Following up on the last post about stereoscopic flatness, I’ve encountered a few papers and processes documenting attempts in production. Click the Gorgoyles for a very interesting tease paper by Disney Animation which allows at least a glimpse of their stereoscopic version of the hand-drawn classic “Beauty and the Beast”. Specifically, “a Patent Pending system was developed to allow artists to locate 2D planar elements – characters, props, effects, backgrounds – at a simulated virtual 3D depth and to give each element the impression of volume. In addition, the artists could animate the elements, align elements relative to each other and isolate and segment areas of an element. The process was envisioned as a “stereo composing” session where an artist composes stereo 3D and verifies the results on a secondary desk-side 3D monitor much like a commercial artist edits and composites a commercial on a high-end computer system and confirms the results in real-time or near real-time on a desk-side professional broadcast or HD monitor.”

They also include a rated overview of screening technologies. I’m sure they also analyzed the perception of drawn elements in stereoscopic… but don’t let any of that shine through here. How to marry an inherently flat perception of pigment on a substrate with bifocal depth cues? Is this at all desirable?