View-Master brought stereoscopic 3D entertainment to millions of homes—but how did its creators produce images of imaginary worlds? According to Hackaday, while photographing real locations in stereo was straightforward, fictional scenes demanded a different approach. The studio solution: painstakingly crafted miniature dioramas. View-Master's craftspeople sculpted and painted tiny sets, populated them with hand-painted figures, then photographed them using stereo cameras calibrated for the dual-image effect. It was analog 3D in its purest form—sculptural artistry meeting optical chemistry. No computers, no rendering. Just talented artisans translating imagination into miniature worlds that, through the viewer's lens, felt genuinely three-dimensional and immersive.

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