IMAX, a major
player in the world of large-format films and theaters, is now trying to make
headway in the animation world with a precedent setting new technology that
truly integrates human interaction with technology. The innovative break-through
in question is called SANDDE (Stereo Animation Drawing Device) -- a revolutionary
new large-format 3D animation system that lets animators draw and animate
in space instead of on paper or a computer. The three-dimensional stereoscopic
films created with SANDDE allow artists to emphasize size relationships and
create actions that move toward and away from the audience creating a grand
effect when viewed on IMAX 3D screens that are upwards of three stories tall.
"Animators like to draw. They do not want a keyboard,
a mouse and complicated engineering manipulations to interrupt the creative
flow; they just want to draw," says IMAX co-founder and developer of
the SANDDE system, Roman Kroitor. That's why animation produced with this
new 3D process is so unique -- an animator freely manipulates a wand-like
device in mid-air inside a localized magnetic field that records and translates
the movement of the hand into 3D coordinates. Says Kroitor, "I thought
it would be great if artists could have a direct relationship to making an
animated 3D image by drawing in space as they have when they draw on a piece
of paper." The results are then viewable in real-time on a special networked
Windows NT computer workstation designed to match the viewing angles and stereo
presentation of an IMAX 3D theater as closely as possible. Furthermore, the
films created with this process don't have the sterilized look of modern computer
animation, but rather the appearance and feel of "traditional" cel-animation,
resulting in both a process and result that is vastly different from anything
else out there.
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