Behind The Camera

8/14/2019 Behind The Camera

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Making Movies


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Making Movies

Concept

Storyboarding

Sound

CharacterDevelopment

Layout andlook

Effects

Animation

Lighting


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Concept

Nothing gets in the way of the story

John Lasseter (Pixar)

S


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Story-boarding

Explicitly define Scenes

Camera shots Special effects

Lighting

Scale

Used as guide byanimators


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Sound

Voice recording of talent completed beforeanimation begins

Animations must match the voice over

A puppeteer once told me that the voice makes or

breaks a character


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Character Development

300 Drawings


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40 Sculptures


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ComputerModels



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Build scenery

Match colors

Layout & Look


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Matchmoving

CG camera must exactly match the real camera

Position

Rotation Focal length

Aperature

Easy when camera is instrumented Hard to place CG on moving objects on film

Match


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Match-moving


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Matchmoving

Known patterns in live action made it easier totrack furniture, wall paper

2D 3D conversion in Maya


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Shooting Film For CG

Actors practice with maquettes (small scalemodels)

Maquettes replaced with laser dots lasers on when camera shutter is closed

After each take, three extra shots chrome ball for environment map for Stuarts eyes

white and gray balls for lighting info


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Matchmoving

Film scanned

Camera tracking data retrieved

3D Equalizer + Alias Maya to prepare (register) thedigital camera

Once shot is prepared, 2D images rendered andcomposited with live action


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Water


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Particle

Sim andIndentation


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Tools


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Compositing


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Compositing

Lighting


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Facial Animation


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Facial Animation


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Fur


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Cloth


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Buttons and Creases


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Texture


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Companies

Pixar

Disney

Sony Imageworks

Industrial Light and

Magic (ILM) Rhythm and Hues

Pacific Data Images(PDI)

Dreamworks SKG

Tippett Studios Angel Studios

Blue Sky

Robert Abel andAssociates

Giant Studios


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Toy Story (1995)

77 minutes long; 110,064 frames

800,000 machine hours (91 years!) of rendering

1 terabyte of disk space 3.5 minutes of animation produced each week

(maximum)

Frame render times: 45 min 20 hours

110 Suns operating 24-7 for rendering

300 CPUs


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Toy Story

Texture maps on Buzz: 189 (450 to show scuffs and dirt)

Number of animation knobs Buzz 700

Woody 712 Face 212 Mouth 58

Sids Backpack 128

Number of leaves ontrees 1.2 mil

Number of shaders 1300

Number of storyboards 25,000


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Toy Story 2

80 minutes long, 122,699frames

1400 processor render farm

Render time of 10 min to 3

days Direct to video film

Software tools

Alias|Wavefront

Amazon Paint

RenderMan


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Newman!

Subdivision-surfaces

Polygonal hair (head)

Texture mapped on arms

Sculpted clothes

Complex shaders


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Devils in the Details

Render in color

Convert to

NTSC B/W

Add film effects

Jitter Negative

scratches

Hair Static


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Images

Shadows?

I


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Images

I


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Images

St t Littl


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Stuart Little

500 shots withdigital character

6 main challenges Lip sync

Match-move (CGto live-action)

Fur

Clothes

Animation tools

Rendering, lighting, compositing

St t Littl


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Stuart Little

100+ people worked on CG

32 color/lighting/composite artists

12 technical assistants 30 animators

40 artists

12 R&D

St t Littl


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Stuart Little

Final Fantas


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Final Fantasy

http://www.arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/01q3/ff-interview/ff-interview-2.html

Final Fantasy


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Final Fantasy

First ever animated feature to attempt photorealistic CGIhumans

Second biggest box office flop ever (lost over $124M)

Main characters > 300,000 polys

1336 shots

24,606 layers

3,000,000 renders (if only rendered once) typically 5 render revisions

render time per frame = 90 min

Most layers per shot 500 934,162 days of render time on one CPU

they used 1200 CPUs = 778 days of rendering

Final Fantasy


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Final Fantasy

Renderman (Pixar) used for rendering

direct illumination

many hacks to fake global illumination

Maya used for modeling

Hair Modeled is splines

Lighting and rendering complicated as well

Star Wars I


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Star Wars I

The good Jar-Jars ears (cloth

simulation)

Jar-Jars facial animation Sets

Were only as high as thetallest character in the

film Above that was all CG

Was the first interactionbetween CGI and humans

The bad Jar-Jar

Jar-Jar

Jar-Jar Jar-Jar

Making Movies


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Making Movies

Production Team

Production Line

Special Effects

Production Team


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Production Team

Directors

Modelers

Lighting Character Animators

Technical Directors

Render Wranglers Tools Developers

ShaderShader WritersWriters

Effects AnimatorsEffects Animators

Looks TeamLooks Team Security OfficerSecurity Officer

JanitorJanitor

LackeyLackey

Documents

Behind The Camera