While the first IMAX 3D film was released 15 years after IMAX’s 1970 debut, the format’s possibilities as a 3-D medium were immediately apparent, particularly among filmmakers affiliated with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). In their first decade, the IMAX Corporation’s priorities were to establish production systems and theatre networks, while continuing to pursue innovation, in large part through World’s Fair experiments including NFB collaborations that would lay the groundwork for IMAX 3D. NFB Commissioner Sydney Newman, inspired by his encounter with Stereo 70 (a 3-D system at EXPO 70’s Russian pavilion), and the NFB’s history of 3-D animation (particularly Norman McLaren), proposed a 3-D film as Canada’s contribution to the American Bicentennial in 1976. (Low 1983, 42) While the Bicentennial project was never realized, it spurred 3-D research at the NFB, including a 1973 trip to NIKFI (Scientific Research Film and Photo Institute), Moscow, by Colin Low, John Spotton and Ernest McNabb to learn about their stereoscopic film practices. While Cold War contingencies stymied aspirations for Canada–USSR collaborative filmmaking, these exchanges were invaluable in cultivating technical expertise and artistic creativity in 3-D production. 

The first stereoscopic IMAX film was We Are Born of Stars, Roman Kroitor’s animated film projected in single-strip anaglyph in an OMNIMAX theater at the 1985 Tsukuba World’s Fair in Japan. While dome-based stereoscopy was, by its nature, a very limited format, We Are Born of Stars would prove an important milestone in computer animation. The following year, the first flat-screen IMAX 3D theater was built in the CN Pavilion (Canadian National Railway) at Expo 86 in Vancouver, British Columbia, featuring the first live-action IMAX 3D film, Transitions, produced by the NFB. The 3-D camera rig for this production involved a crane supporting two full-size IMAX cameras positioned at 90 degrees to each other, with a half-silvered mirror between them. In this configuration, the left-eye camera lens axis pointed downward, while the right-eye lens axis pointed ahead. While the resulting film produced good results, and a refined version of this rig would be used for Echoes of the Sun and The Last Buffalo (both 1990), IMAX also developed a single-camera system called Solido, that would be used on most IMAX 3D films. (Note that this term is related, but not identical to the Solido projection system, detailed in the IMAX Solido entry.)

The Solido IMAX 3D camera was designed with several goals in mind. First, a single camera integrating the left- and right-eye components would be easier to operate, with reduced size and weight that allowed for greater camera mobility. The camera incorporated two 15/65 movements into one camera body, and refined the advancement mechanism: making it smaller, more easily synchronized, and with an adjustable frame rate. It also included microprocessor-controlled shutters and lenses, further ensuring perfect alignment of the left- and right-eye apparatus, while reducing the number of moving parts required to operate the camera. This camera had two lenses in a fixed position 2.85 in. (72.4mm) apart, a distance approaching the average 64mm interocular distance (measured between the pupil of each eye) of an adult (Imax Corporation, 1997). As many of the existing IMAX lenses, particularly the fish-eye lens, were too large for this camera, Hughes Leitz of Canada Ltd. created a 30mm fish-eye lens pair, scaled for the camera. IMAX also created matched 40mm, 60mm and 80mm 3-D lenses. 

Another significant development were variants of the IMAX 3D camera designed for use on the Space Shuttle in orbit, including a Cabin Camera for interior shots, and a Cargo Bay Camera installed in position to photograph exterior shots. These were used to shoot Space Station 3D (2002) and Hubble 3D (2010) through IMAX’s collaboration with NASA, the National Air and Space Museum and Lockheed Martin Corporation. The space cameras advanced two frames at a time (30-perf, pull-across), recording the left- and right-eye images simultaneously on adjacent frames of a single strip of film (later separated with an optical printer) – improving camera size, usability and efficient use of film stock. The interocular distance for the Cabin Camera was 5mm shorter than standard, in order to mitigate the miniaturizing effect as a result of subjects being relatively close to the camera, given the confined geometry of the spacecraft (Duncan, 2006: p. 101). 

Since We Are Born of Stars, animation has been a significant innovative force in IMAX 3D filmmaking, notably the SANDDE system (a portmanteau of the Japanese words for “three” and “D”; also, an acronym of Stereoscopic Animation Drawing Device), patented by Roman Kroitor and used extensively by NFB filmmakers. While SANDDE can be used for films of any format, the compositional versatility afforded by IMAX’s scale was important to its conceptualization. SANDDE allowed the animator to create images by moving 3-D models through virtual 3-D space, rather than modeling 3-D forms and projecting them onto a 2-D plane. The first film made with the format was Paint Misbehavin’ in 1997.

While fully digital 3-D processes are now ubiquitous, 15/70 IMAX 3D has been used in film production as recently as 2017’s Dream Big: Engineering Our World (MacGillivray Freeman Films). The format has allowed for decades of sustained technical and creative innovation in stereoscopic filmmaking, and has impacted the development of subsequent 3-D production in all formats. As of 2025, the cinema at the Gujarat Science City in Ahmedabad, India, is still projecting IMAX 3D in dual-strip 70mm.