A stereoscopic OpenGL-based interactive plug-in framework for Maya and beyond

In many 3D modeling and visualization tools, it is generally difficult to create well-composed stereoscopic animation because stereo previews cannot be seen in real-time. Unable to work interactively in stereo, modelers and animators must work with flat previews and subsequently perform software renders and compositing to preview the stereoscopic effect. We propose an interactive plug-in-based framework and a case-study user interface that uses it for the Maya 3D animation software to remedy this problem. Our work is OpenGL-based and open-source and we have designed it for extension to tools other than Maya. We present the first working iteration of the real-time stereoscopic multi-view visualization interface and its challenges. Despite starting Maya 2009 includes built-in stereoscopic support, our plug-in works for Maya 2008 and Maya 8 that did not support it natively as well as our plug-in does not require the use of the graphics cards that support stereo buffers. Due to being based on OpenGL - an open standard and open-source, and the generality of the architecture, the framework can be included in any OpenGL application that wishes to do stereoscopy as either a plug-in or a library. It can also serve for educational purposes.