On modern 3-D movies

[prberk]

I asked this in a conversation about Star Wars VII, but decided to post it for everyone, because I really want to know the answer. I also want to know everyone's opinion on movies like Star Wars or even The Lion King and Harry Potter, which thrilled us for decades without 3-D and are story driven, being made in 3-D (either from the beginnning or re-done by computer). Here are my original comments and questions:

How do they do these modern 3-D films anyway? Do they always film with one lens and have a computer take the image and separate the foreground images and move them slightly one way or the other, filling in ("guessing") the background that was behind them -- like is done for old movies?
Or do they consistently use two lenses these days, but make two different edits?
It just seems so much more complicated these days for film-makers. It worries me that artists that sit in the director's chair are shut out my techies.

 

[Dead2009]

Some films are converted to 3D in post production and some are filmed in actual 3D, i do believe.

 

[Bairstow]

Wikipedia has a fairly good overview article on the process. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2D_to_3D_conversion

The short version is that, in essence, a simple CGI animation for each scene is created that acts as a depth map, and when software "paints" the CGI with the original image from each frame, the resulting animation can be "re-filmed" to create separate left and right images. Depending on the scene, a lot a information that would be missing in the original clip, like, say, what is "behind" an object that was close to the camera, has to be either interpolated by the software or drawn/tweaked by hand by the conversion artists. Quality conversions take a lot of skill, time, and money.

You can also watch this:

 

[prberk]

Thanks for the info so far.

Do we know if most current movies are filmed in 3-D to begin with (say, with a dual-lens camera)? Or if all, even current films, start with the 2-D image and then have it enhanced by CGI painting and interpolation?

It just seems like if a lot of special effects are involved to begin with, it is double the work to animate one scene.

 

[Bairstow]

Thanks for the info so far.

Do we know if most current movies are filmed in 3-D to begin with (say, with a dual-lens camera)? Or if all, even current films, start with the 2-D image and then have it enhanced by CGI painting and interpolation?

It just seems like if a lot of special effects are involved to begin with, it is double the work to animate one scene.

Either because of cost or studio decisions, conversions are still far more common than true 3D cinematography.
http://realorfake3d.com/

Not sure about the integrity of that list, either, since it lists "Toy Story" as being "real" 3D and "Shrek" as being converted.