Has anybody seen a stereo camera for Carrara to do anaglyph work?  There are add ons for Maya and 3d max that are stereo cameras but does such a thing exist for Carrara?

Thank you.

 Not yet. However, it would pretty easy to make. But, unless specific code is written, the two renderings would need to be composed in post prodution - unlike the plug-ins that do that for you.

How do you make it.  BTW in Maya you get two separate jpegs (left eye and right eye) and you have to compose them together in post.  Thank you.  I have tried but can never get the correct eye separation.

 I actually wrote an article about this several months ago for 3D Artist magazine in reviewing how the studios work with both CG and real Camera rigs. I'm jamming on a deadline right now but I'll put something together and post it up. 

Thank you.

There's actually some YouTube vids up with anaglyphs made in Carrara. Render with one camera as right eye, and have another camera as a child of that for the left eye. Etc.

Here's a nice YouTube vid showing the process: Anaglyph 3d with free software.

The vid actually shows how to do it with GIMP & D|S. But would work for Carrara and PhotoShop just the same. (The concepts are more important than the software for this process.) The anaglyph is made by using the 2D software to separate color channels and recombine the left and right images. (But if you're doing animations, it might be better to use PhotoShop with batch processing to produce the anaglyph result for all the frame pairs. There might be another trick to do batch stuff in GIMP with ScriptFu, but I'm not familiar enough to say for sure.)

I've attached two different methods of stereoscopic 3D. The "towed cameras" is old school but seems to be intuitively correct - however, it's the kind that creates uncomfortable viewing because of the different angles never perfectly being in focus/harmony. Even if each camera is in focus, slight differences in forward/backward distance creates visual problems when viewed. This is because of the convergence plane. 

The convergence plane is where both cameras are on the exact same focal plane and impossible to pull off with towed cameras. Stereoscopy is now created with two parallel cameras. Historically, this has been near impossible to do with real cameras - that is until Cameron's Sony special rig that uses super custom lenses to allow parallel cameras but with an optic film shift to bring them "closer" together. The bodies of the real cameras simply prevented them from physically getting close enough. CG is perfect for this though. Ideally, this distance is the real distance between two human eyes although practically, it is manipulated to enhance/exaggerate the 3D experience.

When I was interviewing the folks at Dreamworks, they indicated that for each CG stereo scene, they will sometimes have up to 5 CG stereo camera rigs. This lets them adjust the interstitial distance (distance between the two cameras) based upon a target object which helps them better control the 3D experience - it just can't be done done as well with a single rig. Of course this means some serious post production to composite the various elements. But it also gives the luxury of better DOF control which adds to the experience. 

This is done whether using anaglyph (red/green) separation or polarized separation (using the RealD glasses)

Mark

Mark

Thank you.  How far apart do I place the cameras?

 It really depends on how significant you want the effect to be. Ideally, it's the same distance as human eyes provided everything is in scale in your scene. However, for more in-your-face 3d, wider apart.

Thank you.

Free anaglyph maker:
http://www.stereoeye.jp/software/index_e.html

Do you remember which issue that your article was published in Mark?

Excellent information!! It stirred my interest enough to do a more in-depth research on it...

Thanks!

It's fun stuff!

Xerxes0002 - I missed your post. It was in issue No. 2