Co-produced by Antwerp’s Cyborn 3D animation studio (“Ploey, You Never Fly Alone”), and produced by Martin Moszkowicz and Oliver Berben, “Dragon Rider” is the next big animation play by Constantin Film, one of Germany’s foremost film and TV production-distribution forces.

“Dragon Rider” is based on the bestselling novel by German writer Cornelia Funke and written by Johnny Smith, who penned the original screenplay and story for 2011’s “Gnomeo & Juliet.”

Lumiscaphe (Canejan, France) released v5.5 of its Patchwork3D software collection. Patchwork3D offers head tracking and a stereoscopic rendering option.

A test version of Lumiscaphe Patchwork3D v5.5 is downloadable for free (follow the link here under).

Partial screenshot of a real-time P3D rendering port.

With most of its 137 million objects kept behind the scenes or in a faraway museum, the Smithsonian Institution is launching a new 3D scanning and printing initiative to make more of its massive collection accessible to schools, researchers and the public worldwide. Beta version of the 3D viewer is now online but without stereoscopic 3D option. As Autodesk is behind the viewer, lets hope for 3D Vision support in v1.0...

The viewer gives access to the usual top, left and front views of scanned objets from the X3D collection, plus a free XYZ pan-tilt-zoom tool and (for some but not all) objects, a tour browser tells you interesting stories in a PowerPoint-like way, with added interaction.

Virtalis GmbH (Moers, Germany) has won a major contract to supply and install two VR (Virtual Reality) suites to Germany’s Gastwelten, which opens later in 2013. Bridging academia and commerce, Gastwelten will be a centre for innovation in hospitality, helping hotel owners and caterers to understand and anticipate their guests’ needs and desires.

Virtalis will be supplying an ActiveCube, a four-sided immersive VR environment for small groups of people, and a massive ActiveWall, a projected stereoscopic passive visualisation system for presentations of up to 100 people. The systems will incorporate Christie Digital’s high-end 4k and Mirage projectors. Virtalis is also working closely with the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO of Stuttgart, who will supply a unique software environment which will enable hotel management to gain an insight into the future, giving confidence in costly investment decisions.