Laser Pacific provides 3D grading services in the run up to Comic Con

The advent of digital projection and the desire to continue to attract audiences to the movie theater has led to a renewed interest in stereoscopic 3D. Now consumer electronics firms are scrambling to bring out televisions that will support 3D viewing in the home. Sony and Panasonic are both planning to introduce large screen HD TV sets with 3D capability next year and already manufacturers like Mitsubishi are offering “3D ready” sets. With more and more movies being displayed in 3D, it was natural that Laser Pacific's clients would start to ask about digital intermediate tools for this new arena. With the biggest DI grading theater in Los Angeles, featuring a 33 foot screen, Laser Pacific has a great environment for 3D. Screen size is very important for depth perception, so the more closely the grading environment matches an actual movie theater, the better.

Laser Pacific's Advanced Development Group wanted to take the time to investigate the best technologies available to meet their clients' needs. Randy Blim, CTO, explains, “With all the different technologies out there, we wanted to step back and figure out what the right environment and the right display technologies are for the color grading of stereoscopic material.”

Autodesk's Lustre, the primary color grading tool used at Laser Pacific, already offered some tools to speed up the grading, previewing and rendering of stereoscopic material. Because of the close relationship that Laser Pacific's engineers and colorists have with Autodesk, they are working with Autodesk's developers to expand Lustre's 3D toolset. For glasses, the group decided on liquid crystal shutter glasses – a solution primarily designed for scientific and engineering applications. “It is very important that everyone involved in the grading process sees the same thing”, explains Dave Register from Laser Pacific's Advanced Development Group , “this solution gave us the best results in this regard. For the screen, we decided to use a standard screen rather than a silver screen for better uniformity.” For the digital projector, the group decided on the new Christie CP2000XB, which has the latest chip set from Texas Instruments and puts more light on the screen. This is important for 3D because of the light lost through the glasses and through the interleaved projection technique.

Laser Pacific's clients were able to take full advantage of all this work in the run up to ComicCon 2009. Laser Pacific graded and finished several 3D trailers that were shown at the conference.

The ultimate goal for Laser Pacific's engineering team is to come up with the best possible method to create one 3D digital cinema master that can then be used to create DCPs (digital cinema packages) for the different 3D exhibition systems (RealD, Dolby and XpanD 3D).