Maya 2009 (and all Autodesk products) are adding 3D Stereoscopic tools - report from SIGGRAPH

Monday, I caught the end of the Autodesk event and got to see a little bit about the new Maya 2009! The first thing I saw was the new particle system. It was really easy to recreate fluid effects, smoke, explosions. Everything done in the demo was created without writing expressions. To me this was the one of the best parts. They also demonstrated some real-time collision detection. But the good parts were the new Stereoscopic tools that are coming out for all of Autodesk's products. I'll focus on Maya since I'm a Maya user. The best thing was Maya 2009 has a built in stereo camera rig. Some really cool options for this camera rig are real-time 3D so that you can animate and model and do everything you want to do while wearing your 3D glasses! That way you don't actually have to render you scene just to see if you stereo is working properly. The next cool thing is the camera can actaully project a red color and a blue color right onto the screen. What this does is gives you a reference for the 3D. Meaning that everything in front of the red plane is going to look like it's coming out at you and everything behind blue is going to be in the background. This also will increase your work flow by allowing you to get a good idea of what your scene will look like before you even render your first scene. As it is now you had to make your own rig and continually render a scene just to see how far the depth is and if you need to tweek more. The whole Autodesk pipeline got a stereo upgrade to help make stereoscopy an easier thing to do.

The industry right now looks like it is getting behind theses 3D/stereo technologies 100%. Dreamworks reps claim that their moving to it and ALL of their upcoming 3D movies are going to be in stereo. These tools just make that transition a whole lot easier for pro's and students alike. If your a 3D student today then you can't afford to not be working on stereo projects in school. It's doesn't matter if you like it or not, from what I've seen the industry if moving at full steam with stereoscopy.