Well you might be right, but as far as I know no major movie FX or animation have been done over the Net. Not only because techical considerations but also dealings with the studios. Studios want to protect their investement and market the film according to their plans. You can't just transmit stuff over the net without concerns that someone might snoop in. Besides probably doing the transfers to Exabyte and sending them via courier are faster and more secure.
There might be a few cases though. For example DD has a commercials divisions (also does music videos) and used to have an interactive division. Maybe they worked sending stuff over the net for these smaller projects. ILM Commercial Productions seems to be doing this also (but not the main film FX part):
The stuff your are mentioninmg is referred to 4:3 pullup or pulldown (depending on direction) about transfering from film at 24 frames per second to video at 30 frames per second and viceversa.
But the other thing about FX is not that the plates are scanned typically at 2K resolution but all the data files involved in the FX elements: models, shaders, texture maps, etc. In the renderMan newsgroup there was a thread some time ago that had some very interesting stats. While a single frame might be around, say 10MB, RIBs and textures alone for models might take dozens to mabybe even hundreds of MBs. I couldn't find the reference but it was probably posted by Tom Duff or Larry Gritz. This past SIGGRAPH some people discussed some info about their projects. There is some info about Shrek out there, stating that on average they had 2 to 3 GB per frame (though FX would be a bit lower since not all the image is 3D). It's usually a lot less number of frames, but the amount of data per frame is huge. Take Pearl Harbor that only had around 200 shots but they occupy like 50 min of screen time, or long seuqnces like the Contact oull back or the frozen NY flyby in AI.
You might want to check the RenderMan course notes from this past SIGGRAPH, also a lot of info. For the Gungan battle of episode 1, all the baked RIBs accounted for 64 GB of data. The smallest RIB for one cycle was 209 MB.
About Major Damage, besides SIGGRAPH I think it was discussed in the CH_Char mailing list, now web forum. Jeff Lew used (or maybe still) posts around there.
Your link is correct, it's Jeff Kleiser and Diane Walczak, true pioneers in CG. They came up with the "synthespian" term. Other projects include Clear and Present danger and the Mystique morphs in X-Men and tons of commercials like Trophomotion and others.
But I think some stuff needds clarification. This is kind of a big deal. Stuff is done ont the net, but only local networks. Usually filmed is scanned in and then delivered to the FX crews via Exabyte, DLT or other huge storage media. It's never realy sent over the net, for security and bandwidth considerations. There have been some collaborations like this before: while Spielberg was filming Schindler's List in Poland, at night he would connect via satelite to ILM to approve the work ILM was doing for Jurassic Park. No major FX effort has ever been done over the Internet. There are a few companies that do rendering services like Screamline Rendering Services. The short CG film "Hubert's Brain" was done this way. Another short by Chris Bailey, "Major Damage" was done by people around the country also.
It's not just LOTR but it happens quite often. There are times when studios have to put out trailers when work is still being done on the FX, so sometimes they use test shots, or do stuff specifically for trailers.
The Spider Man trailer was only shots done for the trailer. The Perfect Storm first trailer, the huge wave was specifically done for it and the posters. The first teaser for Twister contained the test reel ILM did for Jan DeBont (and won them the contract). The Lost World also had a specific FX shots done for it, and so did the first T2 teaser. And usually for the Star Trek movies, the trailers contain FX, images from previous ST movies. From what I understand some of the shots in the first trailer were works in progress and test shots, like for their Massive crowd animation program.
LIDAR technology is not soemthing new out of the blue. It has ben used quite a bit before. I saw it once at SIGGRAPH 99 (2 years ago). It's very useful for creating detailed 3D models. Kind of like a range finder, but it sweeps an area to get 3D range data out of it. It has even been used in films like in End of Days and What Dreams May Come. Here are a couple of articles from VFXPro.com
Interesting to see how this technology can be applied for a critical job. Especially when they start diging deeper below the level of the Hudson to detect any shifts.
Just because the majority of readers think that Mesa/DRI is only useful for games, that doesn't mean it's not crucial for several other markets. One of the would be in engineering and scientific visualization. Remember that it's becoming more often for huge Linux clusters to be used in big data crunching applications. But after all the data is processed you want to be able to visualize: how air moves on a new wing design or turbine, a 3D volume visualization of the brain, meteorological patterns, stellar formation, how a car would react on a crash, etc. It would certainly be better for some people if they mantained the whole process under one platform.
The other one is Digital Content Creation (DCC). The most recent example has been the production of Shrek. Though most of the Linux use in DCC and particularly FX have been in renderfarms (which don't require interactive OpenGL accelarated graphics), there is an increased use of Linux as animation workstations. PDI is making the switch, and also their co-workers at Dreamworks feature animation. Many other facilities are doing the switch to use Linux for interactive workstations: Pixar (their next movie Little Nemo will use Linux), ILM (by October they move 20% of their workstations, and 20% of their renderfarm to Linux, and the next movie after Episode 2 will mostly be done under Linux), Double Negative and many others. In October there is going to be a meeting organized by VES to discuss more of the FX technology and Linux. And of course several vendors already or are planning ports of their products to Linux: Maya 4 from Alias/Wavefront, Softimage 3D and XSI by Softimage, Houdini from SideFX already out, Rayz from Silicon Grail and several others.
I guess it depends if you prefer a closed source but vendor supported solution. In oprder for Houdini to be released it was only available from HP workstation with their FX10 cards and they even provided their own X and OpenGL implementation (no XFree or Mesa/DRI). But I'm sure other customers or vendors might prefer an open solution.
Just check the september issue of CGW for the Linux coverage in Hollywood. The current and past issue of LinuxJournal also have some coverage.
Re:My "siggraph experience"
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
·
· Score: 1
All media people had little purple badges with the word media printed on them. But it seems there was a shortage of student volunteers this year. in previous years I saw people have their camera taken off or at least giving a warning to put it away. This year in the biggest technical seesion there was barely anyone watching. So people sneak in cameras. I saw several people. usually they put their feet up, and the video camera beteween their legs or beside. It's OK to take pics afterwards, or in the case of the 2001 special session, they actually said it was OK to take pics during the session as long as you didn't take pics/video from the screens (though i saw plenty of people that did anyway).
So it seems they lacked manpower to better monitor this year.
Of course there are a couple of people besides media that can take pictures, mainly the presenters themselves. Jill Smolin took pictures from the presenters in Course 36 and also for the 2001 special session.
As for the Exhibition Floor, it depends. there are times when you have exciting stuff being shown, cool demos or products or really creative booth design. But this year was very lackluster in that respect. It was smaller and there was not much excitement around (maybe with the exception of the Deep paint girls;-)
Re:SIGGRAPH 2001 official pictures
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
·
· Score: 1
Hate to follow my post with my own reply, but there is also the Art Gallery website:
Re:Monsters Inc.
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Well it set to open around Thanksgiving, Pixar has been working hard on it for a few years now. During SIGGRAPH they actually had a course in which in one part they explained all about the hair rendering and dynamics for Sullivan (the blue monster voiced by John Goodman). You could probably get the course notes by a library loan, or buy the CD from the ACM.
Pixar introduced a new gemetric primitive, RiCurves, a few years back, which is used for stuff like hair and the like. Here is the Application Note from Pixar:
No, SIGGRAPH prohibits you to take pictures from any of the technical sessions (courses, papers, panels, sketches and applications) and from the computer animation festival. You can't take pics during the session, though nothing prohibits you to take pics after one. Here it is directly from their website:
a/v Recording Guidelines
Only registered media representatives who have completed and signed the SIGGRAPH 2001 Audiovisual Agreement may be granted photography/ videography permission. The Audiovisual Agreement will be available on-site when you pickup your media badge.
Images or video obtained at SIGGRAPH 2001 may be published or aired only by a credible media outlet. Material may not be commercially sold or bartered. Media representatives must obtain permission from the person they are recording.
NO CAMERAS ARE ALLOWED IN THE TECHNICAL SESSIONS OR COMPUTER ANIMATION FESTIVAL, INCLUDING THE ELECTRONIC THEATER. ALL CAMERAS AND RECORDING EQUIPMENT MUST BE HAND-HELD.
Any media representative in violation of these guidelines may have their credentials revoked and may be removed from the Los Angeles Convention Center for the remainder of the conference.
Now there were plenty of people that would sneak in video cameras and record those sessions but they would sit in a place where they could hide, if you noticed.
There were several places where they did forbid explicitly any recording, the Virtual Stars session (where John Dykstra showed the SpiderMan clip), and the 2001 special session (with Bob Abel, Syd Mead, Peter Hyams and Dennis Muren).
SIGGRAPH 2001 official pictures
on
SIGGRAPH 2001
·
· Score: 1
Well, the SIGGRAPH 2001 website has already posted some pictures from some of the venues here:
SIGGRAPH also had a TV camera crew walking around the Convention Center so probably in the near future they will put up some clips up. I also took quite a bit of pics for a website, ilmfan.com, but since I use "analog" 35mm it'll take me some time to put up a report;-)
Although you can also control shader behaviour (even if it's a procedural shader) via texture maps, so it's a combination of both. You could have a procedural shader, say some fractal like or natural pattern but use a texture to control opacity or certain look to your shader, say hoy bumpy it is or the direction it would reflect light. There are shaders that can control tons of interesting procedural stuff via texture maps. Like at ILM, in Episode 1 (and also places like Imageworks with Stuart Little and many other examples), for the fur of creatures they painted texture maps that could define parameters like length of hair, it's density,, how much it curled, springiness and many others.
So in a sense you need a traditional paint tool for this texture maps. Photoshop is a mainstay in the FX industry so it's not inconceivable that it was used. of course in the end as you mentioned it's the shader that brings it all together.
You mention BMRT but you might be interested that it's creator, Larry Gritz, left Pixar, started his own company with other graphics gurus and are about to release a RenderMan complaint renderer called Entropy during SIGGRAPH 2001. BMRT is still supported there.
Not really that suprising, as the combo of RenderMan plus Maya has been used for quite some time. Especially in places like ILM which they get betas and early previews of Alias/Wavefront and Pixar's software. Episode 1 used that combo, among a lot other stuff, probably since 1998 and I'm sure it was being used and tested even before that. And many of these studios had their own tranlation tools to incorporate that stuff into their pipeline, especially big studios since many based parts on it not only on Maya but on previous software like PowerAnimator and Dynamation.
Anyway Pixar has Alfred for batch distributed rendering, part of the RAT tools. There is also project BORG. Many places have custom tools though. Also there has been mentioned that the PBS (Portable Batch System) from NASA has been used (Chris Watts, supervisor of Pleasantville used for his next film, the yet to be released Dubbed Action Movie).
As an above poster noted it's not really feasable. Here is a thread with a similar issue that also appeared around the same time on the RenderMan newsgroup:
Just the data for texture maps alone would sometimes require hundreds of megabytes alone, not including the RIB and other stuff that has to be passed around.
There will indeed several places where FF will be discussed at this years SIGGRAPH. The Advanced RenderMan course will have 2 sections with Kevin Bjorke, rendering supervisor, about the work. The original AWGUA (Alias/Wavefront) plan had also a talk about FF, but now it's scaled down. But there will probably be presentations at their booth. Mach Tony Kobayashi will have 2 presentations at the RenderMan user group meeting part of the Stupid RAT tricks part. There might be other here and there.
As was mentioned earlier, batch rendering, like the one used for stuff like Shrek and anything done in PRMan doesn't require 3D OpenGL acceleration. As far as the HP machines it's no rumor, it's true, they use their own X server. I actually saw HP machines at last years SIGGRAPH with the FX cards running Houdini under Linux. And this year at the HP booth they'll demo Softimage XSI running also under Linux on their FX cards.
Great link. Just to clarify it does mention about PDI and their Linux use. But also the main focus is on Dreamworks own animation facility (they did Road to El Dorado), which is separate from PDI's and they have also made a big change to Linux. Actually there is also a SIGGRAPH Sketch this year about Dreamworks Linux pipeline:
They still do most of their stuff on SGI's, besides the Rebel Mac Unit, but as far as Linux they have stated that actually they are using it for workstations, not servers, they think it's lacking still for server use:
Well when PRMan and the whole RenderMan standard came out circa 1989 the market was different. For starters most regular FX studios were still traditional. Most animation studios, like Pixar, PDI, Blue Shy Studios and Rhythm and Hues used (and continue to do so) in house software. The Pixar folk wanted RenderMan to become a standard in the CG industry, but most off the shelf manufacturers (like Alias and Softimage, etc) decided to go their own way. But eventually it became a de facto standard in the FX industry. Besides they are not really direct competitors to Pixar. Pixar makes animated movies, while places like ILM, Digital Domain, Tippett, Imageworks and others concentrate on FX for live action films. Remebner that Pixar was spun off in part because catmull and company wanted to make animated pictures but Lucas wanted to concentrate on photorealistic CG for film FX. They might be competitors if FX studios get into the animated CG film business, and even then, you are increasing the market, plus they still buy PRMan licenses.
As you sid all the strengths of PRMan had made it widely accepted in the FX industry. For a nice description why, read the first chapter of the Advanced RenderMan book by Larry Gritz and Tony Apodaca:
Well for one thing PDI uses almost propietary in house built software. They did use Maya for modeling some of the stuff and certain fire FXbut as far as rendering, animating, etc. they used their own stuff. CGW did a report on Shrek. What they have done is that they have po0rted most of their software to Linux. Daniel Wexler, the guru behind their renderer has posted very interesting statistics on their rendering and Linux use. Last years SIGGRAPH had a Sketches section devoted to it and this year there will be a course. VES 2001 also had a talk about some of their technology used. And the current issue of Cinefex, THE magazine of the FX industry covers Final Fantasy in detail:
As other people have mentioned, computers are just a tool. It's like the old debate of photography versus paintings (actually heard arguments for both each).
But if you need support just contact someone from SIGGRAPH, at least from the closest professional chapter. SIGGRAPH is the largest organization in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and covers all aspects of CG: straight art, animation, latest research, commercial projects, etc. Each year they have an art show (could be seen by mopre than 40,000 people this year) at the annual conference. After the conference the art show travels around the country. There are numerous panels on art at the conference and countless artists of all kinds.
It's too late for this years conference, but youy can still check out the following links for help and ecouragment:
Well I'm not sure what would imply that Lucas has the final say about this. All he cares is that the ILM delivers the shots, the images. Probably finance them. But it's actually up to ILM to decide what they use. They do extensive testing on new technology to have the best production pipeline possible. They even have a special agreement with SGI, called JDEI to get to test all new equipment, plus they are a beta testing site for Alias/Wavefront. Here is the press release for their renewed JEDI agreement:
It's actually up to the ILM engineers and management to decide what to use, Lucas is not involved in that. ILM has figured out the Linux gives them a good solution. years ago when Softimage was part of M$ and ported the software to NT, ILM did several test as to the feasability of using NT in their production pipeline, but it never panned out.
Besides their SGI infrastructure they have the Mac Rebel Unit which uses macs for stuff like texture painting, matte pintings, animatics and compositing. They just use what works, and finally Linux is good enough for production work. There are also rumors that they recently bought several Digital Tru64 boxes. They also have regular Win PCs for office work. There was even an old report that they started using Linux in the engineering dept. long ago for routers or some such thing. Here are the appropiate links:
I'm not sure what you are talking about but Lucas did direct, hands on, Episode 1. As any other film they have other unit direcotrs, mainly second unit, but by no means they had someone else do all the work and him just give a stamp of approval. just watch the documentaries on the official Star Wars site, reports on several different magazines like Cinefex, American Cinematographer, the VHS featurette, etc. Also I wouldn't call Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson bad actors.
Sometimes it make me wonder about the perceptions. A lot of people complain that there is no story, but as soon as you mention the Coruscant scenes with the political intrigue they think it too boring and should be all action (maybe like Armageddon). True the movie was more childlike, not as adult (but with enough for the kids) as the original. Some people attribute this to Lucas not having a producer that can say no to him like Gary Kurtz, producer of the first ywo originals. You can glance at this from the making of book "The Making of The Empire Strikes Back"
by Alan Arnold. I personally don't dislike Jar Jar, it's purpose being that of a goofy childlike character (but people don't complain about Tom Greens or Adam Sandler's antics), and none of my friends, family or people I've met dislike him at all. Though some of his antics are just too much an do drag down the movie.
As fas as the extras are concerned I welcome them. As a film lover I love to see the creative process behind the scenes. As someone especially interested in Computer Graphics and FX, I'm sure all that extra material will not be enough. But people question it's purpose. Don't watch it if you don't want. No wonder people still think that as far as FX computer "just di it all", that they ahve a button named "create dino or Jara Jar" and another one to "animate creature". It simply amazing what the people behind the scenes do, and I appreciate all the extra material but that's just me.
Many scenes were indeed shot, the lightsaber malfunction bit, which is why OB1 is running away that droid in the STAP on the swamp at the beginning and Qui Gon reprimanding him later. There was a scene shot with the youg Rodian (Greedo like), I believe Anakin decks him. Also there were some cuts here and there of finished stuff, like when Boss Nass says that Jara Jat should be punished by stoning, when they are in the council on the underwater city. There were a few more minor deits here and there.
Well there is a thing called "changing one's mind". So what. it's like when Michael Jordan retired the first time promising to not come back and just play baseball, but he changed his mind. It's not like it's written in stone. Besides, how could they have gotten all those extras on VHS anyway, especially stuff you have to navigate like production notes and photos. He (or more specifically Lucasfilm Licensing) could have just wanted to release just the same material from the VHS and then in 2 years release an expanded version. But at least they chose to make a decent double disk release.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what would be entailed. It's not just a matter or re-rendereing but on redoing the facial animation. And that is done by hand, no mocap, no magical software, nada. It's just a bunch of very talented character animators doing all the facial and scondary animation and lip synching. It would be akin to say, redubbing Mulan to chinese, in essence you would need to redraw all the film again. The same with CG, even with all sorts of blenshapes, morph targets, and animation controls, in the end it's up to the animator to use these controls to move and make every tiny facial pose. They might even have to pull vertices by hand. No matter how sophiticated software is now or in the near future, it will be still an automated process that will probably make characters appear stiff. That's why you need the animators, to bring the models to life. There is stuff like the tradionat animation principles, like squash and stretch, slow in and out, etc. (look for the documents of the old wise men of Disney or the animation notes from John Lasseter) that only animators would be able to impart. That's why you need animation supervisors, dailies, etc. Make sure the film has a consistent vision and animation style. They would have to redo most of the film, at least all face closeups. It simply is not feasable.
Anyone interested in checking out the the principles of animation, here are some links:
Couldn't find Lasster's paper but here is the reference:
Lasseter, John, "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation," SIGGRAPH '87, Computer Graphics, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 35-44, July, 1987.
Slashdot Mirror
Well you might be right, but as far as I know no major movie FX or animation have been done over the Net. Not only because techical considerations but also dealings with the studios. Studios want to protect their investement and market the film according to their plans. You can't just transmit stuff over the net without concerns that someone might snoop in. Besides probably doing the transfers to Exabyte and sending them via courier are faster and more secure.
There might be a few cases though. For example DD has a commercials divisions (also does music videos) and used to have an interactive division. Maybe they worked sending stuff over the net for these smaller projects. ILM Commercial Productions seems to be doing this also (but not the main film FX part):
ILMCP Client AccessSo maybe you are right.
The stuff your are mentioninmg is referred to 4:3 pullup or pulldown (depending on direction) about transfering from film at 24 frames per second to video at 30 frames per second and viceversa.
But the other thing about FX is not that the plates are scanned typically at 2K resolution but all the data files involved in the FX elements: models, shaders, texture maps, etc. In the renderMan newsgroup there was a thread some time ago that had some very interesting stats. While a single frame might be around, say 10MB, RIBs and textures alone for models might take dozens to mabybe even hundreds of MBs. I couldn't find the reference but it was probably posted by Tom Duff or Larry Gritz. This past SIGGRAPH some people discussed some info about their projects. There is some info about Shrek out there, stating that on average they had 2 to 3 GB per frame (though FX would be a bit lower since not all the image is 3D). It's usually a lot less number of frames, but the amount of data per frame is huge. Take Pearl Harbor that only had around 200 shots but they occupy like 50 min of screen time, or long seuqnces like the Contact oull back or the frozen NY flyby in AI.
Shrek rendering staristicsYou might want to check the RenderMan course notes from this past SIGGRAPH, also a lot of info. For the Gungan battle of episode 1, all the baked RIBs accounted for 64 GB of data. The smallest RIB for one cycle was 209 MB.
Renderman repositoryAbout Major Damage, besides SIGGRAPH I think it was discussed in the CH_Char mailing list, now web forum. Jeff Lew used (or maybe still) posts around there.
CG CharYour link is correct, it's Jeff Kleiser and Diane Walczak, true pioneers in CG. They came up with the "synthespian" term. Other projects include Clear and Present danger and the Mystique morphs in X-Men and tons of commercials like Trophomotion and others.
But I think some stuff needds clarification. This is kind of a big deal. Stuff is done ont the net, but only local networks. Usually filmed is scanned in and then delivered to the FX crews via Exabyte, DLT or other huge storage media. It's never realy sent over the net, for security and bandwidth considerations. There have been some collaborations like this before: while Spielberg was filming Schindler's List in Poland, at night he would connect via satelite to ILM to approve the work ILM was doing for Jurassic Park. No major FX effort has ever been done over the Internet. There are a few companies that do rendering services like Screamline Rendering Services. The short CG film "Hubert's Brain" was done this way. Another short by Chris Bailey, "Major Damage" was done by people around the country also.
Screamline Rendering Services
Major Damage
Film images are huge. Even on local area networks (some with fiber backbones) it's a huge undertaking just transmitting the data files for FX.
It's not just LOTR but it happens quite often. There are times when studios have to put out trailers when work is still being done on the FX, so sometimes they use test shots, or do stuff specifically for trailers.
The Spider Man trailer was only shots done for the trailer. The Perfect Storm first trailer, the huge wave was specifically done for it and the posters. The first teaser for Twister contained the test reel ILM did for Jan DeBont (and won them the contract). The Lost World also had a specific FX shots done for it, and so did the first T2 teaser. And usually for the Star Trek movies, the trailers contain FX, images from previous ST movies. From what I understand some of the shots in the first trailer were works in progress and test shots, like for their Massive crowd animation program.
LIDAR technology is not soemthing new out of the blue. It has ben used quite a bit before. I saw it once at SIGGRAPH 99 (2 years ago). It's very useful for creating detailed 3D models. Kind of like a range finder, but it sweeps an area to get 3D range data out of it. It has even been used in films like in End of Days and What Dreams May Come. Here are a couple of articles from VFXPro.com
Panavision: Cinema in a New LightPanavision's Panascan LIDAR System Integrates Cinematography
Interesting to see how this technology can be applied for a critical job. Especially when they start diging deeper below the level of the Hudson to detect any shifts.
Just because the majority of readers think that Mesa/DRI is only useful for games, that doesn't mean it's not crucial for several other markets. One of the would be in engineering and scientific visualization. Remember that it's becoming more often for huge Linux clusters to be used in big data crunching applications. But after all the data is processed you want to be able to visualize: how air moves on a new wing design or turbine, a 3D volume visualization of the brain, meteorological patterns, stellar formation, how a car would react on a crash, etc. It would certainly be better for some people if they mantained the whole process under one platform.
The other one is Digital Content Creation (DCC). The most recent example has been the production of Shrek. Though most of the Linux use in DCC and particularly FX have been in renderfarms (which don't require interactive OpenGL accelarated graphics), there is an increased use of Linux as animation workstations. PDI is making the switch, and also their co-workers at Dreamworks feature animation. Many other facilities are doing the switch to use Linux for interactive workstations: Pixar (their next movie Little Nemo will use Linux), ILM (by October they move 20% of their workstations, and 20% of their renderfarm to Linux, and the next movie after Episode 2 will mostly be done under Linux), Double Negative and many others. In October there is going to be a meeting organized by VES to discuss more of the FX technology and Linux. And of course several vendors already or are planning ports of their products to Linux: Maya 4 from Alias/Wavefront, Softimage 3D and XSI by Softimage, Houdini from SideFX already out, Rayz from Silicon Grail and several others.
I guess it depends if you prefer a closed source but vendor supported solution. In oprder for Houdini to be released it was only available from HP workstation with their FX10 cards and they even provided their own X and OpenGL implementation (no XFree or Mesa/DRI). But I'm sure other customers or vendors might prefer an open solution.
Just check the september issue of CGW for the Linux coverage in Hollywood. The current and past issue of LinuxJournal also have some coverage.
CGW next issueLinux use in Dreamworks and PDI (LinuxJournal)
All media people had little purple badges with the word media printed on them. But it seems there was a shortage of student volunteers this year. in previous years I saw people have their camera taken off or at least giving a warning to put it away. This year in the biggest technical seesion there was barely anyone watching. So people sneak in cameras. I saw several people. usually they put their feet up, and the video camera beteween their legs or beside. It's OK to take pics afterwards, or in the case of the 2001 special session, they actually said it was OK to take pics during the session as long as you didn't take pics/video from the screens (though i saw plenty of people that did anyway).
;-)
So it seems they lacked manpower to better monitor this year.
Of course there are a couple of people besides media that can take pictures, mainly the presenters themselves. Jill Smolin took pictures from the presenters in Course 36 and also for the 2001 special session.
As for the Exhibition Floor, it depends. there are times when you have exciting stuff being shown, cool demos or products or really creative booth design. But this year was very lackluster in that respect. It was smaller and there was not much excitement around (maybe with the exception of the Deep paint girls
Hate to follow my post with my own reply, but there is also the Art Gallery website:
SIGGRAPH 2001 Art GalleryWell it set to open around Thanksgiving, Pixar has been working hard on it for a few years now. During SIGGRAPH they actually had a course in which in one part they explained all about the hair rendering and dynamics for Sullivan (the blue monster voiced by John Goodman). You could probably get the course notes by a library loan, or buy the CD from the ACM.
Course 36: From Ivory Tower to Silver Screen: Visual Effects Companies Reveal How Research and Development Finds its Way Into ProductionPixar introduced a new gemetric primitive, RiCurves, a few years back, which is used for stuff like hair and the like. Here is the Application Note from Pixar:
App Note 19 on Ri CurvesNo, SIGGRAPH prohibits you to take pictures from any of the technical sessions (courses, papers, panels, sketches and applications) and from the computer animation festival. You can't take pics during the session, though nothing prohibits you to take pics after one. Here it is directly from their website:
And here is the link where it states so:
SIGGRAPH 2001 media guideNow there were plenty of people that would sneak in video cameras and record those sessions but they would sit in a place where they could hide, if you noticed.
There were several places where they did forbid explicitly any recording, the Virtual Stars session (where John Dykstra showed the SpiderMan clip), and the 2001 special session (with Bob Abel, Syd Mead, Peter Hyams and Dennis Muren).
Well, the SIGGRAPH 2001 website has already posted some pictures from some of the venues here:
SIGGRAPH 2001 photosSIGGRAPH also had a TV camera crew walking around the Convention Center so probably in the near future they will put up some clips up. I also took quite a bit of pics for a website, ilmfan.com, but since I use "analog" 35mm it'll take me some time to put up a report ;-)
Although you can also control shader behaviour (even if it's a procedural shader) via texture maps, so it's a combination of both. You could have a procedural shader, say some fractal like or natural pattern but use a texture to control opacity or certain look to your shader, say hoy bumpy it is or the direction it would reflect light. There are shaders that can control tons of interesting procedural stuff via texture maps. Like at ILM, in Episode 1 (and also places like Imageworks with Stuart Little and many other examples), for the fur of creatures they painted texture maps that could define parameters like length of hair, it's density,, how much it curled, springiness and many others.
So in a sense you need a traditional paint tool for this texture maps. Photoshop is a mainstay in the FX industry so it's not inconceivable that it was used. of course in the end as you mentioned it's the shader that brings it all together.
You mention BMRT but you might be interested that it's creator, Larry Gritz, left Pixar, started his own company with other graphics gurus and are about to release a RenderMan complaint renderer called Entropy during SIGGRAPH 2001. BMRT is still supported there.
Exluna
Not really that suprising, as the combo of RenderMan plus Maya has been used for quite some time. Especially in places like ILM which they get betas and early previews of Alias/Wavefront and Pixar's software. Episode 1 used that combo, among a lot other stuff, probably since 1998 and I'm sure it was being used and tested even before that. And many of these studios had their own tranlation tools to incorporate that stuff into their pipeline, especially big studios since many based parts on it not only on Maya but on previous software like PowerAnimator and Dynamation.
Anyway Pixar has Alfred for batch distributed rendering, part of the RAT tools. There is also project BORG. Many places have custom tools though. Also there has been mentioned that the PBS (Portable Batch System) from NASA has been used (Chris Watts, supervisor of Pleasantville used for his next film, the yet to be released Dubbed Action Movie).
Pixar's AlfredPBS
Project BORG
As an above poster noted it's not really feasable. Here is a thread with a similar issue that also appeared around the same time on the RenderMan newsgroup:
RenderMan on the FrontierJust the data for texture maps alone would sometimes require hundreds of megabytes alone, not including the RIB and other stuff that has to be passed around.
There will indeed several places where FF will be discussed at this years SIGGRAPH. The Advanced RenderMan course will have 2 sections with Kevin Bjorke, rendering supervisor, about the work. The original AWGUA (Alias/Wavefront) plan had also a talk about FF, but now it's scaled down. But there will probably be presentations at their booth. Mach Tony Kobayashi will have 2 presentations at the RenderMan user group meeting part of the Stupid RAT tricks part. There might be other here and there.
SIGGRAPH 2001 Course 48: Advanced RenderMan 3SIGGRAPH 2001, Stupid RAT Tricks
As was mentioned earlier, batch rendering, like the one used for stuff like Shrek and anything done in PRMan doesn't require 3D OpenGL acceleration. As far as the HP machines it's no rumor, it's true, they use their own X server. I actually saw HP machines at last years SIGGRAPH with the FX cards running Houdini under Linux. And this year at the HP booth they'll demo Softimage XSI running also under Linux on their FX cards.
Great link. Just to clarify it does mention about PDI and their Linux use. But also the main focus is on Dreamworks own animation facility (they did Road to El Dorado), which is separate from PDI's and they have also made a big change to Linux. Actually there is also a SIGGRAPH Sketch this year about Dreamworks Linux pipeline:
Fun for TDs SIGGRAPH 2001 SketchA previous SGI press release for the Perfect Storm Stated that ILM had upwards of 1500 SGI processors:
ILM and SGIThey still do most of their stuff on SGI's, besides the Rebel Mac Unit, but as far as Linux they have stated that actually they are using it for workstations, not servers, they think it's lacking still for server use:
Linux and FXVES Tech meeting on Linux
Well when PRMan and the whole RenderMan standard came out circa 1989 the market was different. For starters most regular FX studios were still traditional. Most animation studios, like Pixar, PDI, Blue Shy Studios and Rhythm and Hues used (and continue to do so) in house software. The Pixar folk wanted RenderMan to become a standard in the CG industry, but most off the shelf manufacturers (like Alias and Softimage, etc) decided to go their own way. But eventually it became a de facto standard in the FX industry. Besides they are not really direct competitors to Pixar. Pixar makes animated movies, while places like ILM, Digital Domain, Tippett, Imageworks and others concentrate on FX for live action films. Remebner that Pixar was spun off in part because catmull and company wanted to make animated pictures but Lucas wanted to concentrate on photorealistic CG for film FX. They might be competitors if FX studios get into the animated CG film business, and even then, you are increasing the market, plus they still buy PRMan licenses.
As you sid all the strengths of PRMan had made it widely accepted in the FX industry. For a nice description why, read the first chapter of the Advanced RenderMan book by Larry Gritz and Tony Apodaca:
Advanced RenderManWell for one thing PDI uses almost propietary in house built software. They did use Maya for modeling some of the stuff and certain fire FXbut as far as rendering, animating, etc. they used their own stuff. CGW did a report on Shrek. What they have done is that they have po0rted most of their software to Linux. Daniel Wexler, the guru behind their renderer has posted very interesting statistics on their rendering and Linux use. Last years SIGGRAPH had a Sketches section devoted to it and this year there will be a course. VES 2001 also had a talk about some of their technology used. And the current issue of Cinefex, THE magazine of the FX industry covers Final Fantasy in detail:
Cinefex FInal Fantasy coverageShrek at CGW
PDI rendering info
SIGGRAPH 2001 Shrek Course
SIGGRAPH 2001 FX R&D Course
SIGGRAPH 2000 Shrek Sketch
VES 2001 Shrek panel
So it isn't exactly like no info was out before.
As other people have mentioned, computers are just a tool. It's like the old debate of photography versus paintings (actually heard arguments for both each).
But if you need support just contact someone from SIGGRAPH, at least from the closest professional chapter. SIGGRAPH is the largest organization in Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, and covers all aspects of CG: straight art, animation, latest research, commercial projects, etc. Each year they have an art show (could be seen by mopre than 40,000 people this year) at the annual conference. After the conference the art show travels around the country. There are numerous panels on art at the conference and countless artists of all kinds.
It's too late for this years conference, but youy can still check out the following links for help and ecouragment:
ACM SIGGRAPH Artist's ConnectionSIGGRAPH Chapters Directory
SIGGRAPH 2001 Art Gallery
Well I'm not sure what would imply that Lucas has the final say about this. All he cares is that the ILM delivers the shots, the images. Probably finance them. But it's actually up to ILM to decide what they use. They do extensive testing on new technology to have the best production pipeline possible. They even have a special agreement with SGI, called JDEI to get to test all new equipment, plus they are a beta testing site for Alias/Wavefront. Here is the press release for their renewed JEDI agreement:
SGI is Preferred Provider of Content Creation Workstations and Servers for Industrial Light & Magic
It's actually up to the ILM engineers and management to decide what to use, Lucas is not involved in that. ILM has figured out the Linux gives them a good solution. years ago when Softimage was part of M$ and ported the software to NT, ILM did several test as to the feasability of using NT in their production pipeline, but it never panned out.
Besides their SGI infrastructure they have the Mac Rebel Unit which uses macs for stuff like texture painting, matte pintings, animatics and compositing. They just use what works, and finally Linux is good enough for production work. There are also rumors that they recently bought several Digital Tru64 boxes. They also have regular Win PCs for office work. There was even an old report that they started using Linux in the engineering dept. long ago for routers or some such thing. Here are the appropiate links:
Linux takes Hollywood by stormThe Little Engine That Could
Lucas probably doesn't care, he could be using a PC or Mac for writing the screenplays. It's up to ILM to use what is best for them.
I'm not sure what you are talking about but Lucas did direct, hands on, Episode 1. As any other film they have other unit direcotrs, mainly second unit, but by no means they had someone else do all the work and him just give a stamp of approval. just watch the documentaries on the official Star Wars site, reports on several different magazines like Cinefex, American Cinematographer, the VHS featurette, etc. Also I wouldn't call Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson bad actors.
Sometimes it make me wonder about the perceptions. A lot of people complain that there is no story, but as soon as you mention the Coruscant scenes with the political intrigue they think it too boring and should be all action (maybe like Armageddon). True the movie was more childlike, not as adult (but with enough for the kids) as the original. Some people attribute this to Lucas not having a producer that can say no to him like Gary Kurtz, producer of the first ywo originals. You can glance at this from the making of book "The Making of The Empire Strikes Back"
by Alan Arnold. I personally don't dislike Jar Jar, it's purpose being that of a goofy childlike character (but people don't complain about Tom Greens or Adam Sandler's antics), and none of my friends, family or people I've met dislike him at all. Though some of his antics are just too much an do drag down the movie.
As fas as the extras are concerned I welcome them. As a film lover I love to see the creative process behind the scenes. As someone especially interested in Computer Graphics and FX, I'm sure all that extra material will not be enough. But people question it's purpose. Don't watch it if you don't want. No wonder people still think that as far as FX computer "just di it all", that they ahve a button named "create dino or Jara Jar" and another one to "animate creature". It simply amazing what the people behind the scenes do, and I appreciate all the extra material but that's just me.
Many scenes were indeed shot, the lightsaber malfunction bit, which is why OB1 is running away that droid in the STAP on the swamp at the beginning and Qui Gon reprimanding him later. There was a scene shot with the youg Rodian (Greedo like), I believe Anakin decks him. Also there were some cuts here and there of finished stuff, like when Boss Nass says that Jara Jat should be punished by stoning, when they are in the council on the underwater city. There were a few more minor deits here and there.
Well there is a thing called "changing one's mind". So what. it's like when Michael Jordan retired the first time promising to not come back and just play baseball, but he changed his mind. It's not like it's written in stone. Besides, how could they have gotten all those extras on VHS anyway, especially stuff you have to navigate like production notes and photos. He (or more specifically Lucasfilm Licensing) could have just wanted to release just the same material from the VHS and then in 2 years release an expanded version. But at least they chose to make a decent double disk release.
I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what would be entailed. It's not just a matter or re-rendereing but on redoing the facial animation. And that is done by hand, no mocap, no magical software, nada. It's just a bunch of very talented character animators doing all the facial and scondary animation and lip synching. It would be akin to say, redubbing Mulan to chinese, in essence you would need to redraw all the film again. The same with CG, even with all sorts of blenshapes, morph targets, and animation controls, in the end it's up to the animator to use these controls to move and make every tiny facial pose. They might even have to pull vertices by hand. No matter how sophiticated software is now or in the near future, it will be still an automated process that will probably make characters appear stiff. That's why you need the animators, to bring the models to life. There is stuff like the tradionat animation principles, like squash and stretch, slow in and out, etc. (look for the documents of the old wise men of Disney or the animation notes from John Lasseter) that only animators would be able to impart. That's why you need animation supervisors, dailies, etc. Make sure the film has a consistent vision and animation style. They would have to redo most of the film, at least all face closeups. It simply is not feasable.
Anyone interested in checking out the the principles of animation, here are some links:
12 Principles of Animation
Couldn't find Lasster's paper but here is the reference:
Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer AnimationLasseter, John, "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation," SIGGRAPH '87, Computer Graphics, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 35-44, July, 1987.
Tricks to Animating Characters with a Computer
Animation Notes from Ollie Johnston