3Dfool

The 1988 Anime Classic, Akira based on the manga of the same name is being made into a live action feature film that is being produced by Leonardo DiCapiro of all folks. I’m very interested in seeing a better translation from the original comic to a film. While I loved the animated film, its story tried to cram some 15 hours of story into a 2 hour film and it suffered terribly from it. I’m excited to see another film, but I’m not sure live action or an American crew can do it justice. The director whose attached did a very interesting CG short film a few years ago called “Fifty Percent Grey” which is below the break.

For more info on this see the link to the Hollywood Reporter.

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So the guys at Stanford have come up with a CMOS sensor that takes an array of images and distills it into a deep pixel format image. Then you can extract multiple 3D depth images, refocus, recompose the final image. This would be an ultimate raw camera image. Only caveat is its sub resolution. If the sensor it 10 mega pixels, then a 10×10 array subdivides the resolution into 100 sub pictures. Not quite ready for prime time but this is very promising. Check the link for more detail.

Original CNet Story

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I’m sorry but this film looks bad. I saw this same trailer before the re-release of Nightmare before Christmas 3D. My professional opinion is this film will set the 3D movement back. The trailer was overwrought with frame violations too much parallax, and bad gimmicks. There was more eyestrain in this 2 minute trailer than I have seen in the last 20 years of 3D cinema. It might be a fun movie, but I think I will see it in 2D.

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Burbank, CA - January 24, 2008 - The Walt Disney Studios is taking the latest advances in digital 3-D technology “to infinity and beyond” with ambitious plans to debut new Disney Digital 3-D^TM versions of Disney- Pixar’s “Toy Story” on October 2nd, 2009, and “Toy Story 2″ on February 12th, 2010, it was announced by Dick Cook, chairman of The Walt Disney Studios. Both of these beloved animated features are being newly converted to 3-D in advance of the June 18th, 2010 release of Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 3,” which is being produced as a 3-D motion picture and will represent the state-of-the-art for the genre. Veteran Pixar filmmaker Lee Unkrich (co-director “Toy Story 2″) is directing.

Academy Award®-winning filmmaker John Lasseter (director of the first two “Toy Story” films and chief creative officer for Disney and Pixar Animation Studios) will personally oversee the creative side of the 3-D conversions for “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2″ with his acclaimed team of technical wizards handling all the necessary steps in the conversion process.

In converting “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2″ to state-of-the-art 3-D films, the technical team is retrieving all of the original digital elements and rebuilding them in 3-D.
Original Press release….

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/35398

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Well its been almost 5 years. FIVE years since I took down what was called Danimation.com the “Anything Coaster!” web portal and reclaimed it as my own professional website. I have done very little with it, and thats about to change. I’ve started a full redesign of the site, and I will be posting tutorials and hints and tips on the new design as well as here on my blog. This will be part of a new more active move to start making some real cash off of my effects knowledge and help to share it with the world. I’ll be more active on some websites and be posting advice and feedback to anyone who asks me for advice. Im working on a series of training Dvd’s that will start to come out summer/fall of 2008. More details on those as the release date gets closer.

Stay tuned there’s lots to come.

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Mitsubishi has developed this prototype 3D television that requires no glasses and displays a fully 3D view to the screen. The video is very good at explaining the basic process. If they can get this down to a consumer level this will be very cool.

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January 1st, 2008 1:00 pm Ralph Wilson Stadium.

What a game! Thats right, I had two tickets to the biggest hockey game of all time, the 2008 Winter Classic featuring a divisional rivalry of the Buffalo Sabres vs the Pittsburgh Penguins. Sure in the end the Pens won in a shootout. But WOW, what a great game.

I took my 8 year old son Danny to the game with two tickets my wife Sherri got us the day they went on sale. The weather was perfect. The snow came down in a gentle dusting that felt magical and inspiring. The wide eyed wonder of my son as 4 black hawk helicopters flew over our heads at the culmination of the anthem. The energy at the Ralph was unmistakable. The crowd swelled with cheers and boos as the game went from a one point deficit to a tie, to overtime, and the shootout. During the shootout, everyone in the stadium was standing screaming and on edge. We sat in Section 122 in the end zone above the tunnel that both teams came out of.

The Pens even wore their old school original baby blue uniforms and the Sabres wore their original uniforms from 1970 when the team was first formed. If hockey had a superbowl this was it. Sure it was cold, sure they didn’t win, but this game was perfect in every way you would want, The snow, the crowd, the shootout ending, what a great game.

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I have seen Beowulf in 3D Imax at the transit road Regal 18 in Lancaster. The movie itself was less than stellar. I found myself bored at times as the characterizations were flat and uninteresting. I felt like the actors were restrained by their mocap suits and lack of real sets in the CG extravaganza. It lacked passion and fire. Ironically both were rendered nicely as CG effects. The CG was amazingly real. Too real. The realism was so real that it required more of it to convey the emotions of the acting. The most successful character was Grendel, who was the most unrealistic. his deformed caricatured tortured visage worked better as a cg character then the photo real humans did. I think this is part of that uncanny valley. Things that are too real, don’t look right, because they are not 100%.

Now the 3D part of the film was very well done. Most of the action lay behind the screen depth with very little breaking frame. There were a few eye poke moments that were uncalled for and stood out as “HEY THIS IS 3D and WE ARE GOING TO SHOW IT!” They were unnecessary and broke the illusion of the reality pulling you out of the film.

Overall I’d recommend seeing it in 3D for there is no bigger 3D spectacle than Beowulf. The film was better than most, but still lacking.Its nice to see an animated film that is not designed for children, but in a bold experiment gone wrong, its not good enough nor will audiences embrace this kind of film for it to be a sounding bell for mature animation in the states.

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So its been a while since Ive done anything on the interweb. I am updating my blog and I will try to update it each day in some regrade into the future. I have stated to develop a new DVD training series for visual effects. I have a new digital camera with a 3D stereoscopic lens from Loreo thats allot of fun, and I will be terraforming my own website Danimation.com over in the very near future. In fact this blog will be a part of that site.

So many things to do. I will post a little image from my 3D as a taster of future fun…

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