Back in 1977 there were no Maya, no shaders, no spacemouse…
Here’s another video from the EVL, the lab that created the Cave :
(1977) The computer graphics for the first Star Wars film was created by Larry Cuba in the 1970s at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) (at the time known as the Circle Graphics Habitat) at the University of Illinois at Chicago
10:09 
3d, Art, Game development
by FUJIKI Ju for Sony, PS3 and PSP, 2008.
10:21 3d, VR Displays
After the early tests (1838),a golden era (1952-1955), a revival (1960-1979), and the beginnings of IMAX 3-D (1980-1984), it seems stereoscopic movies are in for a new-new-new revival!
James Cameron is the leader of this movement that never quite stopped, after having filmed two 3D IMAX 3-D films, he “is committing ALL his future film projects to 3D.”
“Adding 3D stereoscopic display to the burgeoning digital cinema rollout is the best way to save the theatrical experience. And, bring people back to the movies.” he said in his NAB’s Digital Cinema Summit keynote.
Indeed, you can’t copy a 3d movie; who has stereoscopic displays at home? (Well.. I have but I’m not a normal guy..)
From Wikipedia: “In November 2005, Walt Disney Studio Entertainment released Chicken Little, in the new digital 3-D format known as REAL D” (who bought Stereographics, the famous 3d glasses maker).
Disney discovered that something like 10% of its screens (those with 3D projectors) generated more than 25% of the revenue from “Chicken Little” in 3D. (…)
Shooting in 3D Cameron says adds about 15% to overall production costs. Transforming a blockbuster film afterwards - such as exploiting In3’s 2D to 3D technology services - costs more. Still, George Lucas is committing the Star Wars saga to the treatment as is Peter Jackson for the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong.
And more is coming! DreamWorks Animation announces its intention to produce all of its films in stereoscopic 3D technology starting in 2009.
The trend is set.
3d movies imply new ways of filming, of course on the hardware side, but the composition has to deal with the 3rd dimension to create a new grammar. Lenny Lipton, CEO of REAL D says :
The control of space is different. What is accomplished in planar, or 2D, filmmaking with focus and lighting and perspective can now be addressed in additional ways. (…) Placing objects in relationship to the plane of the screen. This is entirely in control of the filmmakers. In other words, pay attention to what plays at the plane of the screen, what plays in audience space, and what plays in screen space or behind the plane of the screen.
If you’re interested in the technique, the REAL D blog is interesting.
In order to take full advantage of the new technology, DreamWorks intends to make films with the stereoscopic 3D concept in mind from the beginning of the production process. The company believes that this approach will increase its storytelling opportunities and create a more immersive movie-viewing experience.
“Historically, 3D has been used primarily as an add-on or a bonus feature,” Katzenberg (Chief Executive Officer of DreamWorks Animation) said. “And while audiences have enjoyed that, they haven’t really seen the true potential of this technology. We’re going to use the latest stereoscopic 3D technology to build our movies from the ground up. We believe that this will create more opportunities for our artists as well as more compelling experience for the audience.”
The growth in the number of theaters capable of projecting 3D films has dramatically risen in the past two years. It is expected by 2009 that there will be several thousand screens equipped for 3D.
Last week I was invited at La Géode’s (IMAX theater in Paris) inauguration of their digital stereoscopic projectors. They use 6 Barco Galaxy projectors and Infitec technology for filters and glasses (Note that the displayed image isn’t 360°, it’s “only” about 30mx20m). Some 3D effects were really well done, and I can’t wait to see movies that are specially tailored for this kind of displays!
Once you’ve started tasting 3d viewing, getting back to 2D is frustrating.
But the next step is even more interesting. Some people you know are already working on stereoscopic, realtime 3d, interactive content (so many words!) for such theaters, and that, my friends, is really impressing. Stay tuned!
10:10 3d
Here’s a really nice video by Justin Henton called ESC :
Inside a 3D program a mouse cursor creates a 3-dimensional character that comes to life after an unknown error in the program and gets into a journey across the computer desktop
Esc is my student film completed in 8 months at Emily Carr Institute.
13:16 3d
Teapotters is to 3D what Flickr is to pictures. You can interactively look at 3D models, post your own models, assign tags, apply different shaders, and download the file if needed. You can also embed the player to show a particular model on your blog for example 
Teapotter uses the Virtools 3D Life Player (formerly known as the web player).
It’s still in private beta, [but I’m told it’s easily accessible, and you can see/download the 3d models without having to sign up]. Here’s the official presentation video :
10:08 3d, VR Displays
Interesting technique to see depth in images, the lenticulation. It seems all you have to do is take 3 offseted pictures. Amazing =) Does anybody know how to build/buy one of those camera?
Here’s a video of a project from Fab@Home, “a cheap self-assembly device capable of fabricating 3D objects” as described by News Scientist.
“We are trying to get this technology into as many hands as possible,” Malone told New Scientist. “The kit is designed to be as simple as possible.” Once the parts have been bought, a normal soldering iron and a few screwdrivers are enough to put it together.
(…)
Malone and Lipson hope Fab@Home will grow into a community of enthusiasts who share designs for 3D objects and even modify the machines for themselves. This will prompt the emergence of widespread personal fabrication, Lipson hopes.
(…)
“We think it’s a similar story to computers,” he explains. “Mainframes had existed for years, but personal computing only took off in the late seventies.” A cheap self-assembly computer called the Altair 8800, launched in 1975, sparked the rapid development of personal computing
(…)
Bowyer adds that (…) “I can imagine people swapping plans of things to make online, or paying to download them instead of going to the shop.”
9:48 3d
15:34 3d
NVIDIA rethinks the GPU with the new GeForce 8800 ( from ArsTechnica ) :
“The G80 architecture that powers NVIDIA’s new G8800 graphics processor has been four years in development, and its new-from-the-ground-up design marks a significant departure from previous PC GPUs. (…) It’s actually built from the ground up as a highly multithreaded, general-purpose stream processor, with the GPU functionality layered over it in software. (…) So with the G80, a programmer can write a stream program in a regular high-level language (HLL) that compiles directly to the stream processor, without the additional overhead that goes along with translating HLL programs into a graphics-specific language like OpenGL.”
If I understand correctly there will be 128 Streaming processors…
Look at some videos.
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