When it comes to the entertainment industry, everyone is excited about the potential of 3D graphics, animation, and video. You’ve surely noticed the increased number of 3D movies playing at the cinema and may have even noticed that ESPN has released an entire channel devoted to 3D content. Here at Captive, we’re keeping a close eye on the potential of 3D as it relates to the digital signage industry. There are already several companies who have focused their business model around the idea that 3D is the future of digital signage. On one hand, we’re excited about its potential, but there are several reasons to be skeptical about its practicality.
The first thing you should know about 3D digital signage is that it must be autostereoscopic, meaning that viewers don’t need those silly red and blue glasses to view the 3D images. In fact, no glasses are necessary. This enables passers-by to become engaged with the screen’s brilliant color and motion, which holds great potential for retail and public space digital signage. Autostereoscopic screens are currently only being manufactured in small numbers and can cost 5 or 6 times more than a comparable 2D LCD monitor. While that’s certainly an intimidating price tag, it’s not a reason to write off the idea of 3D digital signage – every new technology is expensive in its infancy. Autostereoscopic screens will eventually become more affordable as the technology improves and they begin mass production.
The real problem begins when you’re faced with the challenge of developing content to play on that screen. There are some companies who claim they can convert 2D Flash or video files into the 3D format. While this “easy button” solution sounds great, it almost certainly has to be too good to be true. Content creation for a 3D autostereoscopic screen is an extremely complex process. First, your animated message or video must be created using a 3D program such as 3D Studio Max. Next, for each scene it’s necessary to set up nine unique camera devices to capture the 3D object from every angle in the screen’s viewing range. After each of these different camera angles have been exported as an image sequence, they must be converted to nine separate videos. With all these videos rendered and saved, you’ll still need software that can display all nine different video perspectives based on the specifications of the lenticlar overlay on the screen. Sound complicated? It is. But it’s also very space-hogging-- nine videos each with 30 frames per second leaves you with 270 frames of rendered images being seen in a single second. That’s more than 16,000 individual images for a minute-long retail advertising spot. The video will be huge in both size and resolution, and the cost of producing these videos is astronomical compared to today’s 2D content. While the idea of 3D digital signage is compelling and has some potential, it’s still a long way off-- and the content creation is going to be the biggest hurdle.
To learn more about the future of autostereoscopic screens and content creation, visit: http://autostereoscopic-3d.blogspot.com/
