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GRAPHICS FOR STEREO 3D UVPhactory called on XSI and its stereoscopic tools for this Versus 3D graphics package. Lindsay believes we’re still “two or three years away from people wanting to see 3D graphics over their TV shows.” In the mean- time, he feels the tools will get a lot a better and easier to use at the next two NABs and SIGGRAPHs. He advises designers to start getting their feet wet now. UVPHACTORY SCORES FOR VERSUS NETWORK New York City’s UVPhactory (www.uvph. com) has been working in stereo 3D for about three years, commencing with the Bjork Wanderlust music video, whose many animated elements served as “a crash course” in how to deliver stereo 3D, says principal/co-founder Damijan Saccio. You might remember it as a Post cover (Feb.‘08). Most recently, the company created a stereo 3D college football graphics package for cable network Versus last fall for the Cal- ifornia/Oregon PAC 10 game. Not only was it Versus’s first 3D telecast, it also turned out to be the most-watched college football game in Versus history. “Sports is ahead of the curve for 3D,” Sac- cio notes.“We created a logo animation for the end of the open, a bumper and transi- tions in and out of replays for a Pac 10 game that aired in early December. Our task was to tie into the look of the open while taking ad- vantage of all the new stereo 3D capabilities.” One of the biggest challenges posed by 3D is that most clients have no way to view it properly. “That complicates matters and requires us to create anaglyph versions for 2D computer screens, which can be seen with the old red and cyan 3D glasses, so a client can get some idea of what the ele- ments are going to look like in 3D,” he ex- plains. “Then, to accompany that, we also show a full-color left eye render so that the client can see what it looks like in full color. Ideally, a client would have a 3D monitor like we have in our office, which allows for full 3D viewing with the same kind of polarized glasses that you use in a movie theater.” Rendering left and right eye versions dou- Santa Monica’s Brickyard VFX (www.brickyardvfx.com) collaborated with Oil Factory’s creative collective Tomorrow’s Brightest Minds (TBM) on a :30 3D Disney/Sony spot that is currently airing. This family-oriented spot, called 3, simultaneously promotes Disney’s Blu-ray DVDs and Sony’s new 3D TV while using the Schoolhouse Rocksong, “Three is a Magic Number.” In the ad, a family of four wears 3D glasses and sits down to watch Disney’s Alice in Wonderland. The family sees stars, flow- ers and other plants come to life in their living room. TBM called on Brickyard to recreate the iconic feature elements from Alice in Wonder- landin CG as 3D stereo elements. The studio used Maya and Flame. 16 Post • February 2011 bles the amount of rendering time, which “can be significant” depending on the length of the deliverables.“As much as the software has im- proved and become automated, there are so many adjustments you can make to fine tune things that you have to factor that into your schedule,” notes executive producer Paul Schneider.“We get a lot of 3D package requests with the same schedule as 2D pack- ages; it’s part of the education process to re- alize it’s going to take longer.” UVPhactory used Autodesk’s Softim- age|XSI as its primary tool for the college football package where banks of stadium lights and spinning logos serve as transitions, and a football sails through the ring of the Versus logo poised over the goalpost at the end of the open.“XSI has a new release for subscribers that contained some stereo- scopic tools, which were very helpful to us,” reports Saccio. Adobe After Effects and Apple’s Final Cut Pro were also employed. Previous 3D projects had been delivered digitally, but this project had to be delivered on tape.“We found that Sony’s SRW-5800 recorder, which we booked at PostWorks, can input the left and right eye into two sepa- rate video channels. So it can go out live and www.postmagazine.com feed full-size left and right eyes, which the live production truck required,” Saccio says. UVPhactory is currently finishing stereo 3D titles for a TV show and a graphics pack- age for another 3D broadcast job. IT’S A PIC-A-NIC FOR YU + CO Having created stereo 3D main-on-end credits for Shrek Forever After and the new 3D logo for the 3ality camera system, Hol- lywood’s Yu + Co (www.yuco.com) turned its sights to crafting smarter-than-the-aver- age main-on-end credits for the Yogi Bear 3D feature. The company pitched several ideas for what was supposed to be the main title se- quence, but later became the main-on-end credits.A scenario depicting the original car- toon characters — Yogi, Boo Boo, the Ranger — in silhouette traveling through a cel animated-style landscape filled with pic- Yu + Co used After Effects and Flash to create a cel animated feel for this Yogi Bearopen. a-nic references (pretzels, watermelon, kabob ladders, cotton-candy clouds, fire- works with turkey drumstick and carrot pin- wheels) had “equity that old and new audi- ences could identify with,” notes art direc- tor/design lead Synderela Peng.The credits stood in stark contrast with the style of the live-action/3D-animated film. But the end sequence’s graphics needed to be crisp and clean with no fuzziness around the edges, something that’s not al- ways easy to achieve in stereo 3D. “There are very specific things you have to think about in designing in 3D,” notes ani- mation director and VFX legend Richard Tay- lor, who was a VFX director on the original