IMAX's Giant Animated Attractor Ride in 3D, Scream in 3D, Race for Atlantis! No image. Why? At an inch high, you know, for clarity, it would be 24 inches wide.
It may be the world's largest animated computer graphic.The dome of the Rotunda at Caesars Forum is 187 feet across. Around its base is a band of panels each 19 feet wide. Twice each hour these panels become a continuous string of rear projection screens brought to life with a 40 second long "commercial" for the Race for Atlantis attraction, IMAX's most exotic simulator ride featuring OmniMax 3D.
At 347 feet wide, placing moving images on such a canvas would become an exercise in spagetti animation. The storyboards were hilarious, 16 inch wide panels, 15 to the page with plenty of room for notes.
The 18 screen show guides the eyes and attention of everyone in the rotunda to the entrance of the IMAX show with an amazing orchestration of live action, computer graphics, and high speed animation that sweeps the room urging visitors to Ride in 3D, Scream in 3D, Race for Atlantis!
At its climax, the screens that just happen to be right over the entrance to the attraction explode in a display of computer-graphic pyrotechnics that establish for everybody just where tickets may be purchased.
And it works! Twice each hour the lines at the box office expand right on queue.
Metavision interpreted style boards from Seinegar Advertising and created the production design, special effects and unique computer techniques to bring the animation into reality. At 12 thousand pixels wide, each frame covers 18 video screens and was rendered nearly four times as wide as computer graphics for IMAX's film frames!
(Opened March, 1998)