"For shots where we had to do something like remove or dial down depth of field effects, then we had to create a unique left eye for that shot," Neuman says. "There was more of a hit in terms of storage than rendering because, as I said, we didn't render in the depth of field, it was a compositing effect."

The extra overhead of doing Bolt in 3-D was minimal compared to Neuman's previous 3-D projects. For the future, he'd like to see more of the same, moving up the 3-D process further in the pipeline, and making the process more user-friendly and efficient.

"I'm super happy with how Bolt came out," he says. "If you see it in 3-D you're getting a little something you don't see in the 2-D version."

Toy Story is getting a 3-D conversion by Pixar in preparation for a third film, which will be made in stereo. © Disney. All rights reserved.

Indeed, Ed Catmull, president of Disney and Pixar Animation Studios, believes Bolt "is the best [3-D] that's ever been done anywhere... a good addition that doesn't get in the way of the story, but, on the other hand, gives it real depth." In fact, both Disney and Pixar Animation Studios have now fully embraced stereo on all of their upcoming CG-animated features. Up (May 29) marks Pixar's first 3-D venture, with 3-D conversions of Toy Story (Oct. 2) and Toy Story 2 (Feb. 12, 2010) in the works as a setup for Toy Story 3 (June 18, 2010).

"... For this type of film, we're trying very hard to make it as subtle [as possible]," offered director Pete Docter in describing Pixar's View-Master approach to 3-D after a sneak peek of Up earlier this week. "It adds to the richness, to the depth of the environments. You walk through the jungle, and you can see all of these layers going back. And the space when you set foot on the edge of that cliff along with Carl [the elderly protagonist], and he sees Paradise Falls, it adds a real richness there."

Thomas J. McLean is a freelance journalist whose articles have appeared in Variety, Below the Line, Animation Magazine and Publishers Weekly. He writes a comic book blog for Variety.com called Bags and Boards, and is the author of Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy from Comics to Screen, forthcoming from Sequart.com Books.