Making Movies

Making Movies
Concept Storyboarding Sound Character Development Layout and look Effects Animation Lighting

Concept
Nothing gets in the way of the story
John Lasseter (Pixar)

Storyboarding
Explicitly define
Scenes Camera shots Special effects Lighting Scale

Used as guide by animators

Sound
Voice recording of talent completed before animation begins Animations must match the voice over A puppeteer once told me that the voice makes or breaks a character

Character Development
300 Drawings

Character Development
40 Sculptures

Character Development
Computer Models

Layout & Look

Build scenery Match colors

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

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Matchmoving

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Matchmoving
Known patterns in live action made it easier to track furniture, wall paper 2D 3D conversion in Maya

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Shooting Film For CG

Actors practice with maquettes (small scale models) 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) the digital camera Once shot is prepared, 2D images rendered and composited with live action

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Water

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Particle Sim and Indentation

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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 and Associates 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 on trees 1.2 mil Number of shaders 1300 Number of storyboards 25,000
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Toy Story 2
80 minutes long, 122,699 frames 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?

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Images

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Images

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Stuart Little
500 shots with digital character 6 main challenges
Lip sync Match-move (CG to live-action) Fur Clothes Animation tools Rendering, lighting, compositing
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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

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Stuart Little

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Final Fantasy

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

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Final Fantasy
First ever animated feature to attempt photorealistic CGI humans 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
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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

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Star Wars I
The good
Jar-Jars ears (cloth simulation) Jar-Jars facial animation Sets
Were only as high as the tallest character in the film Above that was all CG

Was the first interaction between CGI and humans

The bad
Jar-Jar Jar-Jar Jar-Jar Jar-Jar
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Making Movies
Production Team Production Line Special Effects

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Production Team
Directors Modelers Lighting Character Animators Technical Directors Render Wranglers Tools Developers Shader Writers Effects Animators Looks Team Security Officer Janitor Lackey

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