Making Anaglyphic 3D Movies

by **Darkwing** 2009-09-04, 16:53

I'm writing this mostly for Toa, but others can most certainly use this process.

First you need a video in one of the compatible formats such as AVI.

Open up After Effects and create a new composition with the frame width and height the same as the movie's. Also, change duration to be equal to that of the movie.

Now drag and drop your movie into After Effects. Place it on the stage so that it fills up the whole frame.

Then go to Layer>New>Solid

Make it the colour 00FFFF (pure cyan). Click Ok. Make sure that the cyan layer is above your video layer, so all you see for the whole movie is cyan.

With the cyan layer still selected, go to Layer>Blending>Screen

Now you can see the highlights and stuff in the video but it is tinted extremly blue.

Now render the movie. When the rendering is done, go back to the composition you just rendered. Select the Cyan layer and go to Effect>Channel>Invert. The cyan layer should turn pure red. With the red layer selected, make sure it is on screen. It should be still where the cyan layer was on screen.

Now drag and drop the cyan rendered video into the program. Position it on the stage above the red layer and using your arro keys, shift the newly imported video to the left a little. You can play with where you move it, but this is best done while wearing 3d glasses.

With the newly imported video still selected, go to Layer>Blending>Multiply. Now you should be able to see this shifted overlapping video with blue and red outlines around everything. Check it out with 3d glasses first to make sure it looks all right. Now render the movie and you're done!

by raffitz 2009-09-04, 20:10

I knew how to do this with pictures, I didn't know how to do it with videos... I think I have Adobe after effects on a CD somewhere... Oh, BTW, may I add something?

If the videos come from a 3D render, to make a better anaglyph, use two cameras side by side, with little distance between them. Then, when you render the videos, use the right one for cyan and the left one for red (I think. If not, just swap the colours).