At the recently concluded SIGGRAPH 2015 confab–about as high a high-tech event as you can find–a century-old technique, stop-motion animation, was given its due with tribute paid to one of its leading practitioners, Bristol, U.K.-based Aardman Animations.
On opening day of SIGGRAPH 2015 last week, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences presented a session devoted to Aardman, as its co-founder David Sproxton and cinematographer Dave Alex Riddett chronicled the studio’s voyage over the past three decades–and counting. Founded by Sproxton and Peter Lord, Aardman is no stranger to the Motion Picture Academy, having won four Oscars, the first coming in 1991 for the animated short Creature Comforts directed by Nick Park. That year, Creature Comforts beat out another Park-directed, Aardman-produced short, A Grand Day Out, for the Oscar statuette. Park’s later work featuring his A Grand Day Out stars–the eccentric inventor Wallace and his no-nonsense canine sidekick Gromit–yielded three more Oscars for the animated shorts The Wrong Trousers in 2004 and A Close Shave in 1996, and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (directed by Park and Steve Box) which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2006. Aardman thus far has amassed a total of 10 Oscar nominations.
Aardman’s filmography spans not only features and shorts but also TV programs, special venue projects, commercials and music videos. On the latter score, the studio made a major global splash in 1986 working alongside Stephen Johnson and the Brothers Quay on the seminal Peter Gabriel clip “Sledgehammer.” Fast forward to today and Aardman’s latest feature, Shaun the Sheep, has just been released in the U.S. by Lionsgate after receiving acclaim and a strong box office showing internationally. Written and directed by Aardman veteran Richard Starzak, Shaun the Sheep is based on a British TV show that was a spinoff of the aforementioned Wallace and Gromit short A Close Shave.
At their SIGGRAPH session, Sproxton and Riddett said that at the core of Aardman’s success has been strong storytelling advanced by inventive approaches to stop motion. Sproxton noted that he and his compatriot Lord were inspired by the work of the now late stop motion guru and VFX pioneer Ray Harryhausen, which led to the formation of Aardman. Before a large SIGGRAPH turnout, Sproxton and Riddett shared film clips, still pictures and behind-the-scenes footage marking highlights of Aardman’s development and growth over the years. Among the turnkey moments were: Sproxton and Lord meeting as teens, sharing a love of film through experimentation with a Bolex camera; Aardman getting on the proverbial map with the creation of the Morph character for the children’s U.K. show Take Hart; connecting with Park when he was a student at the National Film School, opening the Aardman door to the iconic Wallace and Gromit characters; and the three Best Animated Short Film Oscar wins which piqued Hollywood’s interest, helping the studio to land a deal with DreamWorks, resulting in Aardman’s first full-length feature, Chicken Run.
Sproxton and Riddett also screened several Aardman-produced commercials for the likes of Duracell batteries, Lurpak butter, the Heat Electric utilities company, and the U.K. tourism board. Sproxton noted that commercialmaking has been creatively challenging and played an important financial role in the development of the studio. “TV commercial work allowed us to invest money in better equipment,” related Sproxton, helping Aardman to be more innovative and efficient in its stop-motion endeavors.
Speaking of equipment, Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit short A Matter of Loaf and Death, nominated for a Best Animation Short Oscar in 2010, was the studio’s first to be shot with a digital camera (Canon EOS). Because the cameras were so lightweight and portable, Riddett said, “We built the sets around the cameras.” At the same time, Sproxton recalled, “It was sad to see those Mitchells [Mitchell film cameras] stacked up in the closet.”
New innovations
While the age-old art of stop motion remains relevant in today’s marketplace–thanks in part to the work of Aardman Animations as well as such key contributors as the LAIKA Entertainment studio, and filmmaker Tim Burton–new breakthroughs in visual effects and computer animation otherwise dominated proceedings on the SIGGRAPH exhibit floor.
Autodesk announced the latest extension releases for its Maya 2016 and 3ds Max 2016 3D modeling, animation, VFX and rendering software. The newest 3ds Max is available immediately to Autodesk subscription customers while the latest Maya hits the marketplace on Sept. 9. Among the new Maya features are: a text tool, 3D Type, which makes it easier to create branding, flying logos, title sequences and other projects requiring 3D text; Scalable Vector Graphic support to help artists bring 2D designs created in application like Adobe Illustrator to life in a 3D environment; new procedural texture and image processing nodes in the Hypershade that allow simplified development of more sophisticated looks; simplified and streamlined game exporter workflows making it faster and easier to move from Maya to game engines such as Unity, Unreal and Autodesk Stingray; and live linking between Maya and the Stingray game engine that can update geometry, characters and camera positions dynamically. For the latter feature, changes can be seen instantly in either Maya or Stingray, eliminating the need to re-export or manually replace assets in a scene. While Stingray is primarily known in the game arena, the system carries implications and applications that could prove relevant in other entertainment sectors.
New wrinkles for 3ds Max include: Geodesic Voxel and Heat Map solvers allowing artists to create better skin weighting faster; new Max Creation Graph Animation Controllers that provide procedural animation capabilities; a Game Exporter enabling artists to transfer models, animation takes and other data from 3ds Max into game engines like Unity, Unreal and Stingray; a Live Link between 3ds Max and Stingray allowing design visualization experts to assess and review their designs in an interactive 3D environment; and a powerful 3D text tool to build engaging visualizations, making it easier to add and animate data-driven information to a scene.
Autodesk also unveiled the 3D marketplace on Creative Market, its online platform for purchasing and selling custom content developed by artists. Autodesk acquired Creative Market last year, expanding its offerings with the rolling out of 3D content. The marketplace is currently home to nearly 9,000 shops selling more than 250,000 design assets to a community of 1 million-plus members. Artists can now search, purchase and license high-quality 3D content created by designers around the world or upload and sell original 3D models on the site.
Another Autodesk company, Shotgun Software announced a new set of features and updates that will make it easier for teams to review, share and provide feedback on creative projects. The upcoming Shotgun release will include new review and approval features and an updated Client Review Site to streamline collaboration and communication within teams, across sites and with clients. Shotgun’s Pipeline Toolkit is also being updated with the Shotgun Panel, which will let artists communicate directly with other artists and see only the information relevant to their tasks directly inside creative tools like Autodesk Maya and The Foundry’s Nuke, along with a refreshed Workfiles tool to find and navigate to relevant files more quickly.
“These updates address some of the biggest bottlenecks we see affecting our clients today: fluid review and approval pipelines, simple and integrated ways for studios to present their work and communicate securely, and simple and fast ways for artists to reference key info right inside of creative applications like Maya and Nuke so they don’t lose time switching contexts and applications,” said Don Parker, co-founder of Shotgun Software and senior product manager at Autodesk. “This will be our second major release this year that focuses on these bottlenecks, and we’re excited to get these new tools into the hands of our clients.”
Demonstrated on the SIGGRAPH exhibit floor, Shotgun 6.3 is expected to be available by the fall of 2015 while new Shotgun Toolkit features will roll out next month.
Meanwhile NVIDIA rolled out DesignWorks, a suite of software tools, technologies, and libraries for designers that enable photoreal rendering for accuracy, easy transfer of materials and digital models between applications, and the ability to incorporate virtual reality into design software. DesignWorks was designed for the developers behind the software that designers use to create products we use, buildings we reside in, and the planes, trains and automobiles that keep us on the move. The big idea of DesignWorks is to give application developers a way to take advantage of work in both physically based rendering (PBR) and physically based materials, cornerstones of visualizing a design interactively with photo-real results.
PBR isn’t new. It’s been used for movies and games where the requirement is for a scene or model to look good, but where accuracy is less important than achieving the desired look. Contrast that with the requirements of an architect who might need to understand how sunlight will reflect off exterior windows or whether the lighting in a parking structure is sufficient for safety. Or a motorcycle designer who wants to understand if a particular kind of metallic paint will be attractive. To them, accuracy is of paramount importance. They need applications that let them see and interact with accurate visualizations of what their final product will be.
And of course these users will want to be able to visualize their designs the way that makes sense for their business. That might be at their desktop, on large multi-display walls, using virtual reality or even from a remote location. These capabilities and more all come together in DesignWorks, with some two dozen tools that include rendering, materials, display and much more. And this level of accuracy could also be relevant for the entertainment arena.
Among the DesignWorks tools are: NVIDIA Iray SDK, a calibrated, physically based rendering and light simulation framework, which now includes new algorithms that cut the time to visualize design changes; NVIDIA Material Definition Language (MDL), a technology to create and share digital models of real-world materials between applications (MDL will also be available soon as a software development kit, providing a simple way for developers to access the growing MDL ecosystem); NVIDIA vMaterials, a collection of calibrated and verified materials for use in MDL-based applications; NVIDIA OptiX, a framework for building ray tracing (OptiX now includes support for the NVIDIA Visual Computing Appliance, providing scalable performance from laptops to data centers); and DesignWorks VR, a suite of tools for incorporating virtual reality into design software.
The latter is NVIDIA’s set of APIs, libraries, and features that enable both VR headset and application developers to deliver high quality VR experiences. DesignWorks VR has components that enable VR environments like Head Mounted Displays (HMD), Immersive VR spaces such as CAVEs and other immersive displays, and cluster solutions.
DesignWorks VR builds on NVIDIA’s existing GameWorks VR SDK for game developers, with improved support for OpenGL and features critical for professional VR applications.
With DesignWorks, VR developers can push the boundaries to create fully immersive and interactive experiences. The first automotive company to use VR to create vehicles, Ford Motor Company, was in NVIDIA’s SIGGRAPH booth showing how they’ve made VR central to automotive development over the last few years. Created with Autodesk VRED 3D visualization software, Ford’s digital models run on two high-end NVIDIA Quadro M6000 graphics cards. Automotive designers and engineers can strap on an Oculus headset and examine the entire exterior and interior of a car design. The interactive digital prototype lets designers drill down into the photorealistic details so they can see how each particular element looks, such as the texture of the dashboard or upholstery. Or they can check the positioning or shape of individual design elements, such as lighting size and brightness. By using new tools within DesignWorks VR, Ford and Autodesk realized substantial performance improvements to make the demo smooth and interactive.
On the cinematic front, visitors to the NVIDIA booth were able to try on the latest Crescent Bay prototype headset from Oculus and step inside "Thief in the Shadows." Created by Weta Digital and Epic Games, this fully immersive experience, set in the Lord of the Rings universe, lets viewers take on the role of a hobbit prowling for treasure in a dragon’s lair. It’s a visceral experience–all powered by the NVIDIA Quadro M6000.
Speaking of virtual reality, adjacent to the exhibit floor was a major new SIGGRAPH venue, the VR Village which featured dedicated real-time immersion with leading VR/AR content. With Nomadic Virtual Reality, Tabletop Augmented Reality, Full-Dome Cinema, and live demonstrations in a 360-degree immersion dome, the VR Village let attendees explore the fascinating potential of VR, AR and Immersive Environments as a means for telling stories, engaging audiences, and powering real-world applications in health, education, design, and gaming.
Moving back to the exhibit floor over to The Foundry booth, MARI 3, the newest version of the company’s 3D paint package, was demonstrated. Ideal for texturing and look development artists in the VFX, animation and games industries, MARI 3 combines productivity enhancing features with broader and tighter pipeline integration. This includes an exposed node graph for advanced users and integration with the rendering and baking capabilities of MODO, The Foundry’s 3D content creation solution.
“Fitting into the pipeline or creative lifecycle in which an artist works is just as important as enabling artists to create beautiful 3D painted and textured content,” said Jack Greasley, head of new technologies at The Foundry. “Therefore, MARI 3 continues The Foundry’s commitment to addressing not only what artists need to do but how and where they do it. This includes seamless integration with third parties, open APIs, and support for industry standards.”
MARI 3 brings support for widely used shaders such as Unreal, as well as for OpenSubdiv geometry. Within the games market, more AAA and indie game developers have adopted MARI to create the cinematic quality characters and experiences required in today’s most successful games.
For visual effects artists, MARI 3 delivers creative tools that provide the performance, power and quality that the creation of today’s high resolution assets require. With MARI, artists can create and edit thousands of high resolution textures, freeing them to concentrate on their art rather than technical details.
“I’ve used MARI for almost five years now and really don’t know where I would be without it. It has been the cornerstone for all of my texture work both personally and professionally,” said Justin Holt, texture paint lead, Sony Pictures Imageworks. “MARI is a world-class tool for any serious texture painter and I highly recommend to anybody who wants to succeed in the world of textures to pick this tool up now because it will quickly become one of the only tools you will ever need. I have spent time exploring MARI 3 and I simply cannot wait for the official release in order to take advantage of all of the wonderful new tools it will offer.”
MARI 3 will be commercially available in Q3 2015.
Vicon, the motion capture technology specialist for the entertainment, engineering and life sciences industries, debuted Vantage, its powerful new flagship camera line, alongside the Control mobile app. The company also announced a series of updates to Cara, Vicon’s facial mocap system for film and games production. Vicon Vantage has been intelligently designed to work cohesively with each of its components to provide up-to-the-minute information to the system operator. It continuously monitors its performance with a host of new sensors, giving the user visual feedback through the on-board camera display, in the software and on Vicon’s new tablet application Control. This gives users the opportunity to make adjustments on the fly, ensuring a “right the first time” approach.
Control is Vicon’s new iOS app, which frees the user from the capture PC. Operators can remotely change camera settings, calibrate, and start and stop capture, turning what was traditionally a multiple crew setup into a one-person job. With touch-sensitive commands, users can simply select and monitor Vantage, T-Series or Bonita cameras in the Control app in real time–giving users a highly efficient and flexible system.
Vicon’s Cara system is designed to enable film and games studios of any size to bring characters to life through advanced facial tracking and capture. The modular system allows customers to use different tracking solutions alongside Cara Post, which provides the engine and tools to extract high-quality 3D point data from marker-based capture footage. The latest version of Cara makes this a seamless process by delivering improved output support and increased functionality, especially when using Cara with fewer than four cameras.
