Almost 1 year in the making and 55tb of data, I am happy and reliefed that the Humpbacks of Hawaii now are out in the wild. The 13 minute short is a 360 degree fulldome experience and can be seen in the Maui Ocean Center, Eilat Coral World and the Palma Aquarium.

We used the fantastic Domemaster Shader for Vray.

The shader is just the best fit for a good stereo experience in a dome. You can easily reduce the stereo to zero gradually to the poles. Also it offers a rotation axis in relation to the dome orientiation, that then works as though the two cameras would rotate around that axis, so when rotating the head to the left and right, the stereo is not flat but still works as there is a disparity between both eyes. For our scenario where we knew that the domes are roughly the same in size and also the dome tilt is the same this was perfect. We then could take the average seat incline into consideration and create a stereo experience that would work for 90% of the audience. Also the audience was not seated like in a planatarium (360 degree) but was facing the southpole all the time.

Back then we had one shot to render the 4096x4096 stereo images, which put a lot of pressure on the team.

I still sometimes read the comments on Tripadvisor for the Maui Ocean Center, quite often they are still amazed by the 13 min film.