This week, i am posting the videos that i have prepared for the 3December event. The blog post covers a wide range of knowledge on making stereoscopic CG with 3ds Max. And, most of all, you will learn the basics of making comfortable CG Stereoscopic images by taking the projection setup into consideration. 

3December Event

The 3December Online event was held last week and 6 master classes were made available for your viewing. You can find very interesting presentations visiting the dedicated page on The area:

http://area.autodesk.com/3december

There is a couple of 3ds max presentations including one from Liquid Development on the assets development for The Beatles : Rock Band game. My colleague Eddie Perlberg also does a presentation from the show floor at AU.

3December happens every year on that date and you can find tons of new material on the Area and you can attend live events in various cities around the world.

Stereoscopy videos

In order to make everybody aware of the videos i have produced for 3December, i decided to include them in this blog post. This way, long after the event will be over, you'll be able to refer back to those videos and use them for your stereo production. Also, because there is a comment section at the bottom of the page, we'll be able to continue the discussion about stereo and how to achieve great results within 3ds Max.

The videos are the most recent ones i have produced on stereoscopy. They contain new learning and concepts that i have never covered before. So, i hope you will be able to learn something new from them. I know that there are a lot of Power Point slides but those videos were intended to be a master class and it was the appropriate format for this presentation. I hope you won't mind... But don't worry, there are 3ds Max examples in there too...
At the end, you'll see that i use a Max Script that i wrote to make stereoscopic shots. The script is included below and you can use it/modify it as you wish.

Basics

Overview f the basics concepts related to stereoscopy. It's a good refresher before getting into the technicality of producing stereoscopic images.

Projection Technologies

A very brief overview of some of the technologies available today for viewing stereoscopic images.

Comfortable Stereoscopy

In this video, i review all the considerations that needs to be made to produce comfortable stereoscopic content.

Comfortable Stereoscopy | Practical Example

In this video, you'll use the rules of comfortable stereoscopy to produce a stereo image for a given setup: my office...

Stereoscopy as a Story Tool

Here, we'll see how stereoscopy can be used as a tool to better tell stories because, like many other camera effects, stereoscopy can generate emotional responses with the audience.
 

Stereo Camera Modifier in 3ds Max

This is the instruction manual of the 3ds Max modifier called "Stereo Camera". I wrote this modifier for my own use but you can download and use it in its current version by following what is explained in this video.

You can download the Max Script here:

userdata/fckdata/4952/StereoCamModifier_V1_7_3.rar (updated on july 25th 2011)

Please note that this script is not supported by Autodesk. If you find issues and limitations, you can let me know in the comments section and if i have time, i'll try to improve it. But, there is no guarantee that i will respond to every wishes that are made. If anybody else wants to work on the script and improve it, you are more than welcome to do so and share with us!

notes on june 15th 2010 update (V1.7.2):

• added Toe-in vs Film Offset slider to blend between the 2 convergence methods
• fixed the vertex error in languages other than english
• made the anaglyph preview faster
• added an option to unhide the cameras for rendering setups that have issues with the skew modifier when cameras are hidden
• added an option to see all the camera frustrums
• added color options for the colored filter glasses (you choose which colors to use for left and right channels depending on the glasses you have)
• option to preview in grey mode or original viewport colors
• added a "setup batch" button that adds the 2 stereo cameras as views in the batch renderer dialog (important: if you press this button while the dialog is opened, the views will not update. Close the dialog and reopen to update the views that have been added)

notes on July 25th 2011 update (V1.7.3):

• Force a complete viewport redraw so that the preview function works in the new Nitrous viewport (2012).
• Made the stereo zone's materials 2 sided so that they can be viewed correctly in the new Nitrous viewport (2012)

Viewing Stereoscopic Animations

This videos covers a few techniques to produce content for stereo viewers.

Conclusion

Few conclusion notes.