An epic battle between Spidey and the Sinister Syndicate, which includes Hobgoblin, Electro and Doc Ock, rages on every side of the vehicle. Throughout the battle between good and evil will be fire effects, 3-D film and a "sensory drop" when Doc Ock aims at the Scoop with his Doomsday anti-gravity gun.

"Using visual images, sound and large fans the rider experiences the illusion that they are rising more than 400 feet into the air and we have the impression of activities going on all around us," Trowbridge said. "Then we are plummeting toward the ground and people are screaming, and this trampoline comes out and catches us. All along we have only moved a few feet into the air."

Scott Trowbridge. Photo by Jacquie Kubin

The New Trick
The, excuse the pun, marvel of this ride is that the projected 3-D film image is all around the vehicle. The use of three-dimensional film projection has always left the viewer with an image that seemed to come right at them. If they moved across the room, it would follow them. While this does provide a real-time, real feel to a film, it is obviously a projected image, a trick.

In The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man, Trowbridge and his crew have come up with the technology necessary to allow: a very three-dimensional image of Spider-Man to sit on the hood of the Scoop vehicle; the pumpkins that Hobgoblin throws to fly past the car; and Doc Ock's tentacles to come not only toward passengers but also grab onto the car. The result is almost a Starship Enterprise Holodeck type of experience. The edges between reality and film quickly become blurred and the rider is in for a whole new entertainment experience.

"In the film world they say the camera adds ten pounds so if you see someone on TV they look a little bit different than they do if you were to meet them in person. We are taking that idea and applying it to this attraction," Trowbridge said. "Here you are in the same space as Spider-Man. He is three-dimensional. He has substance. He projects a shadow when standing in front of a light, but he is a projected image because the actions that he, Doc Ock or the Hobgoblin do, such as web slinging, flying or moving mechanical tentacles, could not be done by an animatronic or person in costume. It would only work if we could do it with film."

Kleiser-Walczak Technical Supervisor Jeffery A. Williams and Lead Animator Derald Hunt use an action figure to analyze Spider-Man's movement. Image courtesy of Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company.

Trowbridge and his team set off to find the film and animation experts who would help them to achieve their goal, only to be told it had not been done before and could not be done to give the illusion that they wanted. Not only did they not take no for an answer, they became even more determined to find the solution that would lead to a new era in animated storytelling. Kleiser-Walczak Construction Company was the well known digital effects house that took on the job, producing all of the animation with Jeff Kleiser and Diana Walczak directing. The Kleiser-Walczak team had to create new production methods on the fly to meet the needs of this never-before-done project. The end product is technically called "moving point of convergence," or, more casually, "squinching," and it incorporates the dynamics of a 3-D movie with the surround screen technology of a thrill ride like Back to the Future or Star Tours, where riders sit in a car that shakes to give the impression of movement. The kick here is that while the car is bucking like a bronco it is also moving through the 1.5 acres of space which is filled with sets and 3D projection screens.

Finishing Touches
The surround screen projection adds to the feeling of movement from flying to falling. The results of the new squinching effect is that guests will see 3-D images that appear to have singular space and mass standing, sitting, or flying in front of them. "What we wanted to do was create an environment that married the physical with the virtual," says Trowbridge. Most 3D films have an item at a time dangle in front of the audience. Here the Universal team wanted to create an entire 3D environment, meaning backgrounds needed to behave in a 3D way too...as the ride was moving past! Due to the very nature of 3D images, this had been considered near impossible. "As you move through the ride, the backgrounds can't rotate, because buildings don't move, so the problem was that we had to develop a way to fix that and to give the illusion of 3-D images in this stationary environment. Using computers we figured out that we could calculate the distortion that the eye would see ... and basically pre-distort the images so that when they are viewed from the right place, moving at the right speed and in the right direction, it all looks normal."