document

®

W O R L DComputer

T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N

$4.95 USA $6.50 Canada

Asian myths spring to life in the action-RPG Jade Empire

Living Legends

August 2005 www.cgw.com

Willy WorldDigital effects

sweeten Charlie’s Chocolate Factory

Supercharged Superheroes

CG fuels the Fantastic Four

Power BoostThe 64-bit revolution

kicks into high gear

0508CGW_CV1 CV10508CGW_CV1 CV1 7/13/05 10:51:24 AM7/13/05 10:51:24 AM

Contents Zoom In Zoom Out Search Issue Next PageFor navigation instructions please click here

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COMPUTERCOMPUTER

GRAPHICS WORLDGRAPHICS WORLD

to a friend!to a friend!

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Image created by Meats Meier (www.3dartspace.com)

© Copyright 2005 Alias Systems Corp. All rights reserved. Alias, the swirl logo, Maya and MotionBuilder are registered trademarks and the Maya logo is a trademark of Alias Systems Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

Maya® 7, the latest release of the award-winning 3D software, is packed with innovative new features allowing you to realize your creative vision faster and more easily than ever before.

Capitalizing on Alias MotionBuilder® technology, Maya 7 makes character animation easier and more accurate. Other improvements such as advanced render layering and new modeling, texturing and effects tools help you achieve more with Maya.

To find out how the new and innovative features of Maya are changing the face of 3D, visit www.alias.com/maya7.��



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W O R L DComputer

T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N

Also see www.cgw.com for computer graphics news,

special surveys and reports, and the online gallery.

w w w . c g w . c o m AUGUST 2005 Computer Graphics World | 3

Departments

Editor’s Note 4

Bring Your Brain

Spotlight 6

Products

3Dlabs’ Wildcat Realizm 500

Nvidia’s Gelato

Pixar Animation’s RenderMan

Silicon Graphics’ Prism Deskside

Alienware’s Area-51 7500

Video Viewpoint 8Virtual Sets for All

CG Viewpoint 12Thoughts in Motion

Portfolio 62SIGGRAPH Animation Theater

Reviews 66Autodesk’s Combustion 4

Products 68 Hardware and Software

Events

Book Corner

Stock Options

Features

Eye Candy 16FILM | CG is the key ingredient to

making the wonderfully weird world

of Willy Wonka sweeter than before.

By Martin McEachern

Asian Fusion 24GAME | BioWare mixes together rich

graphics, a real-time fi ghting system,

and a compelling story to create the

fantasy-based Jade Empire.

By Karen Moltenbrey

Four Play 32FILM | Digital effects studios join

forces to give the silver screen’s latest

superheroes, the Fantastic Four,

their digital superpowers.

By Barbara Robertson

All Systems Go 44TECHNOLOGY | Content creators

can expect graphics to fl y as DCC

vendors throw their support behind

the 64-bit revolution.

By Kathleen Maher

Top of the Class 50SPECIAL REPORT | In this Students in

Animation segment, studios reveal

what constitues a good hire, while

students illustrate what makes a

good animation.

By Jenny Donelan

On the cover:

Wu the Lotus Blossom and other martial

arts warriors battle for peace in BioWare’s

mythological Jade Empire. See pg. 24.

16

24

32

44

August 2005 • Volume 28 • Number 8

50

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Kelly DoveEditor-in-Chief

KELLY DOVE : [email protected]

KAREN MOLTENBREY: Executive [email protected]

COURTNEY HOWARD: Senior Technical [email protected]

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:Jenny Donelan, Audrey Doyle, Evan Marc Hirsch, Doug King,

George Maestri, Martin McEachern, Stephen Porter, Barbara Robertson

SUZANNE HEISER: Art [email protected]

DAN RODD: Senior [email protected]

BARBARA ANN BURGESS: Production [email protected]

MACHELE GALLOWAY: Ad Traffi c [email protected]

SUSAN HUGHES: Marketing Communications [email protected]

HEIDI BARNES: Circulation Managerheidi@pennwell

MARK FINKELSTEIN: Group [email protected]

COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLDExecutive and Editorial Offi ces:

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4 | Computer Graphics World AUGUST 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m

editor

’sno

te

Bring Your Brain SIGGRAPH returns to Los Angeles this month, and you’re encouraged to

“Bring Your Brain.” For 32 years, this mecca of CG has attracted and inspired

artists from around the world, encouraging attendees to stretch their minds

and unleash their creativity. George Lucas, “the father of digital cinema” and

all things Star Wars, takes center stage at SIGGRAPH this year as keynote

speaker and inspirational guidance counselor to the many show attendees who have

worshiped at the alter of Lucas for more than three decades.

Part trade show, part classroom, part creative think tank, SIGGRAPH effectively

combines schmoozing, parties, and after-hours events with creative enlightenment

and the occasional free T-shirt. It’s an experience that is not to be missed.

As I join the editorial team at Computer Graphics World, I’m prepping for SIGGRAPH

Number 15. Back in the day, the big buzz at the show was manipulating the 3D wire-

frame teapot in real time and Pixar’s Luxo Jr. animated short showcasing RenderMan

technology. It was all so revolutionary! In fact, people were downright giddy at the

prospect of texturing and viewing 3D models in real time. Now we see far more

advanced graphics on our cell phones.

With each passing year, the enthusiasm and energy of SIGGRAPH never wanes.

The throngs of attendees still patiently wait outside the trade show doors in anticipa-

tion of all the new technology (and a chance to be one of the few, the proud, to get a

free ILM T-shirt.)

In addition, the promise of 64-bit technology is back in the news; expect it to

garner quite a bit of attention at SIGGGRAPH. The 64-bit road is not a new one.

(Remember Digital Equipment Corp.’s AlphaStation or the war Silicon Graphics

waged against 32-bit Windows NT with its Indigo2 workstation and its 64-bit “com-

putational performance?”)

Microsoft has re-engaged 64-bit performance at a more manageable level with

Windows XP Professional x64, and the software developers are gradually climbing

onboard. NewTek was fi rst out the gate last December

with a 64-bit beta version of LightWave 3D software.

Softimage and Maxon soon followed with 64-bit ver-

sions of XSI and Cinema 4D and CineBench, respec-

tively. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect more 64-bit 3D

modeling and animation software developers to make

announcements at SIGGRAPH. Will we hear from Alias

and Autodesk Media and Entertainment?

Expect 64-bit dual-core processing technology to be big news at the show, too, as

computer companies demonstrate the latest processors from Intel and AMD in single

and multi-core confi gurations—upping the ante once again in price and performance.

While these high-powered systems may be overkill for some artists and animators, the

performance and productivity gains they afford the power-hungry are truly impres-

sive. Senior analyst Kathleen Maher of Jon Peddie Research outlines how the 64-bit

revolution will impact the DCC community in “All Systems Go,” pg. 44.

From mind-boggling emerging technologies to panelists and conference sessions

that promise to fi ll our brains to capacity, SIGGRAPH is an adventure that is not to be

missed. We’ll see you there!

Look for director

George Lucas and

64-bit technology to

take center stage at

this year’s SIGGRAPH.

0508CGW_REV_4 40508CGW_REV_4 4 7/14/05 11:15:17 AM7/14/05 11:15:17 AM



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Autodesk and 3ds Max are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. © 2005 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Tom

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So real it renders fear.

Idea:Create the most gripping and realisticstealth action game on the market.

Realized:Ubisoft™ modeled and animated therealistic characters and backgrounds of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® Chaos Theory™with Autodesk’s 3ds Max to build on one of the most popular series ever. 3ds Max’s work-horse capability helpedUbisoft stay on top of their grueling production schedule and garner a 9.9 out of 10 by Official Xbox Magazine. To learn how Autodesk software can help yourealize your ideas to compete and win, visit autdodesk.com/3dsmax

0508CGW_5 50508CGW_5 5 7/13/05 11:07:35 AM7/13/05 11:07:35 AM



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spotlightYour resource for products, user applications, news, and market research

PR

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SIGGRAPH attendees will be among the fi rst to witness the

upgraded version of the Nvidia Gelato software renderer.

Tapping the power of Nvidia Quadro FX graphics boards,

Gelato speeds fi nal-frame rendering for fi lm, television, and

design projects. Version 2.0 boasts enhancements to volu-

metric shadows, performance improvements, and support

for Windows XP and

64-bit Linux.

Included with

Gelato is a plug-in for

Alias’s Maya, called

Mango, that brings

Gelato’s functional-

ity to the 3D solu-

tion. Frantic Films

Software (http://soft

ware.franticfilms.

com) offers a similar plug-in, named Amaretto, for Autodesk

3ds Max. Gelato will ship with the Mango plug-in, and one

year of maintenance and support, at a cost of $1500.

Also making its debut, Nvidia Sorbetto is an interactive

lighting tool available as an option with Gelato 2.0. With

Sorbetto relighting technology, Gelato users can more quickly

re-render changes to a scene’s lighting, such as the addition or

deletion of lights and changes in their position, color, or intensi-

ty. Designed to speed lighting tasks, Sorbetto performs relight-

ing on the fi nal image, rather than an intermediate proxy. The

new tool accommodates immediate lighting changes before

completion of the fi nal render. It also aids users in adjusting

lighting and lighting parameters, recomputing refl ections and

shadows, and relighting only specifi c objects or sections of the

image. Gelato with Mango, Sorbetto, and a year of mainte-

nance and support is priced at $3700. Gelato 2.0 with Sorbetto

enters the beta-testing stage this month. —CEH

Nvidia Upgrades Gelato to Version 2.0

R E N D E R I N G

3Dlabs Introduces Wildcat Realizm 5003Dlabs has unveiled its Wildcat Realizm 500 professional

graphics accelerator.

The company’s latest midrange graphics board, the

Wildcat Realizm 500 is designed to ensure the effi cient

manipulation of large-size, complex animations and ren-

derings. It takes advantage of PCI Express technology, the

Wildcat Realizm Visual Processing Unit (VPU), 256MB

of memory, and a high-precision fl oating-point

pipeline, as well as offers compatibil-

ity with OpenGL and DirectX

technologies. 3Dlabs’

Wildcat Realizm

500 begins ship-

ping this month at a

cost of $900. —CEH

G R A P H I C S C A R D

SIGGRAPH 2005 Opens Roughly 30,000 professionals from six conti-

nents are expected to descend on the Los

Angeles Convention Center early this month for

SIGGRAPH 2005.

And it couldn’t be a better time: Both technol-

ogy and opt imism

abound in the indus-

try. In fact, the 2005

SIGGRAPH Exhibition boasts the largest num-

ber of vendors demonstrating computer graphics

and interactive technology products and servic-

es in four years. If this record high is any indica-

tion, this year’s show promises to deliver signifi -

cant announcements, just a sampling of which is

presented on these two pages.

For additional information about the annual

industry event or the association behind it, visit

www.siggraph.org. —Courtney E. Howard

Image courtesy Nvidia.

0508CGW_6 60508CGW_6 6 7/13/05 11:09:19 AM7/13/05 11:09:19 AM



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Correction

In its booth at SIGGRAPH 2005, SGI will demonstrate

the Deskside version of the Silicon Graphics Prism

interactive visualization system.

In fact, these systems can be

seen powering a Sony SXRD 4K

projector in the SGI

Visualization Theater,

in addition to driving

various advanced develop-

ment tools and high-

end displays, on the

show fl oor.

The Silicon Graphics

Prism Deskside system,

whose pricing starts

at roughly $8500, is said to bridge the gap between PC

workstations and scalable, rack-mounted visualization

systems. It is designed to deliver powerful visualiza-

tion and application performance, as well as increased

memory capacity (up to 24GB) and bandwidth, for such

demanding high-resolution tasks as digital content cre-

ation and video editing.

Although a compact box sized at roughly 16x13x21

inches and 60 pounds, the Silicon Graphics Prism Deskside

can accommodate two Intel Itanium 2 CPUs and two ATI

GPUs. Capable of displaying up to 10 million combined

pixels, a system powered by dual ATI FireGL graphics

processors can be used in multiple-application and mul-

tiple-user environments. That is, a single Deskside system

can drive more than one demanding program or be used

by two professionals simultaneously. It also offers a 64-bit

Linux environment, SGI’s scalable shared-memory visu-

alization architecture, OpenGL support, and dual-chan-

nel support for passive stereo viewing. —CEH

Silicon Graphics Prism Deskside System Debuts

Pixar Animation Studios has unveiled the latest ver-

sion of its RenderMan software, RenderMan for Maya.

RenderMan for Maya is designed to provide tight

work fl ow integration with Alias’s Maya 3D modeling,

animation, effects, and rendering solution.

The company’s newest product, developed in response

to customer requests for a seamlessly integrated and easy-

to-use RenderMan interface geared to the general Maya

user, made its debut

at the Gnomon School

of Visual Effects in

Los Angeles in April.

Being demonstrat-

ed during SIGGRAPH,

RenderMan for Maya

features the com-

plete range of Pixar’s RenderMan rendering technology,

employed in the creation of such fi lms as Finding Nemo and

The Incredibles, to the full community of Maya artists.

Pixar Animation Studios anticipates shipping Render-

Man for Maya, available on both Mac OS X and Windows

platforms, later this summer. RenderMan for Maya car-

ries a price of $995. —CEH

RenderMan for Maya Presented at SIGGRAPH

V I S U A L I Z A T I O NR E N D E R I N G

In the June issue,

two images appear-

ing in the Portfolio

section on page 29

were incorrect ly

identifi ed. The image

pictured here on the immediate right is “Rogue IV” by

Eric Heller, while the image on the far right is “Persona

in Fields” by Sherban Epure.

Alienware has expanded its Area-51 product line with

the Area-51 7500, a high-performance desktop system

designed for data-intensive applications. The Area-51 7500

is the fi rst Alienware system to incorporate Nvidia SLI and

Intel dual-core technologies in a single workstation.

Bridging two graphics cards in a master/slave confi gura-

tion, Nvidia SLI technology e nables up to double the graph-

ics performance of non-SLI workstations. Meanwhile,

the Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition

840 adds two processing cores on one

chip, for increased computing power.

The Area-51 7500 also sports Intel

Hyper-Threading Technology and sup-

port for up to four processing threads,

aiding users in effi cient multitasking.

Now available, the Alien ware Area-

51 7500’s pricing starts at $2500. —CEH

Alienware Launches Area-51 7500

0508CGW_7 70508CGW_7 7 7/13/05 11:09:29 AM7/13/05 11:09:29 AM



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Vid

eo

By Jeff Sauer

view

poin

t

increasingly regu-

lar feature in edit-

ing systems for the

last dozen years. For

keying to work best,

you typically need

to start with a solid,

evenly lit, colored

background, usually

green or blue. That

color, or color range (which can’t appear on the foreground talent or their clothing),

is used to create the alpha channel for keying the background screen to the image. If

that color range is too wide, it gets extremely diffi cult and time-consuming to mini-

mize keying errors in the foreground actor or objects and on the edges of the key.

Computer animation and the ability to create realistic-looking sets and locations

have come a long way over the last decade. Still, keyed effects, and especially virtual set

material, aren’t common in many modest-budget videos, because good, natural-looking

keying is hard to do. Shooting at a real location is usually easier and less expensive.

Ultra 2, a major new version of a virtual set and keying application from Serious

Magic, may address some of these problems for smaller companies that haven’t been

able to use virtual sets before. To begin with, Ultra 2 costs only $495, compared to

the thousands of dollars you need to spend for traditional professional keying tools.

With this product, Serious Magic hopes to make virtual set keying something that

any videographer can use on any shoot, which means it’s also designed to be easy to

use and of good quality, as well as affordable.

The secret is in how Ultra establishes the key. Instead of employing the traditional

approach of keying off only a specifi c, evenly lit color, Ultra analyzes a digital image

of an empty virtual set, complete with any shadows, wrinkles, or unevenness, before

you start fi lming the on-screen talent. (If you can’t get a clean-slate image before

shooting, Ultra allows you to create one in postproduction by selecting a series of

points—such as a well-lit area, and one with shadows—on the key background to

build an effective clean slate after the fact.)

From there, Ultra builds a mathematical model of the virtual set using a technol-

When I was a kid, my fam-

ily visited Universal Studios

in Hollywood. That was back

in the early 1970s—the era of

mechanical monsters, rubber

scars, and Styrofoam boul-

ders. I recall seeing examples of all those

things on the studio tour. I was espe-

cially taken by the wilderness and other

“outdoor” soundstage sets inside the large

warehouse-style buildings on the stu-

dio lot. As a youngster,

I found it amazing that

these fake-looking sets

could actually look real

in movies and on TV.

I also remember see-

ing virtual sets for the

fi rst time (in the mid-

1990s), and they were

pretty amazing, too. The

demos always made

everything look so

easy, but lighting was

just as important, if not

more so, than on a real

soundstage. And the

end results tended to

look fake, because the

actors were usually over-

laid in some sort of early

era, computer-generated,

Alice in Wonderland-type

background that just

didn’t look natural.

Key to Virtual Sets

Keying has been around

even longer, of course

(since the mid-’60s,

though it wasn’t much

in use then), and key-

ing effects have been an

With a low price point, Serious

Magic’s Ultra 2 virtual set and

keying application makes the

process of replacing backgrounds,

whether they are in DV, HDV, or

HD format, practical for all

types of video professionals.

Virtual Sets for All

Images courtesy Serious M

agic.

Jeff Sauer is a contributing editor of Computer Graphics World and director of the Digital Video Group, an independent research and testing organization for digital media. He can be reached at [email protected].

An affordable,

easy-to-use

product

promises to

democratize

keying

technology.

0508CGW_8 80508CGW_8 8 7/13/05 11:12:15 AM7/13/05 11:12:15 AM



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ogy Serious Magic calls Vector Keying.

It writes equations for how the different

areas of the background relate to each

other. When an actor steps in front of

the virtual set, Ultra can use a variety

of mathematical techniques, including

pixel substitution, color vector differ-

ences, edge recognition, and traditional

keying, to build an alpha channel. The

Ultra interface does include a variety of

traditional keying tools like color-range

sliders, edge softening, and cropping,

but the idea is that most users should not

have to use them.

In Ultra 2, which began shipping

recently, Serious Magic introduces two

clever features; the fi rst of which is sup-

port for high-defi nition content. You

might not think there’s anything par-

ticularly special about this, because HD

has become an obligatory part of any

content creation tool. But in addition to

supporting traditional HD content from HD cameras, Ultra can actually create true

HD footage from an SD camcorder.

This sounds like digital trickery or “upconverting,” but it isn’t. Serious Magic

lets you simply turn a 720x480 camcorder sideways 90 degrees and shoot in

480x720 portrait mode, thus yielding a full 720 vertical lines of your on-camera

foreground talent. That can be matched to any size high-resolution computer-gen-

erated or video background. The Ultra 2 software automatically compensates for

the rectangular pixels by determining the native aspect ratio of the source and

adjusting horizontally.

Ultra 2 also leverages the virtual lighting technology from typical 3D creation

tools to draw virtual shadows on virtual sets from real on-camera subjects. By simply

choosing a light angle, you can make your keyed-in actors blend more naturally with

the virtual set. Even more remarkably, Ultra 2 can retain real shadows created by

real actors standing on or in front of a greenscreen background and, thanks to Vector

Keying, can map those real shadows onto the generated virtual set.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Ultra is that by enabling a wider use of virtu-

al sets, Serious Magic is opening the doors for digital artists and animators to become

the new virtual soundstage designers for video makers.

Digital artists and animators could become

the new virtual soundstage designers.

0508CGW_10 100508CGW_10 10 7/13/05 11:12:43 AM7/13/05 11:12:43 AM



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Steve Gray is currently executive producer for The Lord of the Rings at Electronic Arts’ Redwood Shores Studio.


By Steve Gray

CG

view

poin

t

problem is also close to being solved with the new round of game consoles—and

will probably catch up with the feature-fi lm world in another fi ve to six years—along

with the subsequent generation of hardware. So rendering isn’t really the problem.

What hasn’t been solved is the issue of animation—how the model moves—and the

subtle details of that movement.

Motion Capture

One way to animate your characters is with motion capture. At the current time, there is

one big technical problem and one big artistic problem associated with this technology.

The technical problem is that you can’t get all the data at the same time. Full-

body motion-capture systems don’t quite have the resolution to capture the subtle-

ties required to make faces work. Most of the facial motion-capture systems can’t be

attached to the actor during full-body capture without impeding the full-body perfor-

mance. Some of the facial-capture systems don’t capture the eyes—and if the system

can’t be attached to the full-body performance, how could the eyes look in the right

place anyway? This problem will go away some day fairly soon, but for now it remains.

The artistic problem involves the actors: If your human performers don’t do the

right thing, your captured data won’t be any good. That’s why real athletes have to

be used to capture animation for sports games. Conversely, if you want to capture

dramatic storytelling, you need real actors, a real script, real blocking, a real director,

and lots of rehearsals.

In our recent game project, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, the best motion-cap-

tured storytelling sequences occur in the simplest scenes. Probably the best one involves

a few characters sitting around a campfi re, talking. It works the best because the actors

could focus on their craft and emotional state, and because the dialogue and block-

ing are good, and so forth—in other words, we did the art correctly. Then, because the

movements and blocking are simple, we got all the data (full body, face, and eyes) to line

up right—we successfully worked around the technical problems. I might add that all

Two fundamental aspects of

creating a believable character

are thoughts and actions. While

creating believable thoughts

for a character with artifi cial

intelligence (AI) is certainly an

admirable endeavor, at this point in time,

for most game applications, it’s enough to

make the player feel as though the char-

acter has believable thoughts.

At the very least, a character must not

break whatever illusion

has allowed the player

to become immersed in

the gaming experience.

This might seem like a

low bar to set, but when

you consider how rare it

is that a synthetic char-

acter meets even this low

bar, it’s actually a good

place to start.

Animation Challenge

Rendering, and by that

I mean everything that

has to do with the visual

appearance of a charac-

ter, including the model,

textures, shaders, etc., is

becoming less and less of

an issue. It wouldn’t be

too far fetched to claim

that in the feature-fi lm

effects world, the render-

ing problem has been

pretty much solved—

assuming you’ve got the

talent to run the soft-

ware and the CPU horse-

power to back it all up.

In the video-game

world, the rendering

Someday we

will be able

to synthesize

human

motions down

to the tiniest

movement,

but not today.

Thoughts in Motion

In Electronic Arts’ recent game project, The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age, the artists show

that simpler animations can be more dramatic and have a larger impact.

Image courtesy Electronic A

rts.

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those things were able to happen because the cast and the crew

rehearsed like crazy.

You could replace all the techniques I’ve just recommend-

ed with some really good animators and a great animation

director. Whether that’s the right solution for your project, as

opposed to the actor/director/motion-capture route, depends

on whom you have working for you, and on the artistic style

of your project.

Synthesizing Reality...Someday

While the techniques discussed earlier work well if you know

in advance exactly which characters will interact in what

ways, they obviously fall short if any signifi cant variables are

introduced—such as those occuring within the interactive

environments of games.

Someday, in order to meet this challenge, we’ll be able

to synthesize human motions down to the smallest muscle

movement. But that day is not today. Right now, the most

practical solution is to divide movements into four catego-

ries: facial expressions, lip sync, head and eye tracking, and

full-body gestures.

Facial expressions and lip sync have probably been around

the longest. There are lots of different libraries full of happy,

sad, angry, and other facial expressions, and morphing

between these works fairly well. Lip sync is also reasonably

well understood in terms of different mouth shapes for pho-

nemes or other, similar systems. Both types of animation are

signifi cant simplifi cations of reality, but they work pretty well

if implemented carefully and by talented artists and engineers.

Head and eye tracking are making some big strides for-

ward, as well. Algorithms have been developed here at

Electronic Arts that take into account the emotional state of

the character being animated, as well as the emotional rela-

tionship between that character and other entities in the scene

(characters and objects). These algorithms move the head and

eyes in a coordinated manner and have proved successful in

giving the player the illusion that the character has an emo-

tional state—that is, has believable thoughts.

We are also experimenting with something like facial expres-

sions for full-body gestures. Using information from psychology,

as well as executive and sales training literature, we’re assem-

bling animation building blocks for using body language to

communicate an AI character’s state of mind to the player.

In summary, we can create much more believable AI-driv-

en characters in years to come, but we also need to concen-

trate on what can be done to make believable characters now.

There is a lot of work yet to be done in order to make them

“think” and have any sense of true intelligence, but even with-

out that, there is much we can do now, with carefully planned

and rehearsed motion capture, animation, etc., to make far

more believable synthetic characters. The key is to concentrate

on the details.

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. . . . Film


Eye CandyBy Martin McEachern

CGI makes Wil ly Wonka’s chocolate

factory sweeter than ever

Images ©2005 Warner Bros. Pictures.

A much more literal adaptation of the Roald Dahl children’s classic, Tim Burton’s Charlie

and the Chocolate Factory stands apart from the 1971 version by using state-of-the-art CGI to faithfully re-create the weird and wonderful world of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

The Moving

Picture Company

handled the majority of

the fi lm’s digital effects,

including the creation of this

chocolate river that fl ows

through the enticing candy land.

The river’s surface was a fl at NURBS

patch, onto which the artists mapped

a displacement shader to simulate

the basic fl ow of the sweet water.

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Film. . . .

rom Pee-wee Herman to Ed Wood, Tim Burton has

had a career-long affection for blissfully unassimilated

oddballs who cling to their own warped yet magical

view of life. This affi nity was rekindled this sum-

mer in Burton’s imagining of the chocolate wonder-

land created by Willy Wonka, the star of Roald

Dahl’s beloved children’s fable Charlie and the

Chocolate Factory. “I’m attracted to characters

who do their own thing,” says Burton. And for

the fi ctional Wonka, that “one thing” is treat-

ing the world to the most delightful confec-

tionery creations ever conceived: marsh-

mallows that taste of violets, rich caramels

that change color every 10 seconds, chew-

ing gum that never loses its taste, and

lovely bluebirds’ eggs that, once in your

mouth, gradually get smaller and smaller

until there’s nothing left but a little sug-

ary bird at the tip of your tongue.

Burton’s eye-popping fi lm adaptation,

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, tells

the story of poor yet kindhearted Charlie

Bucket and his Grandpa Joe, who win one

of fi ve golden tickets to tour Willy Wonka’s

candy factory. The other winners are four

selfi sh brats whose misbehavior inside the

factory leads to unsavory comeuppances,

thanks to Willy’s wiles. The fi rst is Augustus

Gloop, a gluttonous kid who tries to drink

from a chocolate river, only to fall in and be

sucked up a pipe leading to the fudge room. Violet Beauregarde,

a brazen, fast-talking girl who constantly chews gum, snatch-

es an experimental piece of three-course-meal gum and trans-

forms into a giant blueberry. Spoiled Veruca Salt, who bullies

her father into giving her everything she wants, is tossed down

a garbage chute by squirrels trained to dispose of the bad nuts.

And fi nally, there is the television-obsessed Mike Teevee, who is

miniaturized inside a television set designed to transmit candy,

then sent to the taffy-pulling room to be stretched.

As each child gets his or her just deserts, Wonka’s factory

handymen, little fellows called oompa loompas, sing chants

lamenting the misdeeds.

Unlike the 1971 version, which reveled in abstract, psychedelic

imagery, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a literal adaptation

of Dahl’s book, and is as wacky and hyperstylized as Burton’s

usual surrealistic aesthetic. State-of-the-art CGI enabled the

fi lmmakers to create the nut-sorting room for the fi rst time,

wherein 200 squirrels sift through walnuts and interact with

the live actors. In addition, the fi lmmakers were able to shrink

and multiply actor Deep Roy, who single-handedly portrays

the scores of 30-inch-tall clone-like oompa loompas working

the factory fl oor and rowing Wonka’s boat—a cross between

a Chinese dragon boat and a Viking long ship carved from a

hollow piece of candy—through the white tunnel.

Burton employed in-camera tricks, animatronics, and pros-

thetic makeup while fi lming on 17 soundstages at London’s

Pinewood Studios, where a crew constructed the candy land,

though he entrusted most of the visual magic to a handful of digital

effects houses. The Moving Picture Company (MPC) handled the

bulk of the effects, including the dancing, singing, and acrobatic

y

F

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. . . . Film

sequences of

the oompa loompas, the fl uid simulation

for the roller-coaster-like white-tunnel

ride down the chocolate river, Augustus’s

spiraling descent into the river and his

subsequent emergence through the glass

pipe, and Violet’s transformation into a

giant blueberry. Meanwhile, Framestore

CFC tackled the squirrel sequence, and

Digital Domain stretched Mike Teevee

into a 7-foot-tall, 2-inch-thick piece of taffy

and turned Violet into a superfl exible

contortionist after her blueberry body is

freshly squeezed in the juicing room.

Song and Dance

Wonka’s factory is purely imaginary, and

the entire environment refl ects Burton’s

affi nity for bold, primary colors, folk

art, and a Rankin-Bass (Rudolph the Red-

Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman)

simplicity in the angular designs. Burton

worked closely with production designer

Alex McDowell to create the look of the

sets, characters, and sequences. “[Burton]

made rough drawings that weren’t spe-

cifi c, but rather conceptive, to portray a

mood,” says MPC’s visual effects super-

visor Chas Jarrett. “Rather than com-

ing in at the beginning with a strong

agenda of his

own, he col-

laborated with

[McDowell] to

create the unique

design-like feel of

the fi lm, and was

quite hands-off with

the visual effects.”

Upon entering the choco-

late room, the children discover

a 90-foot waterfall fl owing into a

chocolate river, which is spanned by

numerous bridges and surrounded by

embankments and gentle rolling hills

topped with grass of luminescent green.

Then, the oompa loompas make a grand

entrance, clambering up over the terrain

and breaking into the “Chocolate Room”

song. Prior to fi lming, this and almost every

other sequence was meticulously choreo-

graphed in previsualizations created in

Alias’s Maya by Nic Hatch at Proof UK.

The oompas also perform little chants

throughout the fi lm to remonstrate each

child for his or her misbehavior, which

results in bizarre transfi guration and

subsequent expulsion from the premises.

To capture facial performances for the

scores of oompa loompas during these

musical sequences, MPC used scanning

technology from Eyetronics to record

Deep Roy’s face as he lip-synced to

composer Danny Elfman’s songs. The

system projects a fi ne, detailed grid onto

the actor’s face using fi ber-optic lighting,

then records changes in the pattern using

an HD camera, producing 24 scans, or

meshes, per second.

Using Maya’s polygonal tools, and the

Eyetronics scans as references, the MPC

team surfaced only one model for all the

oompa loompas, which it then subdivided

and rendered in Pixar Animation

Studios’ RenderMan.

After Eyetronics completed the

facial capture, it delivered a Maya

scene fi le to MPC that contained

its own model of Deep Roy, now

bearing a blend shape representing the

entire performance for a particular shot.

MPC then applied these performances to

the digital oompas, and synced them to the

song using a playback system connected to

the HD camera. While most of the oompa

loompas’ facial animation was motion

captured, MPC did create a standard facial

rig to add variation and individuality to

their emotional expressions.

For the oompa loompas’ wide entrance

and a similarly composed shot of their

exit, MPC used Alice, its proprietary

crowd-simulation software (see “Creature

Feature,” October 2004, pg. 34). Developed

originally for the battle scenes in Troy, Alice

applied various Pose Deformers, or types

of movements, to the oompa skeletons,

and blended them on the fl y. These Pose

Deformers included traversing up and down

hills, scampering across bridges, running

in or forming a line, and so forth. For the

rest of the oompa shots, MPC motion-

captured their movements using Vicon

mocap equipment, which was quicker and

more effective than using Alice.

Artists then stitched the newly

deforming facial mesh to the body,

which was rigged in Maya and outfi tted

with MPC’s proprietary Arbitrary (Arb)

Deformers. Unlike typical tools, which

limit the deformation to that produced by

simple shapes such as spheres, the Arb

Deformer is a Maya plug-in that operates

similar to Maya’s Sculpt Deformer but

allows animators to model any arbitrary

piece of geometry for use as the deformer

tool. “By using more complex deformers,

we could create more complex and intricate

bulges on their bodies,” says Jarrett.

Rough Ride

Unable to resist a drink from the choco-

late river, the gluttonous Augustus Gloop

falls into the river and is drawn under

by a whirlpool, only to emerge seconds

MPC employed scanning technology from Eyetronics to shrink and multiply actor Deep Roy,

who plays all the oompa loompa characters in the movie. From the scans, the artists created

the dozens of little oompas who row Willy Wonka’s dragon/Viking boat, carved

from a hollow piece of candy.

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. . . . Film

later through a glass pipe. Everything

in the shot is digital: the child, the pipe,

and the chocolate fl uid. Artists painted

Augustus’s texture maps brown, and then

hand-animated his fl ailing and thrashing

arms. Next, the fl uid-sim team used dis-

placement maps to simulate chocolate

trickling down his arms, and employed

Next Limit’s RealFlow to animate the

splashing chocolate.

Also, technical directors at MPC wrote

a tool called a meniscus deformer, which

created a “lip” between the fl uid and the

skin. This lip updated frame by frame so

the fl owing edge of the chocolate crawls

realistically across the character’s skin.

Finally, to squeeze Augustus through

the pipe, the group employed lattices in

Maya to compress the digital body slightly

as it presses against the glass.

Human Blueberry

For Violet’s transformation into a giant

blueberry, MPC used a combination of

3D and 2D greenscreen effects. When her

face fi rst begins to turn blue in close-up

shots, artists created the effect in 2D using

Shake to track the veins and apply color

to her face. The next cut is to a full-body

shot, which is completely CG, save for her

face; her face was shot against a green-

screen, colored blue, and then projected

on to

the CG

head as a

texture map.

To ease the character

through the various stages

of expansion, the artists cre-

ated three models, then, us-

ing the Arb Deformers, rigged

each model with unique blend

shapes to handle different bulg-

ing deformations.

As Violet is rolled out of the

inventing room to be squeezed

in the juicing room, one of the most

challenging sequences of the fi lm unfolds,

as scores of oompa loompas perform

acrobatic jumps off the catwalks and

onto her giant blueberry ball of a body.

Bouncing and back-fl ipping off her body,

six oompas land in a pyramid formation.

To realize this high-fl ying sequence on

the big screen, MPC positioned several

Vicon motion-capture cameras on tall

scaffolding, and mocapped acrobats

performing on trampolines. The group

recorded the motions using Vicon’s MX 40

camera, which boasts a four-million-pixel

resolution. After cleaning up the various

motion-captured clips in Alias Motion

Tools (formerly Kaydara Filmbox),

the team mapped them to

the oompas’ skeletons,

and blended them

using Alice.

“When

you see them

jumping down, that’s one clip, but when

you see them hit and bounce on the ball,

that’s another clip, and the back-fl ip is yet

another,” says Jarrett.

Squirrelly CGI

Further along the tour of the factory,

Wonka introduces the impudent Veruca

Salt and the other remaining children to

his nut sorting room, where trained squir-

rels shell walnuts for use in Wonka’s choc-

olate bars. Before shelling a nut, each

squirrel shakes the object and listens to

determine if it’s bad. If so, the squirrel

throws the nut over its shoulder and into

the central garbage chute; if not, the squir-

rel carefully shells the nut and places the

fl esh onto a moving conveyor belt.

Deciding she wants a squirrel for a

pet, Veruca demands Wonka give her

one. When Wonka refuses, she climbs

through the railings and attempts to pick

up the cutest squirrel. This causes all the

squirrels to jump off their stools and knock

her to the fl oor. Once she is pinned down,

the lead squirrel jumps on her chest, taps

her on the head, and determines she’s

a bad nut. The squirrels then carry her

on their backs and dump her down the

garbage chute, before returning to work

as if nothing ever happened.

Dressed to ThrillThe greatest challenge in matching the digital oompa loompas with their

live-action counterparts was posed by their tight-fi tting, one-piece suits: Any

traction or force exerted on the fabric would cause the effects to ripple throughout

the entire costume.

“If you moved his arm, his ankle would move,” says MPC’s visual effects supervisor Chas

Jarrett. “In contrast, if you’re simulating normal clothing, such as lanky shirts or jeans, the effect

of an arm movement won’t extend throughout the entire piece of clothing. It was diffi cult for our

sim team to get that cloth to behave the way the real cloth behaved.”

To replicate the complicated systemic wrinkling effects of the real fabric, the MPC group used

Syfl ex’s cloth solver for Alias's Maya, which enabled the fi lmmakers to achieve seamless intercutting

between the live-action and the CG oompa loompas.

Because of the highly refl ective, lustrous sheen of the oompas’ plastic-like red suits and the completely

digital chocolate river, capturing realistic refl ection maps was crucial to the successful melding of the live

action with the CGI. To that end, MPC used a Canon 1 DS camera fi tted with a Sigma 8mm, 180-degree

fi sh-eye lens to capture a 360-degree view of the set, from which the group created HDRI maps. —MM

Using lattices in Maya, the artists compressed the digital body of character Augustus

Gloop as he is sucked up a glass tube after falling into the

chocolate river.

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Film. . . .

Burton delegated this complex

effects sequence to Framestore

CFC, which created the CG

squirrels that engage in

frenzied, close interaction

with the live-action per-

formance of Veruca. This

necessitated the creation

of “hero” squirrels, which

could appear in close-ups

at the full height of an IMAX

screen for the fi lm’s IMAX re-

lease, as well as a sprawling

ensemble of squirrels scurrying

about the nut room. With as many

as 100 squirrels to animate per shot,

the sequence entailed both a creative

and logistical challenge for the animators,

who had to intercut the digital versions

with live-action squirrels.

Working in Maya, Matt Hughes

modeled the CG squirrels as polygon-

al meshes, which were subdivided at

render time in RenderMan. To create

their fur, Framestore implemented

a proprietary set of tools called

fcFur, which offers 70 basic con-

trols for length, width, hair profi le,

orientation, curvature, scraggliness,

clumping, and density. In addition to the

basic clumping, it also offers dynamically

calculated clumping, which creates the

banding often seen around the joints of

furry creatures. Created in Side Effects

Software’s Houdini, this clumping system

uses predefi ned splines placed on a static

squirrel and per-frame calculation of skin

stretch to control

how the clump bands will open and

close during extreme animation. In

all, the artists developed seven

different types of fur, so that

the belly, back, tail, and

other areas of the animal

sported different kinds

of hair.

With up to fi ve

million hairs per

squirrel in shots

composing close

to 100 squirrels,

optimizing ren-

dering was a

primary focus in

the development

of fcFur. To that

end, the team programmed the tool to

regulate the fur’s thickness and level of

detail with the squirrel’s proximity to the

camera, and to convert each squirrel into

voxels before generating the hair in the

RenderMan DSOs (dynamically shared

objects). As a result, the crew

could avoid generating hair

that would not be visible

to camera.

Whi le

the squirrels

alternately assume four-legged and

bipedal postures during the frenetic

scene, the animators used only one rig

developed in Maya. “This was no small

feat, as squirrels seem to have no notion

of gravity or natural orientation. They are

just as happy standing on four legs, two

hands, upside down, or on their backs,”

says CG supervisor Ben Morris. So

the challenge for animator

Craig Bardsley was to

make the squirrel

look realistic doing

something that a

squirrel wouldn’t

be expected to do,

which required a

delicate balance

Chocolate RiverTo handle the challenges of fl uid simulation, which

ranged from cascading chocolate over the waterfall, the

ebbing and fl owing of the river, the wake of Wonka’s boat,

and the splashing and thrashing of Augustus as he’s sucked

under by a whirlpool, MPC developed a sophisticated yet elegant 3D

displacement shader within Pixar Animation Studios’ RenderMan.

The river surface, itself, was a fl at NURBS patch. Onto this, the artists

mapped the displacement shader to simulate the basic fl ow of the river

and the waterfall. This shader, which blends procedural noises and other

elements, allowed the artists to control the choppiness, height, direction,

speed, and amount of waves. “We could specify where the waves would and

would not be, whether they fl owed fast or smooth at the edges, or quicker in

the middle,” explains MPC’s visual effects supervisor Chas Jarrett. “We could

also divert the fl ow around pillars, or get the river to fl ow around things, by

simply warping the UVs on the NURBS patch. In some ways it was quite simple,

but it took a long time to make it look realistic.”

MPC also wrote a tool set called Puddle, which worked in conjunction

with the displacement shader to produce more complex fl uid effects

and to blend them together. For example, one of Puddle’s tools

uses particles to create displacements on a surface, so that

if a particle is dropped onto the river surface, ripples

emanate from the point of impact. In fact, MPC created

the wake of the boat using this technique, whereby

artists would emit a bunch of particles off the boat

and, while never rendered, they’d have a displacement

effect on the surface around them, forging the wake

of the boat. Designed to function seamlessly with

the displacement shader, Puddle’s effects

could also be rendered easily through

RenderMan. —MM

The movie includes, for

the fi rst time, the previously

unfi lmable nut room sequence,

in which “trained” squirrels,

created in Maya, weed out the

bad nuts. Framestore used its

fcFur tools to create the pelts.

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between

stretching the anatomy far enough to

tell the story and maintaining enough

“squirrel” mannerisms to ensure a

seamless cut to the real squirrels.

Stretched and Juiced

As they make their exit from Wonka’s fac-

tory, each child’s transfi guration is paid off

in an amusing sight gag. To create these

effects, CG supervisor Serge Sretschinsky

and his team at Digital Domain remodel-

ed the Eyetronics’ scans provided by

MPC, generating high-resolution polygo-

nal models that were hand animated in

Maya and rendered as subdivision sur-

faces in RenderMan. For all the effects,

Burton’s main directive was to make the

children do something impossible for a

human to do, albeit without losing a sense

of believability or the identity of the child.

For instance, Violet Beauregarde, after

being freshly squeezed in the juicing room,

has been left with a rubbery, elastic body

that she can contort wildly to impress her

mother. The artists sculpted Violet’s loose-

fi tting clothing in Maya’s Artisan and used

Syfl ex’s cloth tool to handle the complex

stretching of the tracksuit. While Violet’s

head, hands, and sneakers were modeled

with polygons in Maya, the girl’s body was

composed solely of Maya collision objects—

a series of spheres

placed inside the

body and bound to

the skeleton’s joints—

which drove the Syfl ex

cloth simulation. After

reviewing some video and

motion-captured data of a

contortionist, the artists hand-

animated her body in Maya and then

composited the actress’s greenscreen-

fi lmed head into the shot.

Next, after the miniaturized Mike

Teevee is stretched out in the taffy puller,

he walks toward the camera and then

turns sideways, revealing that he is not

only 7 feet tall but almost completely fl at.

In Maya, the artists used lattices to sculpt

blend shapes that compressed Mike’s

fully CG body and stretched him. In

addition, to accentuate the reveal

of Mike’s fl attened body, the

team also modeled a few

blend shapes to make

his body wider than

the exceedingly thin

version that is seen

from the side. “This

helped us ramp

into his thin shape

more effectively as

he turns in front of

the camera,” says

Sretschinsky.

Whereas Mike’s

spiky hair was com-

posed of polygonal

geometry, the artists

instead used Maya’s Dy-

namic Curves for Violet’s

short, straight hair. Although

Maya converts the Dynamic

Curves to Paint Effects strokes prior to

rendering, Digital Domain

chose to convert the Paint

Effects strokes to RIB fi les,

so they could render in

RenderMan.

Throughout the course of

production, Tim Burton was

adamant about following Roald

Dahl’s book religiously. As with Tolkien’s

The Lord of the Rings, fi lmgoers around

the world will be able to experience the

true wonder of the author’s imagination

for the fi rst time, thanks to state-of-the-

art CGI. And while they will never taste

Wonka’s unrivalled confections, they’ll

be savoring the sweet eye candy of MPC,

Framestore CFC, and Digital Domain for

years to come.

Martin McEachern, a contributing editor for

Computer Graphics World, can be reached

at martin@globility.

com.

For the nut sorting scene, artists

were challenged with animating up

to 100 furred squirrels for each

shot. To optimize the process,

polygonal meshes, created

in Maya, were subdivided

at render time within

RenderMan.

Eyetronics

extended its facial

scanning system so it

could retarget the scans of

actor Deep Roy onto a

polygonal mesh created

by MPC according to its

preferred topology for

facial animation, enabling

Roy to be duplicated

for various scenes.

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. . . . Gaming


icture a wondrous Chinese-style world that could

have been, if all the ancient Asian myths and legends

were true. That’s exactly what the team at BioWare, a game

developer in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, did while creating its

new crown jewel, Jade Empire, for the Microsoft Xbox console.

“This is our fi rst intellectual property, and we set out to

create worlds unlike any other,” says Ray Muzyka, who,

along with Greg Zeschuk, shares the role of CEO at BioWare.

Since the company was formed a decade ago, it has been

adding interactivity to a number of well-known kingdoms,

including George Lucas’s intergalactic universe in last year’s

record-breaking title Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic

as well as the Dungeons & Dragons mythos within the

Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights game series. Instead

of crafting another real-time sequel, however, Muzyka and

Zeschuk decided to revisit a concept that had been churning

around in their minds since the company’s early days.

Asian Fusion

BioWare blends martial

arts and digital arts in

the action-RPG Xbox

title Jade Empire

By Karen Moltenbrey

P

BioWare artists hired real actors

to serve as models for the main

characters in Jade Empire,

including Furious Ming (above),

one of seven player characters.

Imag

es ©2005 B

ioWare.

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Gaming. . . .

"Ten years ago, we thought it would be great

to design a game where you could become

a martial arts master,” says Zeschuk. “But

at the time, we didn’t feel that there was

an adequate technological foundation

to build our vision; this was back when

the consoles were 16 bit and the graphics

were 2D and pixilated.” In his opinion,

that was hardly enough to support what

the company had in mind for its vision

of multiple story arcs, rich visuals, and a

signifi cant amount of weaponry, magic,

and compelling martial arts action. The

duo also thought it prudent to wait until

the right time in BioWare’s history as a

company—when it had enough brand

recognition to attract players to a universe

and story line they knew nothing about—

before attempting such a risky endeavor.

Their patience paid off. A few years

ago, the men decided it was time for the

rise of the Jade Empire, a single-player

action role-playing game boasting a

deep story line, lush graphics, and semi-

realistic-looking characters whose fast-

paced kung fu movements are supported

by a real-time fi ghting system.

Jade Empire unfolds in an ancient,

mysterious world based on mythical

China, as a player assumes the role of a

young warrior training under the watchful

eye of a master while learning powerful

martial arts skills and mystical powers.

As the warrior leaves the tranquility of

the monastery and begins a journey of

exploration, the person discovers that

something is amiss in the world when

spirits and ghosts begin appearing

frequently and, in some instances, start

attacking villagers. During the search to

uncover the truth behind this mystery,

the young martial artist battles powerful

human foes, amazing creatures, and

supernatural beings as the student’s

personal journey unfolds into an epic

battle to save an empire.

“Our goal has always been to deliver rich

story lines, and characters are a large part

of that,” says Muzyka. To this end, Jade

Empire is fi lled with unique characters,

including seven main playable characters

possessing a unique combination of

strengths and weaknesses. There are also

several “Followers,” each with a different

personality and skill set—whether it’s

strength, diplomacy, courage, or stealth—

who interact closely with the player

character. Additionally, there are a large

number of non-playable characters (NPCs)

with whom the player can interact. Some

NPCs are simple citizens, though

not all of them sit passively by, while

others are more powerful and take

particular interest in the player and

the player’s quest. Still others are

enemies, sometimes pretending to

be a loyal agent.

Model Characters

Once BioWare approved a fi nal

concept for the characters, the

art team began building the mod-

els by hand in Autodesk Media

and Entertainment’s 3ds Max.

Meanwhile, the group hired ac-

tors and actresses whose likenesses

would correspond to all the major

characters. Next, the artists photo-

graphed the actors, and applied the

photographic textures to the CG

models, resulting in fully detailed

and believable virtual heads. “We

used photo references for the textures

whenever we could, especially on impor-

tant story characters and player charac-

ters, though we always painted over the

surface to give all the characters a uni-

fi ed, semi-realistic look,” adds senior art-

ist Rion Swanson. For many of the other

characters, the group used the photos as

a reference while hand-painting the en-

tire surfaces in Adobe’s Photoshop.

Soon after the character creation

process, BioWare conducted a number of

focus tests on the models to determine

their potential success as virtual heroes.

“Each important character had a back

story and a history, and we revisited

these characters, as well as the Followers

and primary villains, at various points in

development,” Swanson notes.

In fact, one of the more challenging

aspects of the character creation process

was dealing with frequent story changes,

particularly during the earlier stages

of development. This often affected the

characters’ back stories, requiring the

group to alter, or sometimes completely

revise, the models. “In the case of

Sagacious Zu, a late revision turned out

to be very successful, though it was not

the most effi cient working method,” says

Swanson of the

character’s radical

revision.

The team origin-

ally designed Zu as

a portly, good-natur-

ed, optimistic monk

whose diplomacy

skills would enable

him to assist the

player as a Follower.

Then, a story change

transformed him into

a disgraced monk who

is called on to help

the player exorcise

corrupted spirits.

To support this

new role of an

action-oriented

f ighting monk

with a hint of a dark

Above: Changes to Jade Empire’s story line often

required alterations to the character models, as

was the case for the monk Sagacious Zu, whose

original design (left) differs from the fi nal

model (right). Below: Artists added

a lot of image detail to the main

characters, such as Emperor Sun Hai,

to coincide with their rich back stories.

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. . . . Gaming


and mysterious past, the group

remodeled the character to refl ect

the look of a tragic hero—tough

and somewhat aggressive.

As it turned out, the group

ended up using the earlier Zu

model as another character,

called Smiling Mountain, whose

description, says Swanson, fi t

the original model perfectly.

“Therefore, in the end, it was

not the least effi cient way of

working, either,” he says.

Given the story-driven nature

of its games, BioWare usually

has a lot of dialogue in its titles—

thousands of lines—and Jade

Empire was no exception. All told, more

than 350 characters speak in the game,

though it is not an actual language, but

rather an Asian-sounding dialect invented

by a linguist specifi cally for the title.

Each character has a custom voice set,

unique appearance, and a combination

of fi ghting styles. To deal with the sheer

number of fi les and to get the best acting

possible from the game’s characters,

the team created an automated system

to generate its lip synchronization and

another for its facial animation data. The

animation, explains technical animator

Ben Hindle, was derived from the audio

clip, where all the movement of the mouth,

eyes, and eyebrows was generated. In

addition, the group implemented several

other processes that added emotions and

extra drama to each line.

Heroes and Villains

Without question, the artists spent more

time scrutinizing and testing the player

characters, which averaged approximately

6000 polygons in size, than they did for any

of the others in the game. “They were the

most diffi cult to create, particularly the fe-

males; we had a multitude of opinions on

what they should be like, and we worked

through many variations in both the con-

cept and model stages,” says Swanson.

Meanwhile, most of the Followers and the

story NPCs, such as the emperor and

the princess, range from 4000 to 5500 poly-

gons in size, while the rest of the NPCs

contained about 1500 to 2500 polygons.

To create these detailed, compelling

characters, the artists drew on their

experience with the Xbox, “wringing

every last bit of performance out of the

console,” notes Hindle. In particular, the

team utilized the game machine’s pixel

and vertex shader capabilities to create

bloom and rim lighting on the characters,

giving them more depth and a warm,

fl uid look. By building the Microsoft

DirectX shader system into the Material

Editor inside 3ds Max, the

artists were able to preview the

shaders while they constructed

the models and textures prior to

exporting them.

According to Swanson, the

group took advantage of all

the modeling tools within the

software package, particularly

its mesh-creation tools. In

addition, the artists utilized

a number of proprietary tools

based on the MaxScript system

within 3ds Max for speeding up

artist work fl ow and automating

tedious tasks, such as crowd

generation.

Rendering, meanwhile, was done

inside a completely new game engine that

was fi ne-tuned to take advantage of the

Xbox’s visual capabilities in terms of rim

lighting and multiple render paths, and to

accommodate the game’s action-packed

combat sequences, which are not typically

found in an RPG. The engine features a

number of new improvements based on

what the group learned while making the

engine for Knights of the Old Republic. This

includes a real-time physics-based cloth

system (for capes, belts, ribbons, sashes,

and so forth), which simulates the affects

of gravity and wind, and generates various

effects of cloth weight, such as heavy

woven cloth or light silk, that interacts

with collision volumes on the character.

In addition, the artists set up a

physics-controlled bone structure for

the hair that the engine interprets to

simulate hair movement, allowing for a

dangling ponytail on Follower Dawn Star,

for example. “Building our own custom

Using Autodesk’s 3ds Max, the BioWare team created more

than 350 speaking characters that appear in the game.

The artists took

advantage of the

Xbox’s pixel and

vertex shader

capabilities to

create bloom and

rim lighting on the

characters, which

gave the models

a softer, more

fantastical look.

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. . . . Gaming


engine and our own set of export tools

from 3ds Max enabled us to achieve these

innovations, which, in turn, opened up

more options in terms of our character

designs,” says Hindle.

Kung fu Fighting

The human characters in Jade Empire

are capable of a wide range of fi ghting

styles, each representing a particular

segment of martial arts, from karate to

judo. To portray these intensive moves

realistically, the team motion-captured

martial art professionals, some from as

far away as mainland China, while they

performed an array of stunts. Then, the

group applied those actions to a custom-

ized bone system created in 3ds Max so

that the motion looked natural on the

model. According to lead animator Deo

Perez, the goal was to make each move

look unique, polished, and accurate.

Although the group believed that

motion capture would kick up the

game’s action, BioWare had never used

the technology in any of its previous

titles. So before committing to the

process, the animators tested it to see if

it was worth the time and money, and

whether the development team could

actually work with the

resulting data. Convinced

that the technology would

provide the animators with

a viable solution, the group

contacted Giant Studios, the

Los Angeles-based company

responsible for the motion capture used

in The Lord of the Rings fi lms.

During a nine-day shoot, the studio,

using a proprietary 48-camera setup,

recorded hundreds of moves performed

by fi ve actors, two of whom were stunt

doubles for Keanu Reeves in The Matrix

series and Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels.

According to Ken Murano, motion-capture

engineer at Giant Studios, the performers

completed a full-motion library, including

idle movement, walking, running, rolling,

jumping, and, of course, fi ghting. The

fi ghting moves, he notes, were specifi c to

a particular martial art or included the

use of one or more weapons.

“At the time, Jade Empire had more

motion-captured props than other games

we had done,” says Murano. “So, we

had to be careful of the hand positions

when retargeting the source motion to

the skeletons, which often had different

dimensions, either in height, body pro-

portions, or both, than the performers.”

For the project, the crew used off-the-

shelf video cameras along with Giant

Studio’s proprietary image-processing

software. During the session, the group

used the studio’s real-time mocap

software, which provided instant feed-

back to the director and the performers,

allowing them to see the characters from

the game, as they would appear in the

actual scene. The studio then used its

proprietary processing (Identify) and

editing (Nuance) tools to deliver the fi nal

motion to BioWare. Moreover, licensed

copies of Nuance were provided to the

BioWare team so that the animators could

modify the motion to achieve the desired

style for the particular characters.

In Murano’s opinion, not only did

motion capture save the BioWare team a

great deal of time compared to keyframing

the movements, but it also provided an in-

creased level of realism. “Using traditional

animation, it’s diffi cult, if not impossible,

to get all the subtle movements that a real

human will do as part of his or her natural

movement,” he says. “This motion-capture

approach allowed BioWare to incorporate

the number of different styles they wanted,

instead of forcing them to settle on fewer

options.”

In all, the capture session provided

the group with more than 700 actions,

which the group applied to the human

characters. The monsters, animals,

and creatures, meanwhile, were hand

Myth Versus RealityBecause BioWare’s previous games were based

on existing worlds, and popular ones at that,

the artists and designers were never without

adequate source reference. This was not the

case, though, for Jade Empire, which the group

was creating from scratch. “It is very stylized,

very nuanced, very kinetic,” says senior artist

Rion Swanson of the game. Instead, the

team drew inspiration for building this unique

universe from a number of sources.

Swanson notes that the group watched as

many martial arts fi lms as possible, from the

“cheesy” kung fu movies of the ’60s and ’70s

to the recently acclaimed features Hero and

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. The team also

reviewed a number of Asian-themed novels,

including Outlaws of the Marsh, Romance of

Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West.

Furthermore, the team dug deep into the

myths at the heart of Chinese culture that have

existed for thousands of years. To ensure that

the game’s large Western audience understood

the more obscure Eastern elements, the group

was careful to select imagery and concepts

that would have universal appeal but still

project the desired Asian fl avor. “We collected

folklore and mythology, reviewed them, and

discussed what made them exotic and strange

but accessible to Westerners,” says CEO Ray

Muzyka. “Jade Empire is not a literal adaptation

of those myths and legends, but rather a world

inspired by them.”

In addition, the designers consulted

historical documents and references, many

pertaining to China’s early dynasties, thereby

infusing the story with a hint of reality. —KM

While some of the game

environments are based on

actual Asian locales, many

others, such as this Imperial

Palace, are borne of pure fantasy

and virtually constructed within

Autodesk’s 3ds Max.

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. . . . Gaming


animated, since their motions were

unique and nuanced. In addition, all

the ambient motion—trees swaying in

the wind, grasses waiving in the fi elds—

were achieved within 3ds Max.

Ready for Combat

Jade Empire’s intensive, fast-paced martial

art actions were a necessity for the game’s

sophisticated real-time combat system in

which every physical contact results in a re-

action by the opponent, and a single button

press by the player delivers a resulting

punch or kick. This type of interaction—

ideal for a martial arts action game—im-

merses the player into the activity by

placing the person directly in the heat of

battle, as opposed to on the sidelines.

This setup contrasts greatly with the

slower rules, or turn-based, systems

the group used in its previous games,

whereby a player stacks up moves in

a queue before they are performed.

Although fi ne for action games, this

detracts from the immersive action and,

therefore, usually is not a good fi t for a

typical RPG.

“The new combat system detects col-

lisions, so we could add the moves we

wanted and get creative with the styles—

martial art, magic, transformation, and

weapon styles. The system then detects that

fi ghting and collisions are occurring and,

in turn, determines who is winning and

who is losing a particular battle,” Hindle

explains. As a result, players sometimes

need to change their fi ghting tactics on

the fl y, switching between magic and

weaponry, for example, in order to defeat a

foe. Not only did this allow the artists to be

more creative in determining the animation

styles, but it also made the combat fun and

unique for an RPG, he adds.

Yin, Yang

The people in the fantasy-based Jade

Empire believe in two main moral con-

cepts: harmony and discord. For the art-

ists working on the game, harmony was

the only path that could be followed

when it came to creating the art. Indeed,

the player characters and some of the

Followers are heavily detailed, especially

in the faces, giving them an appearance

that is semi-realistic, while the environ-

ments are more stylized.

To bridge this visual chasm, the artists

painted over the realistic textures of the

photo-based models so they would blend

with the environments. Additionally,

the artists populated the game with

characters that were more stylized than

their semi-real counterparts or contained

exaggerated features to emphasize their

humorous qualities.

The 40 or so environments themselves

range greatly in terms of their look and

feel. From harsh, ice-capped mountains

to lush tropical gardens, from the majestic

Imperial Palace to the musty, labyrinth

Quarry Caves, Jade Empire immerses

gamers in an exotic land of intoxicating

beauty. As Zeschuk points out, the Jade

Empire is a fi ctional world that is not

based on an actual setting. However,

the artists drew inspiration from many

sources, including certain geographical

regions of Asia.

“We added as much detail as we could

fi t into each interior and exterior, as long as

it fi t the visual style defi ned earlier in the

process,” says Swanson, noting that the

locales ranged in size from 40,000 to

100,000 polygons. “We worked with differ-

ent render paths, and the team worked

to generate different specularities and

feels for the textures and the effects,

so the detail would be as believable as

possible throughout the world.”

Just as the characters and en-

vironments in Jade Empire mesh

together well, so, too, do its mixed

genres, making this story-driven

cinematic RPG title attractive to those

desiring a strong action element. Yet,

it also integrated a touch of morality

a la the computer game Black & White:

Players must choose whether to follow

“the way of the open palm” or “the way

of the closed fi st.” Neither represents good

nor evil, but rather defi nes a person’s

reactions in relation to harmony with

society, the world, and oneself. And, the

player’s decisions will have consequences

that precede him or her throughout the

game, impacting the overall experience.

In the same vein, it appears that the

BioWare team chose wisely while making

its decisions for Jade Empire.

Karen Moltenbrey is a senior technical

editor at Computer Graphics World.

BioWare’s newly created real-time combat

system immerses players in the game’s

fast-paced martial arts action. The system

meshes well with the realistic actions of the

characters, which were animated with motion

acquired from master-level martial artists.

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Sure, we’re giving away a best-in-class HP xw4300 Workstation with a 23” flat panel driven by an ATI FireGL V5100 graphicsaccelerator. And although only one lucky person can win it, everyone else who purchases this digital content creation power toolwill still feel like they’ve won. That’s because the xw4300 has the performance you need for creating sophisticated 3D modelsand complex animations today, plus the expandability you’ll need tomorrow. Single or dual core processors, Microsoft Windowsor Red Hat Linux, and 32- or 64-bit processing are just a few examples. And, the rich graphics driven by the powerful ATI FireGLV5100 with 128MB of memory – optimized and certified for Maya, 3ds max, and Softimage|XSI – are available exclusivelyfrom HP. The HP xw4300 workstation comes at a price you can afford. But if you want an even better price – say, free – thenenter for your chance to win at www.xw4300contest.com. Either way, you’re a winner.

Even if you don’t win, you win.Announcing the HP/ATI “Win a Workstation” Contest.

“Win a Workstation” contest runs August 1, 2005 through December 31, 2005. For complete contest rules, visit www.xw4300contest.com. © 2005, ATI Technologies Inc. All rights reserved. ATI and FireGL are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of ATI Technologies Inc. All other company and/or product names may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

www.xw4300contest.com

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4

1. . . . Film


When a cosmic storm envelops an inven-

tor, astronaut, pilot, geneticist, and indus-

trialist, all fi ve become transformed in

unearthly ways. The inventor, Dr. Reed

Richards, becomes elastic Mr. Fantastic.

The astronaut, Ben Grim, grows into an

orange rock-like superhuman dubbed

the Thing. Sue Storm, the geneticist, be-

comes Invisible Woman, and her hot-

headed brother Johnny, the pilot, turns

into the Human Torch. Together, they’re

the Fantastic Four. And the industrialist?

He becomes Dr. Doom.

Directed by Tim Story, the Twentieth

Century Fox fi lm was created with the

help of a dozen studios that crafted 885

visual effects shots. “The shots span over

half the movie,” says Kurt Williams, the

visual effects supervisor, whose staff

acted as a central nervous system for the

effects production. “We had a database

and systems in our offi ce that helped the

vendors work quickly. It was a ‘one way

in, one way out’ depot of information.”

Because there were so many characters

and vendors, Williams turned to Proof

Inc., for the previz work, and then

brought the fi rm back again to do “post

viz.” “They added the characters and

backgrounds to footage so the editors

could cut them quickly,” he says. “We had

a short production time. We needed to give

the editors one vision to cut with.”

Williams organized the production by

Studios join forces to

create unique visual

effects for feature fi lm’s

newest superheroes

By Barbara Robertson

Play

Four

Imag

es © 2005 Tw

entieth C

entu

ry Fox.

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3

2


Film. . . .

character and major sequences, singling

out the work done by Giant Killer Robots

(San Francisco), Soho VFX (Toronto), Stan

Winston Digital (Van Nuys, California),

Meteor Studios (Montreal), and CIS

Hollywood as the core vendors. Other

studios that worked on the fi lm include

CobaltFX, Hydraulx, Pacifi c Title, Pixel

Magic, Kleiser-Walczak, and CafeFX.

Space Storm

Concept: “The cosmic storm sets off

all their powers,” says Williams. “How

it affects the characters was important

to Tim [Story] and me.”

The CG environment—the space sta-

tion, the storm, and the impact on the

characters—was handled by CIS un-

der the direction of Bryan Hirota and

John “DJ” Desjardin. Building the space

station was a straightforward process:

The crew used Alias’s Maya for mod-

eling and animation, Pixar Animation

Studios’ RenderMan for rendering, and

Apple’s Shake and Autodesk Media and

Entertainment’s Inferno for compositing.

Creating the storm and the transfor-

mation of the characters was not.

“They wanted something no

one has seen. We ended up with a

highly charged gaseous cloud full of

electricity,” says Hirota. “We started

by creating conceptual renderings

in [Adobe’s] Photoshop.” For this,

a combination of RenderMan and

Steamboat Software’s Jig helped

create volumetric effects that were

composited in Shake. Mel scripts

controlled layers of particles that

were exported to RenderMan and

composited in Shake.

The transformations were handled with

volumetric and particle effects in Maya,

RenderMan, Jig, and Inferno, as well.

“We ended up match-moving each of the

characters in Maya,” Hirota says. “Then, we

ran particle simulations down the hallways

of the space station.”

Dr. Reed Richards / Mr. Fantastic

Concept: As Reed Richards [Mr.

Fantastic] stretches, he’s regenerating

himself,” says Williams. “He doesn’t

completely lose mass. And, his suit had

to regenerate itself as he stretched, too.”

The effects and R&D wizards at

Soho VFX stretched their skills to cre-

ate the elastic superhero, Mr. Fantastic.

“We started envisioning how we’d build

this character last summer,” says Soho

VFX’s Berj Bannayan. “Every part

of his body can stretch and change

shape in some way. We had to build

a rigging and modeling pipeline [in

Maya] so that any time an animator

wanted, [Mr. Fantastic] could stretch

across the room.”

To give the animators controls that

would let them turn an arm into a whip,

reach under a door, or wrap around a

pipe, Bannayan’s technical crew created

a stretching rig without bones or joints.

“It’s a system of NURBS curves and

smooth primitives,” says Bannayan.

“Sometimes, there might be hundreds

inside the arm.” The NURBS curves

pulled the cvs (control vertices) on the

skin, which was a polygonal mesh; the

amount of detail in the mesh depended

on the shape and position of the limb.

Animators used a series of controllers

to manipulate the elastic limbs, and could

switch from an IK rig to the stretchy

custom rig on the fl y. “If you grabbed

an end effector, it would switch to our

stretchy rig,” explains Bannayan. In

addition to controlling the shape curve of

the surface, the curves also managed the

1: Mr. Fantastic (actor Ioan Gruffudd) stretches thanks to the effects wizards at Soho VFX. 2: Sue Storm (actor Jessica Alba) defl ects a Doom ray created at Giant Killer Robots by using an invisible shield from Stan Winston Digital. 3: Actor Michael Chiklis is turned into The Thing with the help of a rubber suit. 4: The Human Torch (actor Chris Evans) acquires his fi re from Giant Killer Robots.

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. . . . Film

profi le, allowing the animators to squash,

stretch, rotate, and twist the limbs.

“It’s hard to describe because there is no

analogy for what we did,” says Bannayan.

“It was almost like the keyframe in an

animation curve. With our geometry, you

could introduce new shapes, twists, and

bends that normal rigging techniques

don’t allow.”

For fi ne details, a muscle system

made of blend shapes and magnets

moved the skin. “You can see muscles

under the skin when it’s stretched,” says

Bannayan, “even when it’s elongated.”

For texture maps, the crew used

photographs of actor Ioan Gruffudd as

the basis for many layers of shading. To

match the fi ne details on his hands and

face, they painted 16K texture maps and

often had as many as 10 to 12 displacement

maps in the shaders. Textures were

sometimes changed on a frame-by-frame

basis. When Reed stretches his hand

under the door, the hand has 25 layers

that were tweaked over

1000 frames.

“Every shot got special attention,” says

Allan Magled, VFX supervisor. “Every

shot required its own tracking, and they

all had issues, some impossibly hard. We

tried every tracking software program,

even one we wrote, but we ended up hand

tracking the shots in Maya. Some shots

took weeks of tracking.”

For one scene, for example, the team

had to replace the left side of Reed’s body,

locking the geometry to the live-action

plate frame by frame. Fortunately, Reed’s

costume was tight and didn’t require cloth

simulation; however, getting the texture

to match was tricky. “The material was

a cross between silk, velour, and tin foil,”

says Magled. “And, we had to match it in

the same frame and lighting.”

For hair, the studio used its own fur

software; for rendering, Soho works with

custom RenderMan-compliant software

created for the studio by 3Delight.

“We only had around 80 shots, but

sometimes I think we would have been

better off with 250

lighter shots,” says

Magled.

Johnny Storm / The Human Torch

Concept: “Johnny heats from his core

and the fl ames are so hot, they don’t

attach to his skin,” says Williams. “We

couldn’t make him look like a burn victim,

but he had to be realistic.”

At Giant Killer Robots (GKR), a team of

90 effects artists caused actor Chris Evans

to fl ame out on cue. Because the effect was

added to the actor, Evan’s performances

were tracked in great detail using the

studio’s proprietary software Tracula, with

an assist from 2d3’s Boujou. The techniques

had been honed on such fi lms as Blade, Son

of the Mask, and The Matrix.

“We can integrate effects into live-action

characters in unique ways, choosing what

we want to use—virtual or live action,”

says Peter Oberdorfer, VFX supervisor.

“Rather than replacing humans with

virtual guys, we try to maintain the real

performance as much as possible. The

tracking team was crucial, making sure

everything lined up.”

To help ensure that the virtual track-

ing model was accurate, the crew work-

ed from cyberscans of Evans. Motion-

captured data from the actor and his

stunt double delineated the rig’s range of

motion. Animators could then manipulate

the resulting virtual model of Johnny to

exactly match the actor’s performances.

The Torch’s fi ery effects were generated

around the virtual model with the live

performance mapped on top. “For close-

ups, we’d use wind, buoyancy, heat, and

other fi elds that would move a fl uid

simulation according to the movement the

Multiple layers of

texture maps to simulate

actor Gruffudd’s skin were

sometimes tweaked on

a frame-by-frame basis.

The stretching effect was

created with a special

rigging and modeling

pipeline built in Maya.

Below left: Giant Killer Robots gave fi ery Johnny Storm his torch by

tracking fl uid simulations, particle animations, and practical elements

into live-action plates. Below right: In this shot, everything is CG.

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. . . . Film

actor made,” says Oberdorfer.

When Johnny fl ies through

Manhattan all ablaze, though,

they handed the acting torch

to the synthetic actor.

For the fi re, GKR chose

Maya’s fl uid engine, and then

hired Alias to extend it. In

addition, the crew developed

proprietary techniques to place

simulation volumes in ways

that would optimize render

time, whether Johnny was

moving, fl ying, or standing

mostly still. Practical elements

shot for specifi c scenes helped

make the effect convincing.

“We had a library of ele-

ments we could use as sprite

animations with particle sys-

tems or as stand-alone elements,” says

Oberdorfer. “We didn’t paint ourselves

into a corner by relying exclusively

on one technique.” Rendering was ac-

complished in Mental Images’ Mental

Ray, using as many as seven layers of

shading for the fl ames.

GKR also created a virtual Dr. Doom,

using a cyberscan of actor Julian

McMahon in full costume for modeling

and Syfl ex for cloth simulations. For his

lightning bolt-like “Doom” ray, the crew

relied on a proprietary lighting tool that,

using an L-system core, creates branching

rays with particle-based plasma glows.

Brooklyn Bridge

Concept: “During a giant wreck on the

Brooklyn Bridge, the Fantastic Four have

to utilize their powers for the fi rst time

in public,” says Williams. “Of course, the

real Brooklyn Bridge was not available

for fi lming.”

Instead, an exact scale replica of a 200-

foot section of the bridge was built in a

Vancouver parking lot. “We had to sur-

round it with bluescreen,” says Williams.

“We had scaffolding rigs with bluescreens

and tractor trailers with additional green-

screen that we could move quickly. We

also had Meteor build a fully textured

CG model of the bridge, with CG water

below, CG boats and aircraft, and a CG

Manhattan and Brooklyn.”

The long sequence begins with the

Thing (played by actor Michael Chiklis,

wearing a rubber suit) jumping down to

rescue a man attempting suicide. Traffi c

on the south side of the bridge grinds

to a halt, and something kicks off an

explosion. A fi re truck swerves and

pierces the outside of the bridge, causing

the wheelman on the back to dangle

dangerously above the water.

“It was a mix-and-match shot,” says

Paul Nightingale, visual effects supervisor

at Meteor. “We used special effects, CG to

augment the sets and fi re truck, and when

it was impossible to have a real fi re truck,

full CG. We also added fi re, the cities [at

each end of the bridge], helicopters, and

more. A number of shots were fully CG.”

The bridge was built, animated, and

lit in Maya using plans and photos of

the real bridge but twisted to match data

from a Lidar laser scan of the on-set

bridge. The CG bridge was rendered in

RenderMan using level of detail to reduce

the geometric complexity in the distance.

“There were an inordinate number of

rivets,” Nightingale says. “We didn’t want

to drive the modeling team crazy.”

Procedural shaders added dirt and

rust to painted textures. “We had a layer

of nonspecifi c texture for the whole

bridge and then another layer with more

detail to age and match the photographic

reference of the bridge and the set,”

explains Nightingale.

A CG animatic created by the previz

team helped the crew determine which

parts of the background could be 2D,

2½D, or 3D depending on the amount

of parallax seen through the camera.

To create the far backgrounds, artists

stitched together Photoshop paintings.

The paintings were brought into Maya

as 16-bit textures and projected onto a

cyclorama—a ribbon that encircled the

entire virtual set. “Once we had built

that, we could put the camera in any

position, and the system we created

would automatically generate the sky

and freeway traffi c along the border of

Manhattan,” says Nightingale. The sky

was projected onto the inside of a dome.

Details close to the camera were 3D

unless they could be 2½D.

“We knew the camera would be based

in the center of the bridge most of the

time,” Nightingale says, “so everything

could be built with that knowledge of

where the action would take place. We

could switch between the cyclorama

with the texture map and 3D geometry

of skyscrapers. If there was a dead spot

when we spun the world around the

camera, we’d add a building.”

A 200-foot replica of the Brooklyn Bridge was extended and sometimes replaced entirely by a CG model,

created at Meteor, along with the fi re truck and other vehicles, water, and the cities on both ends.

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With its revolutionary

64-bit workstations, Hewlett-Packard is

driving the digital media and entertainment

revolution.

Hewlett-Packard fi rst shattered the memory constraints imposed by 32-bit computing in 1996, when it announced its PA-RISC 64-bit pro-cessor. HP continues this trend of 64-bit leadership with a family of worksta-tions that take full advantage of best-in-class 64-bit technology. All are optimized to provide the impressive levels of scalability, blistering performance, and fail-proof reliabil-ity required by visual eff ects studios in the demanding DCC market.

Available in entry-level and high-end versions, HP’s 64-bit workstations are powered by both Intel Pentium and Xeon processors with Extended Mem-ory 64 Technology (EM64T), and AMD Opteron 64-bit processors, providing unprecedented power. Th ey are available with 32- or 64-bit versions of the Linux and Windows operating systems, easing the transition to 64-bit and enabling content creators to choose the platform they prefer.

“Since we entered the 64-bit market nine years ago, we’ve been committed to off ering customers industry-leading technologies that deliver the best price/performance combination available,” says Jim Zafarana, vice president and worldwide marketing manager of HP’s Workstation Global Busi-ness Unit. “We engineer our 64-bit work-stations to accommodate the complex needs of digital content creators, regard-less of their operating system preference.”

Next-Generation FunctionalityToday’s artists and producers are under extreme pressure to create top-quality content under increasingly strict dead-lines. Th ey don’t have time to troubleshoot software and hardware compatibility

Fast, Reliable, 64-Bit

issues, and they need the fastest and most reliable machines available.

That’s why they stake their reputations on HP’s

64-bit workstations. “Some of the biggest names in

the entertainment industry, including Dreamworks, Sony

Pictures Imageworks, and Disney, rely on our workstations to create

compelling and photorealistic imag-ery and effects,” Zafarana says. “It’s

because of our experience and technical innovation that artists and producers use HP

workstations. Th ey know we provide the perfor-mance and reliability that will enable them to

tackle the complicated challenges they face.”Among HP’s line of 64-bit solutions for

the DCC market are the Intel-based HP xw4300 and HP xw8200, and the AMD-based HP xw9300. All provide a signifi cant performance boost to studios that demand fast, reliable workstations for building and

animating complex and detailed models and environments comprising millions of poly-gons, and for performing complex rendering tasks that formerly required time-consuming, multipass rendering.

“Our 64-bit workstations set new perfor-mance standards,” says Zafarana. “Through these industry-leading, no-compromises solu-tions, we’re enabling 3D graphics professionals in the most demanding applications to achieve the ultimate in visual quality.”

To learn more about how HP’s 64-bit work-stations meet the needs of artists and produc-ers working with leading DCC applications, read on. You’ll see how HP’s 64-bit technol-

ogy is fundamentally changing the nature of 3D pro-duction forever.

From left, HP’s Intel-based xw4300 and xw8200, and AMD-based xw9300. Ferrari image above created in Autodesk 3ds Max.

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As audiences’ appetites for realism in fi lm, broad-cast, and games continue to grow—and deadlines to create digital content continue to shrink—the need for soft ware tools that enable artists to pro-duce cutting-edge visuals without compromising their schedules is on the rise.

Hewlett-Packard and its DCC soft ware partners are providing artists with such tools. By combining the blazing performance and huge memory capacity of HP’s 64-bit workstations with the robust features available in 64-bit-enabled 3D modeling and anima-tion soft ware, artists can create and render their most memory-intensive photorealistic imagery, regardless of complexity, at blistering speeds.

A Commitment to 64-BitLeading DCC soft ware vendors, including Soft image, a subsidiary of Avid Technology Inc., Autodesk Media and Entertainment, and Alias Systems, have long rec-ognized the enormous benefi ts that 64-bit computing will aff ord their customers. Like HP—which entered the 64-bit market nine years ago—these soft ware vendors have been part of the growing movement toward 64-bit. As part of its support for Intel’s Itanium project, Autodesk demonstrated pub-licly a 64-bit version of 3ds Max about four years ago. Soft image and Alias also have been tooling with 64-bit architectures for the past few years.

However, it wasn’t until leading graphics processor vendors such as NVIDIA, and operating system vendors such as Microsoft and Red Hat, began off ering 64-bit versions of their products that the quantum leap from 32- to 64-bit computing could become a reality—for vendors such as HP, Autodesk, Soft image, and Alias, and for their customers in digital content creation.

“Th ere wasn’t enough movement before. Th ere weren’t enough partners and players to make it happen,” says Dan Prochazka, product marketing manager for animation at Autodesk. “But now that multithreaded, dual-core processors and 64-bit operating systems are available for 64-bit workstations like those from HP, there is so much inertia that the wave to 64-bit is unstoppable.”

As this issue went to press, at least two of the leading 3D mod-eling and animation soft ware vendors announced their plans to

showcase, at SIG-GRAPH 2005, the fruits of their labor in 64-bit technology. Avid is announcing SOFTIMAGE|XSI v5.0 in 32-bit and native 64-bit versions, and Autodesk is provid-ing a technology pre-view of a 64-bit ver-sion of 3ds Max.

In addition, Alias said it plans to deliver a new 64-bit Maya-based product that taps the power of 64-bit hardware, although at press time no prod-uct announcement had been made. “We recognize the needs of our customers to always deliver leading-edge 3D graphics and visual eff ects,” says Kevin Tureski, director of engineering for Maya at Alias. “We are working closely with industry partners, including HP and the graphics card manufacturers, to build out a stable 64-bit environment that our customers can migrate to with confi dence.”

According to Soft image, Autodesk, and Alias, 64-bit comput-ing will have an enormous impact on the DCC market.

“Th ere’s been a continuing desire to push the edge of what art-ists can create—particularly for fi lm and, with the next-genera-tion game playing consoles coming from Microsoft , Nintendo, and Sony, in games,” says Prochazka. “Game development art-ists are building far more detail into their models today. Many scenes are so huge that they’re impossible to load into memory, in their entirety, on 32-bit systems. Th e availability of 64-bit work-stations will provide 3ds Max users with access to more memory than they ever imagined.”

Images created in Alias Maya and courtesy of CraneDigital, LLC (top) and Aaron Reid/AntiGravity Studios (left and below).

64-Bit Wave Extends Its Reach64-Bit Wave Extends Its Reach Softimage, Autodesk, and Alias announce plans for support of 64-bit technology



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“Th e advent of 64-bit comput-ing is one of the biggest events

in graphics workstations for the DCC market,” says Gareth Morgan,

senior product manager for Soft im-age. “In their quest for the ultimate

in photorealism, artists are performing increasingly complex and compute-inten-

sive tasks. Artists running SOFTIMAGE|XSI on 64-bit workstations will no longer be sty-

mied by hardware limitations. Th ey will be able to work with massive amounts of RAM, so their scenes can be far more complex and photorealistic.”

“Many of our customers today are interested in testing the 64-bit Maya-based product to quantify the cost and advantage of going to 64-bit, and this will be a lengthy and rigorous process,” says Tureski. “Th ey are already creating scenes of enormous complexity, but they need to ‘bust up the scenes’ to work on them. Being able potentially to deal with an entire scene in memory at once will remove creative barriers and increase overall productivity.”

HP Packs a Powerful PunchAs noted earlier, one of the leading vendors of 64-bit hardware is HP, which off ers a line of workstations that are powered by leading-edge Intel Pentium and Xeon processors with Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T), as well as AMD’s groundbreaking Opteron 64-bit processor.

When you couple the outstanding level of computing per-formance in HP’s 64-bit workstations with the top-notch functionality that 64-bit-enabled DCC soft ware can pro-vide, you get a winning combination of memory capacity, performance, and reliability that no 3D, visual eff ects, or game development studio should be without.

“HP workstations already are valued throughout the 3D indus-try for representing supreme performance and reliability,” says Jim Zafarana, vice president and worldwide marketing manager of HP’s Workstation Global Business Unit. “By combining our professional 64-bit workstations with industry-leading DCC soft -ware, fi lm, broadcast, and games professionals can achieve excit-ing new levels of productivity and quality.”

Th e capabilities of HP’s workstations have not gone unnoticed by Alias, Soft image,

and Autodesk. According to Tureski, the 64-bit version of Maya could

Images left and below courtesy of Softimage Co.–Avid Technology Inc., © UVPHACTORY. Far left, XSI screenshot.

HP xw4300 HP xw8200 HP xw9300

OPERATING SYSTEM

Microsoft Windows XP Professional

Red Hat Linux WS3 or HP Installer kit





PROCESSOR 1 Intel Pentium 4 or 1 Intel Pentium D

1 or 2 Intel Xeon 1 or 2 AMD Opteron 200 series

DUAL CORE OPTION Yes No Yes

CHIP SET Intel 955X Express Intel E7525 NVIDIA nForce Professional

MEMORY Up to 8 GB Up to 16 GB Up to 16 GB

GRAPHICS CARDS 2D and 3D NVIDIA Quadro & ATI FireGL

2D & 3D NVIDIA Quadro & ATI FireGL

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leverage the increased addressable memory and faster RAM access of HP’s 64-bit workstations to provide digi-tal artists with a streamlined workfl ow that allows them greater f lexibility and creative freedom. “Leveraging increased processor capabilities will allow our customers to complete their work in less time, or do more complex work than they could have done previously within a given time and budget,” he says.

Th e outstanding reliability of HP’s workstations also is of critical impor-tance to software vendors and their customers. “For years, people have been saying how reliable HP systems are,” says Mark Schoennagel, 3D Evan-gelist for Soft image. “Th e machines are built very well. Th ey’re easy to access, and their components are rock solid.”

“We’re showing our 64-bit 3ds Max at SIGGRAPH as a technology preview, which means it is very cutting edge,” says Prochazka. “One of the critical fac-tors when showing cutting-edge tech-nology is the removal of risk everywhere else. When we go onstage to introduce 64-bit 3ds Max running on HP workstations to the thousands of SIGGRAPH attendees, one risk factor that will be mitigated com-pletely is the hardware. We won’t have to worry about it because HP systems are steady, dependable, and reliable.”

Unprecedented DetailTh e combination of HP’s 64-bit workstations and 64-bit-enabled 3D modeling and animation soft ware will benefi t content cre-ators working in several distinct areas.

One of these is character animation for games and fi lms. Schoennagel offers a typical example of the advantages SOFTIMAGE|XSI users will enjoy. “With the 32-bit version of SOFTIMAGE|XSI,” he explains, “an animator can render a scene of up to 200 characters comprising 50,000–100,000 polygons each, unique texture maps, a full skeletal system, and motion capture data, without running into any snags.

“But with the 64-bit XSI, we can get into that scene 1,000 unique characters, each with their own full skeletal system, mocap data, and texture maps,” he says. “We demonstrated this to our New York and LA User Groups—our hardcore pro-fessionals—and the entire 7GB scene was rendering within 20 seconds. Th e reaction was phenomenal.”

In addition to character animation, artists creating highly detailed CG environments also will benefi t. “Th is applies to fi lm and games,” says Morgan at Soft image. “Artists develop-ing for next-generation game consoles are producing content that’s around 10 times more detailed than what they’ve pro-duced historically.”

“3ds Max has always been a leader in high-detail modeling,” says Prochazka. “And with the cutting-edge technology of the

new game consoles, this capability is crucial today. Develop-ers are building photorealistic, highly detailed environments for their titles. Being able to process and preview these scenes without having to swap data on and off their hard drive is a huge benefi t that the 64-bit 3ds Max will provide.”

Visual eff ects creation also will benefi t enormously from 64-bit workstations and soft ware. “64-bit allows creative art-ists greater control to do fewer rendering passes and to build out longer sequences when layering 3D for film and video, especially for the creation of sophisticated special eff ects,” says Tureski at Alias.

It’s clear that HP’s 64-bit workstations provide massive amounts of memory, along with unprecedented levels of per-formance and reliability. And with 64-bit versions of leading 3D modeling and animation soft ware, studios will be able to cre-ate the ultra-high-detail, photorealistic imagery that appeals to today’s sophisticated audiences.

“64-bit will let you work with greater accuracy, so you can calculate bigger numbers in a single clock cycle, and it will let you work with larger chunks of memory,” says Morgan. “It’s like having a bigger, more powerful engine in your car; you can drive faster, and you have more torque, more power.”

“Our industry is one of the few that can really take advan-tage of 64-bit computing power,” concludes Schoennagel. “Th e leap that 64-bit provides in performance, and the ability to have access to massive amounts of RAM, promises to change the face of digital content creation.”

For more information on how you can benefit from the power of HP’s 64-bit workstation solutions, visit www.hp.com/workstations or booth #1900 at Siggraph.

Images courtesy of Autodesk. Image at top © 2005 Amilton Diesel.

��



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. . . . Film


For the water, the crew used Arete

Entertainment’s Psunami to create the

surface and refl ections. To add depth,

they rendered multiple layers of fractal

patterns through RenderMan and then

combined those passes with the Arete

RenderWorld passes in compositing.

The vehicles ranged from 3D models

bought over the Internet and used in

the distance, to custom models created

at Meteor for replacing and augmenting

vehicles in the accident scene. “Sometimes

we had to replace everything from the

Thing to Manhattan,” says Nightingale.

That included some 30 vehicles plus the

fi re truck. For the fi re, they used a mixture

of pyro from the set, propane fl ames they

shot separately to produce fi re controlled

by Sue Storm’s force fi eld, and CG fi re

created with Next Limit’s RealFlow.

For rendering, the crew calculated

ambient occlusion using RenderMan,

sometimes on a frame-by-frame basis.

“There were 85 million rivets, all casting

little shadows,” says Nightingale. “But we

got a degree of subtlety with ambient [light-

ing] that we couldn’t get any other way.”

Susan Storm / Invisible Woman

Concept: “Sue bends light,” says

Williams. “She takes the background be-

hind her and projects it onto her front.

Sometimes she’s invisible, but the audi-

ence can still read her expressions. The

job was to give Tim [Story] a tool set to

dial Sue in and out as he wished.”

A crew of around 25 artists at Stan

Winston Digital took on the job of cre-

ating that tool set and 80-some shots.

“The biggest hurdle was trying to come

up with something everyone liked,” says

Randall Rosa, co-visual effects supervi-

sor with Andre Bustanoby.

They did so with a combination of 3D

and 2D techniques and tools: Avid XSI,

Mental Ray, Autodesk Combustion, and

Shake. Modelers created virtual Sue from

a cyberscan of actress Jessica Alba. By

using incident (Fresnel diffraction) passes

to illuminate contours and edges and make

them translucent, and with refraction

passes to bring in the background, ren-

derers created the invisibility illusion.

“You could think of Sue like a wine glass

that you hold in front of your eye,” explains

Rosa. “The way the background looks

through a wine glass is the basic refraction.

The key characteristic for Sue was how

much of her affected the background.”

Although the team created a Mental

Ray shader that allowed the artists to

affect the refractions, they decided to

work in 2D instead.

“Jeff Wolverton, a lighting TD, knew

how refractions work, so he wrote a

plug-in for Shake that simulated the 3D

effect,” says Bustanoby. “It allowed the

client to art-direct the look.” Thus, a

compositor working in Shake could slide

the background so that, for example, a

dark spot wouldn’t land on Alba’s cheek.

“We rendered a normals pass, and a

color rendition on the match-moved

Sue mesh gave the compositor a visual

lookup table,” explains Bustanoby. “The

plug-in looked at that to get a sense of

the direction of normals on the surface

relative to the camera and bent the

background through it.”

Sue has the ability to throw her in-

visibility “cloak” outward, turning it into

a force fi eld. For this, the crew used a blend

of geometry-based soft-body and fl uid

dynamics and particle effects, all created

within XSI. For match-moving, they relied

on three software tools: Science-D-Visions’

3D-Equalizer, RealViz’s MatchMover, and

The Pixel Farm’s PFTrack.

If she happens to be wearing street

clothes and not her Fantastic costume,

Sue’s clothes remain visible when she

becomes invisible and hover in the

air. For this effect, the crew created CG

clothes and used Syfl ex cloth-simulation

software working within XSI to make

them fl oat. “The volume of painting

and roto work that went into this was

incredible,” says Rosa. “Every part of her

occluding the clothes had to be painted in

2D or created in 3D.”

Many of the shots from Stan Winston

Digital and the other studios involved

more than one vendor: Sue, for example,

is hit by Dr. Doom’s plasma ray, created

with Giant Killer Robots’ lightning bolt

software. Williams’ offi ce acted as a

clearinghouse, controlling the ins and

outs. “I hope this kind of collabora-

tion becomes standard,” says

Bustanoby. “Even in the throes

of delivery, it was synchronized

and smooth.”

Considering the type of ef-

fects, that multiple characters

in multiple shots were created

by multiple vendors, and the

tight schedule and budget,

someone might call Williams

Mr. Fantastic, as well.

Barbara Robertson is an award-

winning journalist and a con-

tributing editor for Computer

Graphics World.

CIS built the CG space station using Maya,

RenderMan, Shake, and Inferno. For the

cosmic storm that tears down the hallways,

the crew used RenderMan and Jig for

the volumetric effects.

0508CGW_42 420508CGW_42 42 7/13/05 11:24:48 AM7/13/05 11:24:48 AM



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. . . . Technology

44| Computer Graphics World AUGUST 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m

A revolution is coming...again. This time it involves 64-bit computing

driven by new processors from AMD, IBM,

and Intel.

Like most revolutions, this one has been

building for some time—64-bit computing

has been a mainstay of server and work-

station computing for more than a decade.

Silicon Graphics introduced its 64-bit

processors in 1992, and the DEC Alpha

came on the scene that year as well.

Then, in 1996, Sun and Hewlett-Pack-

ard brought out 64-bit chips: the

UltraSparc and the PA-8000,

respectively. The Alpha

and the PA-8000, in fact,

paved the way for the HP

and Intel collaboration,

which eventually be-

came the Itanium.

Until fairly recently,

there has been a clear

division between 64-bit

workstations and their 32-

bit little brothers. But that

changed when AMD in-

troduced the AMD64 multi-

core processors capable of support-

ing programs written for 32-bit computers

and those written for 64 bit. This makes

it possible for customers and applications

developers to transition to the new plat-

form gradually.

In 2004, Apple introduced its Power

Mac G5 computer based on IBM’s Power-

PC, which is also capable of running

both 64-bit and 32-bit programs. And,

after much speculation and anticipation,

Intel followed with its own version of the

By Kathleen Maher

Boosted by 64 bit, DCC productivity is expected to soar

All Systems Go

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Technology. . . . x86-64 processor, which it defi nes by

the instruction set EM64T, or Extended

Memory 64 Technology.

But it was Microsoft’s announcement of

the 64-bit operating system Windows XP

Professional x64 Edition that really set the

wheels in motion. Previously, customers

who bought computers with the AMD64

processors had to rely on Linux-based

operating systems and a few specialized

programs. Now, with Apple’s OS X and a

Windows OS for x86-64 processors, there

are mainstream operating systems for

applications developers to develop for.

64 Bits Under the Hood

In terms of 64-bit computing’s relationship

to hardware as it pertains to the current-

generation of 32-bit and 64-bit processors,

the focus is actually on multi-core proces-

sors. In fact, the latest processors from

Intel, AMD, and, soon, IBM (the 970MP)

have two CPU cores on one chip. Apple

has announced plans to move to Intel pro-

cessors, with machines to be introduced

in June 2006, but in the immediate future,

the company also is expected to roll out

new systems based on G5 processors.

The difference is all in a “word”—

the name for the processor’s internal

storage unit that is used for addressing

memory. Today’s processors use a 32-bit

“word,” which means they can address 2

to the 32nd bytes of memory, or 4GB, for

everything, including operating systems,

drivers, applications, etc. Going to 64 bits

means the processor uses a 64-bit word,

and processors can address 2 to the 64th

bytes, or 18 exabytes (4 billion gigabytes),

of memory.

As Bill Gates might say, but probably

won’t: Surely this should be enough

memory for anyone. It’s certainly more

than enough for the applications in

use today, and probably enough for

applications for some time to come.

In addition, all three processors feature

faster CPU-to-memory buses. AMD has

led the way with its hypertransport

bus technology and integrated memory

controller, which enables its cores

to communicate to memory via a bi-

directional, internal, full-duplex 2GHz

hypertransport link. Machines based on

Intel’s Pentium processors with support

for EM64T rely on an 800MHz front-side

bus via a northbridge chip. (Intel has also

introduced a Celeron D processor with a

533MHz front-side bus.) Apple’s G5 has a

front-side bus capable of sending data at

speeds of up to 1.25GHz.

Although AMD is currently the

clear winner, all these speeds represent

signifi cant improvements over earlier

generations, and all are dependent on the

speed of the memory.

Putting 64 to Work

So now, with additional addressable

memory and faster connections to mem-

ory, more work can be done interactively.

Moreover, lower power, 64-bit processors

are more effi cient than relatively higher

powered 32-bit processors, giving users

the option of working on cooler and qui-

eter machines.

Instead of working with wireframes

or fl at-shaded models, 3D modelers can

work with fully shaded and even-textured

models within their environments. CAD

operators can work with the entire model

rather than page in and out of memory.

Video editors can see their effects in

real time. And imaging professionals

can work with extremely large images,

multiple layers, and multiple fi lters

without bogging down the system.

With every advance in computing,

digital content creators have been told

that they can spend more time creating

and less time waiting for the system or

compromising with wireframe, low-res

images, or fl at-shaded models. This time,

however, it’s actually true.

Softimage senior product manager

Gareth Morgan notes that today’s game

developers may be among the digital

content creators who most need 64-bit

computing, because they tend to work

within the entire game environment rather

than on a shot-by-shot basis, as is common

in fi lmmaking. No matter how fast the

processor is, if the program has to keep

paging out to disc, or huge fi les need to be

broken up into chunks, notes Morgan, “it

dramatically complicates the process.”

In addition, multi-core processors

mean that the processors can share the

load and allow more effi cient multi-tasking

without crashing the system. Rendering

can happen in the background.

Users who are already pushing the

limits of their 32-bit systems will see

some of these capabilities immediately

when they move to a system with a 64-

bit processor and a complementary

operating system. But the real benefi t

comes when applications are written to

take advantage of 64-bit code and new

processor platforms.

Tim Lawrence, vice president of op-

erations and a cofounder of Boxx Tech-

nologies, is a veteran of 64-bit computing

for digital content creation. The company,

which designs systems for content creation

Imag

e ©2005 A

milto

n Diesel, B

razil.

Using 64-bit processing, a

complex image such as

this (created in 3ds Max,

by Amilton Diesel)

can be rendered

or animated with

exponential speed,

and composited into a

photographic background.

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. . . . Technology

in fi lm, video, and game

development, expects to

“see anywhere from a 20

to 30 percent improvement

[in performance], all the

way up to 6X improve-

ment,” he says. As for multi-

processing, Lawrence notes

there are some applications

with 90 percent or better scaling.

The Software Side

Whether intentional or not, the comput-

er industry has long been preparing for

the transition of the desktop from 32-bit

computing to 64-bit computing. The soft-

ware world went through its own revolu-

tion in the 1990s, as software was rewrit-

ten to take advantage of object-oriented

languages, most notably C++. As a re-

sult, programs are more modular, reus-

able, portable, and can be updated and

changed more easily.

Indeed, programs have to be re-

written and recompiled in order to take

advantage of 64-bit computing, but

the ability of the current generation of

processors to accommodate both 32-bit

code and 64-bit code means that the

software itself can be rewritten gradually,

with programmers concentrating on the

parts of the application that will benefi t

most from being able to process more

information in memory.

This transition is already taking place.

Whether they want to talk about it or

not, companies are already updating bits

and pieces of their programs. For exam-

ple, several sources have reported that

Adobe’s After Effects perks up signifi -

cantly when running on machines with

x64 processors. Also, Adobe’s Photoshop

can take advantage of systems with 64-bit

processor-compliant operating systems.

In systems with up to 4GB of RAM,

Photoshop can access as much as 3GB of

RAM for its image data and use the rest

for Photoshop plug-ins. In systems with

more than 4GB (6GB for Windows and 8GB

for Macs), the RAM above 4GB is used by

the operating system as a cache for the

Photoshop scratch disk data.

All of this helps improve performance.

Otherwise, Photoshop normally accesses

the fi rst 2GB of RAM and has to share

this with the operating system. (It should

be noted that Windows XP Professional

Service Pack 2 lets users set a 3GB switch

for more memory access.)

Adobe is working on updates to its

video products, includ-

ing Premiere and After

Effects. The company

has not made an an-

nouncement regard-

ing support for 64-bit

processors, but Adobe

has been taking advantage of platform

advances in its product line with

threading for multi-core, and so it’s safe

to assume the company has 64-bit

support on its road map.

NewTek has enthusiastically embraced

64-bit technology. The company has

been in a transitional period as it moves

LightWave to Release 8, and so the

company made an early commitment

to introducing code for 64-bit/multi-

core processors. As a result, NewTek’s

64-bit version of LightWave got the star

treatment as Microsoft rolled out its

Microsoft Windows 64-bit version for

Intel and AMD processors at its annual

WinHec conference in Seattle.

Another early mover is Avid and

its Softimage division. The company

demonstrated a 64-bit version of XSI at

WinHec with Dell, and has been on the

road showing the program to customers

ever since. Softimage has elected to

introduce two versions of its software: a

native 64-bit version and a 32-bit version.

According to Softimage’s Morgan, Avid

was able to introduce a fully native 64-

bit version of XSI because of its early

commitment and early access to hardware

from both Intel and AMD. The strategy of

separate releases makes sense, says Morgan,

because professionals who have bought 64-

bit machines and are running Microsoft

Professional are not going to be interested in

running 32-bit code if they can get 64 bit.

Mental Images’ Mental Ray, the renderer

of choice for many digital content creators,

has been available for 64-bit Linux for

some time. Alias is shipping Mental Ray

Standalone 3.4, a 64-bit version that is

George Lucas, a proponent of digital fi lmmaking, continues to push the technology a little

further with each new movie, including the recent Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith.

The power of 64 bit

will shine while

working with large

models. Created using

Softimage XSI’s

subdivision surfaces,

this model consists of

500 million triangles,

using up 6.9GB of RAM. Imag

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0508CGW_46 460508CGW_46 46 7/13/05 11:29:58 AM7/13/05 11:29:58 AM



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. . . . Technology

compatible with Maya 6.5, and the company

says a version compatible with Windows XP

Professional x64 Edition is on the way.

“This is an important fi rst step in our

plans to deliver a new Maya-based product

that taps the power of 64-bit hardware,”

says Kevin Tureski, director of engineering

for Maya, at Alias. Furthermore, Alias

claims that customers “at several leading

studios” are already evaluating an alpha

version of a 64-bit Maya.

Softimage XSI has integrated the Mental

Ray renderer and also offers a stand-alone

version. XSI’s Mental Ray is also 64-bit

compatible, enabling faster rendering.

Another early entrant in the 64-bit

sweepstakes is Maxon, which announced

Cinema 4D and CineBench in 64 bit

soon after Microsoft’s announcement of

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Maxon says Cinema 4D now can access

up to 256GB of RAM in Windows x64. The

software also supports multi-core with

multi-threading. Maxon notes that its

BodyPaint 3D module also gets a boost

from the additional memory for textures.

While Apple was early into the game

with 64-bit processors and an operating

system, the current version of OS X does

not fully support 64-bit applications.

Specifi cally, programs with a graphical

user interface must run in 32 bit. Apple

says, however, that there is 64-bit support

for programs executed from the command

line, such as scientifi c data processing

applications, rendering engines, and high

load servers.

According to the company, it is fi rst

concentrating on its XSan enterprise

server software for 64 bit, giving

users the ability to share fi les

and volumes up to two petabytes.

So, for example, people working

with Final Cut Pro HD can

simultaneously access high-band-

width video streams.

Down This Road Again

Clearly, 64-bit computing will be a

major story at SIGGRAPH this year.

Even those companies that choose

not to make an announcement surely

have a road map for 64 bit, because the

transition will be picking up steam over

the rest of 2005 and into 2006. For instance,

Autodesk’s Media and Entertainment divi-

sion claims it is proceeding “full throttle.”

In a way, the path to 64 bit simply

took a little detour, as the workstation

companies of the past were already

headed down the 64-bit route when

the transition to low-cost x86-based

workstations forced customers and ISVs

to settle for 32-bit computing to please

their economy-minded customers.

Boxx’s Lawrence points out that many

of the major DCC programs were already

running in 64 bit, including Softimage and

Alias products. “For all the wrong reasons,”

says Lawrence, “applications had to get

crammed down into the Intel boxes with

insuffi cient operating systems.”

For this round of 64-bit computing,

software developers and their cus tom-

ers have easier choices to make. It’s

not either-or: either a powerful, but

high-priced computing platform that’s

specialized for particular applications

and little else, or a low-priced, less-

powerful mainstream platform. This

time around, everyone can be happy.

Traditionally, software developers

have been conservative about moving to

new platforms. They prefer to see a good

base of users on the platform before they

make their move. The ability to run both

64-bit and 32-bit programs eliminates this

reservation and the change is happening

rapidly. Viva La Revolution! It has been a

long time coming.

Kathleen Maher is a senior analyst at Jon

Peddie Research, a Tiburon, CA-based

consultancy specializing in graphics and

multimedia, and editor-in-chief of JPR’s

“TechWatch.” She can be reached at

[email protected].

Compositing a greenscreen scene like this

one, from the newly released Bewitched

fi lm, was done using Autodesk’s Flame. A

64-bit version of Flame will support the

new technology.

The game industry is likely to be an early benefi ciary of the transition to 64-bit computing.

At GDC this year, developer Crytek demonstrated a 64-bit version of its Far Cry title.

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0508CGW_48 480508CGW_48 48 7/13/05 11:30:27 AM7/13/05 11:30:27 AM



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. . . . Students in animation


’Tis the season when graduates are stepping out of the classroom and, if all goes well, into the

studios to begin their careers. Whether you’re fresh out of school or an experienced digital

artist, it helps to know what studios are looking for when it comes to new talent. In our feature

titled “Better Be Good,” we take a look inside recruiters’ offi ces at a number of animation

facilities for the inside story on what constitutes a good hire. And in “Academic Achievement,”

we highlight some of today’s brightest stars who have gained a competitive edge with school

projects that already are turning heads at the professional level.

Top of the Class

By Jenny Donelan

Computer Graphics World talks to studios

about who, how, and why they hire

Five out of

the seven

studios

queried said

they hire

artists and

animators

straight

out of

school.

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Students in animation. . . .

Better Be Good The Reel Deal

How important is that demo reel?

“It’s critical. This work will tell us a

lot about who the applicant is and

what he/she is capable of.”

— Diane St. Clair

Sony Pictures Imageworks

“For those positions that require it,

a demo reel is extremely impor-

tant. A resume and a cover letter

are always needed, but the demo

reel is the key to the applicant’s

ability. We look at every demo reel

that is submitted, and we keep

them for reference.”

— Barbara McCullough,

Rhythm & Hues Studios

“It’s the most important tool you

have to market yourself as an

artist. You’ve got about 30 seconds

to a minute to get someone’s

attention, so put your best stuff fi rst.”

— Rachelle Lewis

Digital Domain

“While it depends on the position

and discipline, having a demo reel

certainly helps and may give you a

leg up on the competition.”

— Kathy Mandato,

DreamWorks Animation

Looking for a job? Computer Graphics

World recently surveyed principals and

recruiters from major digital content cre-

ation studios about their hiring practic-

es regarding artists and animators. The

news, in a nutshell: Studios are hiring,

but you have to be good—and nice.

The days when simply knowing how

to use a 3D modeling and animation

package meant a job at a studio are long

gone. The graduates emerging from CG

animation schools each year are better

trained than ever, and competition for

jobs is fi erce. At the same time, studios

are learning that those who play well

with others make the best hires.

Here’s what recruiters from Blur

Studio, Digital Domain, DreamWorks

Animation SKG, Kleiser-Walczak Studios,

Luma Pictures, Rhythm & Hues Studios,

and Sony Pictures Imageworks have to

say about the process.

Talent and Experience

Studios were asked to rate the diffi culty

of hiring talented artists and animators

on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the hard-

est. Three of the studios, or 50 percent of

the six responding to this question, chose

“3,” meaning they encountered a medium

level of diffi culty in hiring talent.

One of those studios said the process

had been getting tougher, however, and

would soon be edging into “5” territory.

Two other studios, or 33 percent of

those responding, selected “4,” or “4/5,”

meaning they have a medium-to-high

level of diffi culty in fi nding talent. And

one company, or 17 percent of those

responding, chose “5,” the highest level

of diffi culty. One studio, Rhythm & Hues,

didn’t select a range at all, explaining

that it looked for experienced animators

fi rst and raw talent second.

In answer to a question about which

experience level was the hardest to fi ll: entry

level, intermediate, senior, or supervisory,

86 percent of the studios reported that

senior-level people were the toughest to

fi nd. The reasons, however, varied.

“Those with the most experience are

going to be booked, either in staff positions

or in long-term freelance positions, which

could make them unavailable when we

want them,” says Barbara McCullough,

manager of recruitment at Rhythm & Hues.

“Good resumes are somewhat easy to

come by,” notes Payam Shohadai, visual

effects supervisor with Luma Pictures,

“due to the fact that many people are hired

based on who they know, which leads to

more jobs and better resumes for certain

people who don’t necessarily have the

talent. Many people can appear to be

senior artists. Very few actually are.”

Just one studio reported that super-

visory positions are actually the hardest to

fi ll. As Blur Studio’s Tom Dillon explains,

“I think it is diffi cult to bring guys in

over others who have been here for a

while. It’s hard to respect someone who

hasn’t proven themselves in the trenches

alongside you. We have tried to bring in a

couple of people at that level and it hasn’t

worked out well. So we prefer bringing up

the supervisors internally.”

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Recruiters talk about their most memorable hiring experiences:

“This reel came in unsolicited from a kid in Michigan who didn’t have much for-mal training, just a few community col-lege courses. I watched it—just doing my due diligence. And I could see that he had natural talent—everything that you look for. I had to call the bicycle shop where he was working and they didn’t want to let him take the call at fi rst! And I was able to hire him. That’s why I do this: to fi nd some natural, raw talent that hasn’t been seen yet.”

—Rachelle Lewis, Digital Domain

“We hired someone the other day right away because he had a really strong recommendation. It was funny be-cause when we saw his reel afterward, we weren’t as enthused—we didn’t see the work we wanted him to do. He turned out to be a great member of our team, though!”

—Tom Leeser, Kleiser-Walczak

“We had contact with a student who wasn’t production-ready after gradu-ation, but through encouragement, he got some experience with smaller companies, which eventually equipped him with the skills he needed in order to be hired by us. That student was re-ally highly motivated. He knew what he wanted, and went out and got the experience that eventually brought his skills up to a professional level.”

— Barbara McCullough Rhythm & Hues Studios

“We interviewed an animator with [just a basic] demo reel, and not a lot of pro-duction experience. He told us, ‘I guaran-tee I will be your best and fastest anima-tor, hands down.’ His confi dence was so high; we decided to give him a shot. He is now one of our lead animators.”

—Payam Shohadai, Luma Pictures

Entering at Entry Level

Five out of the seven studios queried said

they hired artists and animators straight

out of school. According to Rachelle

Lewis, manager of recruiting at Digital

Domain, hiring young people is one of

the best ways to snatch up talent before

other companies do.

Other studios also like the opportunity to

develop their own talent. “The methods in

which work is done differ from shop to shop.

It’s easier to train someone coming from

school because we can introduce them to

our methods fi rst,” says Luma’s Shohadai.

At Kleiser-Walczak, opportunities for

entry-level hires are even rarer, notes

Tom Leeser, executive producer for visual

effects in the Hollywood offi ce. “Because

we’re a small shop, we don’t usually have

that ability to mentor.”

Adds Blur’s Dillon: “We tend not to

hire people directly out of school. We

have done it, but they tend to have a big

learning curve to go through. The issue

usually isn’t talent: It has to do with

being able to take direction and having a

good attitude about making the changes

necessary to please the client.”

Traditional Arts Background

Opinions were divided on whether a tra-

ditional art background was necessary

for CG animators. A few recruiters point-

ed out that it depended on the position. “It

certainly is an important foundation for

any person pursing a career as an artist

or technical director in digital production,”

says Diane St. Clair, director of Digital

Productions at Sony Pictures Imageworks.

“Exposure to the elements of traditional art,

such as volume, translucency, refraction,

density, etc. will be involved in achieving

the look a director is seeking.”

Says Kathy Mandato, head of human

resources for DreamWorks Animation,

“Many of our artists have traditional or

fi ne art backgrounds, and we believe

it only makes their animations more

beautiful. However, it is not a requirement

for an applicant to have a background in

traditional art.”

At Luma, it’s less important, Shohadai

points out, though he believes that

traditional artists tend to work a little

faster if they have experience rendering

with tools other than a computer.

According to Digital Domain’s

Lewis, this is an area where

philosophical opinions are divided.

“My personal opinion is that a

traditional art background is so

important,” she says. “If someone

has done straight CG [rather than

going to CG from traditional animation, for

example], the person doesn’t understand

key poses as much, and tends to let the

computer do a lot of the work. [As a result]

the animations are fl oaty. And the acting

doesn’t pop.”

The Bottom Line

What is the one special factor that can make

the difference between being hired and be-

ing sent on your merry way? Talent is a must,

of course, but nearly every recruiter inter-

viewed supplied an answer that could apply

to any job anywhere: be a good team player.

“If I have two artists and only one po-

sition, it’s not just what you do, it’s who you

are,” says Digital Domain’s Lewis. “I would

rather hire someone who wasn’t amazing

(though still very good), but who had more

enthusiasm than someone whose work

was a little bit better and had an attitude.”

Luma’s Shohadai echoes this sentiment:

“Along with talent, a good personality is

extremely important. A great artist who

can be humble is the best type of artist.”

Says Kleizer-Walczak’s Leeser, “Back

when very few people knew computer

graphics, you had to deal with all sorts

of personalities and temperaments. Now

it’s sort of commoditized—the labor pool

is huge. We don’t have to tolerate that

anymore. We’re looking for people who

are easy to get along with.”

Unforgettable...

“A great artist who can be humble is the best type of artist.”

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That’s why I go to NYU.

Computer animation is bringing about a new era in storytelling – one in which visionary artists play a key role by inventing digital alternate realities that entertain, inform, and enlighten. If you’re in search of a medium for your creativity or a muse for your technical skill, then NYU’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies and its Center for Design, Digital Arts, and Film is the place for you. With exclusive access to high level technology, leading industry-recognized instructors, and contact with other creative individuals like you, your work will become inspired. From game design to 3-D animation, to digital medical illustration and motion graphics, NYU is a thriving center of innovation – and a prime source of talent. Become a part of it. Contact us for our new Fall Bulletin.

Visit our website to view the complete short “No Class” and other examples of outstanding work by our students.

1-800-FIND NYU, ext.94 www.scps.nyu.edu/x94

Courses include:3-D Modeling and Animation

Web Design

Character Animation

Visual Effects

Digital Video Production

2-D Animation: Drawing, Cutout, and

Stop Motion

Video Game Design

Flash: Advanced Intensive

Clay Modeling for Animation

After Effects I and II

Motion Graphics/Broadcast Design

Digital Medical Illustration

Information Session:Wednesday, August 31, 6-8 p.m.NYU Midtown Center, 4th Floor11 West 42nd Street(between Fifth and Sixth Avenues)

Presentations begin on time; please be punctual.

New York University is an affi rmative action/equal opportunity institution. ©2005 New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies

“Where else can I see

my visioncome to life

just as I imagined?”

Frame from animated short “No Class”by Andy Mastrocinque, NYU-SCPS student

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If there’s a common thread shared by the

following four student fi lms, which hail

from different parts of the world—France,

the US, England, and Korea—it might be

simplicity. From the 2D collage look of “La

Migration Bigoudenn,” to the minimal 3D

world of “Food for Thought,” to the pen-

and-ink documentary style of “East End

Zombies,” and the boldly stylized lines of

“Chohon: Calling Back the Spirit,” these

fi lms eschew effects for effects’ sake, and

instead use 3D tools to tell a story. In this

effort, the student directors of these fi lms

have been so successful that each of their

works was among those chosen for the

2005 SIGGRAPH Computer Animation

Festival. Both “Food for Thought” and

“Chohon” are appearing in the Animation

Theater, while “East End Zombies” and

“La Migration Bigoudenn” are featured in

the Electronic Theater, with “La Migration”

receiving Jury Honors.

La Migration Bigoudenn

In “La Migration Bigoudenn” (The Migration

of the Bigoudenn), a band of elderly wom-

en gathers near a sea cliff to participate

in some highly ritualized cooking and

dancing. Their dress and behavior are

based, in part, on actual folk traditions

from the Bigouden region of Brittany, in

France. The women wear the tradition-

al Bigouden costume, which includes a

black dress decorated with lace, and a

tall, narrow, cylindrical headpiece made

of lace, called the bigou.

These Bigoudenn go to great lengths

to cook crepes—a signature Breton

dish—that are delicate enough to suit the

eldest of their number, the one wearing

the tallest hat. The background music,

composed by Alexandre Dai Castaing,

has a Celtic fl avor, as does the dancing,

punctuated by the symbolic Stonehenge-

type formation made by the women as

they form a circle by the sea.

Almost everything in this French

student fi lm references the Celtic heritage

of this remote, northwest corner of

France. Even the movie’s end points to

real-life events in the way it playfully, yet

poignantly, suggests why the Bigoudenn

seem to be dying out.

But you don’t need to know any

of this information to appreciate “La

Migration Bigoudenn,” which works

on its own sweet, mystical level, apart

from any knowledge one might have

of Breton culture and history. In fact,

children especially appreciate the movie,

maintains Alexandre Heboyan, one of the

fi lm’s three directors. He, along with Eric

Castaing and Fafah Togora, all created the

Women in traditional Breton dress strive

to create the perfect crepe in the short

animated fi lm “La Migration Bigoudenn,”

created by French students. In most,

although not all, of the scenes in the

fi lm, the characters are 3D and the

backgrounds are 2D.

Imag

es cou

rtesy Eric Castain

g, A

lexand

re Heb

oyan

, and Fafah To

go

ra.

Academic Achievement Student works use simplistic animation styles to

weave tales of surprising complexity

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fi lm last year while they were students at

Gobelins, l’ecole de I’image, in France.

The two-and-a-half-minute fi lm even

looks a bit like a children’s picture book.

The characters, objects, and scenery have

a collage-like appearance. Though the

fi lm is 3D—modeled and animated in

Alias’s Maya—the appearance is often 2D,

as was intended, according to Heboyan.

“I think the biggest technical challenge

was to use 3D in the way we wanted,” he

says—to create that fl at, collage-like look.

The directors combined 2D backgrounds,

“silhouette” style animation, and special

shaders with compositing effects in

Adobe’s After Effects to achieve the fl at

look they were after. In general, the

characters are 3D and the backgrounds

are 2D, though the composition varies

throughout. “It’s a ‘5D’ movie,” says

Heboyan with a smile.

He, Castaing, and Togora made “La

Migration” as a fi nal project after three

years of animation studies at Gobelins.

(Heboyan is now an animator at Mac

Guff Ligne; Castaing is an animator at

Deff2shoot; and Togora is a storyboarder

at SIP Animation.) All three worked on

the script together, created a storyboard,

and from there, an animatic. In parallel,

says Heboyan, they developed character

designs and color concepts.

The team used Maya to model and

rig the characters, then took on what

Heboyan says was the most time-

intensive task: character animation. In

order to share the workload, each director

handled animation for one part of the

movie. Heboyan painted backgrounds

in Adobe’s Photoshop, and Castaing

and Togora helped supply textures.

Combining all the elements—characters,

rocks, cooking tools—in After Effects was

the big challenge, says Heboyan, because

of the mix of 2D and 3D.

An important partner in the fi lm’s

creation was composer Castaing (brother

of director Eric), with whom Heboyan

says the team worked “interactively,”

and whose musical concepts became

an integral part of the creative process.

Heboyan, in fact, describes the music as

“half the movie.”

The end result—an eerie, yet pleasing

mix of the poetic and the humorous—has

delighted audiences, and earned Jury

Honors at SIGGRAPH. But perhaps the

biggest honor of all was that an authentic

Bigoudene contacted the team last month.

Her evaluation: “She told us she liked the

movie,” says Heboyan.

Food for Thought

Ian Yonika’s “Food for Thought” is a de-

ceptively simple fi lm, “grown” in the US,

with a cautionary message. Two crea-

tures—the hulking and somewhat dim-

witted Mugtor, and his companion, the

nimble and quick-witted Nishu—hap-

pen upon a tree laden with tempting fruit.

Neither creature is tall enough to reach

the fruit on his own, but working together,

they have some measure of success—until

one decides not to share with the other.

“Food for Thought” is only two min-

utes long, has no dialogue (just a lively

musical background by Ben Garceau and

Andy Bianchi), and features relatively un-

complicated scenery and characters.

“Keeping the characters simple allowed

me to keep their expressions simple as

well—yet effective,” says Yonika. “I tried

to make the thoughts and feelings of the

characters evident on their faces at all

times.” In fact, the fi lm “works,” in large

part, because of the interactions between

Mugtor and Nishu, and especially because

of their facial expressions, which are by

turns sweet and sinister.

Yonika was a student at the Ringling

School of Art and Design when he devised

the idea for “Food for Thought.”

(He graduated in May and is

now working for Electronic

Arts.) His primary inspiration

was to create a fi lm that viewers

would enjoy, but that would

also convey a message.

Once he’d mentally formu-

lated the plot, he drew story-

boards, and then arranged

them into an animatic in

order to visualize timing and

logistics. He modeled Mugtor

and Nishu in Alias’s Maya, and

began roughly blocking out

the story. As this happened,

he started to diverge from the

action of the original animatic, coming up

with new movements and expressions that

he discovered along the way. He animated

the characters in Maya, and textured them

with simple color maps painted in Adobe’s

Photoshop, using random fractals for

bump mapping.

Yonika employed similar techniques

to model and texture the fruit tree’s

leaves, and used a tiled, photo-based

image of bark for both color and bump

mapping the tree bark. As for the fruit,

which look a bit like apples and a bit

like oranges, they are default polygon

Imag

es c

ou

rtes

y Ia

n Y

on

ika.

In the short fi lm “Food

for Thought,” friend-

ship, greed, betrayal,

and retribution com-

bine in an affecting tale

from the United States.

The fi lm’s animator

purposely kept the

characters simple so

that viewers would

concentrate on their

facial expressions,

which tell most of

the story.

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©2005 BlueArc Corporation. All rights reserved. The BlueArc logo is a registered trademark of BlueArc Corporation.

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spheres. “I had meant to use these as

placeholders [for realistic textured fruit

of some kind], but I ran out of time and

people didn’t seem to care,” says Yonika.

The generic spheres work just fi ne, in

fact, because their deliciousness is

conveyed by the way the creatures react

to them, and by the wet, crunchy sound

they make when eaten.

To assist him in creating Mugtor

and Nishu’s facial expressions and body

language, Yonika used trial and error rather

than looking in a mirror or watching videos

for inspiration. “I modeled the blend shapes

before beginning animation, then just used

what I had,” he says. One of the biggest

challenges for the fi lmmaker was keeping

the story fresh and funny, despite being so

close to it for so long—about a year.

“Animation requires so much time that,

after a while, you become completely

desensitized to the story,” Yonika says.

“After watching it three billion times, even

the funniest thing gets old.”

Luckily, the fi lm is fresh and new to

audiences watching it for the fi rst, or even

the second or the third, time. “I like that it

makes people laugh,” the fi lmmaker says.

“A year is a long time to devote to a single

project, but the fact that it entertains

people makes it worthwhile.”

East End Zombies

“Deadpan horror” might be the best way

to describe “East End Zombies,” a short

fi lm made by Damian Hook while he was

a student at Bournemouth University in

the UK. The subject of the movie is not

some metaphor for soulless urban deni-

zens, but the very literal phenomenon of

fl esh-eating zombies roaming the streets

of London’s East End. Though the topic

sounds horrifi c, and the short is indeed

based on a short story by horror writer Ed

Clayton, there’s little that’s horrible and

much that’s funny in the fi lm.

The action is narrated in calm,

measured, documentary style by Jan

Weddup, senior lecturer at Bournemouth

Media School. In one long tracking shot

that moves us through different East End

neighborhoods, we see zombies exhibiting

behaviors the narrator describes: hiding

behind corners, attacking women and

children. The catch is that the zombies

and their victims are all primitive pen-

and-ink fi gures whose interactions are

anything but horrifying. Blood doesn’t

fl ow; there aren’t any screams.

And this is what Hook aimed for in

making his three-minute fi lm. “I like the

long tracking shot and how it passes by

all the action in quite a voyeuristic way:

as if you, the viewer,

are just watching day-

to-day events,” he says.

This is all helped by

the narration, which

sounds as if it’s not a

big deal that zombies are roaming the

streets; it’s just part of life.

When Hook set out to make his fi lm,

he wasn’t looking for a piece to show off

technical skills, but rather to tell a story. He

did a lot of searching through abstract and

surreal stories on the Internet before he hit

on Clayton’s “East End Zombies.” The fi rst

time he read it, he says, he could visualize

it and immediately began drafting ideas

for styles and storyboarding.

Even though “East End Zombies” is

rather primitive and 2D looking, it was

modeled and animated in Alias’s Maya

and still required a lot of work, according

to Hook. He drew the characters in pen

and ink, scanned them, then “cut them

apart,” putting each body, leg, arm, and

so forth on planes that were attached to

a simple rig so they could be animated

in Maya. Even though the characters look

2D, they are actually 3D.

The lines on the buildings in the

background are also a separate Maya

model that was rendered using the Maya

vector renderer. All seven or eight layers

were composited together using Apple’s

Shake. At this point, Hook also added

backgrounds from Geographer’s A-Z Maps

for each of the areas through which the

action passes. He scanned in pages of the

A-Z, stitched them together in Adobe’s

Photoshop, then composited them behind

the action using Shake.

The biggest challenge, according to

Hook, was the long tracking shot that had

to be done in a single scene, but which

The not-all-that-terrifying undead roam the streets of East London in “East End Zombies,” a documentary-style animation created by a UK student. While the fi lm looks 2D, it was created in 3D using Maya.

Images courtesy D

amian H

ook. A-Z m

aps have been reproduced

by permission of G

eographers’ A-Z M

ap Co. Ltd. ©2004 Crow

n.

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contained upward of 30 characters, plus

numerous other elements. Given more

time, he’d have liked to add more action

in the background—“things happening in

windows, down the side streets, cars

and buses passing on the road.” But like

most student animators, Hook had other

course work to attend to as well. (Since

graduation, he has worked at a London-

based animation and graphics company

called Blue Zoo Productions.)

Though the fi lm’s appearance is rather

basic, its fl at lines and muted tones also

make it somehow compelling. “East End

Zombies” has a look and a feel that are

different from most other CG fi lms. “The

fi lm obviously has a dry, satirical humor,”

says Hook, “and most people chuckle

or at least smile...it’s pleasing to get the

reaction you had hoped for.”

The artist’s favorite part of the fi lm is

Clayton’s story: “To him I owe a lot,” Hook

says, because it provided the inspiration

and the ideal narration. “I must admit,”

he adds, “that my favorite bit is the part I

am not really responsible for.”

Chohon: Calling Back the Spirit

Epic in length (more than 13 minutes) and

subject (a supernatural love story between

a Japanese geisha and a Korean resistance

fi ghter), “Chohon: Calling Back the Spirit”

required a student production effort of

epic proportions as well. The fi lm had

six directors: Eunju Kim, Jung Sun Choi,

Junsang Yoon, Kinam Kim, Youngju Park,

and Youno Park, all graduate students at

GSAIM, the Graduate School of Advanced

Imaging Science at Chungang University

in South Korea. Altogether, the group

used three modeling and animation tools:

Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s 3ds

Max, Alias’s Maya, and Softimage’s XSI,

and completed the fi lm in two years: a

year for preproduction and a year for pro-

duction and post.

But the effort was worth it, says co-

director Youno Park, to realize their artistic

vision of depicting Korean culture and

history, and, in particular, an aspect of it

that is unfamiliar to many people. Chohon

is the Korean word for a kind of ritual used

to call back a spirit, explains Park. “It’s a

Korean ceremony that the rest of the world

doesn’t know about—and even young

people in Korea don’t know about.”

The fi lm’s hero, Hyun, is fi ghting

against the Japanese occupation of

Korea in 1940 when he is injured. Hee, a

Japanese geisha, helps him. The two fall

in love, but later separate as a result of

misunderstandings and a betrayal. Hee

is later killed, but the two experience a

supernatural reunion after her death.

The setting for "Chohon” is dark and

textured, and the characters are highly

stylized. “The negative historical issues

between Japan and Korea were a bit of a

tough subject, so we gave [the characters]

symbolic looks,” he says, to give the fi lm

more of a distanced, fi ctional feel rather

than a representational feel. “We focused

on simplifi cation, stylization, but also

represented Korean [style] imagery.” The

artists used square, linear shapes to build the

men’s bodies and make them appear stronger,

while they built the female characters out of

circles and curves.

One of the toughest aspects of making

the fi lm was getting all the fi les from the

different programs to work together, says

Park. (The fi lm’s many directors were

profi cient in different programs.) For the

most part, the models were created in 3ds

Max, textured in Adobe’s Photoshop and

Corel’s Painter, then imported into XSI.

Everything was composited in Apple’s

Shake and Adobe’s After Effects, then

edited in Avid’s DS. “It was diffi cult to

transfer between programs,” says Park.

“We learned a lot from it, though.”

The fi lmmakers also struggled to create

some of the effects. One, in particular,

involved a main character at the end of the

fi lm who must “scatter” through the sky as

particles. To fi gure out how to create this

and other effects, the team used a variety

of references, such as the Internet, books,

magazines, and people. For funding, they

were fortunate enough to have a one-year

grant from the Korean Film Council, which

helped cover costs, but also impelled them

to get a certain portion of the fi lm fi nished

by the one-year deadline. (All six directors

are still graduate students and will be

going on to produce solo works in the

future, according to Park.)

Initially, the team worried that non-

Korean audiences wouldn’t appreciate or

understand “Chohon.” “But they appear

to love the stylized characters and the

colors,” says Park, who likes the idea

that the fi lm is exposing both Koreans

and non-Koreans to Korean themes.

“Animation is getting bigger here,” he

says. “But there are not that many works

on Korean culture.”

Jenny Donelan, a contributing editor for

Computer Graphics World, can be reached

at [email protected].

Korean-style designs predominate in “Chohon:

Calling Back the Spirit,” a love story with

ghostly overtones. For contrast, the male

and female leads were modeled with

straight and circular shapes, respectively.

Images courtesy Eunju Kim, Jung Sun Choi, Junsang Yoon, Kinam Kim, Yougju Park, and Youno Park.

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Portfolio

62 | Computer Graphics World AUGUST 2005

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From top to bottom:

The Regulator (Le Régulateur), a French animation directed by Philippe Grammaticopoulos, employs Maya, Photoshop, and Premiere to tell the story of a couple who adopt a child comprising many different pieces. Alas, the pieces are so numerous that the child cannot be as “perfect” as he should be.

True Color, directed by Pierre Ducos and Bertrand Bey of Supinfocom Arles in France, illustrates the story of robots that drive bikes through a white world, repeatedly spreading dirt, while dummies fi ll gas tanks by day and clean streets and buildings by night. Then, a handling error suddenly makes colors appear in this previously colorless world. The animation was created in 3ds Max, After Effects, and Combustion.

The SIGGRAPH 2005 Animation Theater featured a selection of projects—including dramatic

and humorous pieces, commercials, and scientifi c and technical animations—that illustrate the

diversity of computer graphics in a variety of mediums. The event, a component of the SIGGRAPH

Animation Festival, also refl ects a multicultural infl uence, as the Animation Theater, like its

Electronic Theater counterpart, contains a signifi cant number of international works.

The SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival is an internationally recognized event that

engages and inspires artists and technologists alike. Each year, it serves as a mirror of what

is possible today, and a window into what can be achieved in the future, says festival chair

Samuel Lord Black.

According to Black, the jury process differed somewhat this year compared to previous

years, and as a result, the members paid particular attention to building Animation Theater and

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AUGUST 2005 Computer Graphics World | 63

Electronic Theater programs that were broad in scope, yet maintained the high standards and

quality that the shows have exhibited in the past.

This year, the Animation Festival’s seven-member jury—representing research, gaming,

entertainment, and academia—assigned the Animation Theater’s 43 projects to one of seven

sessions, each characterized by a verb, which best fi t or described the animation’s content.

They include: Create, Discover, Dream, Escape, Laugh, Play, and Teach.

Among the highlights of the Animation Theater sessions is Discover’s “Scent of a Robot,”

a character-based music video created by UVPhactory that combines live-action footage with

animation to portray a human as he discovers that he is a robot. Also featured in Discover,

along with several other animations, is a reel from Tippett Studio that focuses on the creation

of Hell LA and Vermin Man from the fi lm Constantine, during which the effects team turns

Clockwise from top:

Manufacturing Proteins with Biomolecular Machines, a collaborative scientifi c visualization from the University of Texas-CVC software development team, uses Maya and After Effects to illustrate the current understanding of the protein synthesis process.

Jona/Tomberry, directed by Rosto and produced by Rocketta Film, uses 3D rotoscoping to match the characters’ faces with live-action torsos. The animation, from The Netherlands, was created with After Effects, Photoshop, and Cinema 4D.

Final Fantasy XII, directed by Yasumi Matsuno of Square Enix, features crowd modeling, realistic cloth simulation, facial animation, and massive environmental modeling, completed in Maya, Shake, and Photoshop, for this recent game title.

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64 | Computer Graphics World AUGUST 2005

Clockwise from top left:

Image-Based Material Editing, directed by Erik Reinhard from the University of Central Florida, is a feasibility study on editing the appearance of objects in images from high dynamic range photographs using an alpha matte. The images were acquired with a Nikon camera, and fi nal editing was done in Premiere.

Surly Squirrel, directed by Peter Lepeniotis from DKP in Canada, is a tale, crafted in Maya, involving a starving squirrel and a hungry rat who disrupt the natural order of a city park as they duel over a slice of discarded pizza.

Amfraid, directed by a team at Supinfocom Valenciennes in France, uses 3ds Max, Painter, After Effects, and Premiere to illustrate how fear and imagination often work in tandem.

modern-day Los Angeles into an imaginative post-nuclear environment by way of nightmarish

digital backdrops. The Vermin Man sequence, meanwhile, illustrates the technology behind a

moving body of swarming creatures that compose the Vermin Man.

In contrast to Tippett’s effects segment is “Recapturing the Lost Colors of Basara,” a his-

torical preservation animation, also shown in Discover, that illustrates how the use of CG and

laser scanning helped virtually restore an archaeological treasure to its original colors.

In the Dream session, student fi lmmakers weave Korean culture and history into their

short fi lm project through the use of highly stylized characters in “Chohon.” (For more infor-

mation about this short fi lm, see “Academic Achievement,” pg. 54.)

Moreover, the Animation Festival jury this year extended its reach into the research, medical,

and scientifi c visualization community, and the groups responded by submitting animations,

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AUGUST 2005 Computer Graphics World | 65

many of which were accepted into the Animation Theater under the Teach session.

In the theater venues, the programs ran directly off hard drives using the new QuickTime

H.264 compression algorithm, giving the imagery a high visual quality.

Augmenting the festival were screenings depicting highlights from the Japan Media Arts

Festival. In addition, there was a Full-Dome Animation Theater, set up in the registration area

so that all attendees could experience this growing technology. “Full-dome projection systems

are redefi ning the traditional planetarium, and there is amazing potential in this immersive

technology for both small- and large-scale group immersive experiences,” says Black. “People

are only now exploring the potential of the dome, and the community is growing. I believe

we’re in for some great advances in this area during the next few years.”

Some stills from the Animation Theater appear on these pages. —Karen Moltenbrey

Clockwise from top:

City Paradise, directed by Gaelle Denis of Passion Pictures, is an illustrative story of a woman who initially feels lost after moving from her native Japan to the UK, where everything seems foreign. The animation was created in LightWave, Toonz, Flame, and Incite.

Piñata, directed by Mike Hollands, is an Australian animation that uses 3ds Max and Combustion to tell the classic tale about a stuffed donkey’s struggle for respect as the character fi nds itself working one bad job after another.

Moscow Souvenir, directed by Luke Bailey from NCCA Bournemouth University in the UK, is an animated short fi lm. Created in Maya and Shake, the “travel journal” contains a loose narrative that combines holiday snaps and abstract compositions.

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revi

ews

stat

s

By Michael Hurwicz

Combustion 4V I D E O

The upgrade offers improved work flows, color keying, and time warping

With improvements to its features and functionality, this

may be the most signifi cant Combustion upgrade yet.

If someone had slipped in one

night and upgraded my Combus-

tion 3 to Version 4, it might have tak-

en me a while to notice it. This is good:

The enhancements have been worked in

smoothly and won’t disrupt existing work

fl ows. At the same time, it presents oppor-

tunities for improved work fl ows.

Take, for example, my favorite new

feature: capsules. Capsules allow you to

save and retrieve portions of a Combus-

tion project, effectively creating a library

of past work that you can easily reuse.

Previously, I reused work by importing

existing workspaces (Combustion proj-

ects) into a new workspace or by using

an existing workspace as a template. Cap-

sules are a more straightforward and fl ex-

ible way of accomplishing the same goal.

As an example, for a children’s book

illustration, I created a cloudy sunset us-

ing “paint,” “turbulence,” and “lens fl are”

operators. By saving this work in a cap-

sule, I then re-created the sky on other

pages with a couple of clicks, saving me

a minute or two each time. Capsules are

shared fi les, so they are a means of ex-

changing tricks of the trade easily.

I do wish that capsules could have as-

sociated thumbnails, as they all look the

same in the fi le browser. In general, cap-

sules do not contain footage, only oper-

ators that you apply to footage, making

the automatic creation of

thumbnails diffi cult. Still,

a graphic for the kaleido-

scope capsule wouldn’t be

hard to design, for example.

And thumbnails would help

me scan libraries of cap-

sules quickly.

Grids, guides, and rul-

ers are handy new features that aid in the

positioning and alignment of visual ele-

ments. I recently created a 600x800-pix-

el Web page graphic, with JPEG images,

text, and a background based on a painted

rectangle. The grid provided the reference

I needed to achieve near-perfect position-

ing quickly. You can snap paint objects to

grids or guides. It would be great to have

snap for text as well. On the Web page, for

example, I ended up adjusting pixel coor-

dinates for text blocks—a time-consuming

job that could be eliminated by snapping

text blocks to a grid or guide.

Combustion might seem like overkill

for combining graphics and text on a Web

page. Yet, in this instance—JPEGs with

troublesome colored backgrounds that

had to be made transparent—I can com-

plete the job much faster using Combus-

tion’s color keying tools than with Adobe

Photoshop or Macromedia Fireworks.

Speaking of color keying, one of the

big new features in Version 4 is the Dia-

mond Keyer, a quick and

easy, yet highly functional,

keyer borrowed from the

ColorWarper in Autodesk’s

Flame/Inferno/Smoke

software. Diamond Key-

er has six one-click pre-

sets, one of which usually

gets me close to the result

I want. A simple interface

makes any subsequent fi d-

dling fairly straightforward. The Discreet

keyer does have the advantage of includ-

ing functions such as matte refi nement

and spill suppression. To get the same re-

sults using the Diamond Keyer, you have

to apply separate Matte Controls and Col-

or Suppression operators. Laziness be-

ing my constant watchword, I fi nd myself

using the Discreet keyer to avoid those

few extra clicks. That being said, the Di-

amond Keyer presets and interface also

can be serious labor-savers.

Timewarp, which enables you to get

the same effect as in-camera slow-motion

(as well as fast-mo and even reverse-mo)

using existing video footage, is an ele-

gantly implemented, cool feature.

I regret not fi nding an upgrade to

Combustion’s integrated particle system.

The stunning feature is based on Won-

dertouch’s ParticleIllusion, but Combus-

tion is currently one version behind.

Combustion’s unique user interface,

which experienced users tend to love,

stymies many newcomers. Third-party

video tutorials (by Dwayne Ferguson and

Ken LaRue) helped me tremendously in

overcoming that initial barrier.

Overall, I highly recommend Combus-

tion 4, whether as an upgrade or as a new

purchase. It is easy to install and an un-

paralleled value, considering the breadth

and depth of its functionality.

Michael Hurwicz is a writer and animator.

Combustion 4

Price: $995 ($249 upgrade from 3)

Minimum System Requirements: A Windows PC with an Intel Pentium III, Pentium 4, or AMD Athlon 850MHZ processor running Windows XP/2000 or a Mac with a Power Mac G4 800MHZ processor running OS X Version 10.2; a 20GB hard drive; 512MB of RAM; and a video display card. A

uto

desk

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eet.

com

© 2005 M

ichael Hurw

icz.

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Sybex has released Maya at a Glance, an introduction to Alias’s

Maya 3D animation and effects software. In the book and

accompanying CD, animation/effects professional, CGW con-

tributing editor, and author George Maestri blends a wealth

of images with his textual explanations of Maya features, tech-

niques, and instructions. Containing step-by-step tutorials, the

new Maya Press title explains how to: create special effects

using particles, build and animate scenes, and compare lights,

shaders, and renderers. Priced at $25, Maya at a Glance includes

a 171-page paperback book and companion CD-ROM with

Alias’s Maya Personal Learning Edition.

Sybex; www.sybex.com

PENNING CG PR INC I PLES

Springer-Verlag has unveiled Principles of Computer Graphics,

Theory and Practice Using OpenGL and Maya. The new text is

authored by Shalini Govil-Pai, who worked at Pixar Animation

as a technical director on such fi lms as Toy Story and A Bug’s

Life. The book provides professionals and students with the

basics of computer graphics, the principles of animation used

by Walt Disney, tools and techniques, and hands-on exam-

ples—all designed to assist readers in developing their own 3D

games and animated movies. Principles of Computer Graphics

is available now at a cost of $65.

Springer-Verlag; www.springeronline.com

GR APHIC AL GEMS

Nvidia has introduced its second volume of GPU Gems, written by GPU programming experts

and edited by Matt Pharr, Nvidia software engineer, and Randima Fernando, manager of

developer education at Nvidia. With graphics processing units (GPUs) incorporated in mobile

phones and handheld gaming consoles, GPU knowledge and programming expertise are high-

ly valued. GPU Gems 2 provides graphics programmers with the latest algorithms for advanced

visual effects, strategies for managing complex scenes, and techniques for processing images.

Information about GPU programming, ranging from the basic to the advanced, spans 20 of

the 48 chapters. GPU Gems 2 explains how to harness the processing power of today’s GPUs

with sections on: Geometric

Complexity; Shading, Lighting,

and Shadows; High-Quality

Rendering; and Image-Oriented

Computing.

Nvidia; www.nvidia.com

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STOCK OPTIONSCREATIVE CONTENT

Curious Labs has launched Content Paradise, a Web portal

developed specifi cally for 3D artists, animators, illustrators, and

designers. Via Content Paradise, creative professionals can pur-

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hair, poses, software, and books—offered by

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$599. LightWave 3D features rendering, mod-

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S T O R A G E

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storage capacity.

Appro; www.appro.com

lion ray-triangle intersections per second. The

RenderDrive RD6400 ships with RenderPipe

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3ds Max and Viz, and Dassault Systemes’

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W O R K S T AT I O N

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ics applications. The base tower confi guration

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By Michael Abraham

How does one go about creating the vicariously violentworld of Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction,the third-person shooter adventure from LucasArts?For their part, Pandemic Studios relied heavily on SOFTIMAGE | XSI’s modeling, texturing and animationtools for creating the game’s pulverizingly playful world.

“SOFTIMAGE | XSI’s modeling and texturing tools, advancednormal mapping and realtime shaders, and non-linearanimation were all extraordinary on Mercenaries,” saysCarey Chico, Executive Art Director at Pandemic. “Theclarity of the XSI interface has provided our company witha streamlined set of modeling, texturing and animationtools that have increased our iteration time in development.”

Created for Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, NintendoGameCube and PC, Mercenaries allows players to assumethe role of one of three mercenaries attempting to controlchaos by creating it following a violent coup in a futureNorth Korea. Backed by a dizzying array of weaponry, theExOps trio is battling erstwhile North Korean General Song,“the most dangerous man on earth” who just happens tohave his country’s nuclear arsenal at his disposal.

“The biggest challenge we faced on Mercenaries was anambitious project on a very tight deadline,” says Chico.“Our animators all agree that they can work much fasterusing SOFTIMAGE | XSI. With the advent of XSI’s Real-Time Shaders and Normal Mapping tools, Softimage haskept us at the forefront. Being able to previsualize ournormal maps and see the effects of Real-Time Shadershas improved the iteration time on our projects.”

“SOFTIMAGE | XSI’s animation tools were particularly valuable on this project,” says Austin Baker, Lead Animatoron Mercenaries. “Simply put, XSI has improved the quality and quantity of our 3D work by providing intuitiveanimation tools together with the ability to create our own

specialized tools through the intuitive UI, scripting toolsand Net View. Personally, I use XSI for keyframe animation,IK, constraints and expressions. Relational views havereduced the time required to get important information.The performance increases mean faster interaction withcharacters, tools and scripts, and the open constructionhistory has eased the bottleneck that builds up betweenartists and animators, allowing revisions to characters to propagate straight through to the envelope.”

Baker also points to the strengths of the SOFTIMAGE | XSIAnimation Mixer:“The Animation Mixer let me create mockup animationsas proof of concept for game mechanics, to speed up theprocess of lip sync and for applying key poses acrossmultiple looping animations,” says Baker. “We can copyposes from one animation, blend between two or moreanimations and easily change the sequence of events.The Mixer’s non-destructive nature means I can keep a database of animations used by multiple characterswithout worrying about further work in the Mixer altering those saved animations.”

In addition to the Mixer, Baker proves to be quite keen on the Animation Editor:“I use the Animation Editor to create and edit individualanimations,” Baker emphasizes. “The marking sets let me set keys for specific attributes, keeping my f-curvesclean. These tools have eliminated the headaches associated with character setups. I can control how each rig component is used, manipulated and keyed. I can also create rigs to accommodate multiple animation styles. SOFTIMAGE | XSI is the best characteranimation system available.”

For Pandemic, the team behind the team is Softimage’sunrivalled customer support crew. Says Chico:“Softimage customer service is the best that I’ve experienced with any company. They make you feel part of a community of users; part of the team, you might say.”

© 2005 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. SOFTIMAGE, Avid and XSI are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

www.softimage.com

Blown away: Pandemic Studios Gets Busy with LucasArts’ Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction

Images © LucasArts


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Alias’ products and services will be on-hand at SIGGRAPHSM, including the new releases of Maya 7, Alias MotionBuilder 7 and Alias SketchBook Pro 2. Be sure to drop by Booth #1312 and check out their full range of workflow solutions or visit www.alias.com.

For more than twenty years, Alias has been developing

award-winning software solutions for the entertainment and design industries. Maya® is the top choice of leading film- makers, and has been used in many films that have been nominated for an Academy Award® for best visual effects. In 2003, for the awards year of 2002, Alias|Wavefront™ was awarded an Oscar® for scientific and technical achievement for the development of Maya software. In entertainment, Alias MotionBuilder® is an integral part of the pipeline for many film, game, video and broadcast professionals. It has long been established as the pre-eminent character performance and animation package. As for the world of design, Alias StudioTools™ leads the way and is used by most major auto- motive manufacturers in the world. Award-winning product designers also depend on it for unparalleled technology,

flexibility, and depth. Other software solutions include: AliasSketchBook™ Pro, Alias ImageStudio™, PortfolioWall®,mental ray® Standalone, FBX®, and HumanIK® Middleware.

Accompanying their diverse product line are industry-leading education and Alias’ service solutions. From the wide range of self-directed Learning Tools that include books and DVDs, to the full-service, customized consulting solutions offered by Professional Services, Alias can offer as much support as you need. The Platinum, Silver and Bronze Memberships continue to be a huge success with computer graphics professionals around the world. And for educators, Alias has a special line of solutions geared specifically for you. Leading educational institutions consistently choose Alias solutions to prepare their graduates for successful careers.

Images clockwise from top left: © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved. Image Courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic., Image courtesy of Bobby Chiu (www.artofbob.com), Image courtesy of GlyphX Games, Image courtesy of Nova Design Co. LTD.

© Copyright 2005 Alias Systems Corp. All rights reserved. Alias, the swirl logo, Maya, PortfolioWall, MotionBuilder, FBX and HumanIK are registered trademarks and Alias|Wavefront, StudioTools, SketchBook and ImageStudio are trademarks of Alias Systems Corp. in the United States and/orother countries. Academy Award and Oscar are registered trademarks and/or service marks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. SIGGRAPH is a service mark of the Association of Computer Machinery, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

Alias to demonstrate full range ofindustry workflow solutions at SIGGRAPHSM

corporateoverview


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Combing the ease of use and management of a NAS with the performance andscalability of a SAN, BlueArc’s Titan enables organizations to maximize performanceand reduce operating costs through the movement of software functions intoprogrammable hardware.

Accelerating the Digital World

©2005 BlueArc Corporation. All rights reserved. The BlueArc logo is a registered trademark of BlueArc Corporation.

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August 2005, Volume 28, Number 8: COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD (USPS 665-250) (ISSN-0271-4159) is published monthly (12 issues) by PennWell Corporation. Edito-rial & Production offi ces at 98 Spit Brook Rd., Nashua, NH 03062-5737. Corporate offi cers are Frank T. Lauinger, Chairman; Robert F. Biolchini, President & CEO; and Mark C. Wilmoth, CFO. Corporate offi ces: 1421 South Sheridan Road, Tulsa, OK 74112, Tel: 918-835-3161; FAX: 918-831-9497; Web Address: http://www.pennwell.com. Periodicals postage paid at Tulsa, OK 74112 & additional other mailing offi ces. COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD is distributed worldwide. Annual subscription prices are $55, USA; $75, Canada & Mexico; $115 International airfreight. To order subscriptions, call 847-559-7500. RIDE-ALONG ENCLOSED IN VERSION P2.

© 2005 CGW by PennWell Corporation. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without permission. Microfi lm copies are available through University Microfi lms Inc., Ann Arbor, MI 48106, Tel: 313-761-4700. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specifi c clients, is granted by Computer Graphics World, ISSN-0271-4159, provided that the appropriate fee is paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA 508-750-8400. Prior to photocopying items for educational classroom use, please contact Copyright Clearance Center Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA 508-750-8400. For further information check Copyright Clearance Center Inc. online at: http://www.copyright.com. The COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD fee code for users of the Transactional Reporting Services is 0271-4159/96 $1.00 + .35.

POSTMASTER: Send change of address form to COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD, P.O. Box 3296, Northbrook, IL 60065.

RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO: P.O. Box 122, Niagara Falls, ON L2E 6S4

The ad index is published as a service. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions.

index t

o a

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isers

advert

isin

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ale

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advertiser phone or web page

Group PublisherMark FinkelsteinTEL: 603-891-9133FAX: 603-891-9297E-MAIL: [email protected]

Associate PublisherRandy Jeter1150 Lakeway Dr. Ste. 217Austin, TX 78734TEL: 512-261-1998FAX: 512-261-7915E-MAIL: [email protected]

ReprintsPARS International Corp.TEL: 212-221-9595Web: www.magreprints.comE-MAIL: [email protected]

United KingdomAmanda LoftusTEL: 44-1793-641571FAX: 44-1793-610001E-MAIL: [email protected]

FranceLuis MatutanoTEL: 33-1-47-91-70-11FAX: 33-1-55-02-03-85E-MAIL: [email protected]

GermanyHolger GerischE-MAIL: [email protected] andJohann BylekE-MAIL: [email protected]: 49-89-904-80-144FAX: 49-89-904-80-145

IndiaRajan SharmaTEL: 91-11-2686113/14/26865103/26861758/268617666861113FAX: 91-11-26861112E-MAIL: [email protected]

KoreaPaek KwonTel: 82-2-420-1293Fax: 82-2-420-1294E-MAIL: [email protected]

JapanAkiyoshi KojimaTEL: 81-3-3261-4591Fax: 81-3-3261-6126E-MAIL: [email protected]

TaiwanTeresa FuTEL: 886-2-8771-9388 ext. 240FAX: 886-2-8773-7066E-MAIL: [email protected]

Hong Kong & ChinaAdonis MakTEL: 852-2-838-6298FAX: 852-2-838-2766E-MAIL: [email protected]

SingaporeJoanna Wong-MonisTel: 65-6836 2272Fax: 65-6735 9653E-MAIL: [email protected]

Internet SalesShaun ShenTEL: 916-419-1481FAX: 916-419-1474E-MAIL: [email protected]

Director,Internet ServicesTom CintorinoTEL: 603-579-9002FAX: 603-579-9030E-MAIL: [email protected]

List RentalBob Dromgoole98 Spit Brook Rd. Nashua, NH 03062-5737TEL: 603-891-9128FAX: 603-891-9341E-MAIL: [email protected]

3D Connexion www.3dconnexion.com 35

3D Labs www.3dlabs.com 23, 78

Academy of Art University 800-544-ARTS 75

Alias Systems www.alias.com 2, 79

Alienbrain-Avid www.alienbrain.com C3

AMD www.amd.com/hp 19

Apple Computer, Inc. www.apple.com ◊

Appro Systems, Inc. www.appro.com 10

Art VPS www.artvps.com 14

ATI Technologies www.ati.com/FireGL 13, 80

HP/ATI Workstation www.xw4300contest.com 31

Autodesk Media & Entertainment www.autodesk.com/mediaandentertainment 5, 81

Blackmagic Design www.blackmagic-design.com 1

BlueArc Corporation www.bluearc.com 57, 82

BOXX Technologies www.boxxtech.com 9, 83

Cyberware www.cyberware.com 61

D2 Software www.d2.com 59, 84

Dimension Printing www.dimensionprinting.com C2-1, 85

e-frontier www.e-frontier.com 43, 86

EOS Systems www.photomodeler.com/cgw 74

Eyeon Software, Inc. www.eyeonline.com 27, 87

Eyetronics www.eyetronics.com 15, 88

Hewlett-Packard www.newworkstation.com/CGW 19

Hewlett-Packard www.hp.com/workstations 37-40

Infortrend Technology, Inc. 408-988-5088 47, 89

IntegrityWare, Inc. 1-858-538-3800 73

Microway www.microway.com 29

NYU-SCPS www.scps.nyu.edu/x94 53

NVIDIA www.nvidia.com 90

NVIDIA Corporation www.nvidia.com 19

Okino Computer Graphics, Inc. www.okino.com 49

REALVIZ www.realviz.com 55, 91

Safe Harbor Computers 1-800-544-6599 71

Softimage-Avid www.softimage.com 77, C4

Soma Media www.soma-media.com 67

TerraMetrics, Inc. www.truearth.com 74

Thomson Course Technology PTR www.courseptr.com/animation 69

Vancouver Film School www.vfs.com 74

XI Computer www.xicomputer.com 76

◊ Polybagged outsert

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© 2005 Avid Technology, Inc. Al l r ights reserved. Product features, specif ications, system requirements and avai labi l i ty are subject to change without notice. Avid is a registered trademarkof Avid Technology, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Al ienbrain and the Al ienbrain logo are trademarks of NXN Software AG. Al l other trademarks contained herein are theproperty of their respective owners.

BrainpowerAvid Alienbrain Studio 7.1 has the intelligence to help your team work faster and smarter.

Its intuitive interface tells you more than the what, where and who of an asset. It tellsyou what an asset references, what it’s referenced by, and whether it’s buildable, it’soptimized, or it’s redundant. It knows what platform an asset is for and what shouldhappen to it next. It even knows an asset’s location in a texture map, its resolution inlevel three, and how much damage it inflicts when eaten. Alienbrain knows. You know.Your pipeline knows.

www.alienbrain.com

ASSET MANAGEMENT FOR CREATIVE TEAMS

[Other competitive solutions require multiple supportingpackages to handle our assets. With Alienbrain, everythingwe need is in one package.]

Christopher Bretz Art Director, Secret Level

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Witness the power of Avid Alienbrain Studio 7.1 at SIGGRAPH 05:Avid Computer Graphics Booth #1401.

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· Work with ten times the detail· Easy migration from Maya

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It’s really that easy.

Pre-order XSI v.5.0 now at softimage.com/five starting at $495*.

Experience XSI v.5.0 at Siggraph 2005 at the Avid Computer Graphics Booth #1401.

© 2005 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. *All prices are USMSRP for the U.S. and Canada only and are subject to change without notice.Contact your local Avid office or reseller outside U.S. and Canada. Product features, specifications, system requirements and availability are subjectto change without notice. SOFTIMAGE, Avid and XSI are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United Statesand/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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