3D Machinima Part1: Introduction

Here we go. As you have noticed I'll split the release on how to produces 3D Machinima in several parts. There is lot to learn and to know to even get started with it which won't fit into a single post. I'll not cover a detailed description on the basics of Stereoscopy. You can find a good introduction to that topic on Wikipedia
This first part will bring you right into 3D movies by showing on how to view them on your computer. Most of you may have already or will soon see a 3D film in a movie theatre. They use either active Shutter or polarized viewing glasses. We start with something different.
What I'll cover here first is Anaglyphic viewing because it's easy accessible to everyone. This viewing method isn't as bad as you migh remeber it when you maybe first viewed a 3D picture or movie with those red-green plastic paper glasses. Today we use red-cyan colored glasses for viewing. Their advantage is they allow viewing films in colour.
To get started, first you need some of those glasses. I was lucky, I got one at fmx conference, another one from a recently published computer magazine and the book (which is indeed great) on 3D, I covered in my last post had one as well. If you don't alread have one pair of glasses around, you can buy the from various sites. For example:
3D glasses from The 3D Market
Acrylic 3D glasses from Anachrome

Next step is to get some 3D movies to watch. There are a lot of Anaglyphic encoded videos already around on the net to get started and explore 3D viewing.
Vimeo has Stereoscopy channel
And you'll find some on YouTube as well (search for stereoscopic).

The main problem with those videos is that they are most of the time of low resolution and quality. I'll highly recommend to try something different:
Download the 'swiss army knife' for 3D viewing: Peter Wimmer's Stereoscopic Players
With this viewer you can created the anaglyphic video on the fly from high-quality 3D movie sources. These sources are usually distributed as either 2 video files, side by side or over/under encoded files. You'll find some excellent examples at his site as well.
The quality get in viewing is much better as with the pre-encoded anaglyphic videos and show the full potential of this viewing and distribution method.
Let me know in the comments if you like/or dislike viewing 3D movies, found some interesting 3D movies etc.
Next post will be more machinima related, when I'll cover some advanced viewing techniques and 3D viewing of games.