The current wave of Stereo 3D cinema releases such as Bolt, Monsters vs. Aliens, Coraline and even the Jonas Brothers: the 3D Concert Experience has appealed to a new audience. Luckily they don’t remember the last time 3D was around- the ‘B’ movies that exploited the technology in order to cynically try to shift otherwise sub-standard fare.

 

Stereo 3D is now back - but for different reasons. With High Definition big screens increasingly placed in the living room, cinemas need to offer a more immersive experience to the punters. There’s also the not insubstantial issue of piracy- it’s far harder to pirate films in Stereo 3D. Oh yes, and it seems people will pay a premium to experience 3D.

Currently it’s reckoned that Stereo 3D films take two or three times more revenue than standard versions and sometimes it’s as high as six or seven times. For instance, 71% of My Bloody Valentine’s revenue came from 3D screens. CEO of Dreamworks, Jeffery Katzenberg, has already predicted that “moviegoers will some day own their own glasses for 3D viewing much like they own sunglasses today”.

 

 

 

 

THE CORALINE FACTOR

 

If you’ve seen Coraline in 3D the first thing you’ll have encountered is the title sequence, a macro-photographic collage of textiles and sewing.

 

There’s one shot in particular that seems to presage a new mature approach to stereoscopic 3D, towards using this medium to heighten perception, not batter it. There’s a moment when a giant needle emerges from cloth and leaves the screen, jutting towards the viewer.

 

But this isn’t the 3D gimmick and techno braggadocio from yesteryear. This particular shot isn’t there to shock or jolt, but rather is a humourous in-the-know nod towards the OLD way of doing Stereo 3D. It’s making fun of the old school. It’s a confident statement to make in the title, and a justified one (compare this with the pickaxe through the eyeball sequence in My Bloody Valentine and you’ll know what I mean).

 

It maybe in years to come we’ll see that Coraline in 3D marks the start of a more considered and intelligent way of using Stereo 3D (or S-3D).

Of course Coraline isn’t the first animated film to give an eager cinema audience a new S-3D experience. However, one gets the impression from most of the current slew of Stereo 3D CGI originated films like Bolt and Monsters vs. Aliens that the stereo aspect is a production pipeline add-on rather than being integrated into the design process. Not so with Coraline. It may be its material physicality (as opposed to CGI virtuality) that has something to do with this.

 

Might it be that working with a puppet model in a stop motion studio rather than in a software program on a screen means you are guided towards more appropriate decisions and a different engagement with the imagery you create?

 

There’s also the interesting adjunct that Coraline wasn’t shot with two cameras. The models were so small you couldn’t really get two lenses that close to each other to provide the two eye viewpoints. In fact, within the workflow process of making Coraline, each frame reminded you of the stereoscopic nature of production; a single camera was used to record each viewpoint, being alternately slid along an armature. So frame one was the left eye, frame two the right, and then the model was moved. Thus two different viewpoints were interwoven as one film.

 

If Stereo 3D is to take more than a novelty foothold in our cinemas it will be through animation rather than live action. Tim Mendler, one of a growing number of 3D Stereo cinematographers, mentions some of the obstacles to further ubiquity “As a digital process there’s an immediate problem in that the colourspace is 4:2:2; put simply, there isn’t the dynamic range of real film. There’s also the issue of brightness in the capture and projection. A dual lens camera is bulky to shoot with, and the weight for steadicam work is almost prohibitive, cutting down on your options. You also end up needing more lights, and this has repercussions for crew size. But out of all this, a different cinematic grammar may emerge”.

 

 

 

A SITE FOR SORE EYES

 

But S-3D movies are only half the story. Less than half, if you remember that computer games now outgross film. Also, the nature of S-3D involves the sensation of moving THROUGH a space and as such lends itself to a quest, a hunt, or at least exploration by the viewer. And that, of course, is what computer games have been doing since day one. So will S-3D find its true place in games, not cinema?

 

But if cinema goes fully S-3D, what will happen in the home? Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks is on record as saying “3D in the home will be led by gamers.” Director and technophile James Cameron agrees, stating “3D displays will become a must for video and computer games”.

 

So let’s turn our attention from Hollywood to Leamington Spa, and the offices of Blitz Games Studios. Blitz have been one of the UK’s major games developers since 1990, and now have a complement of over 200 employees creating popular games for PS2 and 3, Wii, Nintendo DS and Xbox 360. They make family games such as Karaoke Revolution: American Idol, Bratz: Girlz really Rock as well as more hardcore games like the neo-noir Dead To Rights, and Reservoir Dogs.

 

Blitz are headed by twin brothers and games legends Andrew and Philip Oliver, who were 1980s schoolboy coders whose first games were created on the Sinclair Spectrum and BBC Micro. The Oliver Twins are incidentally credited with creating the first game to load from a CD rather than cassette. That kind of attitude for technological innovation meant they also created the first Xbox game, Fuzion Frenzy.

They’ve seen a lot of technologies and fads pass by and know that today’s climate isn’t the best to punt a new technology. However, after seeing Epic Games demonstrate a S-3D version of Unreal Tournament 3 running on a PC at SIGGRAPH, and hearing a leading industry technology spokesman suggest that consoles weren’t powerful enough to run S-3D, Andrew Oliver returned home and set Blitz’s technical team to create a solution. 

Andrew Oliver betrays an evangelical zeal over stereo 3D in games, and it’s infectious. His message is simple; Try It.

 

 

In a collaboration with Namco Bandai Games, Blitz have created Invincible Tiger: The Legend of Han Tao. It’s a stylised hand to hand action game. It looks retro with its fake film grain and scratches, rich colour palette and tongue in cheek moves and humourous quirks. It seems to simultaneously reference both old kung fu movies and coin-op beat ‘em ups from the late eighties. It can be played in single and multiplayer modes and it’s the first game to be created in Stereo 3D. As Han Tao you fight to reclaim the Star of Destiny from the Evil Overlord and his evil ninja throngs with a series of pugilistic and agile acrobatics.

 

With its scrolling wide-angle proscenium-arch style composition, at first glance it’s a strange choice for the medium of S-3D as the action happens perpendicular to the viewer. There are no fists flying at you and you won’t find yourself ducking as errant shurikens whizz past you. Again, as in Coraline, we are seeing the appropriate application of the stereoscopic art, far away from the accusation of gimmickry.

 

 

Blitz’ Senior Animator Ollie Clarke developed the original concept of Invincible Tiger and became it’s Project Manager - "I wanted to make a game that played like the martial arts games and movies I loved when I was growing up, and that's something we stuck to from creation through to development. It’s a fluid fighting game, easy to play but difficult to master!”

 

Andrew Oliver takes up the story. “Of course this isn’t new. The first S-3D film to make money was way back in 1922, The Power of Love, and the audience used Red-Green Anaglyph glasses. The first use of Polarising lenses, which is today’s preferred method was in 1936.”

 

Regarding the adoption of S-3D in games, Oliver makes a pertinent point, “After seeing Coraline, no-one is going to want to play the game version unless it is in S-3D too”, but he also warns that “There needs to be fast action on standards. Games take up to two years to make”.

Oliver is alluding to the need for TV manufacturers to add 3D capabilities to TVs as standard. This is a major bottleneck at the moment. Why buy a 3D game if your telly (even though it might be HD) can’t display it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

STEREO SPEAKERS

 

Imagine interviewed three key players at Blitz Games Studios about their experience of developing Invincible Tiger. Aaron Allport was R&D Art Manager, Ollie Clark was Senior Animator and they were joined by Kim Blake, Blitz’ Education Liaison Manager.

 

You could say S-3D at the cinemas has resurfaced as an attraction now to keep people coming to the cinema at a time when everyone can experience large scale high definition images at home on their TVs. If so, what is the exploitation of S-3D in Games a response to?...and why now?

 

Ollie: “Well, Blitz mostly create games for consoles and it so happens that a lot of our games already run in 1080p at 60 frames a second; a sufficient spec to create quality S-3D. This is also what Blu-Ray can display. Our system also relies on the console having HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) technology cables, so it suits the console infrastructure, although it will never be available on the Wii for instance”.

 

Aaron: “The demand for widespread S-3D will come from games. Cinema, especially CGI films may be ahead of us on this, but it’s about the demographic. Movie-goers aren’t used to peripherals like polarising glasses, whereas gamers will adopt any peripheral which will add to their experience within the game and heighten its intensity. It’s about taking part, about immersion, and gamers will readily adopt any technology or gadget which will promote that. Gamers put on headphones as a matter of course, for instance, whereas it’s harder to think of a family huddled round a TV to watch a 3D film”.

 

Kim says “you can’t underestimate the effect this will have on atmosphere as well as gameplay. Imagine how creepy a game like Bioshock would be in S-3D, since you’d feel totally immersed”.

 

Aaron: “But you need to get away from the gimmickry to ensure the sustainability of S-3D. That’s often been the mistake in the past.”

 

 

But what about critical mass? Will it take off, or are games publishers edgily waiting for someone else to dip their toe in the water first?

 

Aaron: “The big players ARE working on this. We’re not the only ones, believe me. The lack of standards is slowing down adoption though. Essentially this is the new ‘Next-Generation’ for games, a step up like the move from Playstation 3 to 4”.

 

Ollie: “There will be a tipping point. After a while S-3D will be seen as the norm and today’s ‘flat’ games may seem redundant, who knows. Some time soon it’ll also be less invasive - even the glasses will only be a temporary step in the development of S-3D”.

Kim: “I think publishers are very receptive at the moment. Blitz has a role to raise awareness; our CTO, Andrew Oliver, demonstrated Invincible Tiger at FMX in Stuttgart last month”.

 

Aaron: “There is the issue of how to do demos and advertise without the technology to show it and how to get the message out through mainstream ‘2D’ media. It’s kind of a leap of faith for the consumer otherwise. But we also need to consider putting trailers on with S-3D movies for instance, so people see our products”.

 

 

Could it be said that this was another aspect of the CGI obsession with realism? Now that CGI modellers and animators are finding it harder than expected to surmount the Uncanny Valley, are they turning to S-3D?

 

Aaron: “There’s a feeling that CGI in film has done it all and hence the hype about James Cameron’s Avatar, that suggests something new. But in games, we’ve only just started, we’ve only had the tools for a short while in comparison. It’s true we still need to explore what we can do with levels of detail, but that’s different from trying to create a realistic 3D world”.

 

Ollie: “Realism is the wrong way to think about S-3D, as you can see from how we’ve applied it to Invincible Tiger which is heavily stylised”.

 

Kim: “Regarding the idea of S-3D as being the new Next-Generation, it’s important to remember that the games we make at the start of any cycle are vastly different than at the end. Think about the games that came out at the advent of PS2 and compare them with the ones at the end. It takes a while for studios to fully exploit any new technology. We’re just starting on S-3D, and that’s what really excites us. As soon as we saw results from some early tests, we knew it was worth it”.

 

Ollie: “It’s easy to talk about technical development and downplay the role of the artist. The technology is in place now and today’s games are good because of the artistic levels of judgement and excellence. It’ll be artistic inventiveness that drives S-3D forward because the technology is now embedded, it’s there.

Also, we need to remember that at the end of the day it’s about having FUN, not aspiring to any form of realism. I think it’s telling that usually after creating a game I want a rest from it, but with Invincible Tiger I still find myself returning for another play”.

 

Kim: “I have to agree with the attraction. I don’t count myself as a hard-core gamer, but Invincible Tiger is such great fun, and that’s because of the nature of the S-3D experience. S-3D is something that can’t be described, you just have to try it”.

 

 

Will S-3D mean a new visual grammar evolves with new conventions regarding framing or composition?

 

Ollie: “If so, it’ll be built around exploiting interpupillary adjustments and finding ways to apply this to emotional cues”.

 

Aaron: “Character design won’t change, but deployment might. The level of parallax used for instance, won’t necessarily depend on the object being displayed. It’ll be a judgement call. However environments are a different matter. They may need to be designed differently. Design-wise, we have to be mature and considered rather than just think all the time about how it might be exploited in an ‘in your face’ 3D kind of way. At the heart of our pipeline is BlitzTech, our middleware. Anyone with BlitzTech can create a game in S3D. We have custom stereoscopy composition shaders to enable it to be seen on a range of compatible monitors. We don’t need to worry about Stereo 3D at the asset creation stage; we can export assets quickly into our pipeline and check out how they look dynamically with our Livelink technology. For instance, we can make a change to our game, commit that change and see it updated on the Xbox 360 almost instantly”.

 

Ollie: “Actually, I think there is a minor issue with art asset creation. To get a 60 fps speed, game developers cheat by 'bill boarding' graphics, drawing things like flat trees rather than 3D. But these shortcuts can look awful in S-3D. Therefore, a lot more models will be required which will impact the art asset pipeline and budget.

However, Livelink allows you to do more iterations than ever before. It’s like you are changing the lighting, effects or textures within the game itself. In S-3D you start to see things like lighting or shadows that aren’t quite correct, even though they looked ok before. Also, there are no normal maps in Invincible Tiger”.

 

Kim: “It’s important to realise that getting this kind of feedback generally used to take thirty minutes to half a day - this used to really hold back the creatives. Now it’s instant”.

 

Aaron: “I’m a pipeline guy. It floats my boat. If a creative decision has to stop because of a technical process, then to me we’ve failed. So at Blitz we’ve concentrated on achieving fast feedback in the kind of tools we use to build our games”.

 

 

What about the nausea that some people claim to get from Stereo 3D?

 

Aaron: “The experience of S-3D is different for different people. The muscles in your eyes do have to work harder over extended periods of time. Fast cuts are to be avoided because of this, unless the depth is very similar shot by shot. This in itself changes the way you compose work. In the recent U2 S-3D movie they had to forget standard conventions of editing and allow parallax to do the work rather than relying on fast cuts which would have strained the audience”.

 

Ollie: “And don’t forget there are people who just can’t see it, either because they are monocular or have other eyesight issues. Then there’s the issue of frames per second. Any S-3D Game needs to be locked at sixty frames per second and not vary from that. When we investigated frame rates, we found that anything beyond 72 frames per second is a waste anyway, there’s no benefit to the viewer”.

 

Kim: “We’re just at the start of a learning curve. There will undoubtedly be design issues thrown up as we go along”.

 

Ollie: “Things like whether action in the foreground, say grass waving in a breeze, will detract from mid-ground and background action”.

 

Kim: “The depth has to draw you in to the story or gameplay, otherwise it might as well not be there”.

 

Ollie: “Clean lines and solids like in a Pixar film will work better than foggy, fuzzy outlines; the depth cues need to be clearly communicated. Also, certain genres may be more suited to S-3D. Maybe those with consistent focal lengths, like racing games will prove to be the most appropriate genre”.

 

 

 

NUTS AND BOLTS: HOW S-3D WORKS

 

Seeing things in the real world is different to seeing a filmic image. In everyday life our two eyes see whatever we look at from slightly different angles. These two images are fed to our brain which interprets depth and spatial information from these two viewpoints.

 

In order create a Stereo 3D picture, you need to have two viewpoints of the subject recorded which are then displayed or transmitted separately, enter the viewer’s eyes separately, and only finally get put back together in the viewer’s brain.

One way to make sure each eye sees only one viewpoint is through anaglyph imagery (from anáglyphos “wrought in low relief”). Take two photos of a scene with two camera lenses next to each other. On one lens place a red filter, on the other a cyan filter. (Red and Cyan mixed in differing intensities can create a wide range of colours).

Don a pair of similar glasses, and the Red (usually the left eye) allows only the red part of the image through. The red parts of the photo look white, and portions of the cyan image will look dark through this filter. Likewise, the Cyan eyepiece sees the opposite. Each eye, therefore, only sees one of the shots taken. It’s then up to our brain to take the image it receives from each eye and interpret the differences as depth and distance. This ‘traditional method’ has been largely replaced by glasses with light polarising lenses. The anaglyph method (because it is only capable of a colour range produced by Red and Cyan) is not able to reproduce rich colour imagery with a wide dynamic range.

Polarising glasses get separate images to each eye by only accepting a certain ‘angle’ of projected light. Such linear polarised glasses are problematic because the stereoscopic effect can be disrupted when you tilt your head and if you’re actively playing games, this might be an issue.

2005’s Chicken Little was the first film to utilise RealD’s Circular polarised glasses. Here clockwise and anti-clockwise lenses polarise the light, so no matter how you tilt your head the S-3D illusion is maintained. If you’ve seen a S-3D film recently, it’s probably with these glasses. In RealD cinema, each frame is projected three times to reduce flicker. A cinema film runs at 24 frames a second, so to reduce flicker the digital projectors project each frame three times so they run at 72 frames per second.

 

 

 

THE KEY (GAMES) PLAYERS

 

Neil Schneider is President and CEO of Meant To Be Seen (MTBS), which he terms as an advocacy and certification group. Neil launched mtbs3D.com after a conversion to S-3D a few years ago, and it has become the world’s largest stereoscopic 3D gaming community.

 

Schneider makes the point that S-3D has been around in computer games for a long time. Since the mid 1990s there have been a stream of Shutter Glasses, Head Mounted Displays and Stereoscopic display systems with evocative names like Cybermaxx, Virtuality, Xybernaut, n-vision. So why didn't it take off before?

 

Schneider suggests a cocktail of reasons: poor compatibility with existing games, very little awareness among consumers, and a requirement for above average technical knowledge to get it to work. The most popular systems were also based on CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) technology which have now been displaced by LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) technology, thereby making various systems extinct. Schneider also posits a further reason - games developers weren't consulted or involved in making the technology work properly.

 

"Without a consistent link between S-3D display manufacturers, game developers, and consumers, everyone loses", he says. “So far the game developers and consumers have been increasingly positive and helpful towards S-3D gaming. Getting the display makers to cooperate with each other is a much harder sell, and this hurdle will likely make or break our industry."

 

But now may be the time when things finally coalesce to give S-3D Games the final push into the mainstream. Here are three international companies who have put their weight behind S-3D.

 

NVIDIA

 

In order to see in S-3D each of your eyes needs to see a different image. Most computer games are created in 3D and ‘rendered’ on the fly as the play unfolds.

This is done by bits of code called APIs (application programming interface) like DirectX and Open GL.

Generally only one viewpoint is displayed, but an S-3D Driver can take that information and extrapolate two views in real-time, one for each eye of the player. This is what NVIDIA does with its GeForce 3D Vision stereoscopic technology. The advantage is that this can make many old games look stereoscopic. As you might expect it only works with NVIDIA graphics cards in your computer, but it is free. So your computer can now pump out S-3D, and all you now have to worry about is what compatible monitor displays can show the results, and getting a pair of NVIDIA wireless, rechargeable LCD shutter glasses which work by synchronising with a wide selection of monitors or even projectors. However, monitor displays do need to be set at the rather high 120Hz refresh rate to work.

Gamers can also take advantage of NVIDIA’s SLI (Scalable Link Interface) technology that can link two graphics cards together to share the heavy burden of rendering two alternate views.

 

 

iZ3D

www.iz3d.com

iZ3D claim the worlds first 3D monitor for gamers, a 22 inch screen with a 700:1 contrast ratio, a resolution of 1680 x 1050 with up to a 170 degree viewing angle. It works with linear polarised glasses and a list of compatible ATI and NVIDIA cards. The TFT (thin film transistor) liquid crystal of the display redirects polarised light to 45 and 135 degrees which is picked up respectively by the two eye lens of the glasses, thus ensuring each eye sees a separate picture at the same time. In reality iZ3D updates the images 60 times per second.

To create stereo viewpoints from the original game, drivers need to be installed on the computer. As the iZ3D website breathlessly point out “most games that have been released in the last six years are already written for 3D! They’re just waiting for the monitor!”

 

Essentially the iZ3D algorithm converts the 3D game into ‘back’ and ‘front’ information which is transmitted to back and front LCD panels or layers of the iZ3D monitor. The back panel information is then combined with the information on the front panel to create a mix of depth cues intended for the lens of the left eye (which sees 45 degree polarized light), and the right eye (which sees 135 degree polarized light).

 

It claims that almost any graphic card with two outputs will drive an iZ3D monitor. It needs the two outputs to maximise resolution rather than any trickery involving halving resolution to switch, shutter, or interlace left and right-eye images.

The advantage of this system over some others is that each eye sees allof the image all of the time.

It needs to be said that this ‘retro-fitting’ of S-3D means some games look better than others, pointing to the need to get S-3D instituted into the design process itself.

 

 

BLITZ GAMES STUDIO’S BLITZTECH TECHNOLOGY

www.blitzgamesstudios.com/blitztech

Blitz first showed off its proprietary technology for creating true stereoscopic 3D games running on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 game consoles at the 3D Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles December 2008.

 

The BlitzTech engine allows S-3D games to be built from the ground up rather than be ‘converted’ like the NVIDIA and iZ3D systems. Hence, design and artistry can be applied to the mobilisation of S-3D in Game production. Also games built with BlitzTech can be viewed with polarised or LCD shutter glasses.

Of course, this won’t work with any old TV or monitor, but S-3D enabled TV sets are becoming more common, with an estimated two million being sold into households this year. "Many TV manufacturers are already selling sets capable of displaying 3D imagery and we envisage that these sets will rapidly gain popularity as content in the form of movies and games becomes available”, says Andrew Oliver, CTO of Blitz Games Studios. “Our technology allows for our games to run in both 2D and 3D in one version by simply flicking a 'switch' between them”. Blitz are now licensing BlitzTech to other studios.

 

 

Experiments in S-3D

 

Animators are starting to experiment with S-3D. There’s even a European competition for stereoscopic short films called InvaZion. Started in 2008, it has categories in storytelling and excellence in visual arts. This year’s winners were announced at FMX in May, but the competition will return next year. See www.invazion.org for details.

 

This year’s winner was Tina Braun with her graduation film “Deconstruct”

 

Another earlier film that created waves in the S-3D community was "Moving Still" by artist Santiago Caicedo. A train window looks out onto a city landscape. Slowly the familiar starts to unravel.

 

For accessibility, both these films can be viewed with Anaglyph Glasses (Red/Cyan lenses)