Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Wise guys
Creating compelling CG game characters
10
Features
In Your Dreams
10 Helping director Chris Nolan achieve his unique vision for the film Inception
was VFX facility Double Negative, which, among other things, turned the
actors’ world upside down.
By Barbara Robertson
COVER STORY
18 26 Character Traits
18Thesophisticated
digital stars of today’s popular interactive titles are growing more
and complex. Meet some of these characters, and learn
how their creators brought them to life.
By John Gaudiosi
Rivet-ing
34 42 T
26 Filmmaker/CG artist Sam Chen spent four years trekking through a digital
rain forest to create his short “Amazonia,” made entirely on mobile PCs. 2
By Karen Moltenbrey
By Kathleen Maher
A Partial Rebound
Spotlight
4More growth expected in the CG market.
Products Luxion’s KeyShot 2. Dell’s portfolio update. Eyeon’s Fusion
6.1, Rotation 6.1. News The workstation market’s road to recovery.
42Hiring in the film and games industries continues, offering a bright spot for
recent grads as well as seasoned professionals.
By Jennifer Austin
CAD industry in slow-recovery
mode.
Review SEE IT IN • Director Rob Reiner discusses Flipped.
• ABC’s The Gates is all-digital from start
46Adobe Creative Suite 5. x to finish.
• VFX supes on this summer’s films.
Back Products • Special DI section.
August/September 2010 1
Editor’sNote
SIGGRAPH Sideshow E D I TO R I A L
KAREN MOLTENBREY
Chief Editor
T
karen@cgw.com • (603) 432-7568
his year, the annual SIGGRAPH conference was not so much about 36 East Nashua Road
super-new technology, but rather, better ways of using it. In a word, Windham, NH 03087
“efficiency.” To this end, many new products were unveiled, many high- CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Courtney Howard, Jenny Donelan,
lighted in this issue and on our Web site. Some we even singled out Audrey Doyle, George Maestri,
for a Best-of-Show designation on page 3. Kathleen Maher, Martin McEachern,
Barbara Robertson
The conference, however, is far more than just new products. It
is about art, technology, applications, education, and research. It is WILLIAM R. RITTWAGE
Publisher, President and CEO,
about sharing concepts and ideas to push the industry further. It’s COP Communications
also about building relationships and having fun. To this end, I want-
ed to take this opportunity to mention some things that I thought SA L E S
LISA BLACK
were of particular interest. Let’s start with education. CGW kicked Associate Publisher
National Sales • Education • Recruitment
off the show with its third annual SIGGRAPH student volunteer ad- lisab@cgw.com • (818) 660-6323
dress, as top industry experts (Avatar’s Rob Powers, Zoic’s Les Ekker, fax: (214) 260-1127
Microsoft Game Studio’s Paul Amer, and DreamWorks’ Craig Ring) KELLY RYAN
spoke to the students about the recent trends in the industry and offered advice Classifieds and Reprints • Marketing
kryan@copcomm.com
for breaking into the job market. (818) 291-1155
The day before the exhibition floor opened, Don Marinelli gave one of the
most interesting and engaging keynotes I have witnessed in quite some time. Editorial Office / LA Sales Office:
620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, CA 91204
Executive producer of Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center (800) 280-6446
(ETC), Marinelli relayed how this successful initiative, which dared to unite
two seemingly opposite disciplines—fine arts and computer science—came PRODUCTION
KEITH KNOPF
to be. Think of it like the relationship of the characters Day and Night, in the Production Director
Knopf Bay Productions
Pixar animated short film “Day&Night”: Each initially wary and untrusting keith@copcomm.com • (818) 291-1158
of the other (see “You Are the One,” pg. 34). That is, until they got to know
MICHAEL VIGGIANO
and understand each other. Once they learned to appreciate and embrace their Art Director
differences, they found they had something novel to offer. Now, substitute in mviggiano@copcomm.com
place of the characters Day and Night, ETC co-founders Marinelli and the late CHRIS SALCIDO
Randy Pausch (of “The Last Lecture”). Throughout the keynote, Marinelli Account Representative
csalcido@copprints.com • (818) 291-1144
made reference to tornados: It is in the title of his book, and it is the basis for
his many analogies, one of which is that every now and then the world needs
a tornado to shake things up and tear down the old, outdated concepts so that
new ones can grow. Not only were the “tornado” references appropriate for his
presentation, but also for Marinelli himself, who is a true force of nature. Not
only did his talk meet with the appreciation of students, but also with industry
veterans, who could not help but be inspired by his enthusiasm and vision. Computer Graphics World Magazine
is published by Computer Graphics World,
On the show floor, Nvidia made quite an impression with its all-digital a COP Communications company.
Computer Graphics World does not verify any claims or
booth—a first for SIGGRAPH. There were no printed signs, just amazing other information appearing in any of the advertisements
contained in the publication, and cannot take any
displays with amazing content (thanks also to Barco screens and HP and Dell responsibility for any losses or other damages incurred
by readers in reliance on such content.
machines). Not only did the area look sleek, but it really helped illustrate the
Computer Graphics World cannot be held responsible for
complexity facing today’s digital content creators across various industries. The the safekeeping or return of unsolicited articles,
manuscripts, photographs, illustrations or other materials.
booth featured Nvidia’s new Quadro line, based on the Fermi architecture, and Address all subscription correspondence to: Computer
Graphics World, 620 West Elk Ave, Glendale, CA 91204.
the company touted this as “the perfect platform for computational visualiza- Subscriptions are available free to qualified individuals
within the United States. Non-qualified subscription rates:
tion”—the combination of advanced visualization with computational simula- USA—$72 for 1 year, $98 for 2 years; Canadian
subscriptions —$98 for 1 year and $136 for 2 years;
tion. There were demonstrations by Bunkspeed, RTT, and others, but the one all other countries—$150 for 1 year and $208 for 2 years.
Digital subscriptions are available for $27 per year.
that stole the show was by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. The puppeteer dem- Subscribers can also contact customer service by calling
(800) 280 6446, opt 2 (publishing), opt 1 (subscriptions) or
onstrated how the Quadros enable the digital characters to come alive in real sending an email to csr@cgw.com. Change of address can
be made online at http://www.omeda.com/cgw/ and click
time—and now, thanks to the new Quadros, in stereo 3D. Plus, the guy was hi- on customer service assistance.
larious! His quick wit drew laughs and smiles from all those who ventured by. Postmaster: Send Address Changes to
Computer Graphics World, P.O. Box 3551,
Not to be outdone, AMD also vied for attention with its huge video wall, Northbrook, IL 60065-3551
Please send customer service inquiries to
with its 40 displays and more than 92 megapixels of resolution—all powered 620 W. Elk Ave., Glendale, CA 91204
by just 10 ATI FirePro V8800 cards.
continued on page 3
2 August/September 2010
Editor’sNote
continued from page 2
the past, present, and future of visual effects. n The motion-capture vendors (namely Organic Motion, NaturalPoint,
What few people realized is that both men Xsens, Vicon), which are making the technology easier to use
are longtime LightWave users. n The rendering vendors, including Luxion (KeyShot 2), Bunkspeed (Shot),
There is so much more, of course, but I StudioGPU (MachStudio Pro 2), Mental Images (iRay), The Chaos Group (V-ray)
only have so much room here. What did you n Maxon’s Cinema 4D Version 12
find interesting? Share it with us online in the n The Foundry’s Nuke 6.1 and Mari
CGW Blog section at www.cgw.com. n
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August/September 2010
At the annual SIGGRAPH conference and exhibition, held a little more than a month ago,
numerous vendors introduced a bevy of new offerings, whether brand-new products or updates
to existing ones. We have highlighted a number of them here in our Spotlight section and in our
Products. A comprehensive report from the show can be found on www.CGW.com by select-
ing News on the left side of the page.
PRODUCT: LIGHTING
PRODUCT: WORKSTATIONS
4 August/September 2010
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The Workstation Market’s Road to Recovery
The workstation market posted another round of steadily improv- the workstation shipment crown outright for the first time.
ing results for the first quarter of 2010, taking one more solid step But HP didn’t get much time to revel in the top spot, as the
in its recovery from the lows of 2009. That finding by Jon Peddie very next quarter Dell’s shipments surged, and in the process,
Research (JPR) comes after the firm’s first-quarter analysis as part virtually eliminated the scant lead HP had been able to manage.
of its “JPR Workstation Report” series. The technology and market And in the first quarter of this year, the company had an upside
research firm reports that the industry shipped 725,000 worksta- once more, jumping back in front of HP 39.3 percent to 38.1
tions worldwide in the first quarter, resulting in sequential growth percent. Since HP looks to still have a slight edge in revenue,
of 1.1 percent and a year-over-year increase of 25.7 percent. JPR’s calling it a tie, and Dell has been successfully served
While a welcome number, the 25.7 percent gain over the notice that workstation market leadership is back up for grabs.
same quarter a year ago should be taken with a grain of salt, Amazingly, the professional graphics hardware market set a
as it’s more of a reflection on how bad the first-quarter 2009 new record for shipments, surpassing 2007 and early 2008
market performed than how good Q1 2010 turned out. Instead, numbers: The market shipped 1.26 billion total units, up 17.6
it was the sequential gain that this time proved a better indica- percent sequentially and a whopping 77.9 percent year-over-
tor of the progress the market is making in its climb back up to year. Not only was growth surprisingly hot, but the market
pre-recession levels. managed to set a new record for units shipped, besting totals
In periods of flat or even modest growth, Q1 sales tend to from the bullish days of late 2007 and early 2008. Given the
lag those of Q4, so even a modest sequential uptick is a bull- exceptionally precipitous downturn of 2009, a new record
ish sign. And from that perspective, this year’s first quarter was wasn’t expected quite so soon, but the major beneficiaries—
stronger than might first appear, as a 1.1 percent sequential Nvidia and AMD (ATI)—certainly aren’t complaining.
increase for Q1 signals a market ahead of its normal pace— Now in its sixth year, “JPR’s Workstation Report–Professional
more evidence of sustained momentum for its recovery from the Computing Markets and Technologies” has established itself
ugly days of last year. as the essential reference guide for hardware and software
That said, it’s beginning to look like HP’s coronation as the vendors and suppliers serving the workstation and professional
new king of workstations might have been premature. After graphics markets. Subscribers receive two in-depth reports
years of closing a major gap to market leader Dell, HP flirted per year, providing a comprehensive analysis of the vendors
with volume leadership for three consecutive quarters, essen- and technologies driving the workstation platform. Clients also
tially deadlocked with Dell for Q4 2008 through Q2 2009. receive four quarterly reports detailing and analyzing market
Finally, in the third quarter of 2009, HP surged ahead to take results for each calendar quarter. ■
NEWS: WORKSTATIONS
NEWS: CG
6 August/September 2010
The USS MISSOURI exterior was imaged
in full HDR color at a resolution of less
than 4 mm in 4 days during dry-docking
at Pearl Harbor, HI. January 2010.
NEWS: CAD
PRODUCT: COMPOSITING
8 August/September 2010
■ ■ ■ ■ Visual Effects
W
hen director Chris Nolan approached visual effects super- Knight; stunt coordinator Tom Strothers, who won a Screen Actors
visor Paul Franklin of Double Negative with another dream Guild Award for The Dark Knight; and cinematographer Wally Pfister,
job, Franklin had no idea Nolan meant that literally. Until who received Oscar nominations for both of Nolan’s Batman films.
he read the script. Much of the film Inception, which Nolan wrote, di- Although the Batman films are comic-book fantasies, Nolan insisted
rected, and produced, takes place inside a dream world. The Warner on grounding anything created with computer graphics in physical re-
Bros. Pictures production stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Cobb) as a dream ality, from streets and buildings to Batmobiles. So, too, the effects in
thief and Ellen Page (Ariadne) as an architect who becomes a dream- Inception’s dream worlds. “Chris [Nolan] will do his utmost to shoot for
space designer. real if he can,” Franklin says. “We had fantastic special effects from Chris
For Inception, Nolan brought back a team he had worked with on his Corbould and truly astounding stunt work from Tom Struthers, and all
award-winning films Batman Begins and The Dark Knight: visual effects three—visual effects, stunts, and special effects—worked in unison.”
supervisor Franklin, special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, and edi- Double Negative (Dneg) provided all the digital visual effects, with
tor Lee Smith, all of whom received Oscar nominations for The Dark New Deal Studios providing miniatures for an alpine sequence. “By
10 August/September 2010
Visual Effects ■ ■ ■ ■
modern standards, we didn’t have a huge shot count,” Franklin says. Paris in the Dream Time
“We had a modest 500 shots; but, it was 34 to 40 minutes of screen In the first part of the film, we learn that Cobb, accused of murdering
time.” Although Dneg altered reality in the real world for a few shots by his wife, is on the run. He’s an extractor, someone who uses futuristic
adding passing views of a landscape outside a bullet train, for example, dream sharing to invade the subconscious of sleeping targets to steal
most of the studio’s effects involved altering environments inside the information from their minds. Corporations hire him to do industrial
dream world. espionage. But one industrial magnate has a different idea: Rather than
Even so, Nolan wanted those environments to look and feel real. steal ideas, he wants Cobb to invade the dreams of a rival and plant an
“There’s a large amount of sophisticated visual effects work,” Franklin idea. Cobb agrees and hires a team that includes the brilliant student of
says, “and what distinguishes it is Chris’s strong aesthetic grounding in architecture, Ariadne, who will design dreamspaces the team will share
reality. He says the audience has to believe it’s a filmed image, not syn- with their target. As she learns how dream sharing works, the first series
thetic.” So, even if a shot doesn’t call for a plate, the team will still shoot of effects take place.
something real for reference. We see her and Cobb sitting outside at a café in Paris, discussing dream
August/September 2010 11
n n n n Visual Effects
A combination of practical explosions enhanced with digital models destroyed this procedurally furniture and tableware from the café, and so
created vision of a shattered dream that takes place in a Parisian café. forth. DNShatter uses procedurally created
patterns based on observed shatter patterns.
architecture. Cobb asks how they got there. cobblestones flying in the air, buildings ex- “We couldn’t have achieved the level of de-
Ariadne answers that she can’t remember, and ploding and shattering. So, we did a lot of CG tail we have in the shot without these proce-
Cobb explains that they’re in a dream. He says dynamics. We added levels of detail and com- dural tools and a fantastic level of photorealistic
people never remember how dreams start, and plexity to the sequence.” rendering,” Franklin says. “But, we also did a
adds that they’re not in the part of Paris she Franklin began by working with a rough lot of work in our version of Apple’s Shake to
thinks they’re in. She panics and loses control of cut that editor Lee Smith assembled in Quick- re-time the slow-motion footage. The explo-
the dream world she created in her own mind. Time from footage shot on the street in Paris, sions start at 24 fps and then slow down, as
When she does, the world explodes. using Dneg’s “Clip,” a Linux-based editing if damped by a treacle-like medium, to 1000
Nolan shot the scene in Paris. “We were on tool. “Clip allows me to draw annotations on fps, and hang in the air. Leo (Cobb) and Ellen
Rue Bouchut in central Paris,” Franklin says, top of the sequences and animate them over (Ariadne) are moving around within a mael-
“a marvelous 19th century classic Parisian street the timeline,” he says. “I could scribble with strom of debris flying and shattering around
that Chris Corbould rigged with compressed a pen, like in Photoshop, to show which bits them. It was a great sequence. A brilliant com-
air canisters that fired lightweight debris. Even break up and where the debris would go.” bination of special effects, visual effects, and
though it looked dangerous, he rigged it so Leo After sketching an animated sequence in fantastic compositing.”
and Ellen sit in the middle of things explod- Clip, Franklin discussed his plans with No-
ing around them.” To enhance that practical lan and Smith via Cinesync’s remote viewing Stepping Up
effect, the camera crew filmed the scene with and approval software. Then, keeping notes When Cobb and Ariadne return to Paris in her
high-speed cameras at 700 frames per second from Nolan in mind, he replaced the ani- dreams, the burgeoning dreamspace architect
(fps)—a five-second take slowed to a minute mated drawings with placeholder visual effects more confidently plays with “reality.” In this
on playback. animations and sent the new versions back to sequence, which appeared in the trailers, we
“That gave a slow-motion, antigravity look Nolan and Smith. see the buildings in Paris fold up and arc over-
to the debris floating in the air,” Franklin says. “The final sequence evolved over six head to create a cube of streets at 90-degree
“It shows the physics of the world inside their months,” Franklin says. “We’d iterate and iter- angles, with people walking on the “ceiling.”
dreaming mind breaking down and falling ate and iterate again. We’d review the sequence The visual effects team combined their
apart. It’s a stylized look, not like a bomb go- with Chris regularly and, toward the end, every digital work with a practical effects technique
ing off.” day. It was an interactive, two-way process, and similar to one that helped Fred Astaire dance
For reference, the filmmakers examined it was great.” up the walls and across the ceiling of his apart-
the final scene in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Effects supervisor Nicola Hoyle led the ment in the 1951 musical Royal Wedding.
1970 film Zabriski Point in which Daria, group that built the models and broke them Franklin previs’d the shot.
a main character, imagines blowing up her apart, working with the studio’s DNDyna- As Cobb and Ariadne step up, in effect,
boss’s home. Antonioni represented this by ex- mite, a rigid-body dynamics solver built inside onto a vertical plane, they are actually walk-
ploding a house, filming it with a high-speed Autodesk’s Maya. Lead effects TD May Leung ing on a tilting set built by Corbuold’s crew
camera, and then projecting it in slow motion. led the animation team. Modelers used refer- that has a camera fixed to it. “The whole set
“We wanted to create the same complexity,” ence photos of material filmed on location to pivoted over and they stepped onto the ‘wall’
Franklin says, “all the tiny fragments you get match pieces of debris broken on set. But, they at the same time,” Franklin says. “We replaced
when you blow up something. But, the prac- also built polygonal models and broke them everything except Leo [DiCaprio] and Ellen
tical effects team couldn’t destroy things to apart using the studio’s DNShatter—bits of [Page]. But, we had to get them really step-
the extent Chris [Nolan] wanted. He wanted buildings, cardboard boxes, cobblestones, ping up to that wall.”
12 August/September 2010
Slightly dangerous
Because Franklin and Nolan had worked Franklin says. “We built a straightforward ani- a per-face adjacency map in one texture file
together on previous films, they could refer- mation tool set system to place the people and for each surface. First used for Bolt (see “Back
ence visual memories shared over the past six traffic in the shots.” to the Future,” November 2008) and “Glago’s
years. And for the tilting building shot, they Guest” (see “Short Subjects, Big Ideas–Simple
both remembered the drawbridges over the Paris Light Truths,” February 2009), the technique uses
Chicago River. “Chris [Nolan] didn’t want Although sending people walking up vertical adjacency data to do seamless anisotropic fil-
plastic buildings that moved like taffy,” Frank- streets and tilting buildings might seem to tering of multi-resolution textures across sur-
lin says. “He wanted a visceral, engineered be the trickiest part of the shot, the challenge faces, even those with arbitrary topology. The
feeling. In Chicago, the drawbridges lift great was in making everything look photoreal. “If technique works through RenderMan.
sections of road. It looks like the whole end of you fold a building over on itself, you can’t see “Basically, with this new way to map tex-
the street levers up on a giant hinge, so we used the sun anymore,” Franklin says. “So we had tures onto 3D geometry, we didn’t have to
that idea. The streets would hinge up and arc to work out a way to light the street to look go through the process of setting up UV co-
over, but they would pivot, not bend.” natural, yet still fit with the live-action pho- ordinates,” Franklin says. “We used this more
To build a Paris street as a full-CG envi- tography. The actors are in broad daylight, lit sophisticated projection system to map all the
ronment, the team from Dneg worked with by the sun. But, we couldn’t have light shining textures in the Paris street scenes. We’ve done
a visual effects team from Lidar Services that through a building.” photorealistic environments before at Double
scanned the four-block area around Place The answer was mystery light sources added Negative: Gotham City, Chicago. But this
Georges Mulot over a period of three weeks. artfully. “The lighting had to be so seamless sequence happens in broad daylight, in high-
“They had an SUV with a mast that had a that you never question it,” Franklin says. “It’s contrast sunlight. We had fantastic, beautiful
Lidar head on it,” Franklin says. “They digi- a dream that has to feel real. This sequence plates shot by Wally Pfister with 64mm clear,
tized the streets down to a quarter-centimeter exemplified the key challenge in all the work: anamorphic cameras. There was nowhere to
level of detail and provided us with a high- No matter how outlandish the imagery—fold- hide. And Chris [Nolan] insisted the digital
detail model. Then the Dneg team did an ex- ing streets or a café blowing up—we had to buildings be equal to photography.”
tensive photo survey of all the buildings.” In ground it with convincing, absolute reality.” Compositing supervisor Graham Page
addition, because the crew couldn’t get per- The lighting was so complex, in fact, that placed the live-action actors in the digital en-
mission to helicopter low over the city, to cap- the crew could not use Spangle, the interac- vironment. But, before he did so, the artists re-
ture a view looking down onto Paris rooftops, tive, in-house lighting tool developed at Dneg alized that the movement of the actors looked
they turned to the Internet for images. for The Dark Knight. Instead, they relied on too mechanical. “He worked out a brilliant
The Internet images, the combination of optimized shaders and raw renderfarm power. way to separate the actors even though we
filmed them in the same pass,” Franklin says.
“And then, he changed the timing to make
the shot feel more organic. It was a tremen-
dous piece of compositing.” The compositors
all worked at 4k resolution using the tools
that Dneg’s R&D department created for the
IMAX version of The Dark Knight to overcome
Shake’s memory limitations (see “Extreme
Effects–Dark Inspiration,” August 2006).
“I don’t want to play down our technical
achievements, but this sequence is a testament
to the artistry of the crew,” Franklin says.
14 August/September 2010
Visual Effects n n n n
August/September 2010 15
n n n n Visual Effects
the sequence and think they shot a slow-mo- And then, with the help of New Deal Studios, technique that worked. Using reference pho-
tion plate,” Franklin says. “But it wouldn’t they blew it all up. New Deal built a 45-foot-tall tos of glaciers, Boyle built polygonal models
have been possible. You can’t strap a delicate miniature and, working from Knapp’s previs, to capture the basic shape, and then created
high-speed camera onto a speeding vehicle. exploded their version of the set and the moun- space-filling algorithms that used basic build-
Muhittin Bilginer [technical director] created tain. “They replicated the action from the previs ing blocks. “It was like building a glacier with
layers and layers of slow-motion CG rain fall- and took it further,” Franklin says. “And then we giant Legos,” Franklin says. “We added a rule
ing down, hitting the street, and splashing.” added CG bits and more buildings in the back- to the procedural system to insert streets and
A Dneg team again added slow-motion CG ground. It was the best of both worlds.” intersections, and another set of rules to vary
rain to the end of the shot as the van drops Inside this dream, the characters snooze their the width of streets and buildings based on
off a bridge and plunges into the river below. way into a deeper dream, the final level, Limbo. the shape of the glacier. Through this iterative
For this shot, the artists created the rain us- process, we ended up with a complex cityscape
ing Maya particles, and compositor Scott How Low Can You Go? that had recognizable shapes taken from archi-
Pritchard supervised the layering of digital and Limbo is where dreamers end up if the dream tectural history, but had a crumbling, decaying
practical rain elements into the sequence. traps them, and at this point in the film, Cobb feel because it was inspired by the shape of the
Because all the people inside the van except and Ariadne wash up on the shores of Limbo. glacier.” Then, with the help of a procedural
for the driver are dreaming another dream, Cobb was there before, trapped with his wife destruction system implemented within Side
and because the physics of one layer affect the for 50 years. Both architects by trade, while Effects’ Houdini, they collapsed the buildings
next, in the second dream layer (which takes there they constructed a modern city, but and destroyed the city.
place in a hotel), the walls and ceiling move Cobb has been away for hundreds of dream For a final encounter between Cobb and the
as the van leans around the corner and then years, and this city, constructed deep in his ghost of his wife, Dneg created a giant storm
freefalls off the bridge. mind, is falling apart. that sweeps across the city using the studio’s
Borrowing an idea from techniques used to “Chris [Nolan] wanted a city collapsing Squirt fluid dynamics system. The blizzard
create zero gravity inside a spaceship for Stan- into the sea, and he wanted it to be completely that tears through the streets and rips build-
At left, Double Negative artists created the decomposing city by procedurally stacking building
ley Kubrick’s 2001, Corbould’s team built gi- blocks inside the shape of a glacier and then crumbled it with a procedural destruction system. At
ant rotating sets. “They built an 80-foot-long right, the studio sent a blizzard raging through the dream city using its proprietary fluid dynamics
section of corridor that could rotate at eight system called Squirt.
feet per minute to create a tilting bar and ho- unique,” Franklin relays. Dneg art director Gurel ings apart echoes shots of the collapsing café
tel room,” Franklin says. “It was staggering to Mehmet created concept drawings of a sea wash- in Paris at the beginning of the film.
watch and a testament to the immense power ing over a city, of a city embedded in a glacier, “We are creating outlandish imagery from
of doing effects in camera.” As for postproduc- a sea in city streets, and more, but the drawings deep inside the mind with the clarity of a lucid
tion work, the artists’ main task was painting didn’t match what Nolan envisioned. “The art dream,” Franklin says. “Visual effects are an
out wires, replacing backgrounds, and adding department tried, as well,” Franklin adds, “but integral part of that. But the most significant
floating debris. In addition, for shots that take nothing hit the mark. So Chris concluded that thing in this film is not that we are pushing
place later on this dream level, the Dneg team we couldn’t get there with concept art. The idea the boundaries of new science, it’s the develop-
put CG faces onto stunt performers. had to evolve in a complex fashion.” ment of the art of visual effects. We’re reaching
Below the hotel level, the dreamscape moves Franklin remembered that when he was in a level of sophistication in which filmmakers
outside, to the top of a Canadian mountain, art school, he would create steel sculptures by can treat visual effects as another camera. They
where the art department built a set at 8000 cutting pieces of metal that he’d stick together can say, ‘I’d like to shoot this,’ and we can film
feet and filming took place in freezing tem- with spot welds. “Using this process, I’d arrive it for them through visual effects.”
peratures. CG artist Vanessa Boyce led a team at an end result, a sculpture built from short Film anything, in fact, that a filmmaker can
that built a CG model of the set and then ex- sections of welded steel that had aspects of a dream of. n
tended it, adding storms and blizzards using drawing. But this process is the complete an-
3D particle and fluid dynamics. Compositing tithesis of digital visual effects.” Barbara Robertson is an award-winning writer and a
lead Richard Reed’s team fit the model and the Franklin sat with Boyle and lighting su- contributing editor for Computer Graphics World. She can
effects into plate photography. pervisor Bruno Baron, and they developed a be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net.
16 August/September 2010
Think you know RealFlow?
Think again...
OUT NOW
A
BY JOHN GAUDIOSI
As technology advances, game developers are given more choices when it comes to creating
the next generation of protagonists and antagonists that captivate gamers for hours on end.
During the past few years, as studios have become more acclimated to current-generation con-
soles, they have been pushing their processing power further, and as a result, gamers have seen
a variety of diverse character types evolve. From photorealistic, motion-captured characters that
seem to eerily live and breathe within the game worlds of Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain to the
epic, ripped-from-a-painting, blood-soaked beauty of Sony Santa Monica Studios’ God of War 3,
there’s something for every graphic artist to dive into.
During the past several months, titles like Gearbox Studios’ Borderlands took the shooter genre
in an entirely new direction with a unique cel-shaded, “living comic” look that had never been
seen before, especially running on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3. A derivative of that comic-book
style can be seen in characters like Ryu in Capcom’s new Super Street Fighter IV, and that studio
is pushing this vibrant, pop-out-of-the-screen style even further with the 2011 fight title Marvel
vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. There are also games that are focusing on story and utilizing
more robust, more human characters in story-driven titles, such as 2K Games’ interactive crime
story Mafia II and Visceral Games’ survival horror/adventure Dead Space 2. And then there are
studios, such as Epic Games (Gears of War 3) and People Can Fly (Bulletstorm), which like to
infuse hulking, arcade-style caricatures who carry big guns and let the ammo do the talking.
Here we examine some of the unique characters in these game titles and the CG techniques
used to create them.
18 August/September 2010
Gaming ■ ■ ■ ■
C
T
Bulletstorm
People Can Fly/Epic Games
The folks at Epic Games liked Polish developer People Can Fly so much after working with
the studio on the PC version of Gears of War that Epic bought the studio. Next spring, their
first collaboration, Bulletstorm (published by Electronic Arts), will be released on the PC, Play-
Station 3, and Xbox 360 platforms. The game introduces a “symphony of blood,” allowing
players to methodically torture enemies before showing them mercy.
The game’s protagonist, Grayson Hunt, is a drunken space pirate who was once an elite mer-
cenary. Cliff Bleszinski, design director at Epic Games, says Hunt was modeled after rogue anti-
heroes, such as Han Solo; players will journey with Hunt as he seeks revenge and, ultimately,
redemption.
“Hunt is a member of Dead Echo, an elite group of mercenaries trying to keep the peace for
the confederation of the galaxy,” explains Bleszinski. “He discovers that some of his commanding
officers have been using him and his team to do their ill will, so he makes a decision to save his
crew, and they end up in the dead of space.”
The game’s action picks up years later with Hunt living a rogue pirate existence. After crashing
his small ship into the Ulysses, the prized ship of the confederation, the game takes place on Sty-
gia, a resort planet run amok by mutants and now overrun by confederation enemies, as well.
“Modern consoles, along with high-end game engines like Unreal Engine 3, can manage in-
sanely detailed game characters with ease,” says Andrzej Poznanski, lead artist at People Can Fly.
“Are there still restrictions and limitations? Sure, they’ll always be there, but these days it’s not
about limitations, it’s about not getting overwhelmed and carried away with almost limitless
possibilities.”
As Poznanski notes, good game characters need a tasteful balance of clean, simple shapes,
complemented with meaningful details, which weren’t added just because there was empty space
on a normal-map texture. He adds that it is important that even when players are squinting
their eyes, they still clearly “get” the distinctive features of the model, including the character’s
silhouette, props, and attitude.
The team at People Can Fly start the character creation process with a mood concept draw-
ing, “because we need to get the vibe and feel of the character before we go further,” explains
To create the characters for its noir title Heavy Rain, Quantic Dream
enlisted real actors to bring its CG characters to life. The artists spent
a great deal of time creating realistic facial animations for the cast.
August/September 2010 19
n n n n Gaming
Poznanski. Next, the artists make proper or- hundreds of additional textures are layered in to 4000 by 2000, not only in cut-scenes, but
thogonal drawings of the character in a default [Adobe’s] Photoshop,” says Poznanski. “A large within the game itself. Some of our high-resolu-
pose, and then make necessary adjustments part of the final effect can be attributed to Un- tion meshes went beyond the 100 million mark,
to ensure that the new character will work real’s powerful shader capabilities. We also can which can be a challenge to work with. Despite
well with the studio’s standard skeletal rig for use the Fresnel effect, and breathe life into skin all those numbers, the quality and believability of
animation. “It’s important and lets us reuse all textures by emulating subsurface light scatter- the final product purely comes down to what the
typical animations for our humanoid charac- ing, and create more 3D models using bump artist is able to deliver.”
ters,” he adds. offset mapping, and even animate geometry Naughty Dog begins with a concept that out-
A 3D modeler then builds a base mesh, using vertex shaders.” lines the major attributes of the character. For
which is quickly rigged, and the person ap- At each step of the way, the character is tested the characters’ faces, the artists use a mixture of
plies some temporary textures and exports the in the game environment because it’s only after concepts, reference photos, and photos of actors.
character to the Unreal engine so that the team the artists see the character in the level with in- Giving the game characters a rough resemblance
can get an early feel of the character. Once the game lighting during actual gameplay that final of their actor counterparts helps with delivering a
base mesh is approved, it is used for the cre- adjustments and fixes can be tweaked. solid performance across the board.
ation of a medium-resolution model. People “Does the character look distinctive? Does When it comes to the look and personality
Can Fly employs Pixologic’s ZBrush for this it have screen presence? Does it work well in of the characters, the artists work closely with
creative director and writer Amy Hennig. In
the end, it’s all about creating a character that
fits and works with the story, notes Hagedorn.
The Naughty Dog group uses motion capture
as the base for the characters’ body animations,
but all the facial performances are still 100
percent hand animated. “We’re actually proud
of that fact,” he says. “Hand-animating facial
movements goes along great with the stylized
look of our characters and helps us avoid the
biggest issues of the Uncanny Valley.”
When it comes to sculpting, the majority
of the team use ZBrush, but some of the guys
stick with Autodesk’s Mudbox. In the end,
each artist picks his or her weapon of choice
to deliver the best performance. For textur-
To build characters in its title Bulletstorm, the team at People Can Fly use a range of software, includ- ing, the artists at Naughty Dog use a mixture
ing ZBrush, Modo, Maya, and 3ds Max. of Mudbox and Photoshop, and a little bit of
ZBrush’s Polypaint once in a while. The abil-
stage, and then uses re-topology tools before fast motion? Do detailed features work from ity of Mudbox to display and paint on normal
exporting the character to either Luxology’s a distance, or do they become meaningless and specular maps can be a great help, too,
Modo or Autodesk’s Maya or 3ds Max for fur- noise?” asks Poznanski. “We are often forced Hagedorn adds.
ther modeling. At People Can Fly, the art team to make significant changes at that stage, but “In general, we put a big emphasis on
usually juggles the software of choice a num- when we’re done with them, then, and only maintaining an artistic, hand-painted look,”
ber of times, depending on the specific task at then, can we finally say, ‘We no longer have says Hagedorn. “Therefore, using photos as
hand or the artist’s personal preference. Once just a character; we have a game character.’ ” textures is not the path that works for us the
the medium-res model is complete, the group majority of the time.”
again uses ZBrush to create a high-resolution Uncharted 2: However, the artists sometimes use photo-
pass. The art team mixes default brushes with Among Thieves realistic textures for minor surfaces, such as
custom alphas, utilizing layers, morph targets, Naughty Dog/Sony Computer fabric patterns. The company’s shader system
projections, Z spheres, and a 2.5D tool set. Entertainment America is hooked into Maya, enabling the artists to
At this stage, the mesh often reaches 30 Developer Naughty Dog has pushed the idea get a real-time preview of their shaders within
million to 40 million polygons, which are of an interactive Hollywood action flick into Maya itself. The preview doesn’t take any post-
trimmed to about four million to five million new territory with the critically acclaimed processing effects into account, but it is close
polys using Pixologic’s Decimation Master Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. The group’s goal, enough to ensure a sophisticated workflow,
plug-in. An artist turns this medium-sized says Hanno Hagedorn, lead artist at Naughty Hagedorn maintains. It also allows the group
mesh into a low-res mesh using ZBrush’s re- Dog, is to bring cinematic characters to life. to dynamically select the resolution for each
topology tool, with all the details baked into it. The key focus is for these characters to deliver texture separately without having to re-export
Next, a character undergoes the time-consum- a believable performance in every way possible any assets. “Using this feature is a great help in
ing UV layout, an important technical step in while meeting the studio’s high standards. optimizing our assets,” he adds.
creating a sharp and detailed protagonist. “An extremely high level of detail in our char- To satisfy the technical directors and to get
“Normal map, base color, and ambient oc- acters is crucial,” says Hagedorn. “Polygon counts better skinning results, Naughty Dog uses
clusion are derived from the hi-res mesh, and can go up to 45,000, and texture resolutions up quad-heavy in-game meshes. One side effect is
20 August/September 2010
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other countries. *Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others. Copyright © 2010. Intel Corporation. All rights reserved
was at the start of the process to what he has
now become is a result of me putting a lot of
myself into him, along with little pieces of so
many guys I knew growing up in New York,”
says Scalici.“The Godfather is one of my favor-
ite movies, but for this game, we wanted our
characters to be real wise guys, not an idealized
vision of what you see in that film. Plus, we
certainly didn’t want them to be the stereo-
types you see in so many movies.”
The team at 2K Czech used its proprietary
Illusion Engine to bring these characters to
life, while utilizing third-party middleware,
such as Autodesk’s Kynapse for AI, PhysX for
Physics simulation, and FaceFX for in-game
facials. According to Denby Grace, senior pro-
Naughty Dog’s game Uncharted 2: Among Thieves brings the cinematic characters to interactive life. ducer on the title at 2K Games, this engine
To do this successfully, the team made sure the characters delivered a compelling performance. allowed the team to fully realize the vision
for the game; as a result, the artists were able
that the more evenly distributed polygons give The game introduces a colorful cast of young to provide a hugely detailed and destructible
good auto-LOD results. The other is that this, characters that enter the violent business of world that will load without the player incur-
in combination with the polygon densities, al- organized crime. According to Jack Scalici, ring any wait time after entering the city.
lows the team to effectively use its in-game face director of creative production at 2K Games, “The main difference between Mafia I and
meshes as its sculpting bases. As a result, the who served as lead writer, music supervisor, Mafia II in terms of technology has been the
team can spend more time sculpting, thereby casting director, and voice director for the title, dramatic increase of texture resolution and
significantly easing various processes, such as one of the goals of the team was to bring these poly count (from hundreds to thousands),”
the creation of wrinkle maps. authentic-looking characters to life and build explains Ivan Rylka, lead character artist on
For Naughty Dog’s cinematic skin, the crew an emotional bond between the main charac- Mafia II at 2K Czech. “Civilian characters
uses texture-space diffusion. The artists bake ters and the nonplayer characters that populate have 4000 triangles on average, while major
the lighting information into a separate map, the New York-inspired city of Empire Bay. characters exceed 6500 triangles; Vito, the
which is blurred with different widths for the “We examined each character’s reason for protagonist, has nearly 10,000 triangles.”
red, green, and blue channels. The blur kernel existing in the game, their relationships with This higher visual credibility was achieved
combines the five blurs into a single 12-tap one another, and we made some adjustments through complicated shaders, as well as using
blur. For hair, the studio uses the Kajiya-Kay to ensure they all feel real and have a defined normal maps for wrinkles and expressions, and
hair-shading model, giving the hair its aniso- purpose,” explains Scalici. “From there, I start- facial animation through FaceFX technology.
tropic look. The group then tweaks the shadow ed working with the cast. The best thing you Rylka says that physically simulated cloth on a
so that the hair does not self-shadow, but in- can do for your character is to cast a good actor wide range of Vito’s outfits was also something
stead uses a diffuse falloff that wraps around and let him or her become that character. I end- the team couldn’t have done in Mafia I.
the hair strands. The direction of the sun used ed up using the first draft of the script I was “During the process of character produc
for the specular is always set at a grazing angle. given as more of a blueprint than a script when tion, we also used ZBrush for high-res models,
According to Hagedorn, part of the game’s it came to the characters and dialog. After the which gave us incredible detail to bake into
story is told with the look of the characters. dialog was written, we still didn’t consider it the normal maps of our in-game models cre-
Not only do they change outfits on a regular 100 percent final. The guys at 2K Czech have ated in 3ds Max,” details Rylka.
basis, but these characters sometimes become some incredible tools, and they can respond Grace believes that this sequel ultimately
physically affected by what is happening to to changes very fast, so I had the freedom to benefited from a larger development budget,
them as the narrative plays out. For some improvise during recording and to completely thanks to the success of the original title. That
characters, Naughty Dog has as many as four change certain scenes if they weren’t working allowed the team to provide more depth for
different beat-up face textures. For each outfit, out in terms of how they were intended.” not only how these characters look, but how
there is at least one dirty or beat-up variation. Joe Barbaro, who is protagonist Vito they behave in the game.
In addition, the characters can get dynamically Scaletta’s best friend and wingman for most of “Everyone who has played the game has said
wet or dynamically accumulate snow, also af- Mafia II, was brought to life by actor Bobby the same thing to me: Our characters feel like
fecting their appearance in the title. Costanzo. Scalici describes Barbaro as the life real wise guys, and the story has a mob feel and
of the party but someone who is going to end atmosphere that’s there in a big way,” relays
Mafia II up in a fight by the end of the night. Although Scalici. “What many of them don’t realize is
2K Games/2K Czech it might seem like there were Hollywood in- that this is achieved without the characters ever
Mafia II introduces a new cast of characters spirations for Mafia II, Scalici maintains that using the words ‘respect’ and ‘honor,’ and when
and an open world environment for players to he did not watch any movies or TV shows to you hear the word ‘family’ in Mafia II, 99 per-
explore through a 10-year journey that spans help craft these virtual characters. cent of the time it’s the main character talking
from the 1940s through 1950s in Mafia II. “The development of Joe from what he about his mother and sister. Like the first Mafia
22 August/September 2010
Gaming n n n n
August/September 2010 23
n n n n Gaming
these characters were critical to the gameplay: system, we can easily create a lot of complex lines have greatly evolved during the past few
He wanted players to invest not only time, shaders, in particular, skin shaders, including years to allow us to create highly believable
but also emotion, into them as they played SSS, translucency, and thickness.” characters,” says Brusseaux. “The time when
through the game’s chapters. To bring Heavy Rain’s characters to life, artists alone were crafting characters and ani-
“One of our ambitions was to create highly Quantic Dream built an in-house mocap mating them is probably over. By using scan-
believable characters that look and move in a studio. There, the team filmed multiple ac- ning and motion-capture technologies, as
realistic fashion and express subtle emotions, tors on stage at the same time using props and well as through the use of advanced shading,
captured from real actors’ performances,” says basic sets. For the characters’ bodies, the crew skinning, and lighting tools, we were able to
Thierry Prodhomme, lead character designer used motion-captured data as a reference for capture the performance of real actors, produce
at Quantic Dream. “It necessitated rethinking building volumes and proportions. An initial highly realistic characters, and bring them to
the complete production pipeline and devel- skeleton was built for producing a body place- life in a way that, we think, has further pushed
oping specific techniques and tools that we holder used by the animation team as a first the boundaries of emotion in games.”
then used.” reference and by the 3D artists for creating the Given the success of the game and the
To ensure a cinematographic vision of this final body model. ability for the team to avoid the Uncanny
film-noir thriller, the studio built a character When the animators completed the basic Valley criticism that has even plagued some
team comprising concept artists, fashion de- skinning, they built an exoskeleton for each Hollywood CG films in recent years, Quantic
signers, and 3D artists. “Fashion designers were model: This additional skeleton was driven Dream’s pipeline has solved many problems
in charge of defining the mood and style of each by the main skeleton, and contains automatic and opened up a new doorway into character
character, concept artists provided turnarounds expressions, enabling special behaviors and in- creations. By utilizing real actors and adding
and proportions, and 3D artists produced the creasing the quality of the mesh deformation. another layer of emotion to this game, the stu-
final models,” explains Christophe Brusseaux, For the faces, the group used only raw mo- dio has pushed the boundaries of interactive
art director at Quantic Dream. cap data captured in the company’s sound entertainment.
Quantic Dream cast real actors to perform studio at the same time of the voice acting. A And Quantic Dream is not resting on its
live acting, motion-capture shooting, and special marker set was used to capture the face laurels; the studio is already working on its
voice recording, and used 3D scans of actors’ movements, while for the body motion, the next project, and as the game industry looks
faces. A cast of 70 actors worked on the mas- crew used 1.5mm markers along with a Vicon ahead to the next generation of hardware, this
sive game, which required a record amount of setup that includes 14 MX cameras. pipeline will breathe life into even more be-
work. The 3D scans were mostly used as tem- “For aesthetical reasons, we didn’t use lievable virtual characters in the near future.
plates for the artists, who worked in Autodesk’s blendshapes, as these often look too robotic,”
Maya. Accompanying photo sessions provided says Prodhomme. “We focused on capturing Playing With Character
all the skin details in high resolution. raw mocap data to avoid heavy post anima- At the end of the day, many of today’s video-
To model the characters, the group first re- tion work, which also retained the maximum game characters have become as well rounded
surfaced low-resolution models of the faces with information from the original performance of as anything seen on the big screen or on televi-
edge loops dedicated to facial deformations and the actor.” sion. Technology has given the current genera-
animations. Then the artists created the high- The animators also produced a special rig tion of artists and character creators the ability
resolution models in Pixologic’s ZBrush, unfold- that handles 76 base bones for the body, 105 to craft unique heroes, heroines, and villains
ed UVs, and built the skin shader using specifi- for the face, and 60 for the exoskeleton. using the methods that they prefer.
cally developed proprietary tools. To enhance the characters’ appearances, the Ultimately, whether using motion capture
“Our proprietary Materials Editor is based team used Havok Cloth to dynamically simulate or cel shading, these characters are leaving an
on a nodal shading network system similar to certain clothing, such as long trench coats, as well indelible mark not only in gaming, but in the
Maya Hypershade,” says Brusseaux. “With this as hair and special props. broader entertainment landscape. Hollywood
On traditional shots, the team has taken notice, developing big-screen ver-
used classical light setups for direc- sions of games like Gears of War, WarCraft,
tional, spot, and ambient lighting. Uncharted, Dead Space, and EverQuest. Jerry
However, Brusseaux noticed dur- Bruckheimer elected to turn Prince of Persia
ing the production that specific, into a summer movie—and potential fran-
highly cinematic, close-up shots chise—because of the character and story that
required a higher quality of light- Jordan Mechner created with Ubisoft.
ing. To solve this issue, Quantic Moving forward, these more believable
Dream’s R&D team developed a game characters will more easily migrate
specific tool to manage the special across media. As gamers already know, one of
lights with high resolution, inte- the reasons is because many of these characters
grating the technology into the stay with players long after the power button
real-time directing bench used by has been turned off. n
the camera team to set all in-game
cameras and to “direct,” among John Gaudiosi has been covering the world of video games
Isaac’s suit in Dead Space 2 features a fold-away helmet
other segments, the real-time, in- and the convergence of Hollywood and computer graphics
to reveal the character’s emotion, which is apparent in
his face. game cinematic sequences. for the past 16 years for outlets like The Washington Post,
“Technology, tools, and pipe- Wired Magazine, Reuters, AOL Games, and Gamerlive.tv.
24 August/September 2010
R rrrivet-in
■ ■ ■ ■ CG I
By Karen Moltenbrey
26 August/September 2010
-ing
CG I n n n n
August/September 2010 27
n n n n CG I
28 August/September 2010
Immerse Yourself...
© 2010 Wacom. Wacom and Cintiq are registered trademarks of Wacom Company, Ltd.
Image © Gloria Caballe. Wacom user since 2003.
In the end, most of the hero characters tedious tasks for the bipedal and quadrupedal on getting the fundamentals—like overlapping
were given a relatively moderate polygon characters, including those with tails. How- actions, anticipation, arcs, strong poses, exag-
count—50,000 to 100,000 quad polygons— ever, for the less-anthropomorphic characters, geration, timing, and appeal—rock-solid,” he
to facilitate animation and rendering time. like the snake, wasps, and scorpions, he made says. “Most animators are familiar with these
For texturing the characters, Chen hand- the rigs from scratch and custom-skinned them basic principles of animation in their early years
unwrapped the UVs the old-fashioned way using to each model. For the facial rigging, he stud- of education, but it takes a lifetime to learn how
Maya’s texture UV editor, occasionally utilizing ied medical textbooks to better understand to apply them artfully. It is all too common for
projected UV mapping and relax UVs to even which human facial muscles are responsible for CG animators today to rush into their 3D soft-
out overlapping UVs. Using Adobe’s Photoshop which human emotions, and rigged the char- ware and start moving characters around aim-
CS3, he then hand-painted the surfaces and acters accordingly using mostly Maya’s influence lessly because it is easy to do.”
“blend-mode-layered them” over organic tex- objects as deformers. For squash and stretch, he By prolonging the storyboarding and
tures from photographic sources. For example, used lattice deformers to apply non-uniform thumb-nailing process in pencil and delay-
the mottled look of the frog skin was achieved by deformation to all the main characters. ing work on the computer, Chen could try
using zucchini skin as the base layer. Chen simulated the characters’ breath- out rough ideas quickly and cheaply on paper
At times, procedural 3D textures were ap- ing by using non-uniform scaling of selected first. The results were apparent. “I noticed that
plied to quickly add noise and shading variation bones created by The Setup Machine. He whenever I did due diligence and planned
to the characters. While Biggy’s skin was rather paid particular attention to engineering fine character expressions, poses, and gags thor-
generic in its design, Bounce’s skin was closely shape controls, especially for the character oughly on paper first, the end result invariably
based on the natural coloration and patterns of eyelids, eyebrows, and lips, in order to achieve turned out stronger and better when translated
the popular red-eyed tree frogs of the Amazon. the expressions and emotions required by the to CG,” Chen says.
With its distinctive yellow stripes over bluish- story. Meanwhile, he used sculpt deformers One of the benefits of applying strong prin-
purple patches, along with vast areas of green for special effects, such as when Bounce was ciples of 2D animation to CG is that the ani-
and white, Bounce’s skin texture needed to be swallowing his food and the bulge can be seen mation tends to loosen up and feel “more free,”
familiar yet customized to make him appeal- descending down into his belly. “One big Chen maintains. To support that statement, he
ing as an animated CG character. To this end, lesson I learned from making this film is that points to the concept known as “breaking the
the filmmaker generated individual texture caterpillar characters are very hard to rig cor- joints,” which is used traditionally in 2D to
maps for the color, specular, and bump chan- rectly, let alone animate properly,” Chen points give character animation more snap and im-
nels, with the occasional map for transparency out. “So, avoid caterpillars!” pact. “Such exaggeration translated beautifully
to CG when the rigs could be pushed beyond
their breaking point,” Chen says. “Given the
creative license to channel Chuck Jones and
Tex Avery, I made sure to capitalize on any
opportunity for exaggeration whenever a gag
called for it. The more the rigs were pushed,
the funnier the characters got.”
Chen used Maya for all the character anima-
tion, following the 80/20 rule: “Although it’s
not too difficult to take a given animation 80
percent of the way, the last 20 percent can take
twice as long to achieve and drive one to insan-
ity,” Chen says. Therefore, the filmmaker de-
cided early on that he needed to budget enough
time to strive for the last 20 percent “because
that’s where characters came alive and became
most believable and appealing.” Alas, that trans-
lated into many long hours of finessing curves
in Maya’s graph editor and lots of keyframe
The filmmaker spent a good deal of time in preproduction, using Maya and Edius to make sure the nudging in the dope sheet. This was particularly
story and timing were on the mark, such as in these scenes as Bounce sizes up a delectable scorpion. taxing due to the sheer number of shots Chen
had to animate on his own (there are 99 shots
and reflectivity. The maps were limited to no Moving to the Beat in “Amazonia”).
more than 2k x 2k pixels in order to minimize Although Chen has been animating success- “My unwavering commitment to meeting
memory issues during rendering. fully for many years, he wanted to take the this goal was largely responsible for adding
Once Chen finished with modeling, he had process to a higher level with “Amazonia.” So, at least one year to the production schedule,”
to rig the broad range of characters for opti- before embarking on the animation for the Chen points out.
mum articulation and performance during short, the filmmaker re-educated himself in this Chen also spent a great deal of time animat-
animation. To facilitate the rigging process, area, investing a good deal of time and effort re- ing the characters’ eyes. Because the eyes are
he used Anzovin Studio’s The Setup Machine, learning the fundamentals. “I re-read Richard the window to a character’s soul, he made sure
which automated many of the redundant and Williams’ Animator’s Survival Kit and focused to pay a lot of attention to eye-dart animation,
30 August/September 2010
CG I n n n n
and ensure that eye blinks were placed in just with bones and Maya hair for animation, and images without the prohibitively long render
the right spots to add life and reflect what the the filmmaker set up dynamic simulation us- times,” advises Chen. “This is especially true
characters were feeling. “It’s a lot of super-fine- ing turbulence fields. Later, he omitted the sim for independent films without the big studio
tuning of animation timing and spacing in after determining that the leaves rustling in the production budgets.”
order to take a character’s performance some- wind were not absolutely necessary in terms Therefore, rather than choosing global il-
where special,” Chen adds. One character in of story, choosing instead to put the time into lumination and photon-casting, Chen opted
particular—Spike the caterpillar—proved es- character animation and storytelling. (The instead for final gathering, using HDRI for
pecially daunting, mostly due to the inherent swaying palm leaves in the beginning of the the image-based lighting. This created a soft
complexity of this bug’s morphology and lo- film resulted from hand animation.) bounced-light look by filling in the shadow
comotion. With no real shortcut to animating To produce the lush, vibrant backdrop, areas while providing a warmth and richness,
a multisegmented rig with a complex network Chen used photographic textures of real with realistic reflections, to the overall scene.
of IK interdependency, Chen had to hand- plants mixed with procedural textures created He also chose a highly blurred HDRI texture
animate each segment, foot, and appendage to in Maya, making sure the plants always looked of a sky and tree scene, which, after some color
arc, overlap, and stagger properly—“another hyper-real rather than merely photoreal. “It balancing, provided an ideal blend of light and
reason to avoid caterpillar characters in the was important to establish and maintain a shade for the desired rain forest look.
future,” he says. slightly fantastical feeling of a cartoon, while After establishing the indirect lighting,
For some of the sight gags, Chen video- providing a rich and believable backdrop to all Chen used mostly Maya spotlights as key, fill,
taped himself performing the physical acting the characters,” he explains. rim, and kicker lights, to punch up the scene
and poses, which he used as video reference To achieve a back-lit luminescence to the and make the characters pop and stand out
during animation. He also used a Webcam to leaves, Chen conducted early tests using sub- from the background. He avoided any use of
capture his own face while acting out every surface scattering in combination with pro- ambient and point lights, while occasionally
facial expression that the script required. He jected-texture spotlighting. It turned out that utilizing area lights to quickly flood certain
then turned this information into a visual li- a similar effect could be achieved through the areas with even lighting. Hand-painted go-
brary and chart for quick referencing during careful use of the much faster translucency at- bos and cookies were mapped to certain key
facial animation. tribute of the plant shaders. lights to cast yet another layer of richness and
shading to the sets. This was especially effec-
tive when characters would move about the
rain forest environment and appear to swim
through the projected shadows, just like in the
real world.
Chen averaged between 10 and 20 lights
per scene, and these were mainly spotlights.
“The ability of a spotlight to focus its cone of
illumination and its falloff with a high degree
of control meant there was little need for light-
linking and dedicated lights, which made
troubleshooting lighting problems much
easier,” he explains. Spotlights were also used
as dedicated kicker lights to add accents and
seasoning wherever required. Shadows, mean-
while, were completely depth-map-based,
To save time while rigging the characters, Chen used The Setup Machine, which automates the pro- without any raytraced shadows.
cess for some of the bipeds and quadrupeds. Other less-anthropomorphic characters, like the wasps
and snakes, were rigged by hand. “Being mindful of the old adage ‘Keep it
simple, Stupid’ certainly kept this do-it-your-
“Having actually gone through the physi- One of the obvious challenges of re-creat- self production from bloating to something
cal rigor of performing the film’s actions ing a rain forest in CG is the sheer number unwieldy and unmanageable,” Chen notes.
benefited the film tremendously by helping of plants and leaves that are required in any
me get into the heads of the characters so I given scene. In order to animate in real time Post Work
could better channel their spirit and motiva- and render efficiently without running out of For rendering, Chen used Mental Ray. But
tion,” Chen adds. “I didn’t merely animate the RAM, Chen carefully divided the environ- in an unusual move, the entire film was ren-
characters, I had to become the characters.” ment scenes into categories of varying impor- dered not using a renderfarm, but a squadron
tance—from hero and midground plants, to of energy-efficient HP notebook computers.
Environmentally Un-friendly background plants and terrain. By dividing and conquering, Chen broke up
The environments of “Amazonia” are rife with The scenes, meanwhile, were lit with Men- scenes into foreground, hero, background,
flowers and plants. Chen modeled and tex- tal Images’ Mental Ray, integrated into Maya. and extreme background layers for faster and
tured the former in Maya using a combination “In my many years of making CG films, I more reliable rendering. “This minimized the
of NURBS and polygons, while for certain learned that the key to success in lighting need to halt production in order to trouble-
tropical plants, he used a stock model library and rendering is to always look and aim for shoot memory optimization issues common
to save time. All the flora models were rigged the point where you achieve the best-quality in Mental Ray rendering,” he adds. Within
August/September 2010 31
n n n n CG I
32 August/September 2010
CG I n n n n
August/September 2010 33
n n n n Animation
34 August/September 2010
Animation n n n n
fall into a stream below. When he stands up and stretches, a horse routines and what you do, and you don’t want to be influenced too
neighs. Now fully awake, he strides jauntily, arms swinging, toward much by another person’s way. But if you learn a little more about
the right of the screen. Birds fly through the sky. When joggers run the person or custom, you might get excited about the unknown.”
across the grassy field, he looks down and smiles.
And then he walks past a sleeping character, a hand-drawn char- Creating the Characters
acter identical to him, but filled with darker blue and darker green. A team that fluctuated from 25 to 50 worked on the film, with six
Inside this character, sheep are jumping over a fence. Day pokes animators creating the hand-drawn characters. Newton, who had
him, and Night wakes up. The two characters circle each other drawn the 2D titles for Ratatouille, penciled many of the drawings
warily. When they stop, Night on the left and Day on the right, we on paper, with supervising animator Tom Gately providing most
hear frogs croak and an owl call. A songbird chirps, and Day pokes of the key poses.
Night in the belly. Night wakes up and pushes Day. Day pushes “It wasn’t so much like drawing a character and sending it into
back. They don’t like each other; they don’t accept their differences. the world, like in Roger Rabbit,” Newton says. “It was framing a
They wrestle. background with a character’s body. We had to be real specific
Through the film, the three-dimensional, animated world inside about where we placed the character so we could frame the back-
each character reflects their emotions. Day has a sun, Night has a ground without having trees poking through the eyeballs.”
moon. When Night sees a butterfly fluttering inside Day, he shows While the characters moved, the elements in the 3D background
Day fireflies. Day counters with a rainbow. Night shoots fireworks. inside the character moved as well—wind blew, water poured,
They continue one-upping each other. And then, Day shows Las Ve- characters ran through the scene. Sometimes, though, the charac-
gas in the daytime, and Night turns on the neon. Night joyfully grabs ters would hold a pose while the background animation carried
Day. They dance, and the characters become a metaphor. on. If the animators worried that the characters were sedentary too
“A lot of times people see someone, or not even a per- long, Newton would remind them that there was another movie
son, that’s extremely different,” Newton says. “It chal- inside the character. “Usually you have the main characters do all
lenges their world a bit. You feel protective of your the work,” Newton says, “so this was an unusual idea.”
August/September 2010 35
n n n n Animation
(Above) Night, a line drawing scanned and applied to a 2D plane, sleeps in the foreground. Day, We introduced a pan, but we didn’t want it to
another line drawing similarly added to the scene, shows dismay at seeing a darker version of himself. feel like a pan. So we cheated the set and had it
The CG sheep jumping over a fence in the background appear inside Night in the film. (Top, right) move in opposition to the camera.”
Night’s and Day’s internal scenes grow deeper in stereo 3D.
Similarly, the CG artists would often cheat
Often, the animators would do what New- Another example: “On Teddy’s boards, when scale to have the images inside the characters read
ton calls a “moving hold.” “We would have Day first meets Night, Night is sleeping on the properly. Trees in one scene might be as small as
them strike a pose, and give the characters a ground. Day walks in front of him, and we fol- people, and in another, as big as buildings.
subtle bit of motion,” he says. For example, low Day. It looks great in 2D, but in 3D things
when Day frames a radio tower during a Night on the horizon don’t move as far in screen space Come Together
and Day swing dance toward the end, the ani- as Teddy had drawn. So, we had to solve that. Fu joined the production early in the process,
mators stretch the character’s arm into a single
pose. “We get subtle expansion by how far he’s
stretching,” Newton says. “He’s not moving
his hands and legs; it’s more like a rubber band
that’s reached its limit. That’s the way we’d use
Stereo Duality
moving holds. You look at the internals and Director Teddy Newton envisioned “Day&Night” as a stereo 3D film from the
then we trade back to the foreground world to start. In fact, he pitched the film as a stereo 3D film.
keep life in the characters. It’s like having two “We designed everything to be in [stereo] 3D,” Newton says. “In the begin-
films running side by side.” ning of the film, we wanted the 3D to be played out quite shallow and symbolic
Mike Fu, supervising technical director, of the characters, who look only at surfaces. When they become interested in
might beg to differ. “What we have is three films each other, we play with depth. The sets not only become deeper, but the fire-
in one,” he explains, “a short film made of CG flies peek out beyond the perimeter of the character and the jets come through
backgrounds for Day, a short film made of the body. It gets more elaborate so that by the time the sunset scene comes,
CG backgrounds for Night, and the 2D char- we have a glow of light breach beyond the edges of the character as the sun
acters. We ended up with three compositions: unifies them.”
a composition for Night, a composition for Although stereo added depth to the story, it deepened the challenges on the
Day, and a composition for all three.” production side. “Teddy [Newton] had certain rules of the world that he had
invented,” says Mike Fu, supervising technical director. “Even though Day and
Triple Play Night are cutouts, when Day walks in front of Night, he occludes him. We had
To help the animators, the CG team would to follow that, even in stereo. When the audience sees the film in a traditional
start with Newton’s storyboards to see his theater, they see Day move in front of Night and block him. In stereo, they see
timing, mock up the sets, and stitch them that, but they also see Day move closer in stereo space. They see the characters
together. Then, they printed out every frame actually circling each other in 3D space.”
and gave them to the animators to use as back- Also, stereo meant that the team needed to compose the shots in 3D. They
grounds on their light tables. couldn’t simply layer the 2D characters over the internal 3D scenes in composit-
“In the end, you’d never know if a shot ing. “Stereo removed the cheats we could have done,” Fu says. “But, it added a
worked until we put it all together,” Fu says. lot to the stereo version of the movie.”
Fu uses the scene in the opening, with jog- Thus, to keep the pipeline consistent, the crew rendered everything, including
gers running inside Day while he’s walking, the 2D characters in Pixar’s RenderMan. For most stereo 3D films, the crew ren-
as an example. “The challenge was in getting ders the shots from one eye and then, to add stereo, renders a second eye. This
everything to hit right,” he says. “The camera film required three renders. “For the 2D format, we split the difference between
path, the length of the set, how fast the joggers the two eyes,” Fu says. “Then we offset the eyes left and right.”
ran, how fast the 2D character moved. If the “Fortunately,” Fu adds, “because much of the image is black, we could afford
joggers were too close, we’d move them back, to do it in terms of rendering resources. We could use the 2D to mask out the
and then they were too small. There were a lot 3D and render only what we needed. It was an extra process, but when you look
of things Teddy could do in 2D and get away at this stuff a lot, you see the difference. Composition is such a key point for this
with that we couldn’t do in 3D.” film.” –Barbara Robertson
36 August/September 2010
Committed to
Excellence
Every month the writers at CGW deliver comprehensive, original editorial
content to the movers and shakers in the DCC industries. Recently, chief editor
Karen Moltenbrey and West Coast editor Barbara Robertson each received top
honors for their editorial work by the American Society of Business Publication
Editors (ASBPE). Karen won a National Gold Award for her case-history piece
“Dino Might” (July 2009), while Barbara received a West Region Gold for her
case-history feature “What’s Old Is New Again” (January 2009).
38 August/September 2010
Seoul Skyline
The 3rd ACM SIGGRAPH Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques in Asia
Conference 15-18 December 2010 | Exhibition 16-18 December 2010
Coex Convention & Exhibition Center
SIGGRAPH Asia 2010 is a convergence point for art, business, design, and technology, and a unique networking opportunity for the
international digital media community. If you are a distributor, creator, researcher, developer, artist, producer, educator, game developer,
filmmaker, or student, this major Asian CG conference and exhibition is a must-attend event for 2010!
Learn the latest technologies. Test-drive the industry’s newest software and hardware. Discover new opportunities for collaboration with
colleagues in Asia and around the world.
Slow Going The 2009 recession changes the rules, resulting in slow market growth for CAD
t
By Kathleen Maher
he CAD arena is among the most recession-sensitive markets in the world. The archi-
tectural sector feels good and bad news early, as regions build up their infrastructures,
people move to new areas for jobs, and money dries up for loans. In fact, the architec-
ture and construction industries have been feeling the effects of the recession considerably
Doctoral Degrees in Natural Sciences
before it hit the pocketbooks of people living in the US and Western Europe. And, recovery
and Engineering 1996–2007
(in thousands) is coming slowly.
30.00
US total US citizen
Recently, McGraw-Hill published its “Top 400 Contractors” survey and reports, and to
25.00
US foreign
China
Germany
UK
no one’s surprise, the building industries remain challenged. In fact, most recent numbers
Japan South Korea for June show that US construction is down in the second half of 2010. Fortunately, there
20.00 is growth in transportation and power, with the promise of coming growth in manufacture-
related building and infrastructure projects.
15.00
Manufacturing, which is heavily influenced by consumer markets, is more responsive to
10.00 the vagaries of the economy, and it responds faster to both good news and bad news.
The overall CAD market dropped an unprecedented 23 percent in 2009 to levels lower
5.00 than 2008, and for some companies, something closer to 2007 figures. This year, the picture
has begun to get brighter. Remarkably, and contrary to expectations, CAD vendors are re-
0.00
’93 ’94 ’95 ’96 ’97 ’98 ’99 ’00 ’01 ’02 ’03 ’04 ’05 ’06 ’07 bounding in 2010. Manufacturing is coming back as consumers find their wallets, but this
is going to be a cautious growth in the West. The European Union is nervous that its weaker
members—most notably Greece at the moment (but also Spain, Portugal, and Italy)—will
dampen Europe’s economic standing and will slow growth. In the US, there have been signs
of a faster recovery as stimulus money has been put to work on long-range infrastructure
40 August/September 2010
Business n n n n
projects. However, there is not much appetite Percent Change in World Economic Output
(Data from January 2010)
for government spending in the face of high
deficits, so when the stimulus money runs out Advanced economies Emerging and developing countries Japan Central and Eastern Europe Russia
August/September 2010 41
■ ■ ■ ■ Recruitment
42 August/September 2010
Recruitment ■ ■ ■ ■
ast year at this time, the global economy was generally recruiter at Nickelodeon Animation Studios, particularly likes using
acknowledged to be in a downswing, and most studios LinkedIn for hard-to-fill positions. But the importance of Facebook is
were reporting fewer projects, and more applicants. not to be downplayed. At Electronic Arts, for example, the company’s
The situation is a bit rosier now in 2010—not a com- Inside EA page has more than 100,000 fans and is an excellent way
plete reversal, but showing progress. “We’ve seen an for a candidate to gain familiarity with the company, according to
up-tick in hiring since the end of 2009, primarily among smaller- to Cindy Nicola, VP of global talent acquisition for Electronic Arts.
medium-sized, privately-funded, independent video game develop- Staying in touch applies to those not seeking work, as well. Know-
ers,” says Chris Scanlon, account manager for Digital Artist Man- ing what is going on at a studio is of primary importance. Then, when
agement (DAM), a recruiting agency that specializes in interactive it comes time to seek work, the applicant doesn’t have to start from
entertainment (games). scratch. By the same token, potential applicants should stay up to date
Last year, studios outside the US seemed to be less affected on who the right contacts are. “There are so many people applying
by the down economy, and business is still good this year at blindly through the Web site,” says Torrano, explaining that such ef-
the UK-based Double Negative, according to its recruitment forts are nearly useless. Applicants should address their information to
manager, Hannah Acock. “We’re busier than ever at the mo- a particular individual. They can find recruiters’ names by subscribing
ment and receive around 60 applications per day,” she says. to studio pages on Facebook or LinkedIn, or even by cold-calling the
“Over the last 12 months, we have seen a large increase in studios and asking for names. “Just make sure there’s some kind of
the number of new recruits from the US, Australia, Asia, and human connection,” advises Torrano.
New Zealand, but we’ve still contin-
ued to hire a large amount from within
the EU (European Union).” Inside the
US, business is looking up in some
quarters. At Rhythm & Hues Studios,
for example, “We have new work on
the boards,” says Barbara McCullough,
manager of recruitment. Stressing that
she could only speak for her company,
McCullough reports that business had
been a little slower previously but has
picked up in recent months.
Many of the studios (film as well as game)
interviewed by Computer Graphics World
for this article report similar conditions, but
not all the news was good. In March 2010,
Disney announced that it intended to close
ImageMovers Digital Studio in San Rafael, While some have felt the negative impact of the industry downturn, others,
California. That same month, Toronto’s such as Double Negative, have been busier than ever with projects such as
CORE Digital Pictures shut its doors. Iron Man 2, says the studio’s Hannah Acock.
“It’s been a really odd year,” says Debra Blanchard, president of CG artists also need to make it easy for recruiters to stay in touch
Fringe Talent, a recruiting agency focusing on visual effects and ani- with them. “If an applicant doesn’t have a Web site or a blog, they
mation artists for the film industry, noting that things got off to a are doing a disservice to themselves,” says Torrano, explaining that
promising start, but that the recent closing of both ImageMovers and recruiters want to be able to see an artist’s work immediately upon
CORE has shaken many in the industry. “It’s been kind of shocking request. That means that demos should be available online, as well. If
and surprising,” says Blanchard, who adds that nonetheless, projects you decide to mail your reel to the studio, “someone else might get the
are still ongoing and that there are geographical pockets that seem to job while we’re waiting for your package,” adds Torrano.
be flourishing. For example: “Vancouver seems to be coming alive, In addition to the economy, and the importance of staying virtu-
and staffing,” she says. ally connected, the following issues also factor into the ever-changing
hiring landscape at CG studios.
Social Factors
Heading up the list of what’s new in studio hiring this year (besides A New Pool
the tentative economic recovery) are the maturation of social net- Almost across the board, studio recruiters report that the economic
working as a tool for both recruiters and job seekers, and the impor- situation both past and present has altered the hiring pool—sending
tance—which sounds almost counterintuitive in the Internet age—of ever-larger numbers of qualified applicants into the market. Although
maintaining human contacts. Last, it is vital that the job seeker main- a large number of applicants would seem to be a recruiter’s dream, that
tain a virtual presence, such as a Web or blog site, so that his or her is not necessarily the case.
materials may be reviewed by studios on a moment’s notice. “Unfortunately, volume doesn’t always mean quality; it can be a
The use of social networking sites, such as LinkedIn or Facebook, little more time-consuming to find the right one,” says Nicola. Tor-
is not new, of course, but the way in which they are being used has rano notes that at the height of the downturn, she would get many ap-
evolved. LinkedIn, the more professional of the two networks, con- plicants who were far too qualified for the position. It could be difficult
tinues to be more seriously considered by recruiters. Josilin Torrano, to deal with VPs and the like who were willing to take “a serious step
August/September 2010 43
n n n n Recruitment
44 August/September 2010
Recruitment ■ ■ ■ ■
August/September 2010 45
By George Maestri DCC
46 August/September 2010
Review n n n n
R3D file compatibility and native AVC-Intra only is the software full 64 bit, which gives it natively edit 3D stereoscopic content. This
files from the popular Panasonic P2 cards. the requisite speed boost, but Premiere Pro is done using the Cineform Neo3D plug-in,
Probably the most robust new feature in also contains a new way to speed things up— which offers features not found in any major
After Effects CS5 is the new Roto Brush tool. and it is called the Mercury Playback Engine. nonlinear editing application. For those who
This tool works similarly to the Quick Selec- This is a software mechanism that uses the do compositing in Premiere Pro, the new Ul-
tion tool in Photoshop, and can considerably GPU of a qualified graphics card to speed up tra Keyer will help considerably with chro-
help the process of cutting out foreground playback by a significant amount. This tech- ma-keying greenscreen shots and types of
objects. In many ways, Roto Brush makes ro- nology is built upon Nvidia’s CUDA paral- footage. Another nice workflow feature with
toscoping a lot easier, and opens up rotoscop- lel processing architecture and works with Premiere Pro CS5 is the enhanced ability to
ing to a much broader audience. Nvidia’s Quadro cards as well as some of the exchange files with other popular video-edit-
For special effects artists, Adobe has bun- higher-end GeForce cards. ing software, such as Avid systems and Apple’s
dled the DigiEffects FreeForm 3D warp- The speed increase over CS4 is very no- Final Cut. This is nice because this version of
ing tool with After Effects CS5. This tool is ticeable and is most apparent when using Premiere actually takes quite a leap forward
similar to the 2D Meshwarp tool that was multiple tracks and layers within Premiere in speed and reliability, and even surpassing
- already part of After Effects, but with an add- Pro. Usually multiple layers would need to other nonlinear editors in raw power.
- ed dimension. Images and elements can be be rendered, but the hardware acceleration Overall, the CS5 suite is a very good up-
a warped and stretched not only in 2D screen turns Premiere Pro into a real-time editing grade. Those who skipped CS4 will appreci-
d space, but also along a Z-axis to push things and effects system. The higher-end Nvidia ate the added speed and stability of CS5. The
e toward and away from the camera. This can cards can support multiple HD streams with new features also offer another incentive to
help significantly when integrating flat, 2D effects. Adding to the HD workflow are sup- upgrade. Adobe has stabilized and enhanced
content into a live-action 3D scene. port for new HD formats, such as R3D, as CS5 in all the right places. n
well as support for most of the HD files used
Premiere Pro in popular DSLR cameras. George Maestri is a contributing editor for Computer
Premiere Pro CS5 probably experiences the In terms of new features, Premiere Pro Graphics World and president/CEO of RubberBug
greatest speed increase of the bunch, and most CS5 offers some nice enhancements. Prob- animation studio. He also teaches Maya for Lynda.com.
of the improvements are under the hood. Not ably the most cutting-edge is the ability to He can be reached at maestri@rubberbug.com.
High Performance
-
s
Camera Tracking
e Use SynthEyes for animated critter insertion, fixing shaky shots,
-
o virtual set extensions, making 3D movies, architectural previews,
accident reconstruction, virtual product placement,
- face and body capture, and more.
e
s
u
e
d Includes
r Stereoscopic features
e
r used in AVATAR
D
August/September 2010 47
For additional product news and information, visit CGW.com
This month’s Products segment priced at $699 for a single-user license. the software-only version is available for
NUX Pixologic; www.pixologic.com $499.
is devoted to many of the new WIN MAC
product innovations introduced StudioGPU; www.studiogpu.com WIN
during SIGGRAPH 2010, the
37th international conference and VIS/SIM
exhibition on computer graphics Upgrading Digital Nature
WIN and interactive techniques, held in E-on software previewed its upcoming
Los Angeles last month. For ad- Vue 9 products for professionals, includ-
ditional announcements from the ing Vue 9 xStream and Vue 9 Infinite, as
annual event, visit www.CGW.com
well as its Carbon Scatter and LumenRT.
or www.SIGGRAPH.org.
The entire Vue 9 product line, including
RENDERING solutions for 3D artists and enthusiasts
Becoming a MachStudio Pro to create, animate, and render natural 3D
StudioGPU previewed its MachStudio environments, is scheduled for release in
Pro nonlinear, real-time 3D workflow and the fourth quarter of this year. Version 9 will
rendering software with support for Pixar feature EcoSystem 4 for reduced flicker-
RenderMan award-winning rendering ing and optimized rendering and memory
SOFTWARE software. StudioGPU is working closely management, Relighting, HDR Multi-
with Pixar to build an open path from
DIGITAL SCULPTING MachStudio Pro to RenderMan. With a
Presented by Pixologic direct path to RenderMan, MachStudio
Pixologic unveiled its ZBrush Version 4.0 Pro artists can choose between the soft-
for Windows and Mac operating systems ware’s built-in GPU renderer to produce
during SIGGRAPH 2010. Version 4.0 previews or view final results, or using
adds several new features to the 2D/3D the CPU-driven RenderMan renderer
digital sculpting application used in film, to create beauty shots and/or specific
game, concept design, and scientific illus- render passes. Artists can also employ the Pass Rendering and Interactive Network
MachStudio Pro and RenderMan render Rendering, an improved Terrain Editor,
engines simultaneously, combining differ- and HyperBlob Technology for convert-
ent passes from the two render engines. ing HyperTextured MetaBlobs to polygon
All shaders shipped with MachStudio Pro objects. LumenRT is a 3D solution for visu-
will have RenderMan Shader Language alizing architectural and design projects in
(RSL) equivalents. MachStudio Pro will real time. Carbon Scatter is a new set of
also provide the ability to import, edit, and plug-ins for the creation of complex popula-
tration projects. New to the latest edition create custom RSL shaders, parameters, tions using the native instancing technolo-
are an animation “art in motion” timeline and attributes from within the application. gies of leading CG applications. LumenRT
Nash. for producing demo reels or presentations, StudioGPU also announced the avail- extends the concept of static rendering by
as well as the Best Preview Render utility ability of a full-feature version of its Mach- adding the ability to move around inside
with such features as 3D shadows, ambi- Studio Pro nonlinear, real-time 3D work- pictures, in photorealistic quality. LumenRT
ent occlusion, and subsurface scattering. flow and rendering software at educational software is designed to provide high-fidel-
Version 4.0 also boasts an enhanced GoZ pricing to qualified students. MachStudio ity, real-time visualization of architectural
tool for transitioning between ZBrush Pro bundled with the ATI FirePro V7800 projects with accurate lighting, shadows,
and other applications. Now available for workstation graphics card from AMD is and reflections.
purchase and download, ZBrush 4.0 is available at the student price of $999; E-on software; www.e-onsoftware.com WIN MAC
August/September 2010, Volume 33, Number 8/9: COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD (USPS 665-250) (ISSN-0271-4159) is published monthly except in August (11 issues
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48 August/September 2010
#26837 - CGW KONA Ad:Layout 1 01/04/2010 13:09 Page 1
www.aja.com
On the set
Ki
On set, Ki Pro lets you to shoot on the same codec that you
edit with - Apple ProRes 422. With extensive analog and
digital connectivity, virtually any video and audio source
can be fed into Ki Pro, which uses AJA’s powerful 10-bit
realtime up/down/cross conversion, to enable instant
recording of SD or HD from any camera format.
On the desktop
Back in the edit suite, KONA capture cards are the professional’s
choice, chosen for their outstanding performance and
unparalleled reliability. Now fully cross-platform compatible, KONA
cards give you the freedom to work with any formats - in the
software of your choice.
B e c a u s e i t m a t t e r s .
Production
made simple.
Master pre and post production techniques and create
studio-quality 3D animation and effects
with these expert guides.
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PROFESSIONAL
DIGITAL COMPOSITING
Essential Tools and Techniques
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Techniq
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SERIOUS SKILLS.
Your project guide to creating movies with the Blender open-source animation pipeline
Your project guide to creating realistic earth, wind, fire, and water effects in Maya Your project guide to creating breathtaking backgrounds and gaming graphics in Maya
The Open-Source
Animation Pipeline Dynamics Game Environments
and Props
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