Pushing the Envelope For Matrix Reloaded SFX

BenTheDewpendent writes "I just read Steve Silberman's article on the Matrix Reloaded over at wired. I was only slightly anxious to see it previous to reading the article but what they are able to do technicaly now will put bullet time to shame."

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[mrpuffypants]

A few months back Newsweek did a cover story on the Matrix movies.

read it here

Re:Gratuitious Effects

[ecchi_0]

Read the article, or any number of other articles about the sequels - the Matrix was MEANT to be a trilogy. They aren't stretching the original story, they're telling more of it.

The Campanile Movie

[Johnny5_uk]

Information about the precursor to the bullet time technique (The Campanile Movie), that is mentioned in the Wired article, can be found on this page http://www.debevec.org/Campanile

j

Matrix Musings

[thatguywhoiam]

I don't think the Apollo missions were this complicated. Did any of you guys read the article? I mean, it's absolutely crazy....

See if I can precis here, for you:

A splinter faction ("ESC") of renegade uber-compositors and animators, originating at Mass.Illusion (founded by Douglas Trumball), led by some guy with the superhero name of Gaeta, has created the first true photogrammetric virtual cinematography technique, using gobs and gobs of technology and expertise. This technology has been put to good use in the new Matrix movies; the team works at a decommissioned 250,000-square-foot hangar in Alameda. Up to 500 artists have been hired.

Here's an example of what these people are like:
How deep did the rabbit hole go? A cast of each actor's head was sent to a company called Arius 3D, makers of ultrahigh-resolution scanners employed in 1999 to archive the works of Michelangelo. The Arius scanner is accurate down to 25 microns - the diameter of a mold spore. To get the clothing simulations just right, ESC sent swatches of Reeves' black cassock and Weaving's jacket to a company called Surface Optics, which builds devices to measure a property of light called the bidirectional reflectance distribution function. Surface Optics happened to have one machine on hand scheduled to ship to Lockheed Martin a month later, where it was to be assigned to its usual task: evaluating the reflectivity of paint on stealth bombers.

Wow. That is... just... nuts. There's other good examples, like the mock highway they built, or the world's biggest motion-capture dojo.

It's definitely worth reading if you haven't. Particularly interesting are the bits where Gaeta talks about the in-joke he shares with the Wachowskis regarding the potential subversive uses, particularly for the military.. who have already directed DARPA funds towards such and end. (And before you yell about innefectual gov't spending, I'll remind the reader that DARPA gets shit done.) Even the possibility that this work they've done opens the door that much wider for nightmarish Orwellian realities. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.