Pinball Magazine No. 3 features an article about Germany-based Pinball Dreams, owned by Henrik Maurer. The company specializes in making custom pinball machines and in the process they have developed quite a few cool custom products, such as aprons, to enhance your pinball machine. In the article there’s a brief mention of upcoming 3D translites, which have been in development for the past two years. The first one, for Medieval Madness, is now finally available and the result is very impressive.
Turning a 2D image, such as the original Medieval Madness translite image, into 3D is not an easy thing to do. All the various elements of the 2D image have to be separated from their background and placed into various layers. The most difficult part is to add artwork to the layers behind objects that will be moved to the front as you will be able to look behind them in 3D. This must have been a challenging task as the Medieval Madness artwork is quite busy.
But, as mentioned, the end result is very impressive! The tinyest details are taken care of. It definitely ads depth to the original 2D image, making the castle, the King of Payne and his trolls stand out more. Unlike other lenticular 3D images the MM translite is still pretty sharp, which is not easy as lenticular foil can make things look a bit blurry. When looking at the translite from a player’s point of view it simply looks great. Henrik himself expessed to be very pleased with how the end result turned out as the offset printed translates look so much better than the one-off testprints he did earlier on.
Installing the translite was also surprisingly easy. It was shipped flat in a cardboard box. It comes with an easy to understand list of instructions and in a few minutes the original translite is replaced with the new 3D translite.
On the Pinside forum some people spotted an error in the Medieval Madness translite in the upper left corner, but if you don’t know what to look for chances are slim you will spot the mistake.
The new 3D translates are available from Pinball Dreams in Europe and Planetary Pinball Supplies in USA. More titles, like White Water, Attack from Mars and Theatre of Magic, are likely to follow soon. Note: 3D translites are not completely new as Stern Pinball have done lenticular 3D translites as well for Limited Edition models of Tron and Avatar. It is however the first time that such lenticular 3D translites are produced for elder titles, by a third party as an official licensed product.