After weeding down 635 submissions, a SIGGRAPH Jury for the Computer Animation Festival has selected 25 entries to be screened in the annual Electronic Theater, and 52 for the Animation Theater. The work, representing creative and technical excellence, will be screened in highly anticipated presentations during SIGGRAPH 2003, which will take place July 27-Aug. 1 in San Diego.
In this week’s special report on visual effects, SHOOT looks at some of the selections, created by Venice, Calif.-based Digital Domain, London’s Framestore CFC, and Los Angeles-based Rhythm & Hues Studios. The companies took inventive approaches to these projects, achieving the results through a combination of proprietary developments, off-the-shelf software, and—most importantly—artistry and creativity.
Digital Domain
Digital Domain has four projects in the mix, including a commercial—"Mechanical Legs" for adidas created for TBWA/Chiat/Day, San Francisco—that was selected for the Electronic Theater.
"Mechanical Legs," directed by David Fincher of bicoastal Anonymous Content, out of TBWA/180, San Francisco, is a photo-real, fully CG spot that features a pair of robotic legs putting adidas shoes through their paces in a test facility. Visual effects supervisor Eric Barba explains that the performance was based on two days of motion capture using two dancers, then enhanced by keyframe animation using Alias|Wavefront’s Maya. The biggest challenge, according to Barba, was creating photorealism; to achieve this, they used high dynamic range lighting with high-resolution models, and textures using NewTek’s LightWave. Compositing was achieved with the Digital Domain-developed system Nuke.
Ed Ulbrich, senior VP/general manager of commercials and music videos at Digital Domain, explains that the environment was created using photogeometry, a process in which the team takes a series of still photos of a location or set, and—using a combination of proprietary and off-the-shelf software—derives a 3-D representation of the space in the 2-D still using dynamic range photography.
The spot, initially created for cinema advertising in Europe, was completed in 2k; a D1 version was later created for U.S. broadcast.
Appearing in the Animation Theater for Digital Domain is Gatorade’s "23 vs. 39," a spot featuring the current-day Michael Jordan playing one-on-one against the Jordan of ’86. The ad was directed by Joe Pytka of PYTKA, Venice, for agency Element 79 Partners, Chicago.
The production team shot Jordan playing against a player who served as his body double. "Pytka is a master at keeping the talent in the moment," says visual effects supervisor Fred Raimondi, noting that Digital Domain let the director shoot while keeping the digital process transparent.
Afterwards, Digital Domain convincingly replaced the body double’s head with a photo-real version of Jordan’s younger head in a variety of lighting scenarios. That involved using Maya for animation, coupled with proprietary hair shaders and proprietary "Intelligent Skin" technology, which is used to define surfaces based on human skin so that surfaces react as skin would react to light, shadows and movement, according to Raimondi. Nuke and Discreet’s Inferno were used for compositing. Techniques also included creating a cyber scan of Jordan and the body double in order to help define camera positions; and a digital facial sculpture. A plastic surgeon consulted.
Digital Domain’s feature division had clips from two films, Star Trek: Nemesis and XXX, in the Animation Theater.
Framestore CFC
The center of Johnnie Walker’s "Fish," directed by Daniel Kleinman via London-based production company Spectre for London’s Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), features people darting above and below the surface of the ocean as if they were fish. The result is a combination of live-action, CG and practical effects.
Framestore CFC Inferno artists William Barlett and Murray Butler, who served as co-supervisors, were brought in early for the planning. Animation supervisor Andrew Daffy and head of 3-D R&D Alex Parkinson devised tools to help create the CG elements needed for the project, which was essentially made up of the wide shots (CG masses of hundreds of individuals); mid-range shots (which allow viewers to make out people in some detail, achieved through a combination of techniques); and close-ups of swimmers (live action).
The team deployed Alias|Wavefront’s Maya using MEL scripting language to generate the CG people. They created two female and two males body shapes, and a variety of swimming styles. Using the particle tools in Maya, the team multiplied these figures and generated thousands of CG people.
"We found that we could describe the shape of the shoal using a few key people and then interpolate from that," Parkinson explains. "Intelligent interpolation was a guiding principle throughout the CG process. We used it when creating the individual movements of the people … and their physiques."
Practical shots of the humans jumping out of the water like dolphins were lensed on location off the coast of South Australia. The rig included a winch to drag the stunt performers past the camera, and a specially designed technology to help propel them through the air.
Using Discreet’s Inferno for compositing, the artists removed the rigs and multiplied the live-action swimmers. Additionally, speed was varied and positions were changed. Often, CG characters were added to the background. Particles and sunlight effects were also added.
Framestore CFC’s Animation Theater selections also include two clips that extended the work that the company did on the acclaimed BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs (which aired on the Discovery Channel in the United States a few years ago).
The first is Volvic’s "Jog," a comedic spot from directing team Who? (Liam Kan and Grant Hodgson) of Great Guns, London, for agency WCRS, London. The :30 features a CG Tyrannosaurus Rex chasing a live-action caveman.
The live action was shot on location in South Africa, in the hills near Cape Town. Two of the shots required rigs.
The CG dinosaur was created using Softimage 3-D. " ‘Jog’ gave us a chance to do something we’ve not really attempted before," relates CG supervisor Andrew Daffy. "I wanted a T-Rex that’d lived a bit, one that was a bit grittier and scraggier, one with a bit of blood and a few scars in him." The spot also allowed the team to enhance the comedy with the performance.
Inferno artist Stephane Allender handled compositing, which included sky replacements, four matte paintings, volcanoes and smoke, digital flies and other elements.
Framestore CFC’s second dinosaur-related selection consisted of segments from The Giant Claw and Land of the Giants, two half-hour Walking with Dinosaurs sequels for the BBC, for which Framestore added a live actor to observe and react to the CG beasts. The CG was created with Softimage 3-D, Mental Ray and proprietary software.
Framestore’s final project in the Animation Theater is a clip from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets featuring a CG Basilisk, which was created using Maya, Side Effects Software’s Houdini and Renderman.
Rhythm & Hues
The Animation Theater will also include a :51 short film from Rhythm & Hues, titled Spiderweb, which used a combination of proprietary and commercial software packages.
Spiderweb was created and directed by character designer Sei Nakashima. It tells the simple story of a spider trying to grab its web. Nakashima says it was designed to be "simple and cute," using Japanese-style animation (i.e. Hello Kitty) as the inspiration. "[The spider] is really shy, tentative and curious," he explains.
The team modeled in the company’s proprietary AND software, animated in Maya, lit in Houdini, and rendered with the company’s custom WREN software.
Animation director Chris Romano explains that the team used a production pipeline that Rhythm & Hues has been developing in its commercial division to get data from one software program to another. The production of Spiderweb used one of the iterations of this process, which is still being refined. The pipeline has been used for many commercials, including Ritz Bits’ "Cracker Man and Fudge" through J. Walter Thompson, Chicago.
Rhythm & Hues also had a clip from Daredevil in the festival, which was created in the feature division.
At press time, incidentally, Rhythm & Hues was in the process of moving the company’s commercial unit into its own building, just up the road from its existing space. The goal is to create a more boutique-style, service-oriented commercial unit, while still making available the capabilities and infrastructure of the feature division.
