Exclusive Tour of 3D Specialist Inition

INITION – AN EAST LONDON TREASURE CAVE OF MINDBLOWING 3D

I was fortunate enough recently to be invited to the demo studios of Inition – a rapidly expanding company who specialise in one thing – 'Everything in 3D'. And I mean everything, from 3D production to 3D printing but also augmented reality, haptic feedback and virtual reality.

Andy Millns, the company's Director and Co-Founder, took some time out to show 3D Focus a few cutting edge projects Inition has been working on recently.

Andy founded Inition in 2001 and since that time, has grown the company to a staff of 30 and opened an office in Melbourne Australia. Inition occupies a large office in the heart of trendy Shoreditch, London and it now has two offshoot companies – Holition (3D technology applications for retail) and Pointy Stick (a 3D production company).

Inition has created some of the most high profile 3D projects in the last few years and partnered with Sky to work on projects for their forthcoming 3D channel.

Talk about hitting gold. Back in 2001, there was not the 3D frenzy happening today but by establishing themselves early, Inition is in a position to offer experience and expertise that few other 3D production companies can.

My wait in the reception reminded me how long 3D has been around. Several retro 3D gadgets were screaming to be picked up from the table including an original 3D View Master.

Remember?  You inserted a card disc which rotates every time a lever is clicked to show the viewer glorious 3D images.

There were also a couple of Victorian style viewers as well as a 3D lenticular poster – All of which were impressive reminders of the simplicity but powerful impact 3D can offer in terms of entertainment.

But while this was all very nostalgic, I was soon catapulted into the 21st century as Andy Millns led me downstairs to a basement full of expensive high end 3D kit (which made me nervous holding a cup of coffee!)

Both Liam (the photographer) and I had a serious 'geekout' moment surrounded by glasses free 3D TVs, virtual reality helmets, 3D printers and motion capture suits which littered the basement.  While we were there, several guys were testing a hand-held 3D camera rig, outputting a live 3D image to a screen for use on location.

 

 

Andy Millns then showed us some of the objects that the Thinglab (a subsidiary company of Inition) 3D printers 'print off'. It was remarkable to see how advanced 3D printers have become.  In fact, they are so precise that Andy and his team sometimes 'print off' spare parts for the camera rigs!  We were shown an intricate 3D 'printed' chain that was simply outstanding. It made me realise the massive  potential 3D printing technology has for the future. It could almost be called 'quasi-teleportation' as the 3D printers are creating real tangible objects from digital files. In the future there is talk of a lot of production being switched to a printing style of manufacturing. Who knows, in the future we could be 'printing off' televisions, cars, homes perhaps even printing off 3D printers!

Perhaps printing off people might be a tall order.  I recently watched a documentary about travel and during the teleportation segment, it was said that, due to the complexity and amount of data in the human body, it would take 15,000 million years to upload the data on today's fastest Internet connection!  So I think 3D printers will need a serious memory upgrade before anything like that happens!

Anyway, I digress! Andy took us over to a bank of glasses free stereoscopic displays. I saw my first stereoscopic display at this year's 3D Forum. For those of you who are not familiar with the technology, glasses free (or auto-stereo) stereoscopic displays offer a full 3D image (both 'coming out' of the screen and 'going into' the screen) in a similar way to how special edition magazine covers offer 3D (you may have seen SFX magazine's Doctor Who special edition recently). Glasses free displays work using the principles of lenticular technology. By reflecting the image at slightly different angles, the viewer can experience a 3D effect by seeing two different images in each eye. The display is limited to a narrow viewing angle but the displays Andy was showing us offered 8 different viewing zones.

Standing in the right position and at an optimum distance from the screen, the 3D effect is impressive albeit quite a low resolution. Due to its limitations, lenticular technology is best suited for digital signage displays and small screens. What Andy was showing us was a recent project for the diamond crafting company De Beers. De Beers are celebrating their 120th anniversary by launching an exhibition in a department store in Tokyo which features lenticular displays screening a selection of 3D rotating diamonds.

Inition's sister companies, Holition and Pointy stick, produced the film and it was an impressive application of lenticular technology. Because the diamonds were rotating slowly on a turntable, it reduced the desire to move your head when viewing. This is a case of the glasses free technology genuinely enhancing a product's impact.

I asked Andy if he thought there was a future in lenticular technology …

“You have to distinguish this from personal viewing.  This is all about digital signage, getting the attention of people walking past, store front.  If you are talking about mobile phone, tablet, gaming, I’m not sure. I don’t want 3D on my phone.  You will only use something like that once.” ANDY MILLNS

Andy then took us into the screening room which was akin to a mini cinema. It was here that we witnessed some of Inition's most recent 3D projects.

We started with a three minute preview of a longer pilot Inition had co-produced with wildlife film makers Debble & Stone.

I have watched many hours of 3D content and I would rate this film as one of the most perfect arguments for why 3D is, in certain contexts, the future for wildlife programming and why I can understand Discovery, Nat Geo and Sky are looking at the natural history format as a key format for selling for 3D services. Personally, I am not a fan of the quick, blurry sequences of Avatar and I felt the slow pace of this documentary set in Africa really made the case for slower filmed sequences when shooting in 3D.

The sequences were absorbing, engaging and quite breathtaking, especially during the last wide scenic shot of the Kenyan skyline. To film this sequence, each camera was placed a huge 30 metres apart. The result seemed to push the wall out 20 miles into the distance. Simply incredible.

Andy then showed us an example of Inition's 2D – 3D conversion expertise with a Cadburys commercial which went on to win the 3D Cinema Advertising Award at the British Television Advertising Awards 2010.

This is the first time I have seen a 2D-3D conversion that actually works. When I attended the 3D Forum in May, I 'witnessed' a shocking 2D to 3D conversion of a Brazilian soap. I will leave it up to you whether you believe the soap format is suitable for 3D but from a technical point of view, the live action sequence was truly awful. The extent of the 3D effect seemed to be simply pushing a regular 2D image back a metre or so.

During the 3D Forum, I also watched a football game on a television with a real time 2D-3D processor.  It simply does not work. Since then I had decided there was no place for 2D-3D conversion right now because the technology does not exist but this Cadburys advert (it was all CG which probably made it more suitable for conversion) really worked and genuinely enhanced the advertiser's impact.

2D-3D conversion is a complex process and even this 30 second advert took two weeks to convert.

“A three hour Opera has to be really subtle where as a 30 second advert can be really extreme.”

Our final 3D video demo was of a truly awesome first person point of view sequence filmed from the front car of the Colossus rollercoaster in Thorpe Park. It was actually a demo for the Watch channel's programme, "Scream If You Know The Answer".  What can I say, it was all out sheer fun. It reminded me of standing in those domes in theme parks many years ago which projected large projections of rollercoaster 'point of view' films, car chases and flights over the Grand Canyon. For our screening at Inition we were safely sitting down but when you add the 3D effect to a first person perspective from a rollercoaster's front seat, it genuinely does make your body react in a similar way to riding the real thing (fortunately, I am remain silent on rollercoasters, usually from sheer shock). If you have not ridden the Colossus ride at Thorpe Park, it ends with several continuous barrel rolls. Imagine watching that in high definition 3D on a large screen – the whole room felt like it was spinning – that sounds naff – but it's true! Skip to the end of this video and you might get the idea!

So while 3D is doing everything it can to get into the home and be taken seriously, I believe there will always be a place for the fun, gimmicky sheer entertainment factor until virtual reality finally gets its act together.

We left the screening room and I got the opportunity to wrap up with a few questions.

Is Inition and the 3D production industry generally beginning to establish certain 'dos and don'ts or 'rules' unique to stereoscopic filming?

Yes, there are certain rules but rules are there to be broken.  There are rules you do not want to break and their are things yet to be explored.  I would be very wary of people saying you can't film 3D in this way or that way.  For example, they said you should not cut quickly but Avatar had lots of fast sequences.  You can make 3D extremely subtle and you can have lots of 2D sequences in a 3D film.  Mainly the rule is to not make it induce nausea!

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