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Converting 2D to 3D since Ghost Rider," he notes. "Many VFX companies and VFX supervi- sors see the logic in an approach we developed out of naiveté. We only realized we were unique when peo- ple at SIGGRAPH told us we were the only ones working this way." SPEEDSHAPE When Frank Rainone was an Gener8 converted almost 90 percent of Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. virtual camera pairs as if you were shooting with a stereo camera rig." The advantage to the process is that it allows Gener8 to "integrate closely with the VFX vendors; whether they're mono or ste- reo, they're working in 3D space and we are too. So our live-action conversion sits very well with the VFX. There's no guesswork, no eyeballing it. It all works out very naturally." Bennison notes that the company's process can be deployed on a large scale thanks to vendor partners in India, China, South America and the U.S., who help with the shot recreation process; the Vancouver headquarters produces the final shots. "When you convert an entire movie you're touching 2,000 to 2,500 shots, so an IT infrastructure and international vendor partners are very important," he says. "We use industry-standard tools to recreate the shots and do final touch-up and use proprietary tools for the stereo work." Bennison and other key executives and technicians at Gener8 hail from the game industry, so they're admittedly coming at motion picture problem solving in an uncon- ventional way. "Our engineering team built the heart of the pipeline, which reflects our history in the gaming space," he says. "It runs in realtime on a laptop so we can sit with the stereographer on the lot and author stereo with him while a shot is playing in realtime. Creative iteration is really easy; you can experiment with versions of a shot or across a sequence and make changes on the fly." Gener8's rendering engine hardware is based on the company's games heritage, too. "It's completely different from the typical VFX giant renderfarm," says Bennison. "It's more like a render petting zoo — portable and impressive." Gener8 is currently working on multiple major features, and Bennison is happy with the progress the young company has made. "We've made a lot of cool presentations 32 Post • May 2012 executive with the Weinstein Com- pany, he searched for a stereo 3D conversion facility for Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D. "We were looking for a conversion com- pany best suited to the project and had six companies perform tests," he recalls. "Speedshape was far and above the best." So they got the job. "Speedshape's management and organiza- tional skills went beyond anything I'd seen; and director Robert Rodriguez was impressed," Rainone reports. After Speedshape (www.speedshape. com) converted the entire feature, Rainone decided he "wanted to be part of" the 3D conversion process and joined Speedshape as executive producer and head of the New York office. The com- pany is headquartered in Detroit, with offices in Venice, CA, Montreal. and The Montreal studio is about three-quarters of the way through con- verting Weinstein's Escape From Planet Earth Expected ture, then implements Shotgun, the cloud- based shot management tool, to deliver ele- ments to artists. "Shotgun helps facilitate massive file transfers automatically and offers checks and balances," says Ward. "We try to leverage as much off-the-shelf software as possible and mix it with our propri- etary tools," he explains. Speedshape taps Autodesk's 3DS Studio Max and Maya to build sets to match plate photography, Pixel Farm's PFTrack to perform match moves and The Foundry's Nuke for custom conversion tool- sets. The company's proprietary process pulls depth maps, performs rotoscoping and gener- ates left- and right-eye versions. "People who have worked elsewhere have told us it's the amount of refinement we're able to do and the ease of use of the tools we've developed," says Ward about their process and way of working. "We continue to refine and develop things throughout, and our engineering team helps solve issues that come up along the way. We've automated a lot of mundane tasks and provide a lot of QC. Our process gives a tremendous amount of control to the amount of depth and where you place things in space." Ward says the company quickly built talent in Montreal. soon is another Weinstein- Rodriguez collabora- tion, Sin City 2. The com- pany converted all the VFX shots for Piranha 3D," whose live action was shot native 3D. Speedshape's involvement varies from project to project. "Robert Rodriguez had experience shooting stereo 3D so he had the technique in mind when he shot Spy Kids," says Mike Ward, VFX supervisor at Speed- shape Detroit. "In our discussions and initial reviews for Planet Earth, we talked and advised about things to 'look out for' in quality conversion. We transplanted two of our com- positors in the Rainmaker facility [where ani- mation is being done] to not only pull CG elements and layers of shots for a better quality conversion, but also help Rainmaker's compositors set up shots for cleaner and more efficient conversion when we get them." The company ingests individual shots from EDL frame sequences into its file struc- www.postmagazine.com Speedshape is currently working on Escape From Planet Earth. pools in Detroit and Montreal, training tradi- tional compositors and painters on the Speed- shape toolset, and "rolling out new toolsets quickly and efficiently to address any issues they discover. The quality of conversions has improved so much that producers are taking a second look at shooting 3D stereo, with all the gadgetry required for a successful stereo shoot, and coming back to conversions." STEREO D In just two years, Burbank's Stereo D (www.stereodllc.com) increased its staff from 14 to more than 250, then, in May '11 it was acquired by Deluxe Entertainment Services Group. "All creative work is chan- neled through Burbank, where we have 350- 450 artists," says Aaron Parry, CCO/execu- tive VP. "We also have a facility in Pune, India,