Digital 3D?

[tonylong]

Hello All!

Recently, I went with my grandson to the 3D version of the movie Beowulf. It was done "digitally" and you wore special glasses that were not the two-color glasses you use with the "classical" 3D stuff. These just look like sunglasses. When you saw the movie without the glasses, though, it did have the color shift like the old-fashioned stuff.

So, I'm curious if any of you have information about this "digital 3D", and if the ability to apply this to our pics is out there? It seems like it would be a cool thing to experiment with. I did see a site with a 3D photoshop action, but it must have been for the older type of glasses because when I tried it with these, it just made me look cool because I was looking at my computer with shades on -- it didn't turn the pic 3D, though!

Any info?

[FlyingPhotog]

IIRC, 3D is now done using polarized light. One "lens" in the glasses is oriented vertically and the other is oriented horizontally.

I think (but don't hold me to this) they rotate a polarizer in front of the projector lens such that the "polarity" and registration changes with every frame. Your persistance of vision seamlessly combines the frames but the slight difference in registration makes the 3D image pop.

[tonylong]

Hhmm...that sounds like something somewhat different. At the theater, they had previews, some of which were "normal" and some which were 3D, and they just jumped from one to another -- no indication of a projectionist putting a polarizer on and off.

[FlyingPhotog]

Hhmm...that sounds like something somewhat different. At the theater, they had previews, some of which were "normal" and some which were 3D, and they just jumped from one to another -- no indication of a projectionist putting a polarizer on and off.

I think though, if there's no change in registration (no left/right offset), you don't see 3D.

[davidcrebelxt]

I use polarized glasses like that at work every day... I've seen several ways it can be done. In all of the situations, it requires a monitor that can refresh at over 100hz... (as far as I know, no LCD can do that... so that limits you to CRT.

1) Those polarized glasses as mentioned above. It requires a screen (Z Screen from stereographics) in front of the monitor that is polarized... changes its polarization in sync with with the flicker of images on the screen.

2) Similar, but this time wearing Crystal Eyes wireless glasses, where the lenses of the glasess themselves polarize... basically opaqing one eye while the other sees its own correct image, then flipping back and forth. (of course, so quickly you don't see it.)

3) There were some 3d gaming glasses (perhaps with video card?) that did similar to the above, but had a wire that led attatched to the computer.

I've used this program in the past with good results for making Anaglyph stereo images (ie: red, blue): http://www.stereoeye.jp/software/index_e.html
One interesting thing is you can make them grayscale angalyph, or you can acutally do color image anaglyphs (with varying results, of course.)

There's also a choice for making interleaved, for stereo glasses in that software... and the website above gives a link for a place that sells those glasses that attatch to computer (but apparently can only order them in quantities of 50 or more.)