Avatar and 3D

Monday, January 4. 2010

The Wednesday before Christmas several of my new coworkers from Kitware went to see the new Avatar movie in 3D. I haven't been to the movies much recently, generally just using Netflix to watch movies at home. I have to say it was well worth it, and I have been trying to talk Louise into going to see it with me again. We saw it at the local IMAX, and the images really popped out of the screen. It was a little off putting that they use linearly polarized light, so that the effect is lost when tilting your head. I would highly recommend that you make the trip out to see it in 3D, and hope to figure out babysitters and all that stuff so that Louise and I can go and see it before it leaves the big screen.

The story was quite engaging, but I did find it really quite lame that the mineral they were mining was called "unobtanium", or that is what is sounded like. They could have chosen a better name, but it at least it seems to have been used tongue in cheek. That said I moved my head out of the way once or twice when an object swung around. It was also amazing how much emotion was conveyed in the characters, and how tough it was to tell where the CG and real sequences were joined.

I would love to have access to 3D of this quality on my desktop. When are the 30" 3D monitors due out with Linux and OpenGL support?!?

Posted by Marcus D. Hanwell in General at 19:48 | Comments (8) | Trackbacks (0)

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Is that the material I(nob)tanium is made of?

#1 Alejandro Nova on 2010-01-04 20:28 (Reply)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium

#2 Andy Goossens on 2010-01-05 06:54 (Reply)

Well, I was interested in the 3D-Techniques as well after I had seen Avatar (with the circular polar system). It's pretty amazing. It looks like Sony, Apple, LP and maybe even Samsung are planning to bring out circular polarized screen (First TV-screen and then computer screens for games). The thing is that it needs a dual graphics card with a dual input, because there are 2 images. The only other systems would be with shutter glasses (way too expensive and complex) or with anaglyphs (no true colours). It would be great to see KDE in 3D though, but usability might then be an issue.
Anyway, the technology is almost there, but the big problem is free software for it. Even in blender (except the game engine), you need to coordinate 2 cameras because it's not laid out to do stereoscopy natively, which is pretty much a pain. The algorithms for the focal distance and that kind of stuff would be easy to implement. Really, the biggest issue is showing the 3D contents...

#3 Anonymous on 2010-01-05 07:42 (Reply)

Hehe well in regard to the lame story:

http://web.me.com/pascalboogaert/Site/foto3.html

It's just pocahontas in 3d with a few sed 's///g' runs

#4 Milian Wolff (Homepage) on 2010-01-05 07:49 (Reply)

I disliked that there was still the concept of focus. If not everything is in focus then not everything is clearly visible. I can understand this problem in recorded images. but do not see why the out of focus images are rendered. When rendering, everything should be sharp.

#5 Jos on 2010-01-05 10:26 (Reply)

Well, if you want everything sharp then it won't look natural. The eye focusses on some object too, not everything is sharp

#6 Anonymous on 2010-01-05 10:29 (Reply)

He, I liked the movie too. And the 'Unobtanium' thing - I found it funny. If you make the most expensive movie ever, yet have the guts to make fun of such a rather important element (phun intended) I think it's neath

#7 jospoortvliet (Homepage) on 2010-01-06 03:09 (Reply)

I saw the Pocahontas in 3D link, I thought it was really funny. I kinda found it funny that they could poke fun with the unobtanium name, but would have preferred 'reallytoughtofindonium'... I am no movie critic, but I certainly enjoyed it.

It would look very fake if everything was sharply in focus. I did wonder if the effect was amplified by the clever use of motion in many parts of the movie.

#8 Marcus D. Hanwell on 2010-01-06 20:10 (Reply)

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