Our team specialises in the more unusal 3D post work, including our award-winning 2D-to-3D conversion service, along with content for glasses-free 3D and holographic displays.
Explore our 2D to 3D conversion and stereoscopic animation work.
3D Rugby wins MAA Best Award 2011
The O2 3D Rugby broadcast produced by Inition has won the Marketing Agencies Association award fo
Amphibious Wins “Best Feature” at 3D Stereo Media European 3D Film Festival
Inition’s Asia Pacific office has supplied stereoscopic consultancy and equipment for Brian Yuzn
Ford C-MAX Launch Outdoor Augmented Reality Campaign
Inition Shoot 3D Skiing Promo for Nissan Free Ride
Inition London takes delivery of two RED EPIC cameras
Inition Onboard for 3D Shark Shocker
Inition Powers World’s First Virtual Presenter Face-Off
Inition worked with The Gadget Show to create and drive an avatar of the show's presenter Suzi P
Future of 3D #3 : Design, Print, Fly!
Future of 3D #3: Design, Print and Fly!
Co-founder and director of Intion Stuart Cupit, also keen photographer and kite-flyer, decided to set himself a challenge to build a rig capable of taking panoramic aeriel photos from his parafoil kite...
The Spec
The rig needed moving parts, had to be light-weight but strong enough to hold servos and a digital camera and withstand the odd crash landing. Stuart designed the rig using 3D Studio Max and included 5 independent moveable stages, a complete gear system, fittings for 4 servos, a microcontroller, batteries and, most importantly, a digital camera.
The 3D Print
The final design was printed out in one go (yes, no assembly!) using our Invision-XT 3D printer. The various joints and gears were designed in place with the 0.1mm clearance between any two parts required to allow them to move independently. The VisiJet SR200 build material used is strong enough to be for functional finished products.
Servo Control and Support
The gears, axels and sleeves freely revolve and the fleixble nature of the material, when printed in thin sections, allowed the servos to be held in place by sprung hinged latches. The servos follow a pre-recorded set of moves using a Milinst Wizard board.
A Picavet suspension allowed the camera rig to self-level and prevents twisting. A geared mechanism reduced the speed of one of the servos by 20 to 1 to allow the rig to be rotated. The gears were printed in place and once support material is removed just work with no assembly!
The Flight
The whole rig was attached to a Sutton Flowform 16 kite using a pair wire hangups on 200m of cord. The kite needed a 25mph wind to get the 1kg rig into the air. Flown from Hamstead Heath, the rig took 50 blurry photos the first time! The second flight got some great shots looking south across London, and some bemused looks from on-lookers!
The kit we used: 3D Systems Invision XT (in-house), 3D Studio Max, Sony digital camera, Milinst Wizard Servo controller board, Sutton Flowform 16 kite
Check out our 3D Printing Service and our Future of 3D blog at fo3d.posterous.com for our latest experiments in 3D.
About our 'Future of 3D' series
The 'Future of 3D' series is about exploring the boundaries of future 3D technology through non-commercial creative projects. Supporting this type of work is core to Inition's core values of developing new uses of 3D technology, supporting creativity and nurturing the passion of it's staff and collaborators. If you have an idea for a 'Future of 3D' project, we'd love to hear from you.
Future of 3D: #1 - Scan, Print, Explode!
For our first 'Future of 3D' project we decided to have some 3D fun with Shannon's head to celebrate our 10th Birthday and the launch of our 'Future of 3D' series.
This project combined a wide range of our skills and 3D technologies. But mainly we enjoyed it because it involved blowing stuff up! If you're interested in finding out more, make sure you watch the video above.
Some of the kit we used: ZPrinter 450, Mephisto EX Scanner, Phantom/Quasar 3D Stereoscopic Filming Rig
We'd like to point out that no Shannons were harmed in this project, although strangely enough he had a slight headache afterwards. Check out our Future of 3D blog at fo3d.posterous.com for our latest experiments.
About our 'Future of 3D' series
The 'Future of 3D' series is about exploring the boundaries of future 3D technology through non-commercial creative projects. Supporting this type of work is core to Inition's core values of developing new uses of 3D technology, supporting creativity and nurturing the passion of it's staff and collaborators. If you have an idea for a 'Future of 3D' project, we'd love to hear from you.
Future of 3D: #2 - Sketch, Sculpt, Print!
Future of 3D: #2 - Sketch, Scult, Print
As part of Inition’s “Future of 3D” series, our 3D printing team worked with BA design student Kristin Katzer from the London College of Communication to realise a packaging design for fruits.
Concept
The concept for Kristin's organic design was based on structures of nature, in particular her research into “tafoni structures” produced during the calcification of porous sandstone.
Freeform Design
Designing these organic structures using a typical 3D CAD package would have proved very difficult, however with Inition's guidance Kristin realised the design through the intuitive interface of the Sensable Phantom Omni in conjunction with the Claytools software. Claytools is a design package specially tailored towards haptic modelling, allowing the user to directly sculpt, manipulate and feel the surface of a model through a pen-line interface attached to a motorised force-feedback arm.
3D Print
After adding colour to the CAD model, the complex design was prepared for print Paul Armand, one of Inition's 3D printing specialists. Our full colour 3D ZPrinter 450 printed out the model over-night including two end caps with extruded lettering. The final design forms part of Kristin’s degree and was shown at the BA Design Show at the London College of Communication in June 2011.
Future of 3D
Inition’s “Future of 3D” series encourages work on non-commercial projects which help to push the boundaries of current 3D creative and technology. This was the first time we had seen a project go from sketched concept, through haptic modelling to a physical 3D printed model. Organic designs are not usually immediately associated with computers but with Claytools strength in creating organic shapes and our 3D printer's ability to print them, we see a great future for this combination of technologies in product design.
The kit we used: ZPrinter 450, Phantom Omni with Claytools software
Thanks to Kristin for creating a great piece; the first thing we've 3D printed that has been created on a haptic device. Check out our Future of 3D blog at fo3d.posterous.com for our latest experiments.
3D Promo Shoot: Nissan FreeRide Tour
Leading extreme sports television producer Boomerang Film approached Inition to produce a high octane 3D promotional video to support Nissan’s sponsorship of the 2011 FreeRide World Tour after a successful collaboration shooting Tony Hawk on his European skateboard tour in Berlin and Brighton for Canal +
Inition provided stereoscopic consultancy, two portable 3D camera systems, a stereographer and camera assistant for two shooting days as well as 3D post production services including 3D fixing, depth grading and mastering.
Super Fast Turnaround
Inition were commissioned with the ambitious task of delivering a 3D online post, short promo film and 30 second trailer on a Blu-ray disc within 48 hours of the final shoot. Inition’s team edited approximately 4 – 5 hours of footage into a 2.5 minute compelling promo film in time for the opening of the Nissan FreeRide World Tour.
Behind the Scenes
The offline edit was undertaken by the client in Avid and the final post stages were completed at Inition. We were provided with a graded DPX sequence (Digital Picture Exchange) for the left and right channels which were ingested into our Speedgrade XR suite, where 3D geometry correction and a depth grade were performed. The final piece was then mastered in the side-by-side format for Blu-ray.
The Right Tool for the Job
The client required a stereoscopic video capture system which was as lightweight as possible, able to take POV shots and portable enough to be taken to challenging locations such as mountain faces. Always keen to embrace a challenge, Inition developed a custom built helmet with a mounted 3D rig based around two Toshiba Minicams recording to Nano Flash recorders on Compact Flash cards.
Small enough to achieve an interaxial separation of just 4mm, the custom built rig was highly versatile and could be controlled and genlocked with a camera control unit up to 30 metres away. The recorders were synced (in terms of being triggered for recording) via a breakout cable joined to a single trigger.
Alignment of the cameras was performed before mounting to the helmet with wedges to fix roll and vertical offset. Being a fixed interaxial, calculations were made to allow for the best 3D in the given environment with locked off cameras. The professional athletes were prepped before shooting, so that they were aware of the 3D limits i.e. how close to get to objects.
Conclusion
With its production partner Boomerang Films, Inition delivered an attention holding 3D promotional film to Nissan on schedule, which was taken on tour around major European ski destinations in a Nissan branded truck complete with 4D alpine mountain breeze effects.
Live 3D Transmissions : Six Nations Rugby Live in 3D for O2
Six Nations Live to 40 Cinemas
40 cinemas across the country screened England’s home RBS Six Nations games live in 3-D. Archibald Ingall Stretton commissioned 3D specialists Inition to produce the matches which became the largest ever UK sports event to be broadcast live in 3D. Forty Odeon and Cineworld cinemas screened the matches, beginning with England’s official centenary game, against Wales on February 6, as part of a deal with O2, the England sponsor. The match against Ireland on February 27 was also screened live in 3-D.
3D Technology
Using the latest 3D camera technology, the matches were captured from seven camera positions providing a comprehensive view of the game which included replays, match statistics and on-screen graphics. Inition worked with outside broadcast experts SIS Live and used 3D 'Quasar' rigs from Element Technica for the shoot. Broadcast graphics specialists Wurmsers creating bespoke stereoscopic graphics for the game.
Production Team
The BBC is the UK TV rights holder for the 6 Nations – played between England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France and Italy – and assisted Inition in the broadcast. Inition has worked on a number of 3D productions from football and ice hockey to track and music events. Inition were also the 3D experts behind the 3D transmissions of England’s clash with Scotland at Murrayfield, in 2008, as part of a 3D test for the BBC.
Read TVB Europe's inside story on the project here
Remote Avatar: Gadget Show Virtual Pesenter Challenge
When the producers of North One Television approached 3D creative services company Inition to provide the technical expertise for an ambitious 'virtual presenter' challenge, LILA was an obvious solution.
LILA is a portable motion capture solution which was used to capture the motion of The Gadget Show presenter Suzi Perry in London and transmit that captured data to drive an avatar of Suzi who was composited in The Gadget Show studios, all in real time.
Marker-less Motion Capture
Based on real-time 3D animation software Autodesk MotionBuilder, LILA is Inition’s marker-less motion capture solution which can provide show stopping interactive installations for brands, exhibitions, tours and marketing agencies.
Without any calibration required, Suzi stepped into the holo-deck style cube at Inition’s London studios where her silhouette was tracked by 14 x 2D cameras. No markers or special clothing were required. The vision processor software calculated a 3D mesh of her body from these views of which a digital skeleton was applied using the Organic Motion plugin.
The frame-by-frame motion co-ordinates from the data was then transmitted to the MotionBuilder system at North One Television studios in Birmingham via a special driver which then applied Suzi Perry’s features such as clothes, hair, skin tones etc in real time. The avatar of Suzi which was composited into the studios of The Gadget Show next to the real co-presenter Otis and an android version of Jason Bradbury who she was competing with.
Suzi’s avatar character included full face expressions and mouth shapes driven by Suzi's voice fed through LILA's voice recognition software.
The composited footage was sent back to Inition’s London studios via Skype which Suzi could monitor on a screen seeing exactly what the public would see.
A World First
This project posed several challenges, not least because of the processing power required to deliver the avatar in real time. This was the first time a motion capture system had been used to drive another avatar over the Internet.
The LILA motion capture is a complete attention grabbing solution which is available for events, promotions and exhibitions. As well as hire of the LILA system itself, Inition also provide a complete production service with the hardware, software, and creative design of the characters, environments and interactions.