You do know that both Prequel movies were two of the biggest model shots in ILM history right? Except for Lucas insistence on the CG clone troopers it was up to the supervisors to come up with the best approach. Not convinced? Read this (or the Cinefex article among other things):
I don't know why people assume that the projects will be Star Wars related. ILM has created many independent shorts (more or less the wayPixar started) over the years. There was Synchonicity at SIGGRAPH 2000, and Work in Progress and The Moving Pyramid at SIGGRAPH 2001. The artists there work from time to time in their own little projects, as shown in the ILMajan session at SIGGRAPH 96. Heck, in the article you can se that they were working on the ill-fated Frankenstein and tried to do Curious George.
They won't have to dish out too much. The new division will be mainly composed of people from ILM. They just need to establish a separate pipeline. But they will use the same machines, software and people that usually do the VFX. Remember that ILM had a Commercials Divisions, which was kind of independent but still contained inside ILM. Their Digital Productions division, which was trying to do this animated films, was entirely housed inside ILM.
Sigh, leave it to fanboyism to make statements like that. I wonder wy people can't separate the story/direction from the VFX when doing statements like that. It's very easy to take cheap shots but the same could be said the other way around.
ILM is still a leader. They got around one of the biggest R&D dept. besides being the biggest VFX studio around. They have won countless of Sci-Tech awards, pioneered work on cloth dynamics, water dynamics, muscle systems, etc. They are regularly featured in industry magazines such as Cinefex, CGW, American Cinematographer and Millimeter. They participate in countless event including SIGGRAPH, this year they present a paper on fluid simulations, plus a special session and participate in the RenderMan course plus a Maya Masterclass and we'll see what else, plus their R&D reel was selected for the Electronic Theatre. They have 2 sessions on VES plus many other festivals around the world.
BTW, Weta doesn't own Massive, though it was developed for them in the first place. They do deserve much kudos but also many studios like ILM, DD, Imageworks, ESC, and the list goes on. You might want to read this for a bit more perspective:
The shots with the grasshoppers in the bar. There is a glass bottle filled with seeds and nuts. The botle was rendered via BMRT by the frankenrender method.
I think it's mainly because of the rampant fanboyism on the net combined with the severe lack of knowledge about VFX and its history (though it doesn't help that the industry is kinda secretive). It's cool to praise the Matrix and LOTR and bash Star Wars and the VFX of ILM, no mater what. People can't seem to separate the story and direction from the VFX work. Hopefully by 2005 will get rid of this nonsense for a while. No more sequels of those and hopefully no movies to cause this nonsense (kinda like an AICN effect).
As you say credit where it is due. Like people discredinting Harry Potter 2 because of their "dislike" of Dobby (loved the basilisk by the way)?
So what if they used somewhat older machines to do the VFX of those movies. The O2s were used for interactive work mostly, then sent to the renderfarm which has quite a few procs available. Besides it doesn't matter since all their R&D and propietary software, mind stuff that sometimes was way beyond most things, ran on SGI hardware. Like say how they wrote MEL and Maya plugins for things like rigid body dynamics for the battle droids to stuff to simulate bending metal, the constrained dynamic sims of Pearl Harbor and oh so many other things. Just read some Cinefexes and CGW to really get an idea. Many of the things ILM comes up with make it downstream and are adopted elsewhere. The skin for Gollum came from an original idea by ILM, which in turn used the Jensen paper from Stanford to start with. Same with ambient occlusion and many other things. Just check the few SIGGRAPH papers they have presented in the last couple of years. OpenEXR is being adopted by several studios and graphics vendors.
You are confusing things. Maya won a Sci-Tech Oscar. Yes Pixar won a special oscar, but they had already won a few Sci-Tech awards as well. Even if you refer to graphics companies gettting an Oscar, that has happened many times over the years. Heck, this year alone, not only Maya won a Sci-Tech one, but also Mental Images for Mental Ray, and the guys at SideFX for Houdini.
The fact is ILM has been doing this for quite some time too. The title (taken from the news bite from TheForce.net) is very misleading. I don't know how many people saw or read articles about the realtime system for compositing the miniatures of Rouge City for A.I. Also some other studios have been doing this.
Yes this is old news.
As far as the leading edge I guess having the biggest R&D dept. doesn't count, or having another paper (besides other presentations) atthis years SIGGRAPH doesn't count. Much of the technique for Gollum's skin (sub-surface scattering) came from an idea ILM made public at a RenderMan Users Group Meeting a few years ago. I guess those Sci-Tech Oscars a couple years ago, or something like the release of OpenEXR, were just figments of our imagination;-):
Well, you skipped a step there, ESC came actually from Manex (after some nasty happenings there) which itself came from Mass. Illussion.
As far as some of the technology, the VFX industry has been scanning stuff for years. Take for example the actors scans for Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home, for the time travelling sequence. Sure maybe the Arius 3D has more resolution but it's not exactly something new.
Now the extensive use of photogrammetry was certainly something very new, although apparently was used in some shots in Godzilla the year before. The long in production Dinosaur from Disney also used some photogrammetry techniques for surveying.
I do like the idea of that mockup highway though, it's rare when you can see nowadays any good car chase scenes.
Mopst big VFX productions are very big complicated endeavors though you might not hear from them too much.
Well that for the image based techniques that were used to render the many virtual set per se. To see the precursors of bulet time check this VFXHQ article:
They are also bringing the sequels apparently in 3D of Full Throttle and Sam 'n Max. As someone mentioned Monkey Island 4 was 3D. Grim Fandango was 3D and simply an amazing game.
The only problem is that Master and Commander is a film to be released also this year. They have no projects, that we know off, after Return of the King. The general consensus is that they will reduce in size afterwards, many people are from other places.
Probably it also has to do with the font. Pixar has the same problem, because the font on their traditional logo uses all Caps letter. You can read about it on the RenderMan FAQ. If you click around inside the Weta Digital sections, it's spelled right: Weta.
Well for VFX houses it certainly a largish opertation. Considering many boutique studios (which do a lot of commercial and braocast stuff) might just be a couple dozen machines and people at the most. There are few companies out there with more capacity, like ILM, Imageworks, and a few more.
Weta Digital is a more recent company, than the much older Weta Workshop. Weta Digital worked on Heavenly Creatures, The Frightners and most of "The Ride" sequence on Contact, before doing LOTR. They haven't gottn much exposure because their small number of film projects and mostly being a company created for PJs' use.
By the way, LucasArts is a game company, you are probably referring to ILM.
You might be interested to know that Weta Digital was formed in part by a former ILM member, Wes Takahashi.
Heck we had had CG and digital effects for over 10 years and the Acdemy hasn't changed it's perception. The VFX Branch is about 10 years old and they are somewhat dropping the ball by having only 3 nominees (like also the Sound and Makeup categories) still. I never understood Richad Edlund's position on this.
Digital VFX are very widespread, for every big VFX popcorn movie there are probably two regular films that needed CG for sky replacements, to erase cables or boom mikes, wire removal, etc. There is no erspect. That is why the VES will have awards concentrating on VFX and they do have a CG Character category.
The problem is that there are not enough performances of CG characters per year to even qualify. That's why until now we have Best Animated Film category. Niot until last year did it get created, until the US had a more steady stream of animated films in a year.
Besides as others have noted, who should get the award. For one actor, there is probably a team of dozens and dozens of VFX people behind it. That's why this should be more appropiately recognized as VFX.
The curious thing is that no one is award of the VES (Visual Effects Awards), with its first edition this Wednesday. They are doing the equivalent of the SAG, DGA and other Guold awards. They have a specific category for Best CG Characters, with the teams from Episode 2, Harry Potter (Dobby) and Weta Digital nominated:
Well thenI don't see much of the point. There were tons of performances that got snubbed. What about Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert in Far From Heaven. Robin Williams had a couple good performances this, etc.
It would really be tough to clasify it. Who would get nominated, only Serkis, or Randall William Cook and his team or both. It seems more of a flavor of the moment thing and unless there are compelling reasons and rules in place for that I don't see the reason. That's what kept animated films on the fringe for so long. If anything Gollum goes inside the VFX category which they did get. And if Gollum was nominated, why not Yoda, Dobby and other CG characters here. Doesn't make much sense.
I think you misunderstand. I should have said that they will probably be reduced in size, not that they will disappear.
There aer two Weta's here, the Workshop and Digital. Workshop, which makes prosthetics and props has at least another project for this year, Master and Commander. I don't doubt Taylor will continue it successfully.
Weta Digital has hundreds of people in there at the moment. But after Return of the King they don't have anything lined up. They should have some bids by the Summer at the latest. The problem with big facilities, like Weta Digital, ILM and Imageworks is that they constantly need to have projects on the pipeline so that they can survive. After all you can't have dozens and dozens of highly paid artists just sitting idly.
My argument was, and I've heard this from others at SIGGRAPH, is that after LOTR, Weta Digital will reduce in size. They of course will continue to do VFX for films by PJ, like The Freighteners, and some for others, say like what they did in Contact. It's not that Weta Digital has the money or not, but the ability to get enough projects to continually sustain itself in the long run at its current size. Other big studios like ILM and Imageworks have several projects already lined up for this and next year. What other projects does Weta Digital have lined up?
All the key personnel are from the US: Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, etc. and many of the artists were hierd just project-based, not long term, and are on special work visas. When LOTR: ROTK finishes they'll most probably will have to go back.
Yes Weta will go on, but the final size and shape are yet to be seen. We'll continue to see and admire them but I doubt it'l be as many "big" projects as the LOTR movies are. You just wait and see;-).
Well tge real measure of a Hollywood movie is if it done by a Hollywood studio, not by the film shooting location. LOTR was financed by New Line pretty much, and Harry Potter by Warner Bros., even if they shot overseas because of their particular deals (Rowling demanded that certain percentage of the HP films be done by UK people, all the cast, the stages and most of the VFX, before selling the rights; PJ wanted to shoot in NZ where he is from).
Gangs of New York was a Hollywood film, it was done by Miramax. SW was a Hollywood film (Lucafilm and 20th Century Fox), The Matrix too (Warner Bros.
Lastly to the parent post, this is just Lucas consolidating his companies in one place. It's not an actual movie studio like Disney, Paramount and the like, depsite the misleading title in the nwespaper article.
Slashdot Mirror
You do know that both Prequel movies were two of the biggest model shots in ILM history right? Except for Lucas insistence on the CG clone troopers it was up to the supervisors to come up with the best approach. Not convinced? Read this (or the Cinefex article among other things):
Brave New Worlds
I don't know why people assume that the projects will be Star Wars related. ILM has created many independent shorts (more or less the wayPixar started) over the years. There was Synchonicity at SIGGRAPH 2000, and Work in Progress and The Moving Pyramid at SIGGRAPH 2001. The artists there work from time to time in their own little projects, as shown in the ILMajan session at SIGGRAPH 96. Heck, in the article you can se that they were working on the ill-fated Frankenstein and tried to do Curious George.
You can see a couple of those shorts here:
Work in Progress
How to Make Hollywood Cheese
Work in Progress
The Moving Pyramid
They won't have to dish out too much. The new division will be mainly composed of people from ILM. They just need to establish a separate pipeline. But they will use the same machines, software and people that usually do the VFX. Remember that ILM had a Commercials Divisions, which was kind of independent but still contained inside ILM. Their Digital Productions division, which was trying to do this animated films, was entirely housed inside ILM.
Sigh, leave it to fanboyism to make statements like that. I wonder wy people can't separate the story/direction from the VFX when doing statements like that. It's very easy to take cheap shots but the same could be said the other way around.
ILM is still a leader. They got around one of the biggest R&D dept. besides being the biggest VFX studio around. They have won countless of Sci-Tech awards, pioneered work on cloth dynamics, water dynamics, muscle systems, etc. They are regularly featured in industry magazines such as Cinefex, CGW, American Cinematographer and Millimeter. They participate in countless event including SIGGRAPH, this year they present a paper on fluid simulations, plus a special session and participate in the RenderMan course plus a Maya Masterclass and we'll see what else, plus their R&D reel was selected for the Electronic Theatre. They have 2 sessions on VES plus many other festivals around the world.
BTW, Weta doesn't own Massive, though it was developed for them in the first place. They do deserve much kudos but also many studios like ILM, DD, Imageworks, ESC, and the list goes on. You might want to read this for a bit more perspective:
Summer tentpoles rush to wrap effects work
Man I wish this mentality of destroy all competition calms down after both LOTR and the Matrix films are done with.
Not to mention also the VES (Visual Effects Society, kinda like other film guilds) awards:
VES Awards
VES Awards photos
The shots with the grasshoppers in the bar. There is a glass bottle filled with seeds and nuts. The botle was rendered via BMRT by the frankenrender method.
I think it's mainly because of the rampant fanboyism on the net combined with the severe lack of knowledge about VFX and its history (though it doesn't help that the industry is kinda secretive). It's cool to praise the Matrix and LOTR and bash Star Wars and the VFX of ILM, no mater what. People can't seem to separate the story and direction from the VFX work. Hopefully by 2005 will get rid of this nonsense for a while. No more sequels of those and hopefully no movies to cause this nonsense (kinda like an AICN effect).
As you say credit where it is due. Like people discredinting Harry Potter 2 because of their "dislike" of Dobby (loved the basilisk by the way)?
So what if they used somewhat older machines to do the VFX of those movies. The O2s were used for interactive work mostly, then sent to the renderfarm which has quite a few procs available. Besides it doesn't matter since all their R&D and propietary software, mind stuff that sometimes was way beyond most things, ran on SGI hardware. Like say how they wrote MEL and Maya plugins for things like rigid body dynamics for the battle droids to stuff to simulate bending metal, the constrained dynamic sims of Pearl Harbor and oh so many other things. Just read some Cinefexes and CGW to really get an idea. Many of the things ILM comes up with make it downstream and are adopted elsewhere. The skin for Gollum came from an original idea by ILM, which in turn used the Jensen paper from Stanford to start with. Same with ambient occlusion and many other things. Just check the few SIGGRAPH papers they have presented in the last couple of years. OpenEXR is being adopted by several studios and graphics vendors.
You are confusing things. Maya won a Sci-Tech Oscar. Yes Pixar won a special oscar, but they had already won a few Sci-Tech awards as well. Even if you refer to graphics companies gettting an Oscar, that has happened many times over the years. Heck, this year alone, not only Maya won a Sci-Tech one, but also Mental Images for Mental Ray, and the guys at SideFX for Houdini.
Yes this is old news.
As far as the leading edge I guess having the biggest R&D dept. doesn't count, or having another paper (besides other presentations) atthis years SIGGRAPH doesn't count. Much of the technique for Gollum's skin (sub-surface scattering) came from an idea ILM made public at a RenderMan Users Group Meeting a few years ago. I guess those Sci-Tech Oscars a couple years ago, or something like the release of OpenEXR, were just figments of our imagination ;-):
Smoke Simulation For Large-Scale Phenomena
Or just read a few Cinefexes and CGWs.RenderMan, Theory and Practice
Creatures, Critters & Clones: Styles and Techniques Unique to Industrial Light + Magic
Academy 2001 Sci-Tech winners
ILM Sci_Tech awards
Well, you skipped a step there, ESC came actually from Manex (after some nasty happenings there) which itself came from Mass. Illussion.
As far as some of the technology, the VFX industry has been scanning stuff for years. Take for example the actors scans for Star Trek 4 The Voyage Home, for the time travelling sequence. Sure maybe the Arius 3D has more resolution but it's not exactly something new.
Now the extensive use of photogrammetry was certainly something very new, although apparently was used in some shots in Godzilla the year before. The long in production Dinosaur from Disney also used some photogrammetry techniques for surveying.
I do like the idea of that mockup highway though, it's rare when you can see nowadays any good car chase scenes.
Mopst big VFX productions are very big complicated endeavors though you might not hear from them too much.
Well that for the image based techniques that were used to render the many virtual set per se. To see the precursors of bulet time check this VFXHQ article:
Bedtime for DeadtimeThey are also bringing the sequels apparently in 3D of Full Throttle and Sam 'n Max. As someone mentioned Monkey Island 4 was 3D. Grim Fandango was 3D and simply an amazing game.
Polhemus makes a handheld scanner:
Polhemus scanners
I believe there might be a couple of other projects making them but I can't think of any. You might find more here:
Simple3D
The only problem is that Master and Commander is a film to be released also this year. They have no projects, that we know off, after Return of the King. The general consensus is that they will reduce in size afterwards, many people are from other places.
Probably it also has to do with the font. Pixar has the same problem, because the font on their traditional logo uses all Caps letter. You can read about it on the RenderMan FAQ. If you click around inside the Weta Digital sections, it's spelled right: Weta.
Well for VFX houses it certainly a largish opertation. Considering many boutique studios (which do a lot of commercial and braocast stuff) might just be a couple dozen machines and people at the most. There are few companies out there with more capacity, like ILM, Imageworks, and a few more.
Probably a typo. They are surely referring to some big servers or something, maybe Origins?
THX was always a separate entity, while LucasArts is a game company. On the other hand Lucas Digital encompasses ILM and Skywalker Sound.
Weta Digital is a more recent company, than the much older Weta Workshop. Weta Digital worked on Heavenly Creatures, The Frightners and most of "The Ride" sequence on Contact, before doing LOTR. They haven't gottn much exposure because their small number of film projects and mostly being a company created for PJs' use.
By the way, LucasArts is a game company, you are probably referring to ILM.
You might be interested to know that Weta Digital was formed in part by a former ILM member, Wes Takahashi.
Heck we had had CG and digital effects for over 10 years and the Acdemy hasn't changed it's perception. The VFX Branch is about 10 years old and they are somewhat dropping the ball by having only 3 nominees (like also the Sound and Makeup categories) still. I never understood Richad Edlund's position on this.
Digital VFX are very widespread, for every big VFX popcorn movie there are probably two regular films that needed CG for sky replacements, to erase cables or boom mikes, wire removal, etc. There is no erspect. That is why the VES will have awards concentrating on VFX and they do have a CG Character category.
The problem is that there are not enough performances of CG characters per year to even qualify. That's why until now we have Best Animated Film category. Niot until last year did it get created, until the US had a more steady stream of animated films in a year.
Besides as others have noted, who should get the award. For one actor, there is probably a team of dozens and dozens of VFX people behind it. That's why this should be more appropiately recognized as VFX.
The curious thing is that no one is award of the VES (Visual Effects Awards), with its first edition this Wednesday. They are doing the equivalent of the SAG, DGA and other Guold awards. They have a specific category for Best CG Characters, with the teams from Episode 2, Harry Potter (Dobby) and Weta Digital nominated:
VES nomination
Guild awards are always moer interesting because they are always chosen by peers.Well thenI don't see much of the point. There were tons of performances that got snubbed. What about Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert in Far From Heaven. Robin Williams had a couple good performances this, etc.
It would really be tough to clasify it. Who would get nominated, only Serkis, or Randall William Cook and his team or both. It seems more of a flavor of the moment thing and unless there are compelling reasons and rules in place for that I don't see the reason. That's what kept animated films on the fringe for so long. If anything Gollum goes inside the VFX category which they did get. And if Gollum was nominated, why not Yoda, Dobby and other CG characters here. Doesn't make much sense.
I think you misunderstand. I should have said that they will probably be reduced in size, not that they will disappear.
;-).
There aer two Weta's here, the Workshop and Digital. Workshop, which makes prosthetics and props has at least another project for this year, Master and Commander. I don't doubt Taylor will continue it successfully.
Weta Digital has hundreds of people in there at the moment. But after Return of the King they don't have anything lined up. They should have some bids by the Summer at the latest. The problem with big facilities, like Weta Digital, ILM and Imageworks is that they constantly need to have projects on the pipeline so that they can survive. After all you can't have dozens and dozens of highly paid artists just sitting idly.
My argument was, and I've heard this from others at SIGGRAPH, is that after LOTR, Weta Digital will reduce in size. They of course will continue to do VFX for films by PJ, like The Freighteners, and some for others, say like what they did in Contact. It's not that Weta Digital has the money or not, but the ability to get enough projects to continually sustain itself in the long run at its current size. Other big studios like ILM and Imageworks have several projects already lined up for this and next year. What other projects does Weta Digital have lined up?
All the key personnel are from the US: Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, etc. and many of the artists were hierd just project-based, not long term, and are on special work visas. When LOTR: ROTK finishes they'll most probably will have to go back.
Yes Weta will go on, but the final size and shape are yet to be seen. We'll continue to see and admire them but I doubt it'l be as many "big" projects as the LOTR movies are. You just wait and see
Well tge real measure of a Hollywood movie is if it done by a Hollywood studio, not by the film shooting location. LOTR was financed by New Line pretty much, and Harry Potter by Warner Bros., even if they shot overseas because of their particular deals (Rowling demanded that certain percentage of the HP films be done by UK people, all the cast, the stages and most of the VFX, before selling the rights; PJ wanted to shoot in NZ where he is from).
Gangs of New York was a Hollywood film, it was done by Miramax. SW was a Hollywood film (Lucafilm and 20th Century Fox), The Matrix too (Warner Bros.
Lastly to the parent post, this is just Lucas consolidating his companies in one place. It's not an actual movie studio like Disney, Paramount and the like, depsite the misleading title in the nwespaper article.