Making Movies

1
Making Movies

• Aaron Bloomfield
• CS 445 Introduction to Graphics
• Fall 2006
• (Slide set originally by David Brogan)

2
Making Movies

• Concept
• Storyboarding
• Sound
• CharacterDevelopment
• Layout and look
• Effects
• Animation
• Lighting

3
Concept

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

4
Story-boarding

• Explicitly define
• Scenes
• Camera shots
• Special effects
• Lighting
• Scale
• Used as guide by animators

5
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

6
Character Development

• 300 Drawings

7
Character Development

• 40 Sculptures

8
Character Development

• Computer Models

9
Layout Look

• Build scenery
• Match colors

10
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

11
Match-moving
12
Matchmoving

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

13
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

14
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

15
Water
16
Particle Sim and Indentation
17
Tools
18
Compositing
19
Compositing

• Lighting

20
Facial Animation
21
Facial Animation
22
Fur
23
Cloth
24
Buttons and Creases
25
Texture
26
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

27
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

28
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

29
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
• AliasWavefront
• Amazon Paint
• RenderMan

30
Newman!

• Subdivision-surfaces
• Polygonal hair (head)
• Texture mapped on arms
• Sculpted clothes
• Complex shaders

31
Devils in the Details

• Render in color
• Convert to NTSC B/W
• Add film effects
• Jitter
• Negative scratches
• Hair
• Static

32
Images
Shadows?
33
Images
34
Images
35
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

36
Stuart Little

• 100 people worked on CG
• 32 color/lighting/composite artists
• 12 technical assistants
• 30 animators
• 40 artists
• 12 RD

37
Stuart Little
38
Final Fantasy
http//www.arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/01q3/ff-inte
rview/ff-interview-2.html
39
Final Fantasy

• First ever animated feature to attempt
  photorealistic CGI humans
• Second biggest box office flop ever (lost over
  124M)
• Main characters gt 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

40
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

41
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

42
Making Movies

• Production Team
• Production Line
• Special Effects

43
Production Team

• Directors
• Modelers
• Lighting
• Character Animators
• Technical Directors
• Render Wranglers
• Tools Developers

• Shader Writers
• Effects Animators
• Looks Team
• Security Officer
• Janitor
• Lackey