SANDDE

SANDDE is a software and hardware system, developed primarily by IMAX Corporation, designed to create hand-drawn, stereoscopic 3D animation content. SANDDE is an acronym for "Stereoscopic ANimation Drawing DEvice" and is a play on the Japanese term for "3D", which is pronounced "San-D".

The concept of SANDDE is to enable artists to draw and animate in three-dimensional space. It is intended to be intuitively usable, like a pencil. As an art form, SANDDE incorporates aspects of drawing, painting, sculpture and puppetry. Unlike most other 3D computer graphic animation tools, SANDDE does not require the construction of mathematically defined models. The main input device is a "wand" which allows the user to create drawings in the air.

Animators sit in virtual stereoscopic theaters and, using a specialized "wand," draw in space to create individual frames and then animate their creations using the interactive capabilities of the wand to create shots, sequences, and complete movies.

SANDDE was originally developed by IMAX in the mid-1990s, and was used to create one IMAX short (Paint Misbehavin' [1997]) and portions of two other IMAX feature films: Mark Twain 3D (1999) and Cyberworld (2000). Thereafter, IMAX stopped active development of the system but provided licenses for use and future development to the National Film Board of Canada for artistic experimentation and to Janro Imaging Laboratory to explore commercial use of the application. The former has used SANDDE in numerous stereoscopic productions including Falling in Love Again", Moonman, June, The Wobble Incident, Subconscious Password, and Minotaur, while the latter has licensed SANDDE for Ultimate Wave 3D and Legends of Flight, both produced by the Stephen Low Company.

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