Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/24970
Although stereo 3D for broadcast and non-feature film applications is still in its infancy, it’s not too soon for designers to discover what creating graphics for the medium entails. “It’s time for designers to get their heads around it, to become known for it among clients on the leading-edge and to build the muscles required to do it well,” declares Alex Lindsay, founder of San Fran- cisco-based Pixel Corps, a guild for media producers with 1,500 members in 40 countries.“Graphics for stereo 3D requires a big rethinking of how you do things. It’s a whole different beast and often requires customization to be effective.” IN-HOUSE R&D Pixel Corps (www.pixelcorps.com) has been crafting 3D elements for the guild’s own informational podcasts that reach about 100,000 people a week.“We use our own productions for R&D,” notes Lind- say.“We did it when 4K became available on YouTube, and now we’re doing it with 3D. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it;we try to figure out how to do things while they’re still hard!” He reports that,“as soon as you get into 3D you realize that what you learned about how to frame and how to edit doesn’t work anymore. Most of the rules we’ve had don’t translate one-to-one in 3D. 3D is a lot more like the way we look at the world: things tend to want to be centered in the frame so your eyes can focus on them, and that breaks a cardinal rule of 2D filmmaking.” Opinions vary about the degree of 3D to implement, he adds.“Some supervisors want to converge behind the main subject, others right on the main subject. It depends on how your eyes feel afterwards: They’re working harder than in the real world where things are seen in one long shot. Focusing here, then there, then somewhere else puts a lot of stress on the eyes.As you start to shoot 3D and build 3D elements you have to stay conscious of the issue.” Complexities arise when graphics are composited over backgrounds, Lindsay points out.“If you want graphics over top of a background, you have to look at convergence and the interaxial distance in the background plates,” he says.“With lower thirds, for example, you want them to have some dimension, but they need to mix in with the physical plate and not blind the user.” Pixel Corps’ primary distribution medium is the Web, which uses “the lowest common denominator 3D anaglyph process with old-fashioned cyan and magenta glasses,” he explains.“That means we can’t use some blues or red in our graphics.” The guild is in the midst of creating 3D graphics for podcasts that will stream the MacWorld confer- ence in 3D. “It’s a big R&D test for us,” says Lindsay.“We hope to do more at NAB.” Designers on staff at Pixel Corps are using Maxon Cinema 4D for the full 3D open, lower thirds and titles and are tapping the SV stereo rig for the CG cameras instead of writing proprietary rig software. “It’s a great little pro rig that sets everything up so we can see where the convergence is, and it gives us a lot of control of the cameras.Then we render two passes and bring them into my own DV Garage Conduit nodal compositing system. Soon we’ll be able to composite stereo 3D in realtime;we’ll render then fine tune to make sure the graphics look good on top of the video.” The design rules have changed. By Christine Bunish www.postmagazine.com February 2011 • Post 15