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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
$4.95 USA $6.50 Canada
Animated shorts hit a high note with viewers
At Your ServiceService providers bring 3D scanning to studios
The Race Is OnProject Gotham Racing 3
revs up gaming
Hanging A ShingleThe ‘hidden costs’ of
opening your own shop
Music for the
Eyes
February 2006 www.cgw.com®
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COMPUTERCOMPUTER
GRAPHICS WORLDGRAPHICS WORLD
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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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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
W O R L DComputerAlso 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 FEBRUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 1
Departments
Editor’s Note 2
French Inspiration
France has always been known for art, and today, the country has carried over that tradition to the CG realm, teaching and inspiring digital artists to pursue their passions and dreams.
Spotlight 4
Products
Silhouette FX’s Silhouette Paint
Autodesk’s Discreet Combustion 4 for the Mac
Dosch Design’s Viz-Image series
Video Viewpoint 6Adobe’s Suite Production
As video turns digital, a host of new applications are becoming available. With its Production Suite, Adobe is ready to help users migrate to these new markets.
Portfolio 34Jiri Adamec
Digital Training 36A wide range of virtual tutoring and training options allow artists to master software at their own pace.
Reviews 38Bauhaus’s Mirage 1.5
Features
Cover storyShort and Sweet 10ANIMATION | Artists and fi lmmakers test new styles, equipment, and ideas with animated short fi lms, some of which may end up on this year’s Oscar short list.
By Barbara Robertson
Point Person 20SCANNING | 3D scanning technology is proving itself as an important studio modeling tool, and service providers are helping the facilities get this job done.
By Debra Kaufman
The Fast Track 26GAMING | Bizarre Creations revs up its Project Gotham Racing 3 franchise, injecting the title with fi lm-like effects running on the new Xbox 360 engine.
By Karen Moltenbrey
Starting a Small Studio 30BUSINESS TRENDS | Ready to hang your own shingle? Don’t forget the importance of location. Some other things to consider: planning for expenses, fi nding clients, and pricing your work.
By William “Proton” Vaughan
On the cover:Pixar’s “music men” told the story of the
studio’s animated short fi lm “One Man
Band” with music, not words. See pg. 10.
10
February 2006 • Volume 29 • Number 2
See www.cgw.com for a more
in-depth version of this article.
NEW@cgw.comWeb story exclusives:
The French Student RevolutionE-Magiciens in Valenciennes, France, showcases animation from some of the most creative students in the country. See the winning entries from this annual event.
Integration is KeyAt Autodesk University in Orlando, Florida, the crowds were big, but the emphasis on “keeping it digital throughout the production pipeline” was even bigger.
Iomega’s REV Drive Backs It UpCheck out this fi rsthand look at the Iomega REV 35GB/90GB drive, a low-cost, portable backup device that redefi nes the way data is archived and shared.
20
26
© 2
006
Pixa
r.
30
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2 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
editor
’sno
teKelly DoveEditor-in-Chief
French InspirationLively, captivating, and often dark, French animation continues to inspire
artists worldwide. And, in Valenciennes, France, art is more than pretty pictures;
it is a way of life—even for the local government.
On a recent trip to Lille and Valenciennes, two cosmopolitan towns near
Paris, I was introduced to a new way of teaching and inspiring artists to pur-
sue their passions while helping them to “achieve the dream.”
It all starts in the schools, where artists are put through rigorous testing to prove their
talents long before they are accepted into an art program. One such school, Supinfocom,
which I visited in Valenciennes, requires students to work on a project, such as a brand
identifi er for a mock company, creating a unique artistic treatment based on a strict list
of criteria. This type of project is a pre-qualifi er for admittance, and only a handful of
students will make the cut—space is limited, and only the crème de la crème students
will be fortunate enough to add the school to their resume. While it would certainly be
easy for the school to expand and admit students who have more promise (and money)
than talent, it’s pretty obvious the school’s leaders value a solid reputation more than a
hefty bank account. Also at Supinfocom is SupinfoGames, which offers similarly struc-
tured admittance requirements, but with a focus on game creation and development.
During the fi rst and second year, students at Supinfocom focus on design and ani-
mation using programs such as After Effects. Teamwork becomes vital in the third year
as groups of three and four students are challenged to use the latest 3D modeling and
animation software to create animated projects. Team-based learning is certainly not a
new concept. The challenge for the small team of students is to work together to create
an animated short—from start to fi nish—and compete against other classmates and stu-
dents from other schools at E-Magiciens, a small trade show and conference similar to
SIGGRAPH in the early days, only with an enormous animation festival/competition.
While there are certainly many training facilities in the US that offer team-based learn-
ing, most are focused on instructor-driven projects and ideas that utilize large groups of
students to produce an animated project. At Supinfocom, the average team size is three
students, and everyone is involved in each phase of the production
pipeline—from modeling and animation to compositing and edit-
ing of the fi nal project. Clearly, as the teams establish a rhythm, the
individual strengths of the team members are identifi ed, and the
team divides and conquers to meet their deadline. The ultimate
goal for the students is to be on the winning team at E-Magiciens;
winners are quickly recruited to join top studios.
Perhaps the most inspirational part of my trip was realized while visiting with The
Valenciennes Chamber of Commerce, and seeing fi rsthand its commitment to the DCC
community. The Chamber funds a business incubator with self-contained offi ces, where
content creators can move right in and get right to business, utilizing their talent with-
out worrying about overhead, business equipment, etc. The incubator has everything
you need—a boardroom, a small television studio, and even a cafeteria—to get business
off the ground. But the gravy train doesn’t last forever. There is a three-year time limit to
get established, and once companies are successful, they must move on to allow for new
businesses to incubate. It’s a commitment to the DCC community that cities in the States
should consider adopting to help more small studio owners “achieve the dream.”
Pretty pictures
help launch
small business
in France.
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4 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
spotlightE F F E C T S T O O L S
V I S U A L E F F E C T S
Your resource for products, user applications, news, and market research
PR
OD
UC
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I M A G E L I B R A R I E S
PR
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Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s Discreet Combus-
tion 4 visual effects software is now available for the
Mac OS. The latest release offers vector paint, particles,
effects animation, and 3D compositing for use in the cre-
ation of motion
pictures, episodic
television shows,
and commercials.
New features in
Combustion 4 in -
clude a diamond
keyer, time warp,
B-spline vector
shapes and group
pointing, custom
capsules, an optimized Gaussian Blur, merge operator,
and enhanced paint tools. Combustion 4 for the Mac is
priced at $995.
Ready for Combustion 4 on the Mac?
Silhouette Paint from Silhouette FX
offers a nondestructive motion-sta-
bilized paint tool for image resto-
ration, dust busting, and wire and
rig removal that the company says
can handle the demands of motion-
picture and television visual effects.
The product is available as an add-on
to Silhouette’s Roto application, a stand-
alone tool, or a plug-in for Adobe’s Final
Cut Pro and After Effects.
In addition to multi-layered match-
moving capabilities, Silhouette Paint
can nondestructively apply color, tint,
erase, blemish, mosaic, and grain
brushes to 8-bit, 16-bit, and fl oating-
point clips. To match a foreground ele-
ment, paint sources can be transformed
on the fl y by rotation, corner pinning,
and scaling in addition to being offset
in time or XY space. Four independent
clone sources are maintained simulta-
neously for added fl exibility.
Silhouette Paint can be integrated
with Silhouette Roto’s Shape tool for
motion tracking, variable-edge soft-
ness, and realistic motion blur. Brushes
can be applied to shape layers and auto-
matically matchmoved. Blemishes, for
example, can be automatically erased
over time. Silhouette Paint is priced at
$495 and Silhouette Roto sells for $595.
Silhouette FX Introduces Nondestructive Painting
See the Forest, the Trees, and the SignsDosch Design has introduced fi ve new collections in
its Dosch Viz-Images series, offering everything from
road signs and streetlamps to plants and trees. Three
new Road Sign libraries each have 500 images that
include hazard, right-of-way, speed limit, construc-
tion and tour-
ism signs and
symbols in
JPEG format.
The Forest
Trees collec-
tion features
100 trees, and the Urban Features collection includes
benches, hydrants, streetlamps, mailboxes, and more.
The images in these two collections are supplied in
uncompressed TIFF, PSD, and JPEG formats. All col-
lections support CAD, 3D design, and image-process-
ing programs, and are priced at $79 each.
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Introducing
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InspireYou are the creator. You look for inspiration everywhere. You want your work to inspire others. You constantly desire something that will take your designs to the next level, keep you competitive. Productive. You want to lead, not follow. Something great is here now.
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view
poin
tV
ideo
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 kathleen@jonpeddie.com.
6 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
By Kathleen Maher
Adobe has a long history in digital video with its Premiere and After Effects soft-
ware and, in piling it all into one box, the company is trying to give its customers what
they want—true compatibility between the different modules of the Production Studio,
better tools for collaboration, new presets for After Effects, more and better templates,
enhanced ease of use for DVD creation, and fundamental improvements in Audition.
The Pieces of the Production
Adobe’s newest release of Production Studio is available in two versions: Standard,
which includes After Effects 7.0, Premiere Pro 2.0, and Photoshop CS2 ($1199) and
Premium, which adds Audition 2.0, Encore DVD 2.0, and Illustrator CS2 ($1,699).
One of the guiding principles for Adobe’s development is that the use of Photoshop
and Illustrator is almost universal among creative professionals, making back-and-
forth compatibility a built-in advantage for Production Studio users right from the
start. Expanding on this, Adobe has created consistently similar environments for
Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition.
Taking intercommunication between the software programs even further, Adobe
has added Dynamic Link, which enables users to work smoothly within modules with-
out having to perform intermediate rendering. I talked to people who were already
using the Production Suite as beta testers for Adobe and they universally tipped their
hat to the power of Dynamic Link.
For example, Michael Kolowich of Diginovations in Concord, Massachusetts, works
with Adobe’s video products to create corporate videos for the area’s universities
and museums. He notes that the freedom of working interchangeably with Premiere
Someday video might replace
newspapers, e-mail, and even
magazines. Not that this would
necessarily be a good thing, but
video is becoming a signifi cant
form of mass communication.
And, as video goes digital, it becomes a
more fl uid medium, moving from the TV,
to the PC, to handheld devices. And it will
have to shape-shift accordingly. Adobe’s
latest lineup of video tools and utilities
is designed to keep up
with new applications for
video and to simplify the
lives of Adobe’s custom-
ers, which is not a simple
task by any stretch of the
imagination.
There are plenty of
contenders for the atten-
tion of video profession-
als, including Avid’s
Pinnacle line of products,
Sony’s Vegas+ DVD suite
and a swarm of upstarts
led by Sonic and Ulead,
Adobe appears to be aim-
ing directly at Apple.
Yet, Adobe is exploiting
several advantages—its
ownership of creative
tools such as Photoshop
and Illustrator (which are
ubiquitous in the indus-
try), its possession of PDF
(the de facto standard
for document exchange),
and its acquisition of
Macromedia’s Flash, a
leading format for small
form animation used
widely in phones and
on the Web.
Adobe
revamps
its video
products and
takes aim
at Apple.
Production Studio’s Bridge component is a centralized fi le browser with media management
capabili ties, allowing users to fi nd and work with all fi les related to projects within any of
the Production Suite modules.
Adobe’s Suite Production
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w w w . c g w . c o m FEBRUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 7
Pro and After Effects is “incalculable.”
Interoperability, notes Kolowich, actually
makes the programs more powerful than
they would be on their own. For example,
he says that one of the aspects of video
that separates professionals from amateurs
is the skillful use of animated titles. He
has been able to take advantage of Adobe’s
inclusion of text animation and presets in
After Effects since the last introduction of
Adobe’s Production Suite, but now feels
like it is an embedded utility. “It’s like the
Adobe Titler on steroids,” he says.
Other work fl ow improvements in
the Production Suite include Bridge,
Adobe’s name for its centralized fi le
browser with media management that
helps users fi nd and work with all the
fi les related to projects within any of the
Production Suite modules. Also, Adobe
has added DVD creation to its Premiere
Pro program, recognizing that users
may need to quickly output a DVD with
good-looking menus rather than go to
Encore to create a professional-level DVD
designed for distribution.
Adobe’s attention to work fl ow issues
speaks to some of the challenges its cus-
tomers face. A large part of the video
professional market is made up of small
studios—owners are very often the cre-
ative director, the videographer, and the
IT person. For the small house, work
fl ow and communication can be particu-
larly challenging because it involves the
shooting and editing of sound and video,
delivery, client input, and so on.
Chris Randall of Edit 1 Media specializes in wedding vid-
eos and corporate videos. In fact, he fi nds that one business
often feeds the other. Most of the time, Randall and his team
will shoot the video while Randall’s wife takes over the editing
tasks. Randall favors the new multicam features in Premiere
Pro to simultaneously view and work with multiple sources,
since the workloads at small production houses can be stagger-
ing. In fact, he recently was editing 15 video projects simulta-
neously. Randall notes anything that helps make his job easier
and reduce editing time goes straight to his bottom line.
Videographers are also coming to grips with the transi-
tion to HD. Interestingly, video producers are fi nding that
even their wedding clients are becoming interested in HD
video because they’re buying high-def large screen TVs
and looking ahead. Corporate clients are likewise moving
to HD, and, of course, the broadcast industry is racing to get to HD. But the other
reality of video is that it’s big and demanding. Luckily, hardware manufacturers
are coming to the rescue. To keep up with the trend, Adobe has added support for
the Aja Xena HS and also native support for HDV. In addition, Adobe’s support for
OpenGL gives hardware graphics boards the ability to accelerate processes. One
of the most obvious advantages will be support for high dynamic range imagery,
thanks to OpenGL, and also support for effects and plug-ins.
Adobe was among the fi rst to spawn a plug-in community with its SDK for Photoshop
Encore DVD’s fl owchart simplifi es organization when creating interactive
menus, multiple audio tracks, subtitle tracks, and more.
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w w w . c g w . c o m FEBRUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 9
and, later, for After Effects. It is continu-
ing the effort by reaching outto third-party
partners in video hardware, such as Aja,
for example, and also audio hardware
partners, third-party software developers,
training program developers, and expert
support. The evolution of OpenGL and
Adobe’s enthusiastic exploitation of the
API defi nitely opens up new opportunities
for hardware and software developers.
Adobe has made several signifi cant
improvements to Audition and, as a
result, believes many customers will be
able to work totally within Audition, and
not rely on additional products for audio
work. Features, such as support for ASIO
(Audio Stream Input/Output) for multi-
channel hardware, puts Audition more
fi rmly within the realm of professional
audio products, and Frequency Space
Editing lets users zero in on a particular
sound, or frequency, to actually see the
area that needs work.
The Bottom Line
As always, it’s not about the pieces, it’s
about the whole. Much of the Adobe
Production Studio has been evolving to
this point—some of the features, such
as presets, titles, frequency space edit-
ing for Audition, and so on, were actu-
ally included in earlier versions of the
software. Nor are these features unique,
but they are necessary. Apple’s Final Cut
Pro, for example, has multi-cam features,
Apple introduced Motion to compete with
After Effects, and Apple has very strong
audio editing tools. What’s most impor-
tant is the way the pieces fi t together and
the way in which they enable people to
work with each other creatively. Perhaps
one of the most revolutionary additions
to the Creative Suite Production Studio
won’t even be realized until the prod-
uct is used in the creative commu-
nity. Adobe has enhanced its Acrobat
PDF format to work with video content,
allowing collaborators and customers to
attach notes for items such as sequence
fi xes, additions, deletions, etc.
And, some of the real changes in
the use of video are just taking shape.
Kolowich is encour-
aged by the poten tial
of the wide-ranging
hosts for video and the
merger between Adobe
and Macromedia. As a
former executive with
Lotus and publisher at
Ziff-Davis. Kolowich
is also a veteran of the
vast changes in work
habits caused by digi-
tal technology and the
arrival of the Internet.
In his work with college marketing he sees giant change coming as kids who grew
up swimming in digital media reach college and the workplace. “It’s a tsunami,” he
says of the change in media that’s on the way. As a video producer, he sees that radi-
cal new ways of working will have to be developed to create content suitable for HD
and content that can be sent to mobile phones, media players, and online. Kids, he
believes, will treat video just like they treat words, pictures, and music.
With Production Studio, Adobe is concentrating on the professional side of the
equation but with key technologies in video and communications, Adobe is well
positioned to ride the wave as it changes our concept of media.
Audition’s Spectral View can be used to apply effects or edits to
select frequencies of a particular time span.
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10 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Animation
Short and For m
any, the art
of animatio
n reaches it
s highest
peak in the
smallest m
edium—sho
rt animated fi
lms. Free f
rom the
strictures of
box-offi ce a
ppeal and c
lient approv
als, these ar
tists expres
s personal
ideas, test s
tyles, and s
ometimes s
imply have
fun. Largely
invisible to
the mass m
arket, the
primary ven
ues for thes
e short pro
jects are fi lm
festivals an
d animation
festivals.
Each year, t
hough, the
Academy o
f Motion Pi
cture Arts a
nd Sciences
honors one
short anim
ated
fi lm with an
Oscar and
at least thre
e with Osca
r nominatio
ns. To quali
fy for the O
scar race, t
he short m
ust
have won a
n Academy
-qualifi ed fe
stival or op
ened in a th
eater. The s
hort-fi lm br
anch of the
Academy n
arrows
the qualifyin
g fi lms into
a smaller g
roup, from
which they
announce
three to fi ve
nominees
in late Janua
ry. Academ
y
members vo
te on the no
minees duri
ng Februar
y, and this y
ear’s Oscar w
inner will b
e announce
d March 5.
Of the fi lm
s likely to b
e on the Ac
ademy’s se
cret list of n
omination c
andidates t
his year, on
ly two were
ani-
mated solely
with 3D co
mputer gra
phics tools:
Pixar’s “On
e Man Band
” and Shan
e Acker’s “
9,” which w
on Best in
Show at SIG
GRAPH 200
5. Two oth
er shorts, th
ough—An
thony Luca
s’s “The M
ysterious G
eographic E
xplorations
of Jasper M
orello,” wh
ich won th
e Grand Pr
ix at the pr
estigious 2
005 Annecy
Internation
al Film Festiv
al, and Céd
ric
Babouche’s
“Imago,” w
hich has tak
en honors a
t several fes
tivals—used
a 2D/3D m
ix: 2D chara
cters in 3D
back-
grounds. In
addition, m
any advoca
tes of hand
-drawn fi lm
s use comp
uter softwa
re these da
ys, if only to
edit and
composite
their scann
ed images,
as did Joh
n Canemak
er for his fi
lm “The M
oon and th
e Son.” The
other fi lm
s
likely up fo
r nominee c
onsideratio
n are the tr
aditionally
animated “
Badgered”
by Sharon
Colman, w
hich
received a S
tudent Osc
ar nominat
ion, “The F
an and the
Flower,” a
black-and-
white hand
-drawn ani-
mation by B
ill Plympton,
and Michae
l Sporn’s “T
he Man W
ho Walked
Between th
e Towers,”
which is ba
sed on the
2004 Cald
ecott Meda
l-winning ch
ildren’s boo
k.
Chances ar
e, three of
these fi lms
will be nom
inated for th
e Oscar. An
d through
these proje
cts, artists
have demo
nstrated th
at animatio
n can be as
rich a
medium as
live-action
fi lms.
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w w w . c g w . c o m FEBRUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 11
Animation. . . .
Pixar rarely enters its short fi lms in com-
petition these days. Instead, the Oscar-
winning studio releases a short with each
feature fi lm and showcases the fi lms at
festivals, albeit out of competition. To
qualify for this Oscar race, the studio qui-
etly screened its “One Man Band” in a
commercial theater. The short’s world pre-
miere, though, was at Annecy, and its US
premiere during the December opening
of the Pixar exhibition of artwork at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Directed by Mark Andrews and Andrew
Jimenez, “One Man Band” takes place
in an old-world piazza. There, a peasant
child about to toss a coin into a fountain
becomes the focus of a musical sparring
match between a tired, tune-making regu-
lar and a charming, fl ashy new performer.
Bass, the piazza’s one-man band regu-
lar, has his arms fi lled with an accordion,
drum, tuba, clarinet, cymbals, and a few
horns. Treble, the energetic upstart, wields
bows and piccolos. At fi rst, each upstages
the other in turn, but soon the compe-
tition for the little girl’s coin turns into a
cacophony, with both musicians playing at
the same time, one on each side of the girl,
until she . . . well, that would be a spoiler.
Sometimes Pixar creates short fi lms to
exercise new technology; sometimes the
fi lms exercise new talents. This fi lm gave
several artists, from lead animator Angus
MacLane to the directors, their fi rst supervi-
sory opportunities. “Our biggest gain on this
fi lm is that we had new people in every lead-
ership role,” says producer Osnat Shurer.
The fi lm originated as a challenge from
Ed Catmull, Pixar’s founder and presi-
dent, to Andrews and Jimenez.
The pair had followed
di rec tor Brad Bird to
the studio to create
storyboards for The
In cred ibles. Before
that, both had
worked on Bird’s
The Iron Giant.
“He asked i f
we’d l ike to do a
short,” says Andrews
of Catmull’s challenge.
“So, we did lunch and
tried to come up with an
idea. But we kept coming
up with ideas for features.
We had to define the
parameters for a short.” In addition to
length, they listed the following: a single
idea that an audience can get in 10 to 15
seconds, variations on that idea which
predict an outcome, a twist on the pre-
dictable outcome, one or two characters,
and one environment. With this list in
mind, they developed three stories: one
from Andrews, one from Jimenez, and a
third, which became “One Man Band.”
“We’re both musicians, so we won-
dered what we could do with music,”
says Andrews. “That’s how we came up
with the image of a one-man band.”
Then, they added a second character.
“Our idea was to have one character
who is good at something (but doesn’t try
very hard) challenged by someone younger
and better,” says Jimenez. “We showed
the ideas to John [Lasseter, the executive
producer] and he lasered in on this one.
He said, ‘I can see Andy in that character
[Treble] and Mark in the other one [Bass].”
At fi rst, the directors sketched story-
boards that had the musicians perform-
ing for a crowd. Eventually, the crowd
began to shrink until the audience com-
prised a mother and a little girl, and then,
only the child. One reason for the change
was the budget. “The short-fi lm directors
learn to work within creative boundar-
ies,” says Shurer. “There are per-charac-
ter costs and set costs.”
Adds Andrews: “We had to focus on
the center and go for that, and work
with economies of time and
emotion.”
Once the crowd
shrank, the story
changed. “When we
got rid of the crowd,
it gave the fi lm
heart,” says Jimenez.
“Before that, it was
just two guys fi ght-
ing.”
Because the “dialog”
in the story is the music
played by the two per-
formers, the directors
needed a musical score
before they started produc-
tion. Michael Giacchino,
who scored The Incredibles, composed
two themes that escalate and then over-
lap when the one-man bands play simul-
taneously. An orchestra of 38 musicians
played the music.
SweetCG shorts enable digital f i lmmakers to explore
novel styles, stories, and techniques
One Man Band
The character Tinny holds the
coin that prompted a battle of
the one-man bands in Pixar
Animation Studios’ latest short.
© 2006 Pixar.
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12 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Animation
“[Lasseter] said it had to sound like
live music,” notes Jimenez, “like real
people were playing it. So, we recorded
the sounds of fi ngers sliding on metal.”
Although the animators sometimes
had the characters accurately play the
notes from the sound track, the two
one-man bands don’t have enough
fi ngers to match the music through-
out the fi lm. Instead, judicious use of
close-up shots of fi ngers on strings and cheeks puffed out to
blow horns convince the audience that the characters are creat-
ing the complex sounds.
The number of instruments became an interesting challenge
for the technical team: Each character had many surfaces. “Each
surface needs a shader, a texture map, and application space,”
says Bill Polson, supervising technical director. “You’d open up
a character, and the list of shaders would scroll up and down
the page—10 kinds of brass, the felt on the keys for the trum-
pet plungers, 10 kinds of wood...it goes on and on.” Although
the studio has built an infrastructure to handle that complexity
for the upcoming feature Cars, that infrastructure didn’t exist for
Finding Nemo or for “One Man Band.”
“Our pipeline at that point hadn’t handled characters with 400
or 500 shaders attached to them—it’s not like a fi sh that has four
or fi ve,” Lucas says, “so we just carried around big data fi les.”
To create the city surrounding the piazza, the team began
with six buildings. “If you look at a building from one angle,
you see one arrangement of windows and doors,” says Polson.
“If you turn it 180 degrees, you see a different arrangement.” So,
by rotating the six buildings, they created 12 variations. Five
different roofs and three types of shutters randomly placed in
open and closed positions created additional variations, as did
a mixture of shaders.
“A savvy CG person will see that it’s a parts kit, but the aver-
age viewer will probably see a city,” says Polson.
The crew also used matte paintings in the background and
in the foreground. “If you see shrubbery, that’s a matte painting,”
says Polson. “Our rule is that if we model a building, that’s how
we make a building, and we’ll use it all the way into the back-
ground for continuity. If it’s too heavy, we’ll decimate it. We don’t
have near buildings one way and far ones another way, because
then we’d have to worry about matching.” There is one exception:
The tile roofs on distant buildings were rendered onto cards.
For lighting, the directors made a painterly choice. “The
Zen of lighting was that we had light over dark over light over
dark,” says Polson. That is, they’d place a brightly lit character
in front of something dark, such as a building, and that building
would be in front of something bright, which would be in front
of something dark. To make this lighting seem logical, they cre-
ated a cloudy day, which made it possible to place the characters
in pools of light. Haze fi lters softened any brightly lit buildings.
Pixar uses its own RenderMan for rendering, outputting the
scenes in numerous layers, which were composited in Apple’s Shake.
“With this fi lm, we had a wonderful opportunity to work
with an existing, stable pipeline rather than the latest, greatest
stuff,” says Polson. “I’m becoming a real advocate for that in the
studio.” —Barbara Robertson
Australian animator Anthony Lucas of
3-D Films turned 2D cutouts, stop-
motion animation, and 3D backgrounds
into a 28-minute Gothic horror/mystery/
adventure that has taken the festivals by
storm. It’s a science-fi ction fi lm set in
the past and fi lled with Victorian Rube
Goldberg machines—steam-powered
computers and iron airships.
“It’s a ‘steampunk adventure,’” says
Lucas. “William Gibson did a steam-
punk book set within an alternate uni-
verse in Victorian times. It doesn’t come
from that, but having fi nished the fi lm,
I fi nd myself in that genre.” Instead,
Lucas was inspired by writers Edgar
Allan Poe and Jules Verne.
Although Lucas typically works with
stop-motion characters, the stars of this
fi lm are silhouettes: 2D cutouts. “The
adventure takes place in an alternate uni-
verse where light doesn’t refl ect,” Lucas
explains. “That’s why the characters are
silhouettes. Also, I like the look of it. I
guess I worked out a reason for why this
world is like it is.”
The fi lm is set in the clouds; there is
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
The “One Man Band” musicians Treble (at left) and Bass (at right) were modeled after directors
Andy Jimenez and Mark Andrews, respectively. Each character required several hundred shaders.
© 2006 Pixar.
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Ultimate Dream Machine.
(254-3692)www.alienware.com/creative 1.800.ALIENWARE
MJ-12® 7550a Workstation
Starting at $1,759
Alienware® recommends Microsoft® Windows® XP.
“We continue to test drive all of our titles on high-performance Alienware computers. They have become an integral part of the production process at EA and a powerful tool for our development teams.”
Sean DeckerExecutive Producer
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14 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Animation
no ground. The star, Jasper Morello, is an
aerial navigator who embarks on a dan-
gerous voyage and, along the way, must
take desperate measures to save his wife.
Lucas started with a script and story-
boards—600 drawings by storyboard
artist David Cook. From those, the crew
created animatics. Then, they redid the
storyboards. “We photographed bits of
junk, like car engines and hubcaps, and
made the backgrounds out of that in
[Adobe’s] Photoshop,” says Lucas. “Then
we put proxies of our characters over these
backgrounds to create new storyboards.
As the scenes came up, I’d print the pages
and throw them in front of the animators.”
The animators used those poses—cre-
ated for about every 12 frames—to com-
plete the animation. Animators worked
with CelAction’s CelAction2D software
to create the characters, animating them
on white backgrounds as if they were live-
action actors on greenscreen stages. “You
make a fi gure as a 2D object, and hinge
it like a puppet,” explains Lucas. “It’s
classic cutout animation. We give it a 3D
spin—they look 3D when they turn their
heads, but they’re not.”
Because the characters are always sil-
houetted, they’re always jet-black, although
the fl at planes have a bit of texture to cre-
ate such detail as buttons. The posed sil-
houettes are output as Photoshop fi les. “We
slide the Photoshop fi les on top of each
other to make it look like the characters
turn around,” explains Lucas.
To create the iron fl yingships that fl oat
through the sky, the crew used Autodesk
Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max; to
create the clouds, they used (Autodesk)
Maya particles. Compositors then com-
bined all these images in Autodesk’s
Discreet Combustion, and added glows
and color tints to the scene. “We put a tint
throughout the fi lm, and the tint changes,”
says Lucas. “Because this is an alternate
universe that echoes Victorian times, or
maybe even longer ago because there’s
still a plague, we wanted a sepia look all
the way through. But, we changed the tint
to echo locations.” Jungles are green, for
example; ice is cool blue.
The characters, however, are always
black. “I didn’t want the characters to look
like normal CG things,” Lucas says. “I
adore Pixar fi lms. As a short fi lmmaker, I
loved ‘Boundin’.’ My kid loved ‘Boundin’.’
Anything with hope in that abundance
should be promoted. But we aren’t Pixar.
This is an independent fi lm. We were
going for a graphic style. If you do cheap,
low-level 3D, it’s not very sexy.”
At 28 minutes, Lucas’s short anima-
tion is rather long, yet its cinematic quality
has caused reviewers to ask for more. And,
Lucas has begun working on ways to con-
tinue the story—with more half-hour seg-
ments and, perhaps, as a feature.
It certainly sounds like hope has
found its way to this animation studio in
Australia, too. —Barbara Robertson
For “Jasper Morello,” director Anthony Lucas
created an environment using photographs
and 3D clouds, made 3D machines, and then
placed animated 2D “cutout” characters into
the environment.
The Moon and the SonFilm historian, author, teacher, animator, and director of the
animation program at New York University’s Tisch School of
the Arts, John Canemaker created a 28-minute animated imagi-
nary conversation with his father that recently won the Fabrizio
Bellocchio Prize for Best Social Content at the I Castelli Animati
animation festival in Genzano, Italy. Film historian Leonard
Maltin calls the animation, titled “The Moon and the Son,”
Canemaker’s “most personal work ever—and his most brilliant.”
Canemaker writes, “I made this fi lm to resolve long-stand-
ing emotional issues I have with my late father. I wanted to fi nd
answers to our diffi cult relationship, to understand the reasons
he was always a feared fi gure in my childhood, why he was
always angry and defensive, verbally and physically abusive,
and often in trouble with the law.”
“The Moon and the Son,” which features the voices of actors
Eli Wallach and John Turturro as father and son, respectively,
was traditionally drawn.
Even so, the fi lm was cut and sound effects were added
with an Avid system; the composure used Apple’s Logic Pro
to compose, print, and mix the music, and Adobe’s Photoshop
to scan and edit three of the scenes. Apple’s Final Cut Pro
helped the team put it all together. —Barbara Robertson
Animator John
Canemaker uses
drawings to per-
sonify emotions
on the screen and
make what’s in
the mind become
alive in his fi lm.
© 2
004
3D F
ilms
/ AFC
/ SB
Si /
Film
Vic
tori
a.Im
ages
co
urt
esy
Joh
n C
anem
aker
.
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16 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Animation
Created by Cédric Babouche of Sacrebleu
Productions in Paris, “Imago” tells the
story of Antoine, who lost his father in a
plane crash. “He loved his father so much,”
says Babouche, “that he created his own
world to share secret moments with him.
Because he is a child, his perception of
reality comes from fairy tales. So, he
transforms the special moments he spent
with his father into metaphorical dreams.
Because they spent a lot of time near a
tree at the seaside, the tree became a sym-
bol, and when it disappears in a storm, he
understands that he has to grow up.”
The inspiration for this fi lm came from
Hayao Miyazaki’s fi lm Porco Rosso, in
which a plane crashes into a tree. “When I saw that beautiful pic-
ture of the plane crash, I said I would like to use the spirit of that
image for a project,” Babouche says. “Also, my father is a very
special person who I don’t see a lot and don’t really know. So this
fi lm talks about the feeling of missing somebody and the way we
can create our own world to fi ll loneliness.”
The characters in “Imago” are 2D; the backgrounds, 3D.
Babouche used Crater Software’s CTP software for the 2D ani-
mation line tests, Adobe’s Photoshop for painting the scanned
drawings, Cambridge Animation Systems’ Animo for timing,
Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max and the com-
pany’s Maya for 3D, and Adobe’s After Effects and Autodesk’s
Discreet Combustion for compositing.
The fi lmmaker started with a hand-
drawn storyboard, which he scanned
into Photoshop to work on the lighting.
“It’s really important for me to show what
the light will look like as soon as I can,”
he says.
Babouche also created nearly 100
backgrounds by hand. He started with
a 2B pencil on paper, colored the draw-
ings with watercolors and ink, and then
scanned them into Photoshop. He compos-
ited the sequences in Combustion using
that software program’s Particle Illusions
for effects. “Compositing was the most
important step because of the mix of 2D
and 3D,” says Babouche. “I didn’t want to
use any 3D lighting, which is colder than 2D lights, so I drew all
the shadows and lights with masks in After Effects.”
Babouche began working on the script in October 2003, and
began production in July 2004. He fi nished the following April.
He now plans to use the same process to create a feature fi lm for
which he’s nearly completed a script.
“I don’t want to use only 3D because I like the freedom water-
color offers,” Babouche says. “I want my future projects to look
like illustrations.”
Barbara Robertson is an award-winning journalist and a contrib-
uting editor for Computer Graphics World. She can be reached at
BarbaraRR@comcast.net.
Imago
The junkyard world inhabited by the lit-
tle burlap-covered characters of Shane
Acker’s short fi lm, “9,” is a large and scary
one. Though it offers the characters plenty
of opportunities for scavenging—which
seems to be their principal occupation—
it’s also home to a malevolent predator
that hunts them relentlessly. How the main
character, 9, responds to this challenge is a
triumph of reason over instinct, or brain over
brawn. Or, just possibly, good over evil.
A thoughtful plot, with edge-of-your-
seat action and richly detailed and origi-
nal modeling and animation have earned
“9” numerous awards—including Best in
Show at SIGGRAPH’s 2005 Electronic
Theater—making it eligible as an Oscar
contender in the short-fi lm category. The
nine-minute CG fi lm has attracted so
much attention, in fact, that it is going
to be developed into a feature fi lm, with
Acker directing and Tim Burton and oth-
ers aboard as producers.
Success of this magnitude seemed
worlds away during the four and a half
years that Acker spent working on “9.”
He began the fi lm as his thesis project
while a student at UCLA’s Animation
Workshop. He started out with a bit of a
handicap, however: His background was
in drawing and 2D animation, and “9”
marked his fi rst exposure to 3D. Thus, it
was a case of baptism by fi re.
“I bit off more than I could chew with
‘9,’” Acker admits. In fact, the fi lm proved
so diffi cult and time-consuming that
Acker ended up taking periodic breaks
from it (including a stint working on The
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for
Weta Digital) in order to earn a living.
One thing that kept Acker going over
the years was the strength of his original
For “Imago,” French animator Cédric
Babouche placed hand-drawn animated
characters on 3D and painted backgrounds.
9
Imag
e co
urt
esy
Céd
ric
Bab
ou
che.
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C A L L 8 8 8 . T O P. C I T Y O R V I S I T O R L A N D O E D C . C O M
where companies dream in hypercolor.
Business is busting at the seams for Orlando’s digital
media sector. Home to top-notch studios like Electronic
Arts, specialized higher-ed training programs, and the
world’s largest concentration of simulation developers,
it’s no wonder companies around here are so animated.
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18 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Animation
concept. “I had the idea of these little rag
doll creatures that would pick through
their environment,” he explains. That
environment would be more or less post-
apocalyptic, and the rag dolls would rep-
resent the beginning of a new civilization.
In a rough parallel to the way life might
have been for our primitive hunter-gath-
erer ancestors, the rag doll characters look
fairly helpless, but they get by using their
wits. “They’re diminutive in scale,” says
Acker, “and they’re living in an oppressive
world, yet they’re sort of good-natured.”
Another source of inspiration for Acker
was stop-motion animation, especially the
surreal and sometimes downright creepy
works of artists such as the Brothers Quay,
Jan Svankmajer, and the Lauenstein broth-
ers. Acker admired their style, but viewed
it as a jumping-off point.
Acker began work on “9” with the story
itself—an 18-panel storyboard that started
with the main action scene, in which 9 is
pursued by the fi lm’s villain, a mechani-
cal cat-beast. At that point, Acker decided
that a lot more setup was required in order
to invest viewers in the action, so he added
another character—a mentor, called 5—
and also a fl ashback scene that would help
explain the challenges and motivations of
the fi lm’s hero, 9.
Then, Acker created an animatic that
was so highly detailed, “it was almost a
true 2D fi lm—or something in between a
traditional animatic and a 2D fi lm.”
The next step was learning to use 3D
modeling and animation tools—albeit while
he was creating the fi lm. Acker maintains
that “drawing is at the heart” of his fi lm,
though he very much wanted to make use
of CG animation to suggest the stop-motion
look he admired. The fi lmmaker estimates
that he spent about two and a half years
in the preproduction phase of the movie,
doing modeling, rigging, matte paintings,
and so forth, all the while learning to use
Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s Maya.
When it was fi nally time for anima-
tion, that original animatic proved invalu-
able. Acker used it as a kind of road map,
replacing the 2D animation with 3D. In
fact, he notes, the animatic was a kind of
anchor for the fi lm: Since he had to work
on it between paying gigs, it was good for
him to be able to have the animatic as a
guide so he wouldn’t lose focus.
Acker employed keyframing for all the
animation in the fi lm. The cat-beast and its
movements are among the achievements
in the fi lm of which Acker is proudest. The
character is made of cat bones, including a
cat skull, that are interlaced with a metal
armature. The cat-beast moves with a cat’s
sense of purpose, but there is something a
bit reptilian about it as well. Like the rag
doll creatures, the beast is a scavenger, but
also collects living things, and has a grue-
some way of using them literally to add
onto itself. Whatever the creature’s moti-
vations, it clearly wants something that the
rag dolls have. “It recognizes their souls
in them, and is attempting to become like
them,” explains Acker.
In order to create the variety of tex-
tures that are an important part of
Acker’s artistic achievement, he became
a scavenger himself. He collected items
with interesting textures that he could
photograph, scan, and then manipu-
late in Adobe’s Photoshop. He also pho-
tographed broken-down parts of Los
Angeles that would add interest to his CG
environment of urban decay.
Acker employed Maya for lighting and
rendering. “I didn’t use a lot of raytrac-
ing,” he says, explaining that he was aim-
ing at a less-than-real environment that
was somewhat painterly. In fact, there are
quite a few large matte paintings used in
the fi lm. To composite the imagery, the
fi lmmaker used Adobe’s After Effects.
Since “9” has no dialog, the characters’
actions must tell the story. And though
the main plot is simple enough in scope,
the fi lm is full of many small and telling
details—actions that seem random at the
time but turn out to have great signifi cance
later on. Moreover, there are some little
jokes throughout the fi lm. The cat-beast,
for example, hunts for nine characters, or
nine lives. And there is the almost requisite
Pixar-type lamp, albeit a rusty version.
All in all, though, says Acker, he is
happy with the decayed, down-and-out
look and feel of the fi lm. “It’s hyper-
detailed, but it’s also stylized and paint-
erly,” he says. Certainly his attention to
the grit and grime of urban decay has paid
off in that despite its bleakness, there’s a
lot to see in this junkyard world.
In the end, the hero’s brains, and his
use of tools, win the day. The 9 character
rescues the souls of his predecessors, and
in the fi nal scene, seems to be leaving his
bleak world, traveling alone. It’s a hope-
ful scene, and it also sets him up for fur-
ther adventures that just could happen in
the forthcoming feature fi lm.
Jenny Donelan is a contributing editor
for Computer Graphics World. She can be
reached at jdonelan@adelphia.net.
Like the characters he created for “9,” fi lmmaker Shane Acker himself became a scavenger
of sorts, collecting various textures for the bleak setting of his animated short.
Imag
e cou
rtesy Shan
e Acker.
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. . . . Scanning
20 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
lthough modeling and anima-
tion software—and the images
they create—tend to be the
stars of the computer graphics industry,
3D scanning plays a quiet but integral
role in the origin of many digital mod-
els, from props and maquettes to celeb-
rities and stunt actors. Initially, the CG
industry had been fairly slow to embrace
the technology. Today, however, the use
of 3D scanning is prevalent throughout
the entertainment realm, and new appli-
cations continue to emerge.
Cyber-scanning technology was devel-
oped over two decades ago by Cyberware
(Monterrey, CA) as a family hobby,
the brainchild of a retired aero-
space engineer, his artist
wife, and their computer
programmer son.
“My dad wanted
to make a
kind of
sculpting machine that measured the
human face accurately and quickly,” says
Cyberware vice president Steve Addleman,
another son of the inventor. “The device
was hooked to a computer-controlled mill-
ing machine that would carve an image
of what was scanned.” A head scan took
17 seconds, and the resulting carved foam
bust could be completed in a few hours.
What started as a small venture aimed
at artists and sculptors took a huge leap
forward thanks to powerful Silicon
Graphics computers, which, for the fi rst
time, enabled the scanned data to be ren-
dered as a surface. “You could actually see
the data,” recalls Addleman. Soon after,
Hollywood came knocking—in the form of
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986. For
a special effects scene in which the heads
of the bridge crew rolled out of the fog, a
seamless look required computer graphics,
and the project began with scans of the
Star Trek crew’s heads. After that success-
ful experience, Hollywood became a fairly
frequent client of 3D scanning.
The US Air Force was one of the fi rst
groups to identify the value of digital scan-
ning outside the entertainment realm. The
Air Force worked with physical anthropol-
ogists to achieve precise measurements of
the human body, to arrive at standards
for helmets and suits. To achieve this goal,
the military branch provided the money
for Cyberware to develop a full-body scan-
ner that could get the job done quickly—
“a person can only stand still for 15 to 20
seconds,” Addleman points out.
The resulting full-body scanner com-
prised a precise motion system and four
scan heads mounted onto horizontal
arms on tall towers. The new device also
scanned color and, per the Air Force’s
requirement, was “portable” (large trucks
could transport it).
With its focus on designing new 3D
scanners, Cyberware transitioned from
a service provider to a scanning equip-
ment manufacturer; the company
continues to sell customized
scanners for a wide range
Point Person Service providers give studios
easy access to 3D scanning
By Debra Kaufman
A
Service
provider Gen-
tle Giant used its
Cyberware systems
to acquire scanned data
of actor Michael Caine (top
of page) for the effects in the
Austin Powers movie Goldmember.
Imag
e cou
rtesy Gen
tle Gian
t.
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w w w . c g w . c o m FEBRUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 21
Scanning. . . .
of uses, from archaeology to industrial
design and the military. The company’s
products include the original head scan-
ners, small- and large-object scanners,
and the whole-body scanner, all priced
between $20,000 and $400,000.
Dedicated to Service
According to Addleman, there is a rea-
son why Hollywood fi lm-production
companies and computer game devel-
opers utilize scanning services, rather
than purchasing scanners themselves.
“The scanners are very productive, so it’s
more effi cient for clients to buy the time
rather than the scanner,” he says. A fi lm,
game, or TV commercial can take advan-
tage of the specialized skills of a service
bureau’s experienced staff without incur-
ring the cost of the equipment. They can
also benefi t from the latest technology
developments and customized solutions.
Some of the recent advancements in
the technology include increased reso-
lution and higher-quality texture maps.
Increasing the measured points on a sur-
face provides more detail—for instance,
the valley of a wrinkle or the break of a
lip. Visual effects clients also want high-
quality texture maps with a full range
of colors. “The original systems had one
color value for every X, Y, Z location, or
point,” explains Addleman. “Now, high-
res systems have 16 times the number of
color values, and they’re located on and
in between every X, Y, Z location, which
enables the image to bear much closer
inspection. But it’s still not enough.”
While Cyberware proved the initial
value of 3D scanning, other companies
in recent years have fostered the technol-
ogy’s growth and usage, particularly in
the entertainment industry, by offering
scanning services.
Upping the ante is researcher Paul
Debevec at the Institute for Creative Tech-
nologies in Marina del Rey, California,
where an image-based lighting technique
is being applied to the human face. This
process enables the capture of the human
face from every direction that light can
pass, which results in a perfect-fi delity
image of the face. Debevec’s latest appli-
cation enables the capture of the human
face from arbitrary camera viewpoints
and in performance, which Sony Pictures
Imageworks used to generate digital faces
in Spider-Man 2 and Weta Digital used for
Naomi Watts’s face in King Kong.
Debevec says that although typical 3D
scanning does indeed result in texture
maps for the face and body, it imposes lim-
itations. “If you map a person’s face onto
nicely scanned geometry, you’ve wrapped
a photo around the face,” he
says. “You can only change
that by editing out the
effects of lighting and then
resimulating them, which is
diffi cult. This method cap-
tures shading that tells us
how the face responds to
light, independent of
the illumination
it’s captured in.”
Gentle Giant
Founded in 1995,
Gentle Giant (Bur-
bank, CA) got its
start sculpting physi-
cal maquettes for ani-
mation studios and toy
manufacturers. “We’d
often sculpt a perfect likeness [of an
object], take it into the studio for approval,
and they’d say, ‘Great, but it needs to be 10
percent larger,’’’ recalls Steve Chapman,
vice president of technology. “And we’d
have to resculpt the entire thing by hand.
Then it occurred to us that if we could
digitally scan [the model] and then out-
put it on a 3D printer (rapid-prototyping
machine), that problem would be solved.”
In 1997, Gentle Giant bought a Cyber-
ware scanner, and soon after, started
investing in more 3D scanners and more
printers. And, business boomed.
Whereas many scanning service
bureaus serve several industries, 99 per-
cent of Gentle Giant’s business is from
visual effects facilities serving the motion-
picture industry. According to Chapman,
Gentle Giant’s work sometimes begins in
the preproduction phase of a project, with
the creation of designs and sculptures
for characters; other times, the group
becomes involved in the production phase,
scanning actors and props on set.
How the team provides the resulting
datasets to the VFX companies depends
on the client. “[Industrial Light & Magic],
for example, has an intrinsic work fl ow
for dealing with scanned data, so we give
them raw data,” says Chapman. “Other
companies may not have the employees to
process the data from raw points to some-
thing animatable, so we’ll do it for them.”
Rhythm & Hues recently had Gentle
Giant scan actors, maquettes, and props
for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe. “We probably did
100 cyber scans for the fi lm,” recounts Bill
Westenhofer, the studio’s visual effects
supervisor. “They did a lot of the polygon
cleanup, and we got a high-res scan. Then
we created a low-res model that’s specifi c
to our needs for animation.
Processing the data is a simple mat-
ter of taking a random triangle layout and
turning it into ordered polygons. “You ide-
ally want to keep everything,” Chapman
says, “but there are ways to make it more
manageable, such as using displacement
maps instead of polygons to defi ne
texture and bump maps.”
Below shows actress
Jessica Vallot while she
is scanned in “Light
Stage 2” at USC’s
Institute for Creative
Technologies. Right is
the virtual image of
Vallot’s face.
Pict
ure
s co
urt
esy
Pau
l Deb
evec
.
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22 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Scanning
According to Chapman, the benefi ts of a produc-
tion studio using 3D scanning go far beyond those
of the fi lm’s basic completion. “When Warner Bros.
creates a Harry Potter, it’s not just creating a movie, but a market-
ing franchise that includes other ancillary products,” he says. “The
same data used to animate Harry for the movie is also used for the
video game as well as for the related toys and products.” For a VFX
facility, though, the focus is on the job at hand. So it’s hardly surpris-
ing then, that even though Rhythm & Hues is a major effects studio,
the company has no interest in bringing high-res scanning in-house,
comments Westenhofer. “The meat of our work is effects,” he says.
“There isn’t enough scanning [needs] for us to amortize the costs.”
Sony has also relied on Gentle Giant for scans the studio used
while creating effects in Spider-Man, The Polar Express, Spider-Man 2,
and, now, Spider-Man 3. Digital effects supervisor Peter Nofz reports
that Gentle Giant usually delivers the data as high-res polygonal
meshes in three formats, “to make sure that whomever needs it will
have it.” He also requests the raw scan for cross-reference.
Nofz is enthused about what he calls “the next leap” in 3D scan-
ning: instant photographic scans. “These photographic scanners
will get the information and provide much more accurate meshes
instantaneously,” he says. “I hoped we would see it for Spider-Man 3
but now it’s [likely we’ll have it for] Spider-Man 4.”
Eyetronics
Like Cyberware, Belgium-based Eyetronics—founded in 1998—
manufactures digital scanners. Infrascan, a body-scanning
solution, derives a 3D model from a single image. To accom-
plish this, a person is placed in the da Vinci pose (standing with
legs and arms fully spread), and a pattern is projected onto the
subject while a camera takes a snapshot. Meanwhile, software
automatically calculates polygonal data based on the pattern
deformations on the person. The total scanning process takes
less than fi ve seconds, and measurements are calculated within
30 seconds. With the company’s Facesnatcher, designed for cap-
turing face and hair details, two cameras take images while a
beam projects multiple patterns onto the subject’s face.
When Eyetronics opened its Redondo Beach, California, offi ce
in 2000, vice president of operations Nick Tesi pursued indus-
tries as disparate as games and medical, providing systems rather
than services. Eyetronics sold its software, which calibrated the
X, Y, Z positioning of a projected grid, while users bought their
own camera and slide projector. But the number of different cam-
eras made that business model diffi cult to support, and the com-
pany subsequently switched to providing 3D scanning services.
In 2001, Eyetronics built a housing for the actual grid that
contained just one camera—currently an 8.3 megapixel Canon
EOS 20D that uses a fl ash that gives a 12-in. depth of fi eld; a
secondary fl ash provides a texture map. “It’s not a black box,”
explains Tesi. “The hardware is an open system that allows us
to bring in new technology as it becomes available.”
According to most vendors and users, the biggest challenge
to using digital scanning is the postprocessing of the data. In the
case of Eyetronics, it uses computers sporting 3 GHz processors,
Nvidia Quadro FX cards, and 2GB of RAM. The end result is pro-
vided to a client as a fi le in any chosen 3D animation software,
such as Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max or Maya
format. Delivering a 3D model that has a 4K color map and is ready
for animation makes the technology an easy sell to movie studios
and game developers.
The three markets that Eyetronics serves are fi lms, games,
and broadcast. Recent fi lm work includes Batman Begins, Racing
Stripes, and The Legend of Zorro. Tesi notes that Eyetronics has
recently seen an increase in business on the computer gaming side
as a result of the increased quality demands of next-gen gaming.
Continuing to raise the bar in digital scanning and the tech-
nology’s profi le in the marketplace, Eyetronics has developed a
system for facial performance capture, which was used by Café
FX to create the Invisible Man in The League of Extraordinary
Gentlemen and by VFX supervisor Jeff Okun to generate a digital
stunt double of Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. Also, the Motion
Picture Company utilized the system to create multiples of actor
Deep Roy for the oompa loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory (see “Eye Candy,” August 2005, pg. 16).
At Café FX, technical animation supervisor Domenic Di
Giorgio recalls that, to create the Invisible Man, the group fi rst
Eyetronics used its ShapeCam device (inset) to capture the
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