Thursday, December 6, 2012

Creating Stereoscopic 3D Images

Stereoscopic rendering is becoming more common place with 3D animation programs. While working on this assignment, I found out that Source Film Maker by Valve Studios has an option to render videos in Stereoscope. This software is based on the Source Game engine, designed and used by Valve Studios to make award winning games such as Half-Life 2, Portal, and Team Fortress 2.

Source Filmmaker came with the raw files behind some of their advertisement videos. I chose "Meet the Heavy" and rendered it in stereoscopic 3D. I Added ponies in a few shots (why? look no further than my "Laws of Physics in an Animated Universe" term paper; I'm a fan). The Models of the ponies were made by KP-ShadowSquirrel.



 Behind-the-Scenes look at Source Filmmaker

Rendering was relatively fast due to the nature of videogame engines

I also tried rendering one of my Maya animated projects with stereoscopic camera. However, due to technical difficulties, I settled for a single frame rendering

Original Animation

For the base requirements of the assignment, I took several photos and tried to make them stereoscopic.

Self-Portrait

One of my shelfs

Martin Luther King Library Atrium, San Jose State University