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Monday, January 30, 2012

The Dimensionalization of “The Lion King” vs “Beauty and the Beast”



Okay, sooooo my fiancée and I have watched both of the 3D versions of “The Lion King” and “Beauty and the Beast” and here are my thoughts. 

First, I would like to make sure that I am not taking for granted a previous knowledge of terminology thus I took a look at the term dimensionalization.  A term defined by NASA as a process of, “offine conversion of 2D films to 3D stereoscopic films…”.1   The current 2D/3D conversion process of dimensionalization is very labor-intensive and relies on an artist(s) to rotoscope (to trace or “Transfer (an image from live action film) into another film sequence…”.2 Many films flooding the market that are being touted as 3D are actually 2D films that have been dimensionalized.  The problem that this can present is that 2D films were not filmed with 3D storytelling techniques in mind and as a result create stereo window violations.

Such was the case with the dimensionalization of “The Lion King”.  The artists who converted the film were not aware or ignored the stereo window violations that were inherent to this 2D film conversation i.e. they pushed vertical objects that violated the stereo window into the negative parallax and as a result created eye strain.  They also employed a technique of projection of the 2D image onto geometry or 3D modeling which created unusual and warped effects on the 2D perspective of the original artwork, which in my opinion was a major gaff and was very distracting as a viewer.

However, Disney learned from their mistakes in “The Lion King” and made improvements in their dimensionalization of “Beauty and the Beast”.  The depth script for “Beauty and the Beast” never went into the negative parallax and instead the depth of the rotoscoped images were either at the plane of the screen or along the positive parallax and as a result, the film did not have the stereo window violations of “The Lion King”.  They also abandoned the projection onto geometry technique in favor of traditional rotoscoping. 

The only major stereoscopic flaw that I saw with the dimensionalization of “Beauty and the Beast” was in the opening push into the castle through the forest.  This shot had too many planes strung out along the z-axis at varying depths and as a result it created eye strain via excessive parallax.  However, all and all the dimensionalization of “Beauty and the Beast” was in my opinion a major step forward for Disney over “The Lion King”.

Well, those are my thoughts for the week, I hope you find them insightful and look forward to your feedback.

Cheers-

Russell McGee

1 A. P. Van Pernis, M. S. DeJn, Dimensionalization: converting 2D films to 3D, WWW Document, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008SPIE.6803E..27V

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