What's Behind the First 3D Super Bowl Ads

Who or what is InTru3D? That's the message of one of the first two Super Bowl ads to be displayed in 3D, which will feature Intel, DreamWorks, and Sobe.

Two spots will debut on Sunday: a 30-second trailer for the DreamWorks animated movie, Monsters vs. Aliens, and a second spot highlighting Sobe LifeWater energy drinks. A 3D-encoded version of the NBC show "Chuck" will be shown the day after the Super Bowl.

The 3D advertising block will air at the end of the second quarter of the Super Bowl, Intel said. Over 125 million pairs of free 3D glasses, which use a new type of 3D technology, were created by Intel and distributed by PepsiCo through their brand SoBe Lifewater.

The glasses include the InTru3D logo, although it's unclear how high profile Intel and DreamWorks will make the brand. Intru3D represents a "premium 3D cinema experience," an Intel spokesman said.

And how important is 3D to DreamWorks? It's the future of moviemaking, according to DreamWorks chief executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose support was documented in a video blog shot by an unnamed Intel representative during the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

"The whole enchilada," Katzenberg replied, when asked if the studio's films would be made in 3D following the release of Monsters vs. Aliens. "[It's] all 3D from here on out for us."

InTru3D represents the fruits of a partnership Intel and DreamWorks struck last July, where DreamWorks said that Intel microprocessors would be used as the rendering engines to create DreamWorks films. Intru3D is a "new set of rendering and animation tools that run on top of Intel hardware," according to an Intel spokesman.

The Intel spokesman referred to what DreamWorks refers to internally as Shrek's Law, where the processing power needed to calculate clothes, hair, backgrounds, and other scene components in the Shrek movies with the appropriate visual fidelity doubles with each film. "With 3D, you're quadrupling your processing requirements," the Intel spokesman said.

DreamWorks used Intel's Xeon processors to render the film, and will move to "Nehalem" processors, the Intel spokesman said; the first Xeon server chip will be known as the Nehalem-EP, Intel executives have said previously. DreamWorks will also be a future test site for "Larrabee," Intel's upcoming multicore graphics processor for PCs and rendering farms, the Intel spokesman said.  (full Story)

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