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www.cgw.

com August/September 2010

Wise guys
Creating compelling CG game characters

$6.00 USA $8.25 Canada


August/September 2010 • Vol. 33 • Number 8/9 Innovations in visual computing for DCC professionals

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

Departments You Are the One

Editor’s Note SIGGRAPH Sideshow


34Pixar’s “Day&Night” features CG scenes placed inside the short film’s two
main characters, which are 2D.
By Barbara Robertson
2 As expected, there were numerous new product debuts at the annual
SIGGRAPH conference and exhibition. There were also some unexpected
highlights from the show floor. Slow-Going
Which products were most impressive? Look on page 3
to see CGW’s Best-of-Show selections.
40Theon theCADhorizon.
market is still feeling the effects of the recession, but growth is

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.

48Recent software and hardware releases from SIGGRAPH 2010.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x
ON THE COVER
Enhanced Content Character is extremely important in the just-released computer
Get more from CGW. We have enhanced our magazine game Mafia II from 2K Games. As such, the artists honed their
content with related stories and videos online at www.cgw.com. skills to create an amazing-looking cast and bring the story to
Just click on the cover of the issue (found on the left side of the life. See pg. 18.
Web page), and you will find links to these online extras.

August/September 2010 1
Editor’sNote

The Magazine for Digital Content Professionals

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

NewTek, which had been fairly quiet the


past few shows, certainly made a lot of noise
this year. Recently, the company brought on
Best-of-Show Selections
Rob Powers, who had created and supervised Nvidia Quadro cards (4000, 5000, 6000) built on the Fermi architecture.
the virtual art department for Avatar, as its Also: Quadro Plex 7000 and 3D Vision Pro stereoscopic 3D solution
new vice president of 3D development. Rob AMD ATI FirePro V8800
certainly brings his own star power to the Intel Core i7 and Xeon
company, and, it seems, to the show as an ILM/DreamWorks Alemic
engaging speaker. In an interesting move, Autodesk 2011 Entertainment Creation Suites
NewTek teamed with precision motion tech- NewTek LightWave 10
nology company InterSense to debut the Eyeon’s Fusion 6.1
industry’s first off-the-shelf 3D virtual pro- Pixologic’s ZBrush
duction system: LightWave 10 with VCam, The Pixel Farm’s PFMatchIt
for 3D virtual production. NewTek/InterSense LightWave 10 with Vcam
On Wednesday, NewTek had tongues Wacom’s tablets
wagging and cameras clicking when Wil- Kudos to:
liam Shatner and Dick Van Dyke discussed n  The workstation vendors, which continue to push processing boundaries.

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.

Luxion Rolls Out KeyShot 2


Luxion has introduced KeyShot 2, an The interface now features drag-and-
update to the original KeyShot and Hyper- drop import of digital data, a scene tree for
Shot software. The release features a new scene management, a library for all assets
user interface, rendering features, and (materials, environments, textures, back-
performance improvements. It also imports plates, and renderings) with drag-and-
native Pro/Engineer data with associative drop capabilities, interactive material and
linking on both the PC and Mac. environment adjustments with real-time
KeyShot 2 is an all-new application feedback, dynamic camera interaction
built on Luxion’s interactive, real-time with precise position control, and more.
raytracing and global illumination technol- The new rendering features in KeyShot
ogy. Now even faster, KeyShot 2 further 2 allow users to work faster and obtain
breaks down the complexity of creating even more accurate results. Key capabili- mance improvements up to 50 percent,
photographic images from 3D models. ties include: unlimited label placement on and has been further optimized to run
With its improved ease of use, KeyShot any material, light-emitting materials with even faster on the PC and Mac without
2 enables the creation of photographic intensity, color, and appearance control, the need for special graphics cards.
images in a matter of seconds, indepen- and ground caustics without a physical KeyShot 2 is available now for $995,
dent of the size of the digital model. plane. The product also boasts perfor- and $1995 for the Pro version.

PRODUCT: LIGHTING

Dell Upgrades Portfolio


Dell is offering the latest graphics, computing processor, OS, Precision T7500, T5500, T3500, and R5400 workstations
and memory technologies in its Precision workstation portfolio, sport the Nvidia Quadro 4000 and Quadro 5000 professional
including desktops, a rack workstation, and mobile laptops. graphics solutions.
On the mobile side, these include the 17-inch Precision M6500 Based on Dell’s previous announcement of AMD’s Eyefinity
and the 15.6-inch M4500. Customers can purchase 32GB Technology and ATI FirePro 3D professional graphics on its
of system memory in the M6500, and 16GB of memory in the Precision tower and rack workstations, the ATI FirePro V7800,
M4500. The Precision M6500 is also now available with the ATI ATI FirePro V5700, and ATI FirePro V8700 professional graph-
FirePro M7820, which enables users to power up to three inde- ics cards now can be bundled with the Precision R5400,
pendent displays at one time using ATI Eyefinity technology. T1500, T3500, T5500, and T7500 workstations.
Precision tower and rack workstations are being refreshed Dell is also offering the new high-performance Tesla C2050
with the newest high-end and ultra-high-end graphics solutions GPU on the Precision T7500 workstation, transforming it into a
from Nvidia, built on the Fermi architecture to combine advanced personal computer for general-purpose scientific and engineer-
visualization with high-performance computing capabilities. The ing computing.

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

CG Market: More Growth to Come


The computer graphics industry has been effects of the recession and starts replac- ing products, and creating simulations
a growth industry since it was established ing software tools. are exploiting the features of current CG
in the late 1970s. Weathering the storms As a result of the pullback due to the hardware. We’re seeing the results in
of the recession of 2009, the CG industry recession, more people will be buying amazing realism and real-time capabili-
is back on track and showing new, invigo- computer graphics software programs, ties for the next generation of films and
rated vitality and potential. To this end, Jon and we will see the development of tradi- designs, and the trend is accelerating.
Peddie Research is expecting that the tional segments, like CAD/CAM, expand The demand for programmers, artists,
computer graphics hardware market— as new design approaches in automotive, scientists, and designers has picked up
which was worth $59 billion in 2009— aerospace, and architecture are brought again, and firms are actively looking for
should exceed $63 billion in 2010. forth. Visualization, a market that has been people who can use and exploit these
In 2009, the CG software market was almost dormant for the past few years, is new programs and their associated
worth $11 billion (not counting services, poised now for great expansion due to hardware accelerators. The economic
maintenance, and other aspects) and exciting and lower-cost technologies. recession has caused a slowdown, but
should grow to $11.6 billion in 2010 Today, software programs for making it’s going to look like a small bump in the
as the industry shakes off the remaining movies and computer games, design- road by 2013. ■

NEWS: CG
6 August/September 2010
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CAD Industry in Slow Recovery
Right along with the rest of the world, the computer-aided rungs of the CAD workforce, where CAD operators or CAD
design (CAD) industry suffered severe setbacks in the reces- drafters move on to find new opportunities. JPR estimates that
sion of 2008–2009. Fortunately, in 2010, world economies are at least 200,000 workers have left the CAD industry worldwide.
recovering, and so are parts of the CAD industry. In the coming years, there will be increased opportunities for
Because CAD tools are used in architecture, manufacture, CAD workers who can take advantage of new software capa-
plant design, assembly, tool design, mapping, and geographi- bilities to increase their companies’ efficiencies.
cal information systems (GIS), recovery is decidedly uneven. In the architecture-related fields, these opportunities will come
For example, the architecture industry was the first to feel the to people who can help their companies move to a building
recession, and it will take the longest to recover. information management (BIM) workflow. In manufacture, we
On the other hand, the automotive industry, which saw a spec- are seeing new opportunities appear in improving product data
tacular meltdown in 2009, is coming back more quickly. As with all management/product life management/customer relationship
recessions, there are benefits to be realized in a slowdown, and, in management (PDM/PLM/CRM) workflows and analysis. In all
some cases, those benefits are already showing up this year. segments of the CAD industry, rendering is become a main-
Jon Peddie Research (JPR) estimates the CAD software stream capability across the board as workers become inter-
market to be $5 billion in 2009. This is a 23 percent decrease ested in creating their own visualizations.
compared to 2008, when the market reached a high of $6.7 In 2010, the CAD market will grow to $5.4 billion, a modest
billion. All industries in all geographies felt the effects of the increase of 5 percent, according to JPR. And, the consulting
recession. The market will grow in 2009, but it will not recover firm expects the CAD market to fully recover by 2013/2014.
to the high levels seen in 2008, which were unnaturally fueled The “2010 JPR CAD Report” looks specifically at the CAD
by financial bubbles. market, and includes information on worldwide CAD software
As difficult as the recession in 2009 has been and will contin- revenues, market share, and information about the user base.
ue to be for many companies, it will serve as a jump-start for The 2010 report includes forecasts for the major CAD segments:
long-term growth, as many companies take the time afforded architecture, MCAD, process and power, civil, GIS/mapping,
by a slowdown to move to advanced technologies and retrain and others. In addition, the report looks at the growing interest
workers. in the Mac among CAD users, and breaks down CAD use in
Inevitably, this same process is driving many workers out of geographic areas. The CAD report is available now for $5000
the CAD industry. The contraction is tightest at the bottom for a single license and $7500 for a sitewide license. ■

NEWS: CAD

Eyeon Ships Fusion 6.1


Eyeon Software rolled out Fusion 6.1, supercomputing compos-
iting software for Linux and Windows platforms.
Fusion 6.1 utilizes the powerful, low-cost GPU to create
assets and layers in real time. The tool set imports scenes from
3D animation packages, allowing for a much tighter integrated
workflow between departments and applications. This open
flexibility also increases industry support for technologies such
as RenderMan and RED Camera Mysterium X. Relighting and
sophisticated finishing offer more control and transparent collab-
oration between the compositing artists. OpenCL supercomput-
ing is a fresh and innovative use of today’s massively parallel
GPU. By speeding up computationally extensive operations focused tool set for rotoscoping, keying, paint and retouching,
such as Defocus, Fusion 6.1 allows the artist to instantly visual- and clean plate and shot preparation. Rotation 6.1, which takes
ize sophisticated mathematical operations that compile code on advantage of 64-bit computing, has been updated to include a
the fly for use by the new generation of graphics cards. plethora of new tools that enhance overall productivity, includ-
In other news, the company began shipping Rotation 6.1, a ing significant changes to the stereo conversion workflow.

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 ■ ■ ■ ■

Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

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

made in modo by Robert Lechl


©

20100505_CGW.indd 1 5/5/2010 8:21:46 AM


n n n n Visual Effects

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.

If You See My Reflection


In the final part of Ariadne’s Paris dream, she
and Cobb walk out of the cube and toward the
Visual effects artists scanned, modeled, and texture-mapped a four-block area of Paris so they could banks of the River Seine. As she approaches a
pivot digital buildings up and around the live actors. A texture-mapping technique developed at Disney road on the lower level, a bridge springs up out
helped the Double Negative artists create the photorealistic digital set.
of the ground and builds itself toward her. She
data from the digital scans and the photo- To render the digital buildings and people, then walks onto the bridge.
graphic textures made it possible for CG su- Dneg used Pixar’s RenderMan and an updated “The idea sounded brilliant in the script,”
pervisors Dan Neal and Philippe LePrince and shader set. “Philippe [LePrince] developed a Franklin says. “Everyone can imagine it. But
their teams to create the highly detailed digital new shading and texture-mapping system us- building it so that it doesn’t look comical in
models of all the buildings. And more. In the ing the Ptex technique invented at Disney,” reality was difficult.”
shot, everything not on the horizontal, except Franklin says. Nolan shot the sequence on Pont de Bir-
the actors, is CG, including the buildings, Ptex, per-face texture mapping for produc- Hakeim, the same location used by Louis
cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians. CG crowds tion rendering, developed by Brent Burley Malle in Frantic and Bernardo Bertolucci for
jostle on the sidewalks. “We photographed all and Dylan Lacewell at Walt Disney Anima- Last Tango in Paris. “We didn’t have the time
the extras, made little 3D models of them, and tion Studios, stores a separate texture per or flexibility to build a greenscreen on loca-
drove them with a motion-capture library,” quad face of a subdivision control mesh and tion,” Franklin says. “Chris [Nolan] and Wally

14 August/September 2010
Visual Effects n n n n

[Pfister] shoot like a whirlwind. So, we roto-


scoped the actors off the background using
our rotoscope tool Noodle.” The roto­scopers
traced around Ellen as she walked toward
the bridge, and then the artists replaced the
bridge, road, cars, pedestrians, and trees with
digital replicas.
The modeling team worked from Lidar
scans to build lightweight animation models
that animator Dorian Knapp used to drive a
more highly detailed final model. “The idea
was to have it fold down into the road and
then unfold itself, like a mechanical piece of
origami,” Franklin says. “Dorian developed
the rig as he was animating. He came up with
a process by which the ridge unpacks itself and
springs into place, and gave it a marvelous
clanky, rack-and-pinion feel.”
As Ariadne continues exploring her Parisian
dream, she steps onto the side of a platform
and pulls on the handle of a giant mirrored
door. Then, she steps to the other side and
swings around another mirror, resulting in two
mirrors parallel to each other. We see Ariadne
and Cobb in infinite reflections going back
forever, little Leos and Ellens between tunnels
of wrought-iron arches. When Ariadne places
her hand against a mirror, it shatters to reveal a
bridge with repeating arches created from the At top, a digital bridge builds itself toward Ariadne. At bottom, artists at Dneg re-timed the action in the
nested mirror reflection. live-action plates to slow down the dream sequence, and then enhanced the image with digital rain.
On set, Corbould built an 8x16-foot mir-
rored door on a hinge. The mirror had a dreamscapes. When people invade dreams, The first level of Ariadne’s dreamscape is a
large metal rig around it, and the entire unit the dreamer’s subconscious tries to chase them rain-washed American city. The second level
weighed 800 pounds. “Ellen couldn’t pull the out, and it’s up to the invader and the dream- is an elegant hotel with labyrinthine corridors.
door,” Franklin says. “We had burly special ef- scape creator to devise evasion routes and Third is an Alpine snowscape with a fortress in
fects guys on the other side pushing. And, this methods. So, Ariadne creates looped mazes the mountains. At the bottom is Limbo.
door wasn’t as big as Chris [Nolan] wanted the that resemble Escher’s famous drawings. With the help of a flight attendant, Cobb
mirror to be in the film. But, it showed how “We had to work with the art department doses his victim with sleeping powder while
the reflections move.” Of course, the crew ap- to build a physical set,” Franklin says. “The ba- aboard a flight, and the team successfully
peared in the reflections, as well. sic idea is well understood, but it works only if enters the industrial magnate’s dream. In
As he had done before, compositor Graham the camera precisely lines up with the set. So, the first layer, they’re in a van, with bad guys
Page removed DiCaprio and Page from the we created a carefully designed technical previs in a Mercedes SUV chasing them through
plates, and, as before, the Dneg artists built a that showed the exact camera placement.” Post- a rainstorm.
digital background. Neal and lead lighting artist production artists tidied up shots of the actors To film the sequence, Corbould rigged
James Benson wrangled the raytraced reflections filmed on the physical set by painting out rigs a three-block stretch of Wilshire Boulevard
of the digital bridge, river, trees, and people in and painting in holes in the atrium surround- in Los Angeles with giant rain sprayers, and
the distance. “They studied the way a real mirror ing the stairs cut to accommodate scaffolding. Strothers masterminded the car chase and gun
moves and added the imperfections that ground- For the heist, Ariadne designs three levels of battle. “We had to do a lot of manipulation to
ed it in reality,” Franklin says. “You think of a dreams inside dreams, all the better to hide slow down the action,” Franklin says. “They
mirror as smooth, slick, and seamless, but it isn’t.” in. The trick for Cobb and his team, who will shot the van skidding around the corner at
To replicate DiCaprio and Page, the compositors enter their victim’s dream and plant an idea, 24 fps, but Chris wanted it at 700 fps. So, we
lifted reflections from live-action images shot at is that time works differently in the dream needed to do incredible deceleration.”
various angles, and for a key moment when Di- world. Dreams are 10 times faster than the The re-timing software Dneg typically uses,
Caprio turns around, inserted a digital double. real world, and each dream inside a dream is which relies on optical flow to analyze pixel
10 times faster than the first. “The danger is vectors, couldn’t handle the motion-blurred
School’s Out that at the bottom, Limbo, time runs at a mas- layers of rain. So, compositing supervisor
The shattered mirror concluded Ariadne’s first sively accelerated rate, so if you get trapped Julian Gnass rebuilt the shots from scratch by
lesson in dream work. So, having learned to there, you’re trapped for centuries,” Franklin working with a 3D team that extracted ele-
control her own dreams, she begins designing says. “You would go insane.” ments and re-animated them. “People watch

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

And much more...


■ ■ ■ ■ Gaming

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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company that uses the latest technology to create spoke with Intel® Visual Adrenaline about how the
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Intel does not make any representations or warranties whatsoever regarding quality, reliability, functionality, or compatibility of third-party vendors and their devices. All products, dates, and plans are
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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

game in 2002, Mafia II is not a story about the


The characters and their relationships with one another were vital to the story behind Mafia II. A mix
mafia. It’s the story of a regular guy who ends of proprietary tools and middleware were used to create the protagonists and antagonists.
up in the mafia, and all the risks, rewards, and
consequences that go along with it.” combat, so the suit has flaps, rakes, and jets was in the shading. We concentrated our new
that respond to player input. The visual up- shader upgrading primarily on things that
Dead Space 2 grades to the suit are immediately recognizable would pay off on a world that has a lot of light
Electronic Arts/Visceral Games and are the result of the pipeline that the team sources, as opposed to being outside where
Electronic Arts brought gamers face to face employed for the sequel. Because the world of there is one sun. We’re on a spaceship with
with evil when they introduced Dead Space Dead Space is rooted in reality, starting with lots of blinking lights and lots of stuff moving
and its “strategic dismemberment” to shooters the early-concept artist work, all the engineer- around all the time.”
back in 2008. Following the 2009 Wii prequel ing has to actually work and have real funda- Part of that movement comes from the fact
with Dead Space: Extinction, the game gets its mentals behind it. that this world—and those lights—are com-
first sequel this winter with Dead Space 2. It’s “Rather than using CG to fake-transform pletely destructible, which meant more work
been three years in game time since engineer how Isaac’s helmet folds up and away, we cre- for the team to bring the causing effects to life
Isaac Clarke faced off against the Necromorph ated engineering schematics so that the helmet as the player tears through these environments.
monsters aboard the mining ship Ishimura in actually works,” says Milham. He explains the This game employs live specularity and real-
the original game, and since that time, tech- process: “Those get passed to a modeler who time reflections. In contrast, the original game
nological advances and upgrades to the Dead does a high-res base model in Maya. It’s not used more canned content with prebaked
Space Engine have allowed the development all done in ZBrush because sometimes you’re environment maps or cubic enviro-mapping.
team to further explore this protagonist. For just doing panel lines and that sort of business. The end result is a character that fully comes to
one thing, players will actually see Clarke’s face That high-res base model in Maya is taken life with a more realistic look and a new voice,
and hear his voice for the first time. into ZBrush and up-res’d and done up com- whether he’s barking commands at his team or
“In the first game, Isaac always has his hel- pletely. Once that’s approved, a low res is done navigating the dark corridors, waiting to un-
met on, so there was no facial work necessar- in Maya, and the normal maps off the ZBrush leash his weapons on the aliens.
ily,” says Ian Milham, art director for the Dead version are brought in. That gets passed off,
Space franchise. “This time, it’s a much more and then a base set of textures is done for that. Heavy Rain
complicated rig. All the shaders have been Next, a specific shader tech comes in and does Quantic Dream
punched up.” the final shader punch-up. Our character’s Developer Quantic Dream first pushed the
According to Milham, Clarke’s helmet can pretty unique in that he has his health bars envelope of interactive entertainment with
fold away, revealing a full head underneath. built in, so there’s actual gameplay informa- its PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 title Indigo
He’s been given full mocap performances for tion playing on the character. He has different Prophecy in 2005. Since that time, the French-
his body, which now has more fluid, lifelike helmet glows and things like that, so it goes based developer focused on its dream project:
movement, and for his uncovered human face, through a whole technological pass before it Heavy Rain. This PlayStation 3 exclusive was
which has the ability to emote. Milham said is finaled up. Then it goes on to rigging, and created using the innovative new technology
the team came up with this whole dynamic sys- everything else.” that allowed producer/writer David Cage and
tem for his helmet to fold away, so you could Since Dead Space is a horror game, the envi- his team to utilize real actors to bring virtual
really play with that emotion on his face. “All ronments the player will explore are dark and characters to life.
the technology had to go up to match,” says foreboding. Milham and his team are dealing The game introduces four unique characters
Milham. “A lot of it wasn’t necessarily tech- with a world that tends to have a huge num- that the player interacts with throughout the
nological advances as it was re-budgeting for ber of lights that are moving, animating, and noir thriller: Ethan Mars, an architect suffer-
a character that was much more complex and flickering, but they have relatively quick fall- ing from mental and emotional instability,
featured more bones, more shading, and more offs. As a result, they have tweaked a lot of the journalist Madison Paige, FBI agent Norman
texture to support a fidelity of performance shading for the character. Jayden, and private investigator Scott Shelby.
that is greater.” “Because Isaac’s suit is now more shiny and Every decision that is made in the game di-
The character also was given upgrades to its metallic, there’s much more stuff for those rectly impacts the outcome of the story, which
space suit for gameplay purposes. Players will lights to chew on,” explains Milham. “That’s involves a missing boy and the hunt for the so-
now have full control of Clarke in zero-gravity just as much thinking back to the design as it called Origami serial killer. As Cage explains,

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

A pair of frogs discover the meaning of


survival of the fittest in the whimsical
animated short ‘Amazonia,’ created solely
on notebook computers
Under the lush canopy of the Amazon rain forest is a vibrant ecosystem teeming with life of all
variation and size. Amazonia, as it is often called, is home to more than two million insect spe-
cies, three thousand types of fish, 1300 kinds of birds, almost 400 variations of reptiles, and just
as many amphibians and mammals. From the outside, the environment—wrapped in bright
shades of green, from the tops of the great trees to the thick, lush jungle
floor, and speckled with the rich, primary colors of its inhabit-
ants—is playful and inviting. But looks can be deceiving,
as a pair of tree frogs soon discover in the animated CG
short film “Amazonia.”
Creating this green environment, along with the creatures
that live there, was Sam Chen, who directed the five-minute
short. Unlike the main characters in the movie, who partner on a
dining adventure through the rain forest, Chen opted to embark on the
moviemaking journey alone, scripting the story line, crafting and animating
the characters, and building the environments. However, he did receive as-
sistance from Jamey Scott when it came to adding sound to the picture, col-
laborating with his longtime sound designer and composer to add sound
effects and give “voice” to the characters.
“The genesis of ‘Amazonia’ came to me while I was in the middle of a
Beethoven and Stravinsky symphony concert,” recalls Chen. “As I closed my
eyes and let the music transport me, I started to see images in my head of frogs
running around with big critters chasing them. Then the scene blossomed into
wild colors, dance, and song. I thought to myself that this must have been similar to what Walt
[Disney] imagined in his mind when he first thought of doing ‘Fantasia’ back in the 1940s.”
Based on this experience, Chen decided to set the animation to music from Beethoven, and
would later narrow down the selection.
A techie by education and an artist by trade, Chen graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s
degree in computer science and engineering, though he found his passion more than 20 years ago
as a 3D animator. As such, he has earned industry recognition as a veteran animation filmmaker,
first with his short film “Eternal Gaze,” an exceptionally moving portrayal of the work of sculptor
Alberto Giacometti, for which Chen won the top award at the
SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater in 2003 (see “Character Studies,”
August 2003).
“One of my dreams since attending UCLA as a computer
science major specializing in computer graphics was to be
a part of SIGGRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival
and Electronic Theater,” says Chen. Having found so
much success there in the past with “Eternal Gaze,” as
well as with “Piccolo’s Encore” (1999) and “Cat Ciao”
(2000), Chen chose the conference’s animation festival
to debut his newest short.
Chen completed the movie just in time for the festi-

CG animator/filmmaker Sam Chen single-handedly created


the colorful CG short “Amazonia,” about two tree frogs
embarking on a culinary adventure in the rain forest.

August/September 2010 27
n n n n CG I

Before designing the characters, Chen


studied quite a few nature books and imag-
ery, building up his own library of tree frog,
alligator, snake, and insect images. “The chal-
lenge was to take these designs away from the
realistic and toward the caricature and the car-
toony, without losing the essence of the actual
animals and creatures they were based on,” he
explains. “The goal was to hit the sweet spot in
the middle for maximum character appeal.”
While Chen considers his character designs
unique, with a signature look, he notes that
they are Pixar-inspired. “I’ve always been a big
fan of [Pixar’s] character facial and eye designs
in the way they’re able to convey so much emo-
tion and appeal, all the while still resembling
The frogs encounter a number of characters in the film, including this seething snake. All the charac- the animals or characters they’re based on,”
ters were modeled and animated in Maya using a combination of polygons and NURBS. he explains. “Because my story hinged on the
physical comedy between the two hero charac-
val this past July in Los Angeles, though work team up on a culinary quest for food through ters, Bounce and Biggy, even the size and color
on “Amazonia” began in mid-2006, after he the Amazon rain forest. But things quickly go relation between them borrowed slightly from
had completed the film festival circuit with awry when the proverbial hunters become the Mike and Sully in Monsters, Inc.”
“Eternal Gaze.” “At a running time of five hunted. Take all these high jinks and set them To create the cast—which included ap-
minutes, that’s just a little over one minute of to Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 8” (second proximately 10 primary and more than 30
finished footage per year,” Chen says, adding movement), and you have “Amazonia.” supporting characters—Chen again used
with a chuckle, “I know, I’m a slacker.” Per- “It’s heavily inspired by the physical humor Maya. “The [previs] footage was used mainly
haps that would be true had the filmmaker of Looney Tunes cartoons and the musical as a timing guide for creating the shot list and
focused solely on this project rather than grace of ‘Fantasia,’ ” describes Chen. to inform the editorial process,” he explains.
working on it when he could between other As a one-man show, it’s always daunting and “So almost every animation curve was redone
jobs (teaching, freelancing, and so forth). This nerve-wracking when starting any new projects, from scratch for the film.”
schedule, though, kept him from growing Chen points out. “So during pre-production, I Most of the characters were built using a
tired of the film. had to convince myself that the premise would combination of polygons and NURBS. “As
While many artists stick to a certain anima- work,” he says. To that end, the filmmaker someone who started in 3D using Alias’ Power­
tion style, that was certainly not the case for relied heavily on previs to time out the story Animator, I tend to prefer using NURBS for
Chen. In fact, “Amazonia” is at the opposite beats and gags, and to help him choose which much of my organic character modeling,”
end of the aesthetic spectrum from “Eternal piece of music to use. And to create the previs, Chen says. For more complicated NURBS
Gaze.” While “Eternal Gaze” was dark, grun- he employed Autodesk’s Maya 8.0, along with shapes, he found the need to stitch and attach
gy, and set in gloomy black and white, “Ama- Canopus’s Edius 3.0 for cutting. patch surfaces cumbersome and unreliable.
zonia” is vibrant and color-rich. “While some Once Chen settled on Beethoven’s “Sym- So Chen started exploring Maya’s subdivision
think ‘Amazonia’ is a big departure stylistically phony No. 8,” he used early, non-textured surfaces, which he found to have some perfor-
from my previous film, in reality, it was a re- models of his characters and moved them mance limitations, as well. As a result, Chen
turn to my roots of making fun and wacky CG around the bare sets like chess pieces, block- taught himself organic modeling using poly-
shorts in the style of Looney Tunes cartoons, ing out key storytelling positions and gags. gons, a solution he calls “fast and reliable.”
which I devoured everyday after school while Says Chen, “The important questions I asked “With Maya’s ability to polysmooth at will,
growing up in San Diego,” says Chen. myself at this early point were: How’s the story anytime more smoothness was needed, there
In terms of production, Chen’s pipeline has flowing? How are the actions cutting? What was less reason to use NURBS,” Chen relays.
not changed much, either. He has used the same is the pacing and rhythm as they’re layered on For some of the characters, such as the wasps
tools more or less for the past 10 years, but be- top of the music?” and damselflies, where their thorax, abdomen,
cause of Moore’s Law and the advancements in The previs gave Chen the answers he need- antennas, limbs, and wings were segmented
powerful and affordable hardware, he was able ed, convincing him that the story was sound and mostly cylindrical, he still found it advan-
to achieve much more with considerably less. and the project worth pursuing. tageous to use NURBS for modeling because
For “Amazonia,” this meant doing something of their simplicity and their ability to be mold-
that most others would not dare to attempt: What Characters ed easily by pushing and pulling very few CVs.
creating the short film using laptop computers The short features a number of animal charac- “One of the features I love about Maya is its
(see “Mobile Moviemaking,” pg. 32). ters and their habitats, whether it is land, water, brush-based sculpt geometry modeling tool,
or air, including a crotchety crocodile, an an- formerly called ‘artisan.’ This tool provided a
Jungle Jingle noyed anaconda, a bothered bee, and more—in quick way to mold and shape organic charac-
In the whimsical, fun-filled animated short, addition, of course, to the main characters, the ters without having to jump out to [Pixologic]
two buddy tree frogs named Bounce and Biggy two fun-loving, albeit hungry, amphibians. ZBrush or [Autodesk] Mudbox,” he adds.

28 August/September 2010
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n n n n CG I

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

those layers, Chen made render passes for


the color, ambient occlusion, and luminance-
depth channels for compositing later in Adobe Mobile Moviemaking
After Effects.
When Chen began working on “Ama- During the past year or so, mobile computers—both suped-up laptops and mobile
zonia,” he had just returned from screening workstations—have made quite an impact in the professional DCC space, offer-
“Eternal Gaze” in theaters, and with the coun- ing a viable alternative to desktop machines. But can they take the place of their
try moving to high def, he realized that this tethered big brothers? In many case, the answer is “yes,” as animator/filmmaker
new film would need to be HD-ready. “From Sam Chen discovered while making his CG short film “Amazonia.”
an independent CG filmmaker’s point of view, During pre-production in 2006, Chen had used a couple of high-performance
this was quite daunting because rendering at Windows XP workstations custom-made by Verari, and a Dell laptop. Both were
1080p equated to almost seven times more quite effective at the time, allowing him to previs his entire film with relative ease.
pixels to render and composite than As pre-production pro-
NTSC SD,” he says. “So I decided to gressed into production
make a reasonable compromise and and then postproduc-
render to HD 720p instead, and still tion, computers became
use off-the-shelf notebook PCs with faster, and all of a sud-
standard hardware. And the benefits den, a 64-bit 4gb quad-
were worth the trade-off: Most frames core laptop could be pur-
took between 10 and 60 minutes to chased for approximately
render on two- and four-core systems. $1000.
With the imagery rendered, it was “It was quite an em-
time put it all together. According to powering and revolution-
Chen, in the early days of his CG film- ary day for the proverbial
making career, compositing was either independent CG film-
not done at all or was at best an after- maker,” says Chen. So
thought, “as it was yet another time-consum- much so that he quickly made the switch entirely to HP Pavilion notebook com-
ing phase in the impossibly long and chal- puters for his entire CG pipeline—from animation all the way to lighting, rendering,
lenging CG pipeline.” However, the art form and compositing, as well as final HD video editing.
progressed by leaps and bounds in recent years, Chen used consumer-grade HP Pavilion dv7-1247cl 64-bit AMD Turion sys-
and, as Chen points out, it is now almost un- tems with ATI HD3200 graphics chips as well as the much faster HP dv7-2270us
imaginable to create a CG short without the 64-bit Intel Quad Core 2 with an ATI HD4650, and the newer HP dv7 64-bit Intel
luxury and freedom to make changes and to Core i5-450M with an Nvidia GeForce G 105M graphics card. All the systems
further enhance and mold a shot in post. sported 4gb of RAM. “Not only have my electric bills gone down dramatically, but
“Now, I design and create shots fully with the systems ran cool and quiet in my small home studio,” he attests. “Now, when
post in mind,” Chen says. “I liken CG post to I turn on the older desktop workstations, they seem unbearably loud and hot in
the darkroom of the traditional chemical film comparison.”
photographer, like Ansel Adams, who took a Using only laptops for the entire production pipeline has reaped mostly positive
negative and, through the magic of tried-and- results, according to Chen. “When I suffered from cabin fever, I loved the fact that
true darkroom techniques and his famed Zone I could take my entire production pipeline to a coffee house and work there, with
System, was able to coax out an impossibly very little compromise.”
beautiful work of photographic art. Such was What was the downside? The few negatives Chen cited were the generally
the case in my approach to creating a typical slower hard drives that ship standard with these systems—sometimes 7200 rpm
shot in ‘Amazonia.’ ” isn’t quite fast enough for video editing. “Even with the advancements in hardware
It’s difficult to believe from looking at the technology, uncompressed HD video editing still requires RAID and other fast,
finished film, but Chen admits that the raw dedicated hard drives to perform in real time,” he says. “Rendering to HD 720p
shots that came directly from Maya were instead of 1080p lightened the load a little, so I could still use off-the-shelf note-
quite flat and not too interesting artistically. book PCs with standard hardware.”
However, when the imagery was combined Furthermore, most mobile upgrades, such as RAM, and hard drives are more
and layered in After Effects, he was able to expensive than their counterparts for desktop systems. Indeed, you will always be
experiment with different looks and schemes, able to find faster and cheaper parts made for the desktop, but Chen found that
all without re-rendering. After individual the trade-offs were well worth it in retrospect.
layers were gamma-corrected and the levels “I have found that the HP notebook PCs are desktop-replacement systems
adjusted, they were composited with other capable of empowering the independent CG filmmaker with enough horsepower
layers (such as ambient occlusion and other to produce professional-quality CG films,” Chen says. “I am proud that I made a
foreground and background elements) until a CG film almost entirely using only notebook computers. I hope my film can set a
semblance of a shot came together. Then the positive example and help usher in a kindler and greener way of making CG films
fun part began. in the future.” –Karen Moltenbrey
“At this point, the luminance-depth layer

32 August/September 2010
CG I n n n n

posed of a system of Maya bones, influence


objects, wire deformers, and lattices working
together in concert to shape a given character’s
facial expression. It is most likely similar to ex-
isting facial systems out there today, but I had
to invent it along the way as I needed it.”
While Chen shouldered the work all by
himself, that is not what he had planned when
he embarked on his jungle trek. “I believe in
collaborating with artists who share a common
vision and a common passion for excellence.
Nothing is more exciting than being part of
a world-class team producing amazing CG
work,” he says. “Having said that, when I set
out to create ‘Amazonia,’ I didn’t meet anyone
who shared the same passion as I had who
didn’t already have a demanding job creat-
To create the lush, colorful environment in “Amazonia,” the artist mixed procedural textures with ing feature animation or commercial work in
photographic textures, making sure that the plants looked hyper-real, not photoreal. high-pressure environments. A few actually ex-
pressed interest early on but gradually dropped
was brought in and the levels adjusted for maxi- Going Solo out as the workload ramped up. So I marched
mum dynamic range,” Chen explains. Then he In “Amazonia,” Bounce and Biggy benefit from onward, hoping to come across other collabo-
used the Frischluft Lenscare After Effects plug- their teamwork. Chen, though, had to face his rators. Before I knew it, four years had gone by,
in, crafting the camera depth-of-field effect us- challenges alone. “The most challenging part and I found myself standing on the summit of
ing the grayscale depth information. “Being a about being a one-man show is trying to stay fo- the figurative Mount Everest alone.”
big fan of National Geographic and Planet Earth cused and passionate about the project for four Nevertheless, the filmmaker was determined
videos, I wanted ‘Amazonia’ to have a nature- long years,” he says. “Whenever I was traveling, to bring Bounce and Biggy to life. “As with most
photography look, whereby backgrounds are vacationing, or working on freelance projects ambitious independent film projects, the goal
often blown out and appear painterly and im- for clients, it meant that zero work was getting of ‘Amazonia’ was merely to cross the finish line
pressionistic due to the extremely shallow depth done. There was no one to tag-team with, no alive,” Chen says. “As my own harshest critic, I
of field,” he adds. work to pass along to keep the momentum also wanted the end result to be excellent, and
Atmospheric haze in the humid rain forest going. After returning to the film even after a something I would be proud of. It might sound
often created areas of light bloom and glow short hiatus meant a few days of low productiv- like a cliché, but I’ve always believed that if I set
in the brightest parts of the image, along ity while I struggled to regain my bearings and the bar extra high for myself, and I reached it,
with distinctive bokeh highlights in the back- resume forward momentum.” then everything would take care of itself.”
ground. All these effects in the Z-axis resulted On a more practical level, whenever com- Indeed it has. A crowd-pleaser at SIG-
in proper separation and depth between the puter systems fried and hard drives crashed— GRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival,
layers, and effectively controlled where the “and there were many instances,” according to “Amazonia” currently is enjoying a world tour
audience’s eye should be focused. In some Chen—he was unable to appoint someone to of the film festival circuit (having just won an
scenes, Chen used rack-focusing to bring the do system administration. “The production Audience Award at a venue in Europe), leaving
attention from the background characters to would often come to a grinding halt, requir- little time for Chen to enjoy the fruit of his
those in the foreground. ing me to switch from a filmmaker’s hat to labor. Once that is over, will Chen breathe life
RE:Vision Effect’s ReelSmart motion- that of a computer systems engineer, and roll into yet another uniquely styled project? “I’m
blur plug-in helped smooth out all the fast- up my sleeves for a day of technical trouble- excited about getting right back into creating,
action sequences and bring a professional pol- shooting. It was maddening at times,” he says. animating, and visual storytelling,” he says.
ish to the entire film. “The end product is a However, thanks to his computer science engi- “This time, I’m looking forward to collaborat-
testament to the importance of reliable post- neering degree and work experience at Silicon ing with fellow artists on anything that catches
production tools in helping a one-man project Graphics, the filmmaker was in a much better my attention. This can either be in feature
cross the finish line with high-quality results position to address those problems than other animation, turning my short into a feature,
and on schedule,” says Chen. filmmakers would have been. or even game animation and cinematics. I’m
Once Chen rendered and composited the Without the support of an R&D depart- keeping my options open in case opportuni-
HD 720p frames, he output them as uncom- ment or tool engineers meant that Chen had ties come knocking. In the meantime, I’m go-
pressed QuickTime movie clips using the ani- to occasionally write MEL scripts to perform ing to enjoy the wild and unpredictable ride.”
mation codec. Then, he transferred them into certain tasks within Maya. For the most part, And just as Bounce and Biggy chased their
Sony Vegas Pro for editing and mastering at 30 though, he kept his solutions off-the-shelf. culinary dreams, so, too, did Chen. The end
fps. Mastering to DVD and Blu-ray was done “At times, I improvised and created my own result: A CG feast for the eyes and the soul. n
in Sony DVD Architect Pro. “After I switched unique systems mainly because there was
from the workstations to the notebook PCs, I nothing available at the time,” Chen says. “For Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of Computer
used Sony Vegas exclusively,” he adds. instance, my character facial rigs were com- Graphics World.

August/September 2010 33
n n n n Animation

S ome short films build around a story arc—a beginning,


middle, and end. For others, an interesting character, or perhaps
a conflict, drives the concept. Teddy Newton’s stunningly original
short “Day&Night,” on the other hand, began as a doodle and grew
into a metaphor.
“I was drawing a keyhole,” Newton says. “I added a couple eye-
balls, and it kind of looked like a guy. I wasn’t creating an animated
film. It was just a gag.”
A gag until Pixar producer Kevin Reher (“Partly Cloudy,” A Bug’s
Life) suggested that Newton pitch a short film. Newton had been a
character designer for Pixar’s Oscar-nominated short film “Presto,”
Ratatouille, and The Incredibles, a development artist for Up, and had
could walk along and reveal what they were walking against. I had
an idea that they would meet, and I wanted them to change in a
sunset moment in the end.” He turned a few of his ideas into a
presentation—Day waking up, Day and Night fighting, and the
characters going into the sunset at the end—and pitched his idea.
“I showed it to John [Lasseter], and it was the fastest green light
to a film at Pixar,” Newton says. “I didn’t even make it through the
whole presentation. John said, ‘Well, I guess this is the one we’re
going to put on top of Toy Story.’  ”
Newton then began coming up with scenes he could use
within Day and Night. “Fireworks, a girl on the beach, what-
ever,” he says. “We wanted them to be qualities of the character’s
help write the short “Jack-Jack Attack.” Before joining Pixar, he was inner world. Once I had a couple dozen, I filtered out the best
a development artist for Osmosis Jones and The Iron Giant, and co- ones, the ones I would showcase and that would catch the other
wrote and co-produced the mock-1950s public education film The character’s attention.”
Trouble with Lou. But, he hadn’t yet directed a film. With that oppor- Normally a short has two sets, not many more. Newton ended
tunity now staring him in the face, Newton remembered the keyhole up with 18 different CG sets, that is, 18 little CG movies stitched
drawings and thought he might be able to do something with them. together into backgrounds. “That was unprecedented for a Pixar
“I didn’t have a story,” Newton says. “But, I knew we were in- short,” he says.
terested in [stereo] 3D movies. And the idea of looking through a
keyhole seemed like a practical idea to pitch in 3D because you’d Waking Up
be looking into a world.” So, the keyhole doodle became a theme. The film begins with Day, waking up. He is a 2D line
Then, Newton imagined having two keyholes. “Like looking drawing on a black background. Inside, he has a strip
through binoculars,” he says, “but, with one eye nighttime and the of green on the bottom and blue above—grass and
other eye daytime.” sky. Birds chirp. He stretches, and animated
When Newton imagined putting two “keyhole” characters side clouds move into the blue sky. He scratch-
by side, and using them to reveal the different times of day, the es, and we hear a cow moo; he bends
theme began to grow into a story. He wasn’t convinced, however, over, and we hear thunder. He
that the characters could do more than provide a window into 3D ambles sleepily toward
worlds. “If I set them in motion, there would be so many things the right, then more
to look at, I’d have to be careful where the [audiences’] eyes go,” hurriedly. And
he says. then quickly sits.
So, Newton created walk cycles for the hand-drawn characters, We hear running
put photographs inside the “keyholes,” that is, the inside of the water and see
characters’ line drawings, and looked at the result through stereo water spilling
3D glasses. “It convinced me,” he says. “I thought the characters from a water-

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.”

This scene, with Night’s wolf


howling at Day’s bathing beau-
ties, required artful modeling
and composition to have the
wolf look down on a round,
rather than elliptical, CG pool.

Images courtesy Pixar.

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).

Congratulations to Karen and Barbara for these


outstanding achievements.
n n n n Animation

Giacchino, comes from the world: from pass-


ing radios, for example. “We only breached
that maybe once when the sunset happens,”
Newton says.
The voice-over happens toward the end, dur-
ing the swing dance, when the characters come
together. We see a radio tower appear inside Day
and hear an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Wayne
Dyer: “Fear of the unknown. They are afraid of
new ideas. They are loaded with prejudices, not
based upon anything in reality, but based on … if
something is new, I reject it immediately because
it’s frightening to me. What they do instead is
just stay with the familiar. You know, to me, the
most beautiful things in all the universe are the
most mysterious.”
Director Teddy Newton designed “Day&Night” as a stereo 3D film from the beginning. When projected The newest idea in this film, was, for argu-
in stereo, the airplanes appear to fly toward the audience in this shot. ably the first time in a short film, placing CG
animation inside animated 2D characters. But,
when Newton knew he wanted 2D fore- as we refined the process, we’d scan the images the metaphor elevates the film from a cartoon
grounds but still wasn’t sure how to do the in- and cut out the character holes. They could into a significant work of art.
ternal images. “He thought about doing stop work with an animated texture card in the 3D “One thing my crew said was that they re-
motion or live action, but we decided on CG system that was attached to the camera or the ally enjoyed the message,” Fu says, “seeing
because I knew I could have the control Teddy 3D set, depending on what they needed.” people’s differences and appreciating them. It
wanted,” Fu says. Even so, it took a lot of back and forth to get was fun to work on a meaningful project.”
Because the animators drew the charac- the timing right. “It was like a Rubik’s Cube,” For his part, Newton is a bit shy about the
ters in pencil on paper, Fu’s team scanned Fu says. “We’d solve one problem in Day that response people have to the film. “I’m glad
the drawings and then used Vector Magic’s would mess up Night. We’d fix something in that the people who love this film love it quite
software and proprietary code to convert the CG to fix the 2D, and then something else a bit,” he says. “It’s hard to know when you do
bit-mapped images to vector art. “With any would break.” a film. I’ve never seen this kind of story in an
vectorizing software, there are still some bits Lighting also became a “night-and-day” prob- animated film before. It’s about people grow-
that aren’t exactly what the artist drew,” Fu lem, one that production designer Don Shank ing and coming together, yeah, but the sunset
says. “The software has to guess at some point. and lighting supervisor Andrew Pienaar ad- is more or less about them being able not only
So, we’d pre-process the images to give the vec- dressed early in the production. “They knew it to unify, but trade off. One can see the world
torizer better information and help it as much would be a challenge to get both characters to through the other’s eyes a little.”
as we could.” For example, the pre-process- read at the same time, because the black back- Like peeking through a keyhole into an-
ing technique might enlarge some areas and ground is such a predominant part of the over- other person’s mind. n
sharpen others. all image,” Fu says. “We had to light [the CG
The crew also used Toon Boom’s Animo scenes] for Day and then light again for Night, Barbara Robertson is an award-winning writer and a
to help with digital inking and painting. “We and still have both characters read well.” contributing editor for Computer Graphics World. She can
had to build a whole 2D pipeline,” Fu says. be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net.
“That in itself was a big challenge.” Sounds True
The larger challenge, however, was insert- Only one scene in the film has “dialog,” but
ing the 3D scenes into the 2D characters. even then, it is a voice-over. The characters ‘Day&Night’ Content
“We built a kludged pipeline,” Fu says. “We never talk. Otherwise, the sound, designed
rendered out planes and brought them into by Barney Jones with Gary Rydstrom con- Creation Software
our proprietary 3D system. Depending on sulting, sometimes accents the action, some-
what we needed in the scene, we’d attach times doesn’t. 3D Tools
them to the environment or the camera. It “We often hear sounds in the distance,” Autodesk Maya
would have been faster to do this in com- Newton says, “frogs, trains. They didn’t re- Apple Shake
positing, but we would have lost the interac- quire internal visual action; we hear things Pixar RenderMan
tion between other departments, such as the in daily life that we don’t see.” In the theater, Pixar proprietary software
lighters and the animators. And, we wanted moviegoers hear night sounds on the left and
the ability to render the film in stereo.” (See day sounds on the right until they trade places. 2D Tools
“Stereo Duality,” pg. 36). “I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard two Adobe Photoshop
With the characters rendered as 2D cards, sets of ambient sounds simultaneously—the DigiCel FlipBook
the animators could adjust the timing within nighttime ambience and the daytime ambi- Toon Boom Animo, Pencil Check
the 3D system. “The first version the anima- ence happening together,” he adds. Vector Magic conversion software
tors saw had floating lines in a 3D world. But The music, too, composed by Michael

38 August/September 2010
Seoul Skyline

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n n n n Business

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

in 2010 and 2011, it’s unclear whether the US 8


Congress will turn on the tap again.
6
The combined oil and gas segment remains
2009
one of the important levers in the world econ- 4

omy. President Obama has said that alterna- 2

tive sources are not going to be able to make


0
a significant dent in the West’s energy require-
ments in the near future, thus oil is not going -2
2008 2010 2011
to release its grip on the economy or politics -4 (projected) (projected)
any time soon. So it comes as no surprise that -6
oil and gas is one of the few areas where there
has been growth through the recession. -8

Green energy and globalization are two -10 Source: IMF

flags the CAD companies were waving before


the recession. They will return as important Most recently Dassault has sought to speed engineering, and building. First, US colleges
enablers for growth as the crisis mentality the process by releasing DraftSight, a free 2D and universities have had to raise tuition and
ebbs in some quarters. Finding new efficien- drafting product built on the ARES CAD en- cut back on programs to help subsidize stu-
cies in construction and data management are gine developed by Graebert Systems. dents. And second, in a related trend, people
already strong themes for the CAD industry, We’ve seen the ranks of the rank-and-file are reconsidering college as a requirement be-
both pre- and post-recession. 2D drafters thin out. This recession is throw- cause money is tight. Thus, when people do
For obvious reasons, there is always a ing people out of work—the first to go are consider college, they are more interested in
strong focus on 3D CAD at the expense of those with the least skills. In 2006 to 2007, disciplines that will result in better jobs when
2D drafting. A 3D model provides a wealth the ratio between 2D users and 3D users was they get out, so there are more people signing
of information, and that information can be closer to 70 percent versus 30 percent. In up for the sciences and engineering.
built upon. For instance, material properties 2009, the shift to 3D picked up speed as jobs
can be added, analysis performed, volume disappeared on the low end. Unfortunately, Conclusion
understood, and so forth. However, software those jobs aren’t being replaced by high-end No doubt about it, 2009 was a very rough year
vendors, and analysts are coming to the real- positions. Rather, professionals are picking for CAD. (See the related story “Alibre Grows
ization that basic drafting and modeling will up tasks that were performed lower down on While Others Slow” in the August/September
always be a requirement. Still, maintaining 2D the pay scale. The positive side is that people issue Online Extras on www.cgw.com.) It’s still
information for drafting, printing, and illus- “own” their data if they have a more direct role unclear whether the drop in CAD licenses repre-
trations is increasingly being seen as a function in creating it, but in terms of sheer numbers, sents more people leaving the industry or people
that could well become free. fewer people are doing more. just waiting for times to get better before they
renew their subscriptions or upgrade their soft-
2D vs. 3D Users Evolution Now ware. There’s obviously a little of both.
Not all modeling (3D included) is part of a The positive side of any “correction,” a nox-
large enterprise or huge project. There is a ious term when it’s applied to people’s jobs,
3D 41% growing interest in direct 3D modeling as is that it forces efficiency and helps lay the
an easier way to get to a design, and this is groundwork for more long-term growth. At
2D 59% happening on the high end as well as the this midpoint, we at JPR have updated our
low end. outlook for 2010. The major CAD companies
One of the most fascinating trends we have are reporting good growth in 2010, especially
seen is the growth of design hobbyists. Inter- for their design products. The larger PLM
Source: Jon Peddle Research est in industrial design is expanding beyond market is conforming to the more cautious
the small, talented group of people who train outlooks from analysts, including JPR, issued
CAD Industry Revenues through 2010 in this area. In addition, it’s possible that the at the beginning of the year. There are still
(in millions of dollars) availability of 3D printers and CNC machines rumblings of a double-dip recession, but we
$8000 is stimulating interest in design in much the believe the market will return to solid growth
$7000
same way that YouTube has helped stimulate in 2011, thanks to emerging markets and re-
$6000
$5000
an interest in video creation. (If so, we’re just newed strength in manufacturing. n
$4000 on the very cusp of this movement.)
$3000 In the US, it has been commonplace to Kathleen Maher is a contributing editor to CGW, a senior
$2000
worry about the reluctance of young people analyst at Jon Peddie Research, a Tiburon, California-based
$1000
$0
to study science and engineering, but now consultancy specializing in graphics and multimedia, and
’04    ’05    ’06    ’07    ’08    ’09    ’10*
there are two trends that, while not altogether editor in chief of JPR’s “TechWatch.” She can be reached at
*estimated
positive, point to a renewed interest in science, Kathleen@jonpeddie.com.
Source: Jon Peddle Research

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

Different Career Options


It seems that everyone wants to be a charac-
ter animator. Says Acock, “We receive a huge
amount of applications for entry-level and
animator positions.” Fringe Talent’s Blanchard
agrees. “There is a ton of competition for the
character animator jobs,” she says, advising
job seekers to consider options, such as light-
ing and compositing, as well. Rhythm &
Hues often has a difficult time finding texture
painters and lighting artists, according to Mc-
Cullough.
“It really takes a village to make one of
these things [films],” says DreamWorks’ Fried-
man. “Not everyone can do character anima-
tion.” Therefore, the outreach training and ed-
Internships and apprenticeships provide valuable work experience and are offered at a number of ucation program that DreamWorks conducts
studios, including Rhythm & Hues (which recently moved into a new, larger facility). with different universities focuses on lighting,
down” to get a full-time position with a com- So, there is definitely hope for entry-level rigging, and other aspects of content creation,
pany, or benefits, she explains. They were not artists and others who are willing to stay flex- in addition to animation.
always the right fit. Nowadays, she adds, people ible and work the system. Internships are a For those determined to do character ani-
seem a bit less desperate, and more applicants basic component of that system. mation, patience is required. “We do review
are applying for the appropriate positions. all show reels sent to us,” says Acock, “and we
Applicants themselves have also learned to The All-important Internship short-list the most interesting and inspiring. If
modify their expectations. “They understand Many studios offer internship and apprentice we don’t have suitable vacancies at the time,
that it’s more of a competitive climate,” says programs—some paid, some not. Nickelodeon we hold on to these applications and re-review
Scanlon. This is especially true for students has an unpaid internship for college juniors and them when a vacancy arises, and we always
and other entry-level candidates, as there is seniors that requires between 15 and 30 hours try to update everyone by e-mail so that they
now a larger-than-ever talent resource from a week at the studio. “We have an incredible know the status of their application.”
which to recruit. intern-to-hire ratio,” says Torrano, noting that
she herself began as an intern. “Most entry-level The Right Tools
Outlook for Entry Level positions here are filled by interns.” Rhythm & Most recruiters say they expect to do some
Most of the studios CGW interviewed for this Hues offers apprenticeship programs in three amount of training­—especially since many
article say they do hire entry-level CG artists, areas: animation, lighting, and composition. shops have proprietary programs. But when
including those fresh out of school. In general, And EA also has what Nicola calls a “robust it comes to the software that most applicants
the larger facilities have more leeway to hire the internship,” adding that the studio loves recent should be familiar with, it will come as no sur-
inexperienced and then train them. Smaller graduates because “they’re the people who are prise to hear that Autodesk’s Maya continues
studios are usually in the position of needing closest to emerging technologies.” to trump all.
maximum productivity from everyone they Internships are more than a way for an “Maya (for games) and XSI (for film) seem
hire, so they tend to stick to more seasoned applicant to get a foot in the door, however. to be the most important packages to know
professionals who can hit the ground running. Increasingly, they’re mandatory in order for these days. 3ds Max is still relevant, although
At Lumière Visual Effects in Montreal, says HR a graduate to be considered. Recruiters fig- seemingly less prevalent with each passing
recruiter Christine Zervos, the hiring depends ure that if you’re in CG school, you ought year,” according to Scanlon. “In the CG de-
on the project. “With a shorter contract, tight to have the wherewithal to get an internship partment, if they don’t know Maya, we’re not
deadlines require experienced artists who know or two under your belt before you graduate. going to hire them,” says EA’s Torrano.
how to produce under stressful conditions,” she Besides, spending time in
says. With longer projects, the studio is able to a real work environment
bring in artists who will learn as they go. teaches so many “soft”
Says Acock, “We do hire VFX/anima- skills—how to be profes-
tion graduates who have come straight out sional, work as a team, and
of university. We usually hire 3D grads into understand a company’s
matchmove positions and 2D grads into roto pipeline and culture. “An
roles where they’re given time to get to know internship is a must,” says
our pipeline and processes, and gain a full un- Torrano. At DreamWorks
derstanding of the way in which we work as Animation, however, says
a company.  We also hire a lot of grads into Marilyn Friedman, head of
runner positions, where they can train on the outreach, “it’s always nice if
in-house systems and are in line for the next they have apprenticeships, Lumiére, which worked on The Day of the Triffids, can train new
roto/matchmove vacancies.” but it’s not a prerequisite.” hires if the pending project is a lengthier one.

44 August/September 2010
Recruitment ■ ■ ■ ■

Courtesy Universal Pictures


Generalists vs. Specialists
Another consideration for those entering the
CG job market is how much to invest in one
particular area of knowledge. “In video games,
the general rule is that smaller studios tend to
favor candidates with broad or generalist skill
sets, whereas larger houses prefer specializa-
tion,” says Scanlon.
Lumière goes the middle path, looking for
specialists with at least one more skill set. Ex-
amples include a compositor who also does
matte painting, or a rigger who can animate.
“This allows us to work more as a team rather
than in individual groups,” says Zervos. So, One trend among a number of studios, including Double Negative, is to hire artists for short-term
while waiting for those callbacks, it might be contracts, which are usually renewed until the person eventually becomes a permanent employee.
worth an applicant’s time to bone up on at Continual work, such as on films like Kick-Ass, enables Dneg to maintain this trend.
least one additional discipline. staying put, whereas a few years ago, we had and then downsize afterward; we try to keep
a lot more selection when hiring short term.” people long term.”
Full Time vs. Short Term At Double Negative, as at many other studios,
For many years now, the larger film studios employees are hired on short-term contracts, Recruiters
have done a lot of their hiring on a per-project but those contracts are typically renewed. “We Most studios contacted by CGW claim to
basis. Game studios, according to Scanlon, are hire most people on a six- to 12-month basis use very few recruiters. “It used to be that the
more likely to hire full-timers. One difference but look at them as long-term employees, nor- agencies had a lot of special contacts,” says EA’s
Zervos has observed recently at Lumière is that mally on rolling contracts,” says Acock. “After Nicola. “But the Internet has leveled the play-
more applicants are looking for permanent or four years, they become permanent staff, and ing field somewhat. Still, companies are using
longer-term positions. “It is much harder to we have quite a large number of permanent them, as both Blanchard and Scanlon can at-
get artists for short contracts,” she says. “Those employees now due to length of service. We test to. “Groups with an in-house recruitment
who have jobs seem to be more interested in don’t tend to ramp up just for specific projects staff often rely on DAM to complement in-
house efforts on hard-to-fill positions,” says
Scanlon. “Smaller groups without internal re-
CG Salaries cruiters lean on DAM to develop and manage
their entire staffing and recruitment process.”
How much can a CG professional expect to earn? Studios are understandably
reluctant to divulge salaries, and of course, the ranges vary greatly, but a ballpark The Long View
idea can be gained from several sources, particularly as many studios are union Those in the job market, whether newcomers
shops for which the pay scale is a matter of public record. Disney Animation’s or seasoned performers, and in good times or
Animation Guild contract, for example, specifies a current minimum payment for bad, should take heart and keep the following
experienced or journeyman-level artists, from animators to lighting specialists, of advice in mind: “Talented veterans are always
$39.133 per hour, or $1565.32 per week for a 40-hour workweek. For positions in demand, especially those who can lead and
like assistant animator, assistant lighter, or assistant technical director, the mini- mentor; creative types are not always the best
mum pay is $33.49 per hour, or $1339.60 per week. A list of studios covered by managers,” says Scanlon. Yet, studios seem to
the Animation Guild can be found at www.animationguild.org. understand that everyone has to begin some-
According to figures from the International Game Developers Association, sala- where. Says Nicola, “My philosophy in hiring
ries for CG artists in the gaming industry range from $57,000 a year for an artist is to look for people with skills you can’t teach.”
with one to two years’ experience, to $68,000 for a lead artist or art director with Acock advises: “In a competitive market, it
six or more years of experience. Of course, salaries can be much lower for entry- is more important than ever to get the basics
level positions at studios, and go well into six figures for top producers. According right. Ensure that your show reel is working
to job-seeker search engine Indeed.com, the average salary for a senior character hard for you; there should never be any excess
animator in the US is $62,000. And the US Bureau of Statistics reports that the or diluted work that will detract from the main
average salary for a multimedia artist and animator in 2008 was $62,380, with event, which, for us, should be the first 15 sec-
jobs in the motion-picture and video industries averaging $71,910, and those in onds of any reel.” Last, despite it being the dig-
advertising and public relations in the range of $57,740. It should be noted that ital age, never underestimate the importance
many CG professionals are paid hourly rather than annually. of face-to-face contact. “When at all possible,
Of course, salaries vary depending on country and region. Artists generally earn says Acock, “make the most of conferences as a
more in Los Angeles than in, say, the Midwest. On the other hand, it costs more chance to meet potential employers—a smile
to live in Los Angeles. As always, flexibility is key. “I don’t see the crazy bidding and a ‘hello’ go a long way.” ■
wars we used to have,” says Fringe Talent’s Debra Blanchard, who advises job
applicants to be willing to compromise on the issue of salary, “especially if it’s a Jennifer Austin is a freelance writer based in New
job you really want.” –Jennifer Austin England.

August/September 2010 45
By George Maestri DCC

Adobe CS5 Master Suite


I
n April, Adobe updated its Creative Suite 5 (CS5). Every Creative well but can be dependent on the type of content it is replacing. Delet-
Suite update is a massive undertaking for Adobe, because every one ing some rocks out of grassy field, for example, worked quite well; Pho-
of its core products gets updated—from the venerable Photoshop to toshop filled in the grass fairly seamlessly. Deleting an object against a
Web design software such as Dreamweaver and Flash, to graphic design wood-paneled wall didn’t work so well because the pattern of the wood
products such as Illustrator and InDesign, to video products such as Af- panels wasn’t matched. The more you work with the tool, however, the
ter Effects and Premiere Pro. This creates a lot of new
features in a lot of different packages, so this review will
focus on Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro—
applications most commonly used in CGI production.
All these applications offer increased speed and stabil-
ity, as well as a number of innovative new features.
The good news is the key applications in CS5 are
now 64-bit native. Photoshop still works on 32- and
64-bit systems, but After Effects and Premiere Pro
have gone totally 64-bit. In order to use these appli-
cations, a 64-bit operating system is required: either
Snow Leopard on the Mac, or Vista or Windows 7 on
the PC. Sadly, Windows XP is no longer supported.
The switch to 64 bit is mostly to increase perfor-
mance, allowing for faster data processing as well as
larger memory spaces, which allow you to work with
larger images and process them faster. The switch to 64 bit only also The Mercury Playback Engine speeds up Premiere Pro CS5 considerably,
allowing it to handle multiple HD streams in real time.
seems to have increased stability.
more you’ll understand how it works. When it does work, it makes
Photoshop things go much faster.
Photoshop is really the core application of CS5, as it is used through- People who do illustration or retouching in Photoshop will appreci-
out the suite for everything from Web design, to publishing, to mo- ate improvements in Photoshop’s brushes, which allow for much more
tion graphics and special effects. This version of Photoshop has a realistic painting. Brushes now support wet edges and much more real-
number of new features used in CGI production as well as increased istic brush strokes. Of course, these are all tied to pressure sensitivity, so
performance. those who use tablets can paint with more freedom than ever.
Probably the most interesting and powerful new feature in Photoshop
CS5 is that it is now aware of the content within an image and can use Puppet Warp, After Effects
this to create intelligent fills, often eliminating the need for the clone or Puppet Warp is another interesting tool, which is pretty much bor-
healing brush when retouching images. This allows Photoshop to auto- rowed from the Puppet Tool that has been part of After Effects for some
matically do things like use the surrounding content to fill in an image. time. The tool allows you to use puppet pins to deform an image. This
If you want to delete an object out is particularly useful for repositioning objects, like a person’s arm. You
of the scene, for example, simply could place puppet pins at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist, then use these
Creative Suite 5 lasso it and hit “delete.” The re- to manipulate the arm, much like a puppet.
$2599 Master Collection sulting dialog box will allow you After Effects CS5 also benefits from the 64-bit switch, and the added
(Mac or Windows) to use the surrounding content to speed and increased memory space certainly is welcome, particularly for
Adobe fill in the deleted pixels. those working with large files, such as HD and film projects. Riding the
www.adobe.com A few tests found that the con- wave of HD video adoption, After Effects CS5 has added support for
tent awareness features work quite some of the more popular professional HD formats. These include RED

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.

Windows-32 / Windows-64 / OS X-32 / OS X-64 32-bit only $399

High Performance
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Camera Tracking
e Use SynthEyes for animated critter insertion, fixing shaky shots,
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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
annually) by COP Communications, Inc. Corporate offices: 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, CA 91204, Tel: 818-291-1100; FAX: 818-291-1190; Web Address: info@
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POSTMASTER: Send change of address form to Computer Graphics World, P.O. Box 3296, Northbrook, IL 60065-3296.

48 August/September 2010
#26837 - CGW KONA Ad:Layout 1 01/04/2010 13:09 Page 1

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