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Christoph Bungert (Admin)

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Posted on Wednesday, March 09, 2005 - 5:27 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post

I heard PE3D was the biggest IMAX-3D success in the USA so far.

Does anyone have background information on how the 3D-version was made? Did they render the whole movie from a second virtual camera point of view or did they some (dirty) tricks?

Was the movie done completely in a 3D-software or just 3D- and 2D-elements pieced together in a 2D-software - like 'Final Fantasy'? (If you don't believe this watch the FF-making-of on the 2-disc-DVD edition.)

In which resolution was the movie rendered? Did they use the same resolution for both 35mm and IMAX format?

The IMAX page and the reviews and articles I've read so far talk about 'conversion' and they are just crap by people who don't know what they're talking about.

Thank you.

Christoph
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Peter Wimmer

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Posted on Wednesday, March 09, 2005 - 6:31 pm:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post

Hello,

First of all, Polar Express is the best 3D movie I've ever seen. The 3D effect is very natural, not exaggerated or annoying. Because the movie must work in 2D as well, its makers focused much more on the story than any 3D filmmakers did before. Polar Express is a milestone in 3D filmaking: it is the first movie that uses 3D in a restrained way, it does not try to catch the audience's attraction with silly 3D effects.

Polar Express is fully computer generated, very likely by placing two virtual cameras in the rendering application. It was rendered at a resolution suitable for 35 mm film and upconverted to IMAX resolution using the same process which was used before for Matrix and Harry Potter. The lack of resolution is sometimes visible on the IMAX screen. It is presented in 16:9 format, therefore it does not fill the enire screen.

When I've seen Polar Express (in the San Francisco IMAX) there were two or three dropouts in the right channel. This makes me believe that a digital projection technology was used because I've never seen such dropout in 2D cinema nor in the Vienna IMAX. Does anybody has more information on Polar Express technology?
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M.H.

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Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2005 - 10:10 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post

According technologies used for Polar Express creation, I can not resist to give you link to this news :-) :

http://www.lightspeeddesign.com/weblog/archives/00000014.htm

DepthQ was used for the movies checking.
All sources were computer rendered from 2 views.

Just now they use a DepthQ version capable to play 1920x1080 per eye for another project checking. But the final movie rendering is done in much mor higer res.
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Christoph Bungert (Admin)

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Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2005 - 10:39 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post

Thank you for the infos.

If they re-render the movie for IMAX anyway, why do they use DMR? They could have rendered a higher-res version.

Christoph
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M.H.

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Posted on Thursday, March 10, 2005 - 11:52 am:   Edit PostDelete PostView Post/Check IPPrint Post

I do not know in what resolution was done the final rendering ... I was involved only in developing a system for fast checking of the previews.

The final distribution is as far as I know done on film material - so DMR plays no rule.

Samuel Zhou (IMAX)had given a talk abou the future of simila project during the SD&A conference. Generaly they vere wery happy with the Polar Epxres result. So we can expect
anoter simultaneous release of 2D and 3D films
in the future ...

If you have some specific question related to Polar Epxress , you should probebly try to contact Samuel Zhou directly.

According older films release - the key problem is
a lots of things in 3D animated films are done in 2D. Only the critical parts are realy rendered in 3D. It is neccesary to have the stereo release in the mind during the whole proces - so i do not expect 3D stereo release of some older projects. It will be neccesary to re-done them from zero = to much expensive and not economical for a release.

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