Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/17668
3D Stereo Compositing paint, roto and keying become much more intensive as these are typically hand-done and can be tricky to make work in stereo.” PAUL LAMBERT: “In general we’ve found the main difference is precision. Over the years we developed little tricks to more quickly achieve a final composite in 2D, but those tricks don’t work on a 3D film because every element is assigned a specific depth on screen.This requires much more precision to ensure that each element exists in the correct 3D space, otherwise it would negatively affect your viewing experience.” David Cox used SGO’s Mistika on this Samsung spot. move into a stereo pipeline. After that, it is just a matter of being consistent in your ap- proach to compositing both eyes.” WESTLEY SAROKIN: “Compositing in stereo is tricky in that when you’re working on a shot, any effect or fix done without considering the stereo implications can cre- ate visual disparity between left and right eye, which can cause visual discomfort for the viewer. In a traditional 2D composite, all one needs to focus on is how the individual image looks, whereas in stereo, you need to make both left and right eye images work both individually and together. Tasks like POST: Did the changes you made to your tools and workflow integrate well with your cur- rent 2D environment? COX: “Being a user of Mistika, I didn’t change anything as Mistika is as happy at 3D as 2D. It has some great tools to deal with the difficulties of 3D, yet also allows me to ‘hide’ the fact that I am working in 3D, so I can just concentrate on making pretty pic- tures in 3D without the distraction of wor- rying about the logistics of 3D.” CREAN: “Although most of the tools we use have stereo capabilities, being that stereo is a relatively new medium, there were certainly gaps where we had to come up with solutions for. Some of these chal- lenges were quite surprising in that we don’t think twice about them in the realm of tradi- tional 2D compositing. “One example of this was CG-generated, stereoscopic lens flares. Not much thought is given to light traveling across a physical space in relation to other objects and its ori- gin when working in 2D. In stereo this is es- pecially important when you want to have sexy lighting originating in the far back- ground, yet still have it wrap and bleed around the edges of actors in the fore- ground. Another interesting challenge was typography and motion graphics. The Ar- mani project is bookended with animated title sequences. Figuring out a stereo work- flow for our designers while keeping them in their application of choice, with no stereo- scopic tools, was also a hurdle.” ALEXANDER:“Yes, the changes we made integrated well with our current pipeline. We’ve made a concerted effort to not change the way artists are used to working. I wouldn’t say that we’ve made the stereo- scopic aspects of the projects an after- thought, but there is probably 80-90 percent