OT Theatrical Release Stereoscopic 3D (* unfinished project *)

I’m going to start this out very quietly, because I know of all the rumblings that surround Star Wars and its 3D counterpoint.  I have even watched as a few attempts on these forums tried, and quickly failed.

Now that well, Lucasfilm has been bought up and it seems to be that all continuation of the 3D conversion has been stopped by Disney, I feel that we were left really rather empty handed.  I waited in line for Episode I 3D in theaters, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I wanted to know first hand how it would end up.  After watching it, I had a bit of mixed feelings, as I’m sure many of you did.  But then it all ended and we were left with just one film, and it was never released.

I’m a video editor, and I know my in’s and out’s of stereoscopic 3D, and that hard reality that comes with converting a film that is already 2D, but if it is gone about angle by angle, it can be done.  Now what does stereoscopic 3D mean?  It means you need to have a 3D TV with a 3D Blu-Ray player (or a 3D TV that can play USB files) in order to view this.  No old red/cyan glasses.  Those destroy the color and defeat the purpose of the 3D all in itself.

So what are my plans?  I want to start with Star Wars: A New Hope first of course, this will show truly whether or not this project is viable to the community, and what I mean by that is the actual effectiveness of the 3D.  Due to the physical darkness in the OT compared to the new the 3D viewing will be much more difficult, so this is quite an experiment.

As of now, I have actually completed a general conversion of Star Wars: Episode II in stereoscopic, while I did not take the time to develop angle by angle, it was a good proof of validation for me.

My question to the community I think would be what version to convert of ANH first?

I will be releasing these as a digital download, although be forewarned, in my test with Episode II the end conversion rate was over 13GB in HD!  I have attached photos in order to show that I am already on my way, note they are from Episode II and its conversion.

I know it is hard to understand without either having a 3DTV or the video file itself, but it is just a proof of concept at this moment for everyone to see!

Thanks

Sounds like a good idea, though how are you doing this?  And can you make some red/cyan analyph images to see the 3D?

emanswfan said:

Sounds like a good idea, though how are you doing this?  And can you make some red/cyan analyph images to see the 3D?

Yeah this sounds super neat but 3D tv's really aren't all that common still so a lot of us (me included) won't be able to offer any suggestions on how this looks :(

Darksideoflite.

I too saw the Episode one conversion and yes had mixed feelings. I thought they could have gone further and was waiting for the "wow 3d" moment which for me never really happened. But I must admit I left the movie waiting to see the rest. I did several conversions of certain scenes from Star Wars just using different generic 3d conversion programs, which sometimes looked good but mostly failed.

If you can pull this off I'll be mightily impressed and I will wait with baited breath to watch.

emanswfan - there are many different operations that going into 2D to 3D converting, running multiple scripts, also using depth generators.  Unfortuantely when it comes to 2D to 3D converting you will never get the same look as with what is shot in 3D originally, almost always you will end up with a cut out like 3D, but ultimately that is what can be done, unless of course you begin using animation and building scenes while laying over the original content, which is what few major multimillion dollar cinema converters end up doing.  

Brooks - That is the downside to this project, there probably will only be a hand full of people that get to experience this, but for those that can I hope they will fall in love all over again by being immersed in this world.  

polta - Thank you for your deduction, I truly appreciate outside comments all the time in order to make sure I get the best converting done.  I will say that the Episode II conversion was done rapidly and without finesse and attention to true detail, I wanted to convert it though to make sure that what I wanted was plausible in the first place.  I'll see what I can do about getting you guys a short clip!

Ipd - thank you much for your support, and I'm glad to hear that I wasn't the only one feeling the way I did about the first release in 3D!

Thank you all, hopefully tonight I can have a clip of what the 3D experience really is like.

Was TPM trailer officially released in half or full sbs?  If that's true, might make sense to take your 3d creation system, attempt a shot or two shots and see how they comparison to everyone.

The presentation at the recent Celebration for the AotC 3D had some great photos of the length they were going to get the depths they felt worked.  But they had the 3D geometry to play with.  Two clips they focused on were Obi talking to Dexter and part of the Zam chase.  With the Dexter clip they could ratchet the 3D effect to pull his nose toward camera or foreshorten the character in relation to the background.

There was a guy on Youtube a while ago who did lots of Star Wars conversions some of them were very good, he used to take requests from members as to what movie and scene to convert, he said the whole thing was done using his "secret method" and he was trying to get movie studios to employ him and his method. Will try to find a link but theres loads of crap ones about on Youtube.

Wow, I had no idea they're doing a 3D version of JP

It's out next month, isn't it?  Surprise!

Yeah, you're in for a ton of work to do it properly, but it would be very cool to see.  I actually was impressed with the execution on TPM - not absurd 3D but adding subtle depth, and it actually improved some shots (like OOM9 communicating with the TF guys) by making the composition pop.  Very disappointing that Disney has kaiboshed the rest of the films. 

There is software to convert SBS to anaglyph of various flavors (yellow magenta apparently being a good one).  I've run the Nightmare Before Christmas 3D, that I believe ILM did, through one package and it works, so even if the final version is only sbs for 3d sets, the rest of us should be able to make something out of them too.

Good luck!

What are you using for the conversion?  It looks far too good to be anything automated.  I know the ins and outs of stereo 3d too and generally rely on Mocha for After Effects which I find works out fairly well.  As for the comment on anaglyph 3d.  I honestly don't understand the hatred for it.  On it's own it does destroy the colors, but it only takes a usually fairly simple color correction to fix it.  Nobody's going to be watching it without the glasses anyways.  Granted, it will never look as good as polarized, but I think anaglyph 3d is perfectly viable for home viewing, and I'm sure the members of the community without a 3d tv would appreciate an anaglyph version of this as well when you get around to it.  If not I could probably do it in After Effects (I did the same thing with a Jurassic Park 3d blu ray rip).  But all that aside, this is a very ambitious project that I will be following with great interest.

Darth Lucas said:

What are you using for the conversion?  It looks far too good to be anything automated.  I know the ins and outs of stereo 3d too and generally rely on Mocha for After Effects which I find works out fairly well.  As for the comment on anaglyph 3d.  I honestly don't understand the hatred for it.  On it's own it does destroy the colors, but it only takes a usually fairly simple color correction to fix it.  Nobody's going to be watching it without the glasses anyways.  Granted, it will never look as good as polarized, but I think anaglyph 3d is perfectly viable for home viewing, and I'm sure the members of the community without a 3d tv would appreciate an anaglyph version of this as well when you get around to it.  If not I could probably do it in After Effects (I did the same thing with a Jurassic Park 3d blu ray rip).  But all that aside, this is a very ambitious project that I will be following with great interest.

I for one will be viewing this in polarized 3D. It's not like polarized 3DTV's are that expensive right now, even if you lose some vertical resolution.  At any rate, I would hope if this works, you would eventually do Revenge of the Sith, as I was quite looking forward to seeing that in 3D, even if I had to sit through AotC to get it. Can't say what I think now, since I'm in the process of moving, and our 3DTV is back at another house, but when I get the chance, I'll let you know. Looking forward to seeing some results from this project.

I actually have a 3Dtv.  I was just saying that those without one would probably benefit from an anaglyph version.