played with the demo, it does have some real nice features, including network rendering.
Not sure what the big houses use:shrug:
Now to answer your question you need to know that there is no special plugin or tool you need to render polarized 3D. You need to understand that polarization isn’t a act of production but a process of exhibition. In production if your show is going to deliver for polarized projection you just render a left eye and right eye full color as you would on any 2D show. When its shown at a theater a projectionist places the filters that do the polarization right in front of the projection lens.
The great thing about it is once you have these two eyes, you can deliver to any 3D medium be it anaglyph, RealD, Imax 3D, Dolby 3D, etc.
Its like sending out your animation as a Quicktime or AVI… its just a different format.
Yeah, thats what I was trying to say, basically you just need to look into rendering our your right and left cameras. And not look into finding a plugin or answer to automate the process.
Well sure it is all right eye left eye, but how do you preview this without some form of preview mechanism? Max doesn’t have native viewport stereoscopy. So how would you judge what your shot is going to look like?
Well you cant really unless you have a 3d monitor, at work they run it through nuke and it interlaces the R and L camera render I think.
So Nuke is your preview mechanism (at $3500+maint. a seat) 
Sure your can create a right eye left eye camera pair in max but how do you preview your planes? It is not just a matter of rendering a R/L eye pair of cameras. You can’t just render out 1000 frames and hope it looks right and dump it off to a compositor. I guess you could but…
From my (very) limited experience creating some particle tests, what looks good on a small 24" monitor can look like crap on a +30’ large projection. (pictures audience hurling from motion sickness)
We were just testing some Highend Systems DL3’s for use with polarized stereo projection, some of the test renders we had well… lets put it this way you would close your eyes, and we only tested on a 12 foot screen.
Even if you use the dorky red and blues and the script (or go side-by-side and cross your eyes), you can get a half decent representation (it will look a little different when its interlaced) Then render off a couple interlaced test frames and bring them to the venue to see how they look on a large format.
Daniel,
Do you have any experience using 3d for litigation?
I have downloaded the demo plugin JR recommended and will test it.
Ultimately I think I would like to be able to use it for 3d flyarounds and viewing medical models.
Is there a filter or other method for viewing a realtime model in 3d?
Or even special LCD glasses?
Feel free to PM me if you care to, this is facinating stuff.
David
I have not used 3D in litigation. You can see 3D on your monitor in realtime using the nVidia shutter glasses with one of the 120hz monitors from Samsung, or you can use a Zalman stereo monitor with passive polarized glasses. Both of these can be used with openGL and direct X based game engines and you can see stereo right in the Maya viewport.
…and you can see stereo right in the Maya viewport.
Maya yes, Max no 
I hope that changes soon.
Here is an image I made with the SVI plugin.
You need the red and cyan glasses to see it.
I can’t figure out why the MR sky doesn’t show up.
David
My demo is expired, so can’t really troubleshoot it.
Do you have a daylight system to control your mr Phys Sky map (not much of a mental ray user so be warned)
yes I have a MR daylight system in place.
Another downside to the SVI plugin.
It is incredibly slow.
It sits and thinks for 5 minutes a frame, then spits out the colored from in a blink.
I may need to try a different approach as even with net rendering, this would take forever (I am rendering a 360 fly around of the trailer in my posted image).
When It’s complete, I’ll post a link…
David
Yeah thats odd I’d drop the developer a note on it.
Be cool to see, I’ve got my paper red&blues
Here is the fly around of a project we did last year.
I created it for red/cyan glasses, not Red/Blue so I am not sure how it will work…
http://www.dustinproductions.com/3d/Trailer-3d.html
It works better than I expected. Our implimentation of it might need to be a higher level than the RED/CYAN glasses, but I should let my clients tell me what they want (novel approach eh?)
David
I have the same interest as David (3D for litigation work). But I’m sure I know much less about producing stereo 3D than he does. (Thanks for the samples David!)
Here’s the thing I don’t get. I have some red/cyan paper glasses and have been viewing the trailer samples. What I see doesn’t particularly look good. I mean David’s trailer looks great to me but I don’t really see the 3D stereo effect. When I look at the image without glasses, I see the red/cyan offsets within the image… which is of course unacceptable for proper viewing. I know that viewing the normal, non-3D stereo image would be great (and at this point would be what I would prefer). But when I look through the red/cyan glasses, the image assembles itself somewhat… the offsets come together in some areas and try to form a proper image… but in other areas the offsets are no where near assembled together properly. For example, in the frame where the view is looking down the road with the trailer and you can clearly see the road stripe going off into the distance… when viewing the image without glasses, you can clearly see the red/cyan stripes are way apart. But when I put on the glasses the stripes are still way apart… they are not assembled into a single stripe. Basically throughout the image there are many areas where the offsets are not assembled for me and this results in a kind of ghosting/strobing effect which when added to the weirdness of wearing paper glasses (with light leaking around edges), etc. makes for a weird viewing experience. Maybe it’s my glasses or my eyes that have a problem but I am not getting that ‘wow’ effect that says ‘hey… this is 10 times better than viewing a regular image’ and therefore I have a hard time imagining that a judge or jury would be comfortable with the experience. Whether I view the image on the computer screen or my HDTV seems to make no difference. Maybe using polarized glasses would be different for me.
I need to try and spend more time learning about stereo 3D and viewing more stereo 3D images but always seem to be too swamped with work.
Thanks!