I picked up my 3DS the other day, and tested it on some MOCs. The nice thing about the machine, if your eyes are compatible with the 3D, is that depth is clear in the 3D pictures. The downside so far, I just cant seem to find the right settings to bring out the detail on a LEGO® creation with the built in 3D camera. There is still hope for the machine as a MOC sharing medium however.

The 3DS’ 3D screen, as best as I understand it ( And I could be very wrong about this process ), works by vibrating a sort of film in front of the screen. As it vibrates, the screen is rapidly changing between two images, and the vibrating film blocks the left eye from seeing the image only intended for the right eye, and vice versa. Your brain then naturally assembles the two different images from each eye into a 3D object. I was very impressed with how well the 3D display worked for the 3DS’ menus(no games for it yet), but when the time came to test the 3D camera function, a feature I was hoping would allow us to share our creations in a new dimension, I was more or less disappointed.

The depth perception works very well when viewing images coming in from the camera, though the detail is very poor. I took a picture of a Preston Stormer 2.0 figure and was able to recognize him, his limbs even popped out like they should have in real life, except micro sized and kind of blurry. I didn’t seem to have the option of zooming in, which may be a drawback of the 3D technology or because it looks so horrible close up you wouldn’t want to anyway (or something stupidly left out of the picture viewer mode, as the 3DS recognizes a standard 3D picture format, more on that later). I did however have the option of making Stormer and his immediate surroundings pop a half an inch out of the screen, or to make him fall further back into the “room” inside the 3D screen via a slider (a digital one inside the program, not the physical one on the 3DS’ side that acts as the 3D effect’s on/off, and depth control), with the center of the slider being the normal position for the photo’s depth. I found that my eyes had to refocus on the new position with each adjustment on the slider, and my eyes could not focus at the setting sending him the farthest away, but picked up on him perfectly when he was beginning to float out of the screen at the opposite extreme.

No matter what I did, nothing was particularly clear, especially when compared to the menu screens. After some quick research online, I found out that the cameras involved in the process were only .3 megapixels each, not even a third the standard quality of cell phone cameras from five years ago. The lower resolution cameras were probably selected because they create less data, which works better for games that transmit them to other players. For the price I was expecting at the very least 1.3 megapixel cameras in the device, and hoping for around 3.0 MP, which made this a let-down. Its still a cool feature, but not one that is going to be particularly useful for sharing MOCs over the internet. On the other hand, the 3DS is still capable of displaying some high quality 3D photos, even if it cant make them.

I came across this article on a forum, giving you instructions on how to use a standard digital camera of better quality to take two pictures from different angles, and convert them into a 3D image viewable on the 3DS. Using his instructions, I was able to make a very clear 3D image of ” Biodroid Gamma ” for my 3DS using two 7.2 MP camera shots from my Sony DSC-S700. I had hoped the larger image might enable me to zoom in, but it didn’t. In fact, I lost the ability to adjust the slider, probably because it was a portrait picture of Gamma instead of the 3DS’ native landscape view. Gamma being pretty close to 3 Hero factory cannisters tall, one stacked on top of the other, this made for a bad way to show him off since he’s crammed in vertically to about 3 inches of screen. Despite this, the image was exceptionably clear, with his parts mostly distinguishable, and the depth perception still worked great. That said, your average toa sized MOC will look better than Gamma or other larger MOCs using this trick. The downside is that loading two 7.2 MP images for the 3D slowed loading times down to about 6 seconds for me, but it’s otherwise a fun project to do every now and then.

At this point, I think I can safely say it’s alot of work and more of a novelty to get decent MOC pictures on the Nintendo 3DS, but if 3D monitors, cameras, and TVs pick up popularity, I can see 3D MOC sharing becoming commonplace. Keep your eyes on our news page and try to dig up a pair of those red and blue 3D goggles, I’ve been experimenting with something that just might pay off soon.

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