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W O R L DComputer
T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N
$4.95 USA $6.50 Canada
Valiant takes flight with an innovative work flow approach
Top GunDigital Domain
delivers sky-high effects for Stealth
Storage in the StudioStreamlining the
digital process
Bird’s Eye View
September 2005 www.cgw.com
0509cgw_C1 C10509cgw_C1 C1 8/19/05 1:51:33 PM8/19/05 1:51:33 PM
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ForwardForward
COMPUTERCOMPUTER
GRAPHICS WORLDGRAPHICS WORLD
to a friend!to a friend!
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W O R L DComputer
T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N
Also see www.cgw.com for computer graphics news,
special surveys and reports, and the online gallery.
w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 1
Departments
Editor’s Note 2
Learning from George
In his SIGGRAPH keynote address, veteran fi lmmaker George Lucas provides a glimpse into his world.
Spotlight 4
Products
Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max 8
Softimage’s Face Robot Technology
Alias’s Maya 7 and MotionBuilder 7
Macromedia’s Studio 8
E frontier’s Shade 8
Video Viewpoint 6Go with the Flow
Facilities need to be creative while establishing an HD work fl ow.
Portfolio 40Ryan Church
Reviews 42Macromedia’s Studio 8
Adobe’s Creative Suite 2
Products 45A look at offerings making news at IBC.
Features
Cover storyA Wing and a Prayer 12CG ANIMATION | Vanguard uses
commercial tools and an atypical
studio approach to complete its
dual mission of establishing a new
animation facility and creating its
fi rst CG feature.
By Karen Moltenbrey
High-Flying FX 22FILM | Stealth’s photorealistic
digital effects fl y under the radar
as they blend seamlessly with the
movie’s live action.
By Barbara Robertson
On the cover:General Von Talon ruffl es the feathers of
Britain’s WW II carrier pigeons in Valiant,
Vanguard’s fi rst CG feature. See pg. 12.
12
22
27
September 2005 • Volume 28 • Number 9
Storage in the Studio 27
Storage Propels the
Creative Process
By Michele Hope
Storage Requirements for
Digital Content
By Thomas Coughlin
Shared File Systems for
Digital Postproduction
By Saqib Jang
SPECIAL SECT ION
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KELLY DOVE : [email protected]
KAREN MOLTENBREY: Executive [email protected]
COURTNEY HOWARD: Senior Technical [email protected]
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:Jenny Donelan, Audrey Doyle, Evan Marc Hirsch, Doug King,
George Maestri, Martin McEachern, Stephen Porter, Barbara Robertson
SUZANNE HEISER: Art [email protected]
DAN RODD: Senior [email protected]
BARBARA ANN BURGESS: Production [email protected]
MACHELE GALLOWAY: Ad Traffi c [email protected]
SUSAN HUGHES: Marketing Communications [email protected]
HEIDI BARNES: Circulation Managerheidi@pennwell
MARK FINKELSTEIN: Group [email protected]
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2 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
editor
’sno
teKelly DoveEditor-in-Chief
Learning from GeorgeSIGGRAPH’s return to Los Angeles this year was just what the industry
ordered. Close to 30,000 people fi lled the halls to “grow their brains,” expe-
rience dynamic technology, learn from one other, and enter to win any-
thing from a custom chopper to a next-generation Xbox.
The highly anticipated keynote Q&A session with George Lucas drew a
standing room-only crowd, as literally thousands of SIGGRAPH storm troopers fi lled
the hall to capacity for an all-too-brief glimpse into his world.
What would we learn from this “godfather of cinematic breakthroughs?” How
does he plan to top Star Wars, now that the entire story has been told? Is it possible
to translate his forward-thinking vision into our own way of working?
Lucas admits he is not a techie—he relies on his talented team to embrace his
visions and help turn them into reality. He does, however, like to push the technol-
ogy envelope—Avid, THX, and Pixar are all prime examples of his past successes.
And, it’s probably safe to bet that he’s not done yet. “I’m a storyteller. Anybody [who]
works in the arts runs into the technology ceiling. You have to know how to use tech-
nology,” explains Lucas. “Cinema requires that you make it believable [to convince
others] that it exists.” Advances in technology defi nitely help make this happen.
Previsualization, which Lucas considers “a fancy word for storyboarding,” is a
very important process in which he unveils his creative ideals. “The problem for me
is that storyboards don’t translate the real movement,” Lucas says. He overcomes
this challenge by working on a simplifi ed previsualization system which, admit-
tedly, is “easy enough” for him to use. Lucas also believes in integrating sound at
the beginning of a project, but realizes it can become very expensive as changes are
made. However, he holds fi rm to the belief that the sound in a movie is 50 percent
of the moviegoing experience and the primary reason he invests heavily in the audi-
tory elements upfront.
Now that Lucas has told the saga of Anakin Skywalker, what’s next? The direc-
tor says he has hundreds of projects he wants to work on and is currently interested
in the art of anime. He’s so interested, that he plans to strike
out in Asia and India to utilize the enormous pool of talent-
ed artists in those countries who work in this creative format.
Television also intrigues Lucas because it’s an “easier medium
to work in, and more fun.”
What about games and fi lm? Are they converging? “I wouldn’t
say at this point they have,” explains Lucas. “I want it to get to
the point where you talk to the game and it talks back.” In fact,
he looks forward to the day when artifi cial intelligence and voice recognition come
together in “intellectually challenging shooter-type games.”
Although experimenting with television and anime are his latest diversion, fi lm
remains a passion for Lucas as he strives for a “purer way” of fi lmmaking that focus-
es on the visual aspect of the art. That’s not to say he is ignoring the digital dream;
Lucas wants to push it to the next level—all-digital sets with seamlessly integrated
characters that tell the story.
“Every fi lm presents new challenges,” says Lucas. “Without those challenges
thrown at you, you don’t grow.”
Anybody who
works in the
arts runs into
the technology
ceiling.
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Autodesk and 3ds Max are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. © 2005 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.
Tom
Cla
ncy’s
Spl
inte
r Cel
l® C
haos
The
ory™
im
age
cour
tesy
of U
biso
ft™.
So real it renders fear.
Idea:Create the most gripping and realisticstealth action game on the market.
Realized:Ubisoft™ modeled and animated therealistic characters and backgrounds of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® Chaos Theory™with Autodesk’s 3ds Max to build on one of the most popular series ever. 3ds Max’s work-horse capability helpedUbisoft stay on top of their grueling production schedule and garner a 9.9 out of 10 by Official Xbox Magazine. To learn how Autodesk software can help yourealize your ideas to compete and win, visit autdodesk.com/3dsmax
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4 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
spotlightM O D E L I N G / A N I M A T I O N
F A C I A L A N I M A T I O N
Your resource for products, user applications, news, and market research
PR
OD
UC
TS
PR
OD
UC
TS
Rock Falcon © 2005 A
vid Technology Inc.
Softimage, a subsidiary of Avid
Technology, previewed Softimage Face
Robot, its new facial animation tech-
nology, during SIGGRAPH 2005.
Face Robot is designed to assist
3D artists in the production of realis-
tic facial animation for high-end fi lm,
postproduction, and game-develop-
ment projects. The technology behind
Face Robot has at its core a new com-
puter model of facial soft tissue. With
Face Robot, artists no longer must
manually create a wealth of 3D shapes
to depict different facial expressions.
The soft-tissue model emulates a full
range of emotions portrayed by the
human face. Through the use of con-
trol points, animators can fully cus-
tomize facial details, such as fl aring
nostrils, bulging neck muscles, and
wrinkles. Further, keyframe anima-
tors benefi t from direct access to facial
expressions within Face Robot, where-
as motion-capture animators are able
to work with fewer markers, speeding
setup and cleanup processes. —CEH
Softimage Delivers Facial Animation Technology
With the goal of helping game developers, visual effects
artists, and graphic designers realize their ideas, Autodesk
Media and Entertainment has upgraded 3ds Max 3D mod-
eling, animation, and rendering software to Version 8.
With this new edition, the com-
pany paid special attention to
the areas of character develop-
ment, advanced modeling and
texturing, scripting, and data
and asset management.
Advanced rigging tools, mo tion
mixing, and motion retargeting
for nonlinear animation add to
the Character Development tool
set within 3ds Max. At the same
time, its Modeling and Texturing area gains support for
DirectX and .fx fi les and new UV pelt mapping, designed
to reduce the time and labor it takes to texture a 3D model.
3ds Max 8’s Comprehensive Development Framework offers
improved software developer kit (SDK) tools and resources,
XML support, an interactive MAXScript debugger, and sup-
port for the free Autodesk DWF Viewer for reviewing, col-
laborating on, and approving 3D
data and designs. Complex Data
and Asset Management within
Version 8 is enhanced by the incor-
poration of the Autodesk Vault
data-management and asset-track-
ing solution.
3ds Max 8 is scheduled to ship
this fall at a price of $3495 for
the full version and $795 as an
upgrade from Version 7. The 3ds
Max Subscription, priced at $400 per year, provides cus-
tomers access to the latest software updates, product exten-
sions, and E-learning materials. —Courtney E. Howard
Autodesk Debuts 3ds Max Version 8
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w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 5
W E B / M O B I L E M O D E L I N G
M O D E L I N G / A N I M A T I O N
PR
OD
UC
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PR
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PR
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© 2005 A
lias Systems Corp.
Alias announced Version 7 of its Maya
and MotionBuilder applications.
Maya 7 has been upgraded with
Alias MotionBuilder’s full-body IK solv-
er, as well as Blend Shapes and Wire
deformers, simplifying the rigging
and posing of characters. For Version
7, Alias re-architectured Maya’s ren-
der layers functionality. Users can now
manage multiple versions of materi-
als, cameras, lights, Maya Fur, and
Maya Paint Effects in a single scene
fi le. Moreover, users can render layers
with virtually any renderer integrated
into Maya, including the latest version
of Mental Ray.
Collaborative and parallel work
fl ows are supported in Maya Version 7,
granting modelers, animators, and col-
leagues the ability to work on the same
character simultaneously. Additional
features include UV unfolding, tri-pla-
nar and multimesh mapping, Edge
Loop and Edge Ring utilities, and CgFX
and ASHLI plug-ins. Maya Complete 7,
priced at $1999, and Maya Unlimited
7, costing $6999, are now shipping for
use with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS
X platforms.
MotionBuilder 7, Alias’s 3D charac-
ter animation software, delivers new
character extensions that enable art-
ists to more quickly and easily add such
objects as tails, wings, or props to a char-
acter’s control rig. Version 7 also pro-
vides visual feedback on the control rig
and character manipulation enhance-
ments. Productivity is improved by
save reminder and versioning features,
as well as the ability to transfer, repur-
pose, and reuse animation clips with
any character. The Alias FBX fi le for-
mat and new constraints in Version 7
improve the interoperability between
MotionBuilder and other 3D applica-
tions, including Maya. Now shipping,
Alias MotionBuilder Pro 7 costs $4195
for a node-locked version and $4795 for
a fl oating edition. —CEH
Alias Introduces Software Upgrades
Macromedia Unveils Studio 8 Macromedia Inc. has introduced Macromedia Studio 8, a
software suite geared toward video professionals, graphic
artists, Web designers, and developers. Studio 8 combines
the latest versions of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, Flash
Professional, Fireworks, Contribute, and FlashPaper. For
the creation of Web sites, interactive media, and content
for mobile devices, Studio 8 features new video encoding
tools that assist with producing and publishing interac-
tive video for Web use.
Contribute 3 assists
with modifying and
up dating content,
where as FlashPaper
2 converts various
fi le types into Web-
ready PDF or SWF
fi les. Flash Player 8
includes a higher-
quality video codec, an advanced text-rendering engine,
and improved security. Shipping this month, Studio 8 is
priced at $999, or $399 as an upgrade. —CEH
E Frontier Presents Shade 8E frontier, formerly
Curious Labs, previewed
an upcoming version of
its Shade 3D modeling
and rendering software
during SIGGRAPH 2005.
Scheduled to ship in
the fall, Shade 8 provides users with more than 5000
3D objects on various topics for character modeling,
visualization, and architectural design projects. Shade
sports a more powerful modeling engine with polygon
mesh editing, improved integration with the compa-
ny’s Poser, and faster Radiosity calculation. In the area
of rendering, Version 8 boasts network rendering, a
new toon renderer, and an improved Callisto renderer.
E frontier will offer a choice of two versions of
Shade 8. The Shade 8 Standard 3D graphics suite is
targeted at designers, illustrators, and graphic artists.
Shade 8 Professional is designed to put advanced mod-
eling, lighting, and rendering tools in the hands of
design professionals. —CEH
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view
poin
tV
ideo
Jay Ankeney is a freelance writer, editor, and postproduction consultant living outside of Los Angeles.
6 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
By Jay Ankeney
The Mega Approach
The Post Group, a veritable icon in the Hollywood fi lm and video production commu-
nity for more than 30 years, has new owners with a penchant for streamlining work
fl ow. Recently purchased by fi lmmaker entrepreneurs Matt and David Cooper, The
Post Group combines Lightning Media DVD replication, IO Film’s fi lm scanning ser-
vices, Novastar Sound, and Santa Monica-based production company The Vault to
create a synergistic relationship among the facilities. The result is a communal fi lm-
making environment that offers one-stop production and postproduction services,
along with a well-rounded approach to working with HD and establishing a consis-
tent work fl ow.
“It’s well known that productions for television are rapidly adopting HD as their
source material, so our companies are all focused on handling it effi ciently,” says
Richard Greenberg, executive vice president of The Post Group and its affi liated com-
panies. “When footage comes into The Post Group, whether on fi lm or any of the
existing HD media, like Sony’s new HDCAM SR 4:4:4 RGB format, The Post Group
is capable of providing HD postproduction services—either linear or nonlinear—for
that source material at its native resolution,” he explains. “Throughout the process,
we keep our HD work fl ow in whatever format the client chooses.”
Establishing the HD work fl ow requires a series of processes that must be care-
fully assessed and considered on a job-by-job basis. Is the source fi le digital or fi lm?
What are the delivery destinations? Will content be repurposed at a later date?
To begin, fi lm-originated material is scanned into HD or 2K fi les at IO Film or
The Post Group and processed to an Avid Media Composer Adrenaline HD, Avid DS
Nitris, or Apple Final Cut Pro 5 in preparation for high-defi nition post. If the project
is destined for high-defi nition delivery, after the client has fi nished the off-line edit-
ing, the source fi les are assembled at The Post Group using the original HD material.
The promise and challenge
of creating and delivering high-
defi nition (HD) content con-
tinues to capture the attention
of studios around the world,
as artists and owners come
together to fi nd new ways of turning
the latest technology trends, such as HD,
into the “next big moneymaker.”
Establishing an HD work fl ow can
be as straightforward as hooking a
FireWire cable to your
camcorder and captur-
ing your source material
to a workstation, thanks
in part to the fl exibility
of the IEEE-1394 stan-
dards, which allow you
to control the machine
and transfer media, time
code, and metadata over
a single thin strand.
For other more com-
plex applications, wran-
gling different breeds of
HD signals can involve
advanced engineering.
To see how two dis-
tinctly different com-
panies approach HD
work fl ow in their
operations, I visited
with two studios: The
Post Group, the newest
Hollywood “production
campus” being set up
by the Cooper Brothers,
and Digital Neural Axis
(DNA), an intriguingly high-tech bou-
tique facility on the California coast,
where high defi nition is often used as
the off-line medium for award-winning
effects creation.
Creativity
counts when
putting
together
your HD
workfl ow.
Momentum VFX, at The Post Group, incorporates everything from 2K, 4K, and HD streams
into its work fl ow. This shot is one of many created for NBC’s television show Medium.
Go with the Flow
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8 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
If the project is to be recorded out to
celluloid, IO Film will feed the 2K fi les
into a Nucoda Film Master system for
assembly, color correction, and the cre-
ation of digital intermediates (DI), from
which HD versions also can be derived.
Greenberg believes that tailoring the
HD work fl ow to suit a client’s needs
is well worth the effort, but there will
always be instances that require special
treatment. “For example, when it comes
to editing, there are some projects, such
as adding credits to the end of a show,
that are still better suited for the tape-
based linear editing bay. At The Post
Group, this consists of an Accom Axial
3000 controller, a Pinnacle HD Deko
500 character generator, and a Snell &
Wilcox 1010 HD switcher. On the other
hand, a nonlinear disk-based approach
is usually more effi cient for shows that
have complex effects. For those, we
will suggest using the Avid DS Nitris or
Apple Final Cut Pro on a G5.”
The groups of facilities that compose
The Post Group offer services Greenberg
suggests are invaluable to independent
producers. “I look at us as a hospital, and
our clients are the patients,” explains
Greenberg. “Our associates are the sur-
geons and staff. Sometimes independent
producers think they can perform com-
plex operations on their own. But when
they end up in an emergency situation,
they are often left without backup. We are
here to do the surgery right the fi rst time.”
Riding the edge of the HD work fl ow
evolution is Ken Nakada, the managing
director and visual effects designer at
Momentum VFX, which is housed at The
Post Group.
There was a time when all the fi les
Momentum received were scanned from
fi lm negatives to 2K fi les. Today, however,
approximately half of the fi lm scanning
Momentum receives is output to HD,
which is a 60 percent lower resolution
than 2K output and easier to handle on
a workstation. Once Momentum is fi n-
ished with the HD fi les, they go back to
the recording facility to be up-converted
to 2K, to record out to fi lm.
“The HD work fl ow is going in multiple directions,” explains Nakada. “We are
starting to deal with more 2K material from the Grass Valley Viper FilmStream cam-
era for both fi lm and HD fi nished projects. It has such a high uncompressed color
and resolution depth that you never need negatives and can stay digital from inges-
tion to fi nal master.” He continues, “At the same time, we have other clients who are
shooting movies on more compressed HDCAM. Our work fl ow needs to be able to
handle all those formats based on the specifi c client’s needs.”
“Film is not going away,” Nakada insists. “However, 2K fi les scanned from fi lm
are being used less and less for productions intended to be released in high defi ni-
tion. Since there are many more systems that can work faster in HD, we are fi nding
that our work fl ow is tending toward that resolution level. Of course, at the very end,
even the HD material is up-converted to 4K resolution fi les if they are destined to be
recorded out to fi lm.”
Nakada’s 2K, 4K, and HD work fl ow streams across many systems and includes
many types of data—from video to CG. His work fl ow confi gurations include
Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s Discreet Inferno, Discreet Flame, and Discreet
Fire systems, Apple’s Final Cut Pro HD with Blackmagic HD cards, and graphics
workstations with software such as Newtek’s LightWave 3D, Alias’s Maya, Adobe’s
After Effects and Photoshop, Apple’s Shake, and Autodesk Media and Entertain-
ment’s Combustion.
Gregg Katano, one of the executive producers at Momentum VFX, helps to create all
the HD visual effects for the NBC television show Medium, starring Patricia Arquette.
“For our HD work fl ow, we are sent a copy of the edited master in either D5 or HDCAM,
which we bring into our Inferno or Maya workstations along with the EDL, so we can
build on top of the original plates,” he explains. “The off-line editors will send us rough
composites done in their Avid systems, or post a QuickTime fi le on the Web showing
their concepts for the effects. Then we come up with our interpretation of the effect
and respond with a fi le to the FTP site. Once approved, we drop the fi nished version
back into the copy of the master tape and send it back to the producers.”
It’s in the DNA
Not far from the bright lights of Hollywood are Digital Neural Axis (DNA), a bou-
tique visual effects and digital postproduction studio in Venice Beach, California,
that is managing HD work fl ow in its own way. DNA prefers to keep the work load
under one roof, which worked well in the creation of 68 visual effects shots for
Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie The Aviator.
DNA streamlines HD work fl ow by rendering QuickTime HD fi les, positioning them
in a Final Cut timeline, and rendering fi nal 2K image sequences in After Effects.
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Innovatio
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Add the secret sauce—choose NVIDIA Quadro FX by PNY
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10 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
“Our mission is to always be on the
cresting wave of making real what the
mind can conceive,” says Darius Fisher,
founder and owner of DNA. “We take
advantage of the increasing processing
speed of computers and the most recent
software to operate a home-based boutique
incorporating the latest digital technology.”
A key to DNA’s work fl ow is its abil-
ity to use 1920x1080p HD as an off-line
medium. “For The Aviator, we were orig-
inally given high-defi nition QuickTime
fi les of the fi lm’s dailies so we could do
a mock-up of our effects for a preview
screening,” recalls Fisher. “We used
mostly Adobe After Effects on Apple G5
workstations for the compositing, and
constantly referenced the edit being cut
by the fi lm’s editor, Thelma Shoonmaker,
in New York City.”
Most of the shots DNA created took
place inside a mocked-up fl ight simula-
tor playing the role of the Spruce Goose
cockpit positioned inside a gigantic
greenscreen stage. Then, in order to see
their shots playing in real time within
the context of the story, Fisher and his
associates rendered them as QuickTime
HD fi les and positioned them into the
Final Cut timeline.
Once satisfi ed with the look, the com-
positing, and the way the shots were
working within Schoonmaker’s editing,
DNA rendered the fi nal image sequenc-
es at 2K in After Effects. The work fl ow
incorporated delivering QuickTime HD
fi les for director Scorsese’s approval, and
then a folder full of 2K Cineon DPX fi les
on G-Raid and LaCie FireWire drives for
ultimate inclusion into the fi lm’s fi nal DI.
DNA fi nished a commercial for Ford
that was posted using a distinctive HD
work fl ow developed in conjunction with
the spot’s director Rob Legato and post
supervisor Ron Ames. “It was shot on
35mm fi lm, then transferred to HDCAM
SR tape to maintain the full RGB range
of the negative,” explains Fisher. “Once
the off-line edit was completed, we re-
captured the whole sequence in Adobe
Premiere using a Blackmagic HD card
directly from the HDCAM SR tapes. That
let us do all our fi nishing in the 4:4:4
RGB color space, and we did all our
color correction at Complete Post on the
high-defi nition spot’s master, just as if
it had been a fi lm project.
“Using the HDCAM SR tape format
for transfers, we had more information
available to us for the compositing phase
of the job,” Fisher continues. “We used
the project with HDCAM SR as a test bed
to let us do the color correction on the
effects shots and principal photography
in one session, just as we would have if
we were creating a DI.”
These days many facilities are fi nd-
ing HD work fl ow to be as technically
streamlined as standard-defi nition DV
work fl ow. But the goal of any work fl ow
is not just arriving at the project’s fi nal
delivery, whether on a “production cam-
pus” or in a beach-house boutique. It’s
the creativity involved in getting to that
destination that counts.
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. . . . CG Animation
12 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
By Karen Moltenbrey
Veteran fi lmmakers think
outside the studio box to
create the independent
CGI movie Valiant
A Wing Prayerand a
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w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 13
CG Animation. . . .
is a story about a small but determined bunch with big
dreams and a desire to prove themselves, and how, by using their
willpower, courage, and “birdbrains,” they were able to beat the
odds and triumph where better-qualifi ed colleagues had failed.
On one level, that summary describes the story line for the
new CGI feature fi lm Valiant, about a wood pigeon who, de-
spite his diminutive size,
harbors a big ambition:
to become a member of
the Royal Homing Pigeon
Service for England’s Royal
Air Force during World War
II. When given the chance
to realize his dream, the pi-
geon overcomes seeming-
ly insurmountable hurdles
and, to everyone’s aston-
ishment, succeeds in what
his peers believed to be an
impossible mission.
On another level, that
description can be applied to Valiant’s fi lmmakers, who knew
that their mission of creating a major studio-quality feature at
half the typical price and in half the usual time was considered
a lofty ambition. Yet, despite the huge risks and challenges, the
group accomplished these ambitious goals.
“We did what many said was impossible, but through per-
severance, dedication, and creative thinking, we were
able to complete a $70 million fi lm for $40 million,”
says coproducer Curtis Augspurger, a seasoned vi-
sual effects artist (Shrek, Scooby-Doo, Batman
Forever). “We also established a new bar for an-
imated digital fi lmmaking that has been prov-
en fairly successful in Europe but is only now
being tried in the US.”
Valiant Takes Flight
The concept for Valiant, which originated with
UK writer George Webster, eventually caught
the attention of producer John H. Williams of
Shrek fame, who was looking for projects he could
produce outside of the DreamWorks umbrella. Williams honed
in on the coming-of-age story that’s told from the perspective
of birds and beasts, and enlisted the help of Augspurger and
Buckley Collum, also a coproducer on the fi lm along with Eric
M. Bennett. Altogether, they established a brand-new animation
facility that was an offshoot of Williams’s live-action fi lm stu-
dio, Vanguard Films.
Their goal in establishing Vanguard Animation was to break
the “$1 million per minute of animation” barrier that’s
the norm for high-quality CGI features in the US,
by using a “non-studio” approach. “Although
it had not been done before, there was no reason we couldn’t
make a CG animated fi lm of this caliber for half the usual price
by thinking outside the animation studio box,” says Collum. In
particular, Vanguard streamlined the infrastructure and applied
a visual effects approach to the production. It also eliminated
a tremendous amount of mid-level management. “The credits
for Pixar’s The Incredibles
are enormous; in compari-
son, we had just 35 anima-
tors,” Collum points out.
“Indeed, there are perks with
a large organization, but we
were effi cient and could get
things done fast. We knew
from the beginning where
we wanted to go with this
fi lm, and stayed on course
throughout the production.”
Once the fi lm was
green-lighted in January
2003, Vanguard spent eight
months of preproduction in Los Angeles, working on character and
location design, character modeling, storyboarding, and animat-
ic creation. In September of that year, the group shifted the phys-
ical production to a new facility in London for the production
phase, which included set modeling, character animation, light-
ing, rendering, compositing, post, and editing.
While creating a new studio was fraught with challenges (see
“Building a Birdhouse,” pg. 14), it also had its advantages. “We
didn’t have to carry a legacy paradigm into our production,” says
Collum. “Every new fi lm tries to push the animation bar a little
higher, and some studios are hampered with an existing infra-
structure that includes older equipment and a pre-existing pro-
duction paradigm into which a new production doesn’t fi t well.”
Vanguard decided to use commercial packages in its pipeline
and refi ne those tools as needed, rather than develop all its own
software from scratch. To this end, the group based its frame-
work on Alias’s Maya, mainly because of its robust tool sets and
the ability to extend them via Mel scripts and available plug-ins.
Another advantage was that most hires would be familiar with
the content-creation program. In the end, Augspurger estimates
that about 80 percent of Valiant was done with off-the-shelf prod-
ucts, while the remainder was accomplished with in-house tools.
Bird-watchers
Originally, Gary Chapman assumed the role of the fi lm’s char-
acter designer, but his ideas for the story, the settings, and the
music made him an ideal choice as the fi lm’s director. “One of
my main concerns was establishing a look for the fi lm. It’s a
comedy-adventure, but I thought it was important to have some
sort of homage to reality,” he notes. (Pigeons have saved thou-
sands of lives during WW II, and 31 of the 53 top honors given
Using an atypical approach to CG fi lmmaking, Vanguard Animation success-
fully completed its fi rst mission: Valiant, about a wood pigeon and his fl ock
of misfi t friends who help the Royal Homing Pigeon Service during WW II.
Valiant
Imag
es ©
Van
gu
ard
An
imat
ion
UK
Ltd
. an
d th
e U
K F
ilm C
ou
nci
l.
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14 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . CG Animation
to animal heroes have been awarded to
pigeons.) “At no point did we approach
this like a cartoon.”
As Williams points out, the team
tried to keep a consistent period look in
the overall design (objects, gear, back-
grounds), but with some artistic touches
that make it feel contemporary in its tone
and subject. And the jokes and humor fa-
cilitate the story being told, as opposed to
being based solely on pop culture a la the
Justin Timberlake-Cameron Diaz refer-
ence in Shrek 2. “We had to sell our jokes
because they weren’t contemporary.”
In the high-fl ying CGI movie, the lit-
tle pigeon Valiant (voiced by Scottish ac-
tor Ewan McGregor) and his misfi t friends
join the elite Royal Homing Pigeon Service
(RHPS), which has suffered great losses at
the claws of the lethal enemy falcons, com-
manded by the ruthless General Von Talon.
While not fully prepared for duty, the pi-
geons—with the German falcons on their
tails—are sent to retrieve a message from
the French Resistance in occupied France
and deliver it to the Allied Forces. When
Valiant’s feathered friends fi nd themselves
in danger, the little bird not only saves his
wingmen, but he also saves the day.
“The story is one that every child will
be able to ascribe to and every adult has
experienced: It is the plight of someone
who is told they are incapable of doing
something because they are too small
or too young, and then they go off and
prove themselves,” explains Augspurger.
Valiant, though, is told from a bird’s-eye
viewpoint: pigeons, falcons, and other
fowl play the lead roles, while white mice
co-star as members of the Resistance.
Humans appear infrequently, and when
they do, they are obscured, so as to not
pull the viewers, who are mainly chil-
dren, out of this animal-centric world.
Yet, telling the tale from an animal’s
perspective presented Vanguard with one
of its greatest challenges: The team had
to feather and fur every character—a task
that was not in the group’s original fl ight
plan. “We thought we would make pho-
torealistic and visually appealing texture
The fate of Vanguard Animation’s ambitious plans to create a studio-quality CG fea-
ture for half the price and in half the time as was the norm rested on the establishment
of a streamlined pipeline built around commercial software. It also required a visual
effects approach to CG animation that relied on compositing, rather than rendering,
to make quick fi xes.
After months of preproduction in the US, Vanguard transformed part of the for-
mer Ealing Studios in West London into a digital facility of the future, though it had to
endure snags that occur when building a new facility, from getting the servers up and
running properly to testing the tools and techniques during the actual production.
On the logistics end, to qualify for incentives offered by the
UK, Vanguard had to employ a signifi cant number of animators
from the commonwealth and the European Union. As a result of
this mandate and other factors, the multi-national crew—repre-
senting 17 countries and speaking 10 different languages—pro-
vided the team with a broad range of experiences that could be
applied to the production, notes line producer Tom Jacomb.
On the technical side, the pipeline was built around Alias’s
Maya, with Side Effects Software’s Houdini used for the feathering
and the fur. Next Limit’s RealFlow, meanwhile, created the water
and fl uid simulations, and Pixar Animation Studios’ RenderMan ac-
complished the rendering. The renderfarm comprised 500 nodes
of 1000 CPUs, including several IBM Blades; the remaining Boxx
Technologies machines served as DCC workstations by day and renderers by night.
“From the time we began budgeting the fi lm and negotiated the hardware deal,
we saw a threefold performance increase [in the hardware],” notes coproducer
Curtis Augspurger. He points out that in a room a quarter of the size, Vanguard was
able to accomplish the same rendering power for $2 million as PDI/DreamWorks did
after spending $20 million when it made Antz in 1998.
Another large savings resulted from Vanguard’s choice to use Apple’s Final Cut
Pro for editing, rather than an Avid system, allowing for seven editors as opposed
to two. Finally, for storing the digital assets during production, the group used a
Network Compliance NetApp 940. Moreover, the team used a
DI approach throughout the production, working solely with dig-
ital media on hard drives as opposed to fi lm.
“To accomplish our goals, we stood on the shoulders of gi-
ants who have cheapened the price of technology and increased
its power sevenfold,” says Augspurger.
Thanks to Vanguard’s carefully constructed pigeon coop, the
studio was able achieve the goals it set with Valiant. And in doing
so, the group broadened the CG animation talent pool in London,
and Europe for that matter, neither of which had been exposed
to a digital feature of this scale before. And, the paradigm shift
that Valiant represents is likely to make major studios rethink the
way they deliver animated fi lms. —KM
Building a Birdhouse
The artists used Maya’s Cloth to create the simulation for the black leather cape worn by the
evil General Von Talon (center) in approximately 150 shots throughout the movie.
The team employed Next
Limit’s RealFlow simulator
for some fl uid effects, though
Maya was used for this shot.
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16 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . CG Animation
maps for the birds,” says Collum. “But
in the early phases of preproduction, we
challenged our effects gurus to devise
a method of implementing feathers on
the birds in a creative way that not only
looked good in tests, but also could be
used in production. So we shifted the con-
cept from faux feathers to real feathers,
and it paid off from a visual standpoint.
But it was not without its share of head-
aches as we tried to improve the look.”
Birds of a Feather
When the artists began the project, they were
using Maya 4, which was limited in how it
handled subdivision surfaces and polygons,
particularly with the controls that would be
needed for the surfacing. “But we knew we
could take the surfaces we were generating
in Maya and export them to [Side Effects
Software’s] Houdini,” Collum says. “So our
pipeline became more complex after the de-
cision to do feathers and fur.”
Because of the tight production sched-
ule, the group built a sophisticated charac-
ter rig in Maya that was common to all of
the birds and, with some adaptation (clip-
ping the wings and adding a tail), was
used for the mice, too. The rig contained a
skeletal system under the face that defi ned
the deformation and blended the morph
targets that controlled the facial animation,
particularly for achieving the phonemes
and portraying emotion. It also allowed
the end fi ve feathers of the birds to be used
as fi ngers as well as part of the wing.
According to Augspurger, the com-
mon rig system ensured that every ani-
mator would be familiar with any char-
acter’s controls. “As the production
shifted, we could move our artists from
characters that were temporarily out of
production to others that were in pro-
duction, thereby maintaining a constant
work fl ow,” he explains.
Furthermore, the team created a cus-
tomized plug-in called Chanko that en-
abled the animators to create a library of
poses and clips—facial and body pos-
es, performances, and so on—that were
shared among all the characters, thereby
giving the shots a consistent look. In ad-
dition, the coding team, led by Mat Selby
and Manne Ohrstrom, set up referenc-
ing technologies and asset management
tools that allowed the artists to access the
key maps and positional maps, as well as
the unique wardrobes of the characters,
which could be swapped out on a per-
scene basis at render time.
Fowl PlayTo cut costs, the Vanguard Animation team had to avoid getting pigeonholed in their work fl ow approach,
thus forcing the artists to look beyond the usual tried-and-true—albeit time-consuming—solutions often
employed during CGI feature animation.
As a result, Gray Horsfi eld, CG supervisor, brought a good deal of transfer technology to the table, light bak-
ing being one of them. Prevalent in the gaming world, light baking for Valiant was accomplished within Mental
Images’ Mental Ray, and used mainly for the “colder” interior environments, such as the evil Von Talon’s lair.
By light-baking the sets, the group could do an initial
light pass with global illumination or radiosity lighting,
then “bake” those maps into the color texture sets,
from which individual renders were based.
By using this technique, the group no longer had
to render the sets with multiple shadow-casting lights.
Although the upfront costs were high, the subsequent
savings for the individual renders were enormous,
maintains coproducer Buckley Collum. “With this
method, we saved a great deal of time on repeated
renders, free from lighting and shadowing calculations
involving many lights in complex scenes,” he says.
According to coproducer Curtis Augspurger, a number of independent fi lm studios are pursuing game
development solutions for use in their productions. “The real inventions are coming from where the big
money is being spent and made, and that is in the gaming industry,” he says. “There, they are pushing
technology to be faster and better looking, and they have taken this to a new level in just the past three
years or so. If you look at the trends being established by game developers, you’ll likely see the visual ef-
fects industry picking them up soon thereafter.” However, while game developers will hit a wall with these
techniques in order to meet the real-time demands of their genre, the digital fi lmmakers can step in and use
the technology for netting a higher degree of realism, he adds. —KM
The images illustrate the feathering process for the character Von Talon: (from top, left to
right) the initial guide feathers, the changed behavior for the guide feathers disturbed by
the wardrobe, the RI behavior for fi nal feather placement, and the fi nal rendered feathers.
The team used light baking, a technique
frequently employed in gaming, to achieve the
lighting effects for the fi lm’s indoor scenes.
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18 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . CG Animation
According to Rod McFall, character
development and pipeline supervisor,
each of the 30 main bird characters went
through a rigorous grooming process
that formed the basis for the feathering
throughout the fi lm. After modeling and
rigging the characters in Maya, the team
imported them into Houdini, where shad-
ers were assigned. Guide hairs, grown
from the surfaces, defi ned how the feath-
ers looked and behaved—for instance, if
they were ruffl ed or fl at. Texture maps,
meanwhile, dictated the type of feather,
its directionality, color, and other prop-
erties that guided how they looked and
moved within a given shot.
Each bird model had approximately
50,000 feathers, and once the bird got its
feathers, it retained them throughout the
fi lm, since altering the number of feathers
(because of their size) would have changed
the visual look of the bird. Initially, the art-
ists contemplated rendering the feathers
and then generating an exact match for the
displacement map, so they could render
the displacement maps (and not the feath-
ers) at a distance, while in the far back-
ground, they could simply use a fl at color
projection—all of which, in theory, would
speed the rendering. However, this short-
cut did not provide the desired timesavings.
“The shaders and paradigm were clean, so it
wasn’t as painful as we had initially antici-
pated,” says Collum of the rendering, which
took between 5 and 20 minutes per frame.
Later, the feather information was ex-
ported as a Pixar RenderMan shader, lit
within Maya, rendered in RenderMan, and
composited into layers.
Now and again, however, the artists
faced a recurring problem of pops in the
feathers during the renders. Rather than
redo and re-render the feathers in these
shots, the group employed a 2D solu-
tion, using the Foundry’s MotionRepair
tool within Furnace, a plug-in for Apple’s
Shake, which the team used as its main
compositor. “With the motion-estimation
technology, we were able to interpolate ar-
eas from the surrounding frames so that
we wouldn’t have to re-render the mod-
els and could simply replace the frames
with artifacts by analyzing the surround-
ing frames,” Collum explains.
The team generated the fur for the mice
in a similar way, using RI curves within
Houdini, to which shaders were applied. In
addition, the group used its own InfraFur
plug-in to control the hairs so they would
react properly when interacting with the
tiny armbands, bandoliers, berets, and
other items worn by each furred fi ghter.
Dressed for Success
Indeed, the feathers and fur presented a
huge diffi culty for the group; but having
A Bird’s-eye ViewValiant may be limited in the diversity of the animal characters, but not so for the environments through
which they fl y. Nearly all the backdrops—from the tranquil English countryside and the bustling Trafalgar
Square, to a busy air base and war-torn France—are 3D, augmented at times by mattes and set exten-
sions. “We’re all over the map with our environments, but they keep pace with the emotional pulse of the
fi lm,” states coproducer Curtis Augspurger.
One of the more popular backdrops in the fi lm is a sky populated with a range of clouds created us-
ing a 3D volumetric cloud renderer based on a program by Joshua Schpok, a researcher from Purdue
University. Created as a stand-alone OpenGL-based program, the cloud simulator was retooled by the
researcher to fi t within Vanguard’s Maya-based pipeline, allowing for the real-time generation of realistic
types of clouds, from ominous dark formations to those of a thin, wispy variety. —KM
The artists crafted a wide range of backgrounds, from expansive shots of the French
countryside (top) to the busy streets of London (middle) to the wide, open sky
(below). For the clouds in these shots, the group used a real-time volumetric renderer.
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20 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . CG Animation
the characters’ wardrobe and military
regalia interact with those surfaces was
even more daunting. To achieve this, the
group, while developing the grooming
techniques, also defi ned the interaction
between the feathers/fur and the cloth-
ing and objects within Houdini.
Using Houdini’s Attribute tool, the
team extracted data from the clothing,
defi ning areas where the feathers would
need to push down and the gear
would need to push up on the surface,
thereby leaving a slight gap between the
feathers and clothing.
Then, in instances when the feathers
actually penetrated the gear, the anima-
tors used a simple compositing technique
to render out the gear separately with a
“holdout” map for the bird, and then used
Shake to rotoscope little patches of the
gear on top of the animated feathers. As
a result, the team spent only an afternoon
re-compositing a scene as opposed to an
entire night re-rendering it in order to ac-
commodate these intersections.
Because the Attribute Transfer tool
only works procedurally based on prox-
imity, the interaction animated as the re-
lationship between the clothing and the
bird’s surface changed over time. Then,
once the studio networks were in place,
the team set up a Web-based system
that initiated the pipeline using which-
ever combination of character and cloth-
ing was needed for the shot. This ranged
from pliable backpacks to hard helmets
and medals to stiff leather straps.
The process was put to the test in a se-
quence showing the pigeons dressing for
their mission. As Augspurger points out,
audiences usually don’t see many digi-
tal characters getting dressed in fi lms be-
cause of the diffi culty of the cloth interac-
tion. “We took the technology as far as we
could for the sequence—before we broke
it, that is,” he adds.
Yet, the ultimate gear/feather challenge
was presented by the uber bird, Von Talon,
who sports a leather cape, created with
Maya Cloth. The cape had to interact prop-
erly with the falcon’s feathers in approxi-
mately 150 shots.
“Unfortunately, we didn’t schedule
time for the wardrobe, but it was some-
thing that the director wanted because it
gave the characters a look
and feel that was contem-
porary for their time,” says
Augspurger, “and the au-
thenticity of the wardrobe
was key to selling that.”
Therefore, nearly every shot
contains wardrobe against
feathers or fur.
Mission Complete
After 18 months of pro-
duction, Vanguard com-
pleted the movie—slight-
ly ahead of schedule and
budget. In all, the team
created 1200 shots for the
75-minute fi lm, thus proving that a feath-
erweight production paradigm is stron-
ger and more viable than many had pre-
viously believed.
“We just didn’t take no for an answer,”
says Augspurger. “Also, we brought a vi-
sual effects background to the production
process, which is slightly different from
traditional animation in that instead of
using the render tools—which are labo-
rious and time-consuming —for fi xing
little problems, we took a different route
and overworked our compositing team
instead, saving both time and money.”
(See “Foul Play,” pg. 16.)
As a result of this work fl ow, the team
earned its wings, hitting 75 shots on aver-
age per week with a staff of only 150; in
comparison, large studios with 600 art-
ists usually accomplish 50 shots per week.
“We achieved our goal and did so without
compromising the aesthetic we were try-
ing to achieve,” Augspurger notes. “We
bit off more than we could have attempt-
ed a few years ago, but today’s tools allow
you to envision things you couldn’t have
even dreamed about fi ve or 10 years ago.”
Valiant was released in US theaters
August 19, though it debuted this past
spring in the UK, where it soared in the
top slot for a few weeks. Now that Valiant
has fl own the coop, Vanguard is keep-
ing its eye to the sky, waiting as Williams
hatches the studio’s next project.
Karen Moltenbrey is an executive editor at
Computer Graphics World.
Vanguard used Houdini to fur the French Resistance mice. Because the hairs were so fi ne,
they could be rendered at variable rates (100,000 to 1 million hairs), depending on the shot.
Feathering the characters was challenging; having the
feathers interact with the clothing was even more diffi cult.
This task was accomplished with Houdini’s Attribute tool.
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TO ERR IS HUMAN.TO NOT LET PEOPLE SEE YOUR MISTAKES IS DIVINE.
Dimension 3D printing uses tough, durable ABS plastic so you cancreate perfect working models right in your office. Printers start atjust $24,900.* Why not see for yourself? Get a free sample and findyour dealer at www.dimensionprinting.com/cg
$24,900
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. . . . Film
22 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
High-Flying FX
By Barbara Robertson
The underlying question this summer’s
cinematic action-adventure love story pos-
es is a big one: In the future, if unmanned
airplanes fi re the missiles, will we go to
war more easily? As Stealth audiences
quickly discover, that’s not the only prob-
lem an unmanned aircraft might cause.
Directed by Rob Cohen, who brought
The Fast and the Furious and XXX to the
screen, the Sony Pictures fi lm puts au-
diences into the pilot’s seat of a Talon, a
new hypersonic stealth aircraft. Flying
alongside is EDI, an unmanned artifi -
cial intelligence-controlled Extreme Deep
Invader. All’s well until lightning strikes
EDI; the drone develops a mind of its
own and threatens to ignite a nuclear
Armageddon. Can three Navy test pilots,
played by actors Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel,
and Jamie Foxx, save the world?
The Action Is the Story
“Rob [Cohen] had a few basic command-
ments,” says Joel Hynek, visual effects
supervisor. “He wanted everything to be
very clear, not like in Top Gun, which is
a cool movie, but during the dogfi ght, no
one knows where anyone is.”
A second command was to have the
audience see the action from the pilot’s
seat rather than watch it from a third-per-
son point of view. “He embraced the fi rst-
Digital Domain
uses CGI to fabricate
a photorealistic
aerial playground
for Stealth
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w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 23
Film. . . .
person video gamer POV,” says Hynek.
“He made it ‘gamer cool.’”
And third, Cohen wanted people in
the audience to feel like they were fl y-
ing. “He wanted it to be dynamic, differ-
ent,” says Hynek.
The sum of these parts put much of
the action into the hands of artists at
Digital Domain, who surrounded live-ac-
tion pilots with digital backgrounds and
fashioned entirely CG shots. A crew of
approximately 200 artists worked on 10
sequences (658 shots total) for the fi lm.
“These weren’t wire removals,” says Hynek.
“They were toughies.”
To create the shots, the studio used
Alias’s Maya for modeling and anima-
tion, Side Effects Software’s Houdini for
effects, Pixar’s RenderMan for rendering,
NewTek’s LightWave for shots inside the
airplane engines, Adobe’s Photoshop for
painting, and Digital Domain’s Nuke for
compositing, Storm for simulating natu-
ral phenomena, and EnGen for creating
digital terrain.
Hynek believes the studio raised the
visual effects bar in fi ve areas: allowing
for an unself-conscious, freely moving
camera, mimicking the aerodynamics of
real fl ight, and creating CG clouds, CG
terrain, and CG fi re.
Gamer Cool
To help Cohen sell the idea for the fi lm to
Sony, Digital Domain created a 40-second
sample shot. Engineers from Northrop
Grum man helped design a plane for the
test, then worked on aircraft for the movie.
“There were two planes: the Talon,
which the hotshot pilots fl y, and EDI, the
invader,” says Hynek. “The engineers
helped us fl esh out concepts like where
to put the weapons, and then production
designer Michael Riva gave them a sexy
Hollywood look.”
Once the project was green-lit, the
studio modifi ed X-plane, a PC-based
fl ight simulator, to help design camera
moves. “We had two monitors, two joy-
sticks, one fl ying airplane, and one fl ying
camera plane,” says Hynek. “It was good
for quickly working out different types of
shots, but we ended up doing previz in
Maya in a traditional keyframe manner.”
For this fi lm, the previz not only helped
the storytellers design the action, but the
data sometimes helped create the action
by driving a gimballed cockpit, cameras,
and lights on greenscreen stages.
Special effects supervisor John Frazier
and his crew built the 70-ton gimballed
cockpit on a soundstage at Fox Studios
in Sydney, Australia. The gimbal rotated
360 degrees, rolling multiple times with
a person inside, moved straight up or
straight down, pitched 180 degrees on ei-
ther side, and yawed 60 degrees total, ac-
cording to Kelly Port, digital effects su-
pervisor. The crew photographed it with
a Spydercam, a Technocrane, and hand-
held cameras. Sometimes Navy pilots
“fl ew” this device; other times an actor
rode inside while previz data drove it.
“In the case of the Spydercam, one com-
puter drove the camera, the gimbal, and
the lights,” explains Hynek. “The cam-
era would fl y around and come whizzing
up really close to the actor. It gave one
pause.” Cohen took full advantage of all
the dynamics, according to Hynek, who
provides an extreme example: The Talon
crashes, and just when the plane hits the
ground, the camera fl ies in as Josh Lucas
hits his head on the front of the panel.
For some data-driven shots, the camera
move was often modifi ed or undercranked
(fi lmed at a slower frame rate than normal,
to speed up the action) because the previz
didn’t consider velocity. “In one shot, the
camera moves into the cockpit while the
plane goes up and then dives down, so
we ran the move backwards, and had a
camera upside down and undercranked,”
says Hynek. “We shot it in reverse.”
View From Above
The crew encoded the gimbal and camera
motion when it could, but not the move-
ment of the often-used handheld cam-
era. “In the old days, a few years ago, we
would have shot the background plate
fi rst and then the foreground greenscreen
to match the lighting and perspective of
the plate,” Hynek says. “But Cohen didn’t
want to be a slave to the plate, so we shot
the foreground fi rst. Then we created a
background to match the lighting and
camera perspective.”
To make this possible, every shot went
through Digital Domain’s Track software,
which established the relationship of the
camera and the gimbal. “That gave us
choices,” Hynek says. “We could have
all the movement in the camera, or we
could assume the camera is still and have
the plane moving, or any combination.”
They made that decision during the ani-
mation phase.
Although the previz helped realize di-
rector Cohen’s intent for each shot, once
the action moved into animation, things
changed. “We’d redo the shots in anima-
tion,” says Hynek. The shots varied from
all-CG, to close-ups of the live-action pi-
lot with other planes visible outside the
window, to shots of the live-action footage
extended with CG into a complete plane.
Animators incorporated cockpits tracked
from the live-action plate into the anima-
tion; canopies and visors were added later.
To help director Rob Cohen give audiences the sensation of fl ying, a crew of 200 artists at
Digital Domain created all-CG planes and terrains for 658 shots in the fi lm Stealth.
Imag
es © 2005 C
olu
mb
ia Pictures.
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24 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Film
Integrating the live-action cockpit
with the digital plane was not always
straightforward. Often, the animators
had to tone down the movement cap-
tured on the greenscreen stage. “We had
20 shots where the gimbal was pitching
so much that when we added the 70-foot-
long plane, it looked like a bucking bron-
co in the sky,” says Port. “So we animated
the plane and then projected the original
photography onto the animated plane.”
Refl ections made the CG visors and
canopies necessary. Visors worn on stage
refl ected that environment, not the fi lm’s
high-fl ying clouds, and those refl ections
were diffi cult to remove; the CG canopies
had to refl ect moving clouds and the sun.
To add realism, the crew aged the cano-
pies with dirt and minute scratches. And
then, they added sun dogs, the little re-
fl ections that radiate in circles when a
sun highlight hits the scratches.
Procedural animation helped move
the fl aps on the airplanes, but animators
did the rest, setting the speed—500, 1000,
even 5000 miles per hour—and keyfram-
ing the action in Maya using aerial pho-
tography for reference. “I’ve been a pilot
for 30 years. I was riding herd on each
shot,” says Hynek.
A Playground of Clouds
One of the key instructions from Cohen
was to place the planes in an environ-
ment where speed became palpable, but
when the planes fl y in a clear, blue sky,
there’s no way to tell how fast they’re
traveling. That meant the crew needed to
fi ll the sky with clouds in the foreground,
mid-ground, and background.
“Cohen’s direction to the animators
was to take advantage of the 3D space
they lived in,” says Port. “He wanted to
get away from the idea that the action
was on a 2D plane in space. So, we cre-
ated a playground of clouds in which the
action took place.” In addition, the crew
created rapidly moving, less-detailed va-
por that interacted with the fuselage and
wings, and streamed into the intakes.
For this, the group used Digital
Domain’s Academy Award-winning Storm
software, creating a library of different
types of clouds for all the environments
in which the planes travel throughout the
fi lm. Houdini provides Storm’s interface;
Digital Domain’s Voxel B, the rendering.
“Storm simulates a true volume and ba-
sically generates 3D volumetric noise,”
explains Port. The rendering is effi cient
because the simulation is stored in volu-
metric buffers and represented internal-
ly on cards that always face the camera.
“We can put lights in there and have it
backlit,” says Port, “and have full control
of the 3D noise.”
Storm also helped the crew put a cir-
cle of fl ames in the sky. At one point, EDI,
acting like a rebellious teenager, decides
to keep the Talon test pilots from refuel-
ing at a dirigible refueling station 50,000
feet in the air. It blasts off one of the fuel
hoses, and fuel spews out into a doughnut-
shaped cloud that EDI then sets on fi re.
Because the pilot’s visor and the airplane’s canopy would have refl ected the equipment on
the bluescreen stage, they were always digital, as is the plane fl ying nearby in this shot.
Without visual cues, it would have been impossible to tell how fast the planes were fl ying. So Digital Domain used a combination of its
volumetric Storm software and Voxel B renderer to create a playground of CG clouds for the digital airplanes to speed through.
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w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 25
Film. . . .
The crew created both the fuel cloud
and the fi re with Storm. “We used the
density fi eld of the fuel cloud to drive the
animation of the fi re almost like a fuse,”
says Port. The fi re colors were based on
time and density, and generated from a
color lookup table. Because they used
Storm for both types of imagery, the
crew rendered the two simulations to-
gether rather than combining separate
passes in compositing.
Earth Movers
Proprietary software under de-
velopment for two years at Digital
Domain generated the ground
beneath the planes and the at-
mosphere above. With the result,
named EnGen, for Environment
Generator, the crew could view
the Earth from space and zoom down to
a rock on the ground. On the ground, the
terrain could include caves, rocks, roads,
trees, snow, boulders, mountains, rivers,
and so forth.
“It’s not just a simple height displace-
ment,” Port points out. Shadows are soft
when far away and hard when close, and
the color of the atmosphere changes
based on the sun and the viewing angle.
To create terrain for a location in
Stealth, the crew
often started with
publicly available 3D topographic data
and photographs of the location where
the action takes place. Working in Maya,
the team modeled a rough landscape in
3D, through which the director could fl y
a camera. Then, the group moved direc-
tor-approved low-res meshes into EnGen.
Within the software, the crew added
detail using nodes, sometimes as many as
1300 for a location. “We could get down
to the behavior and the look of individu-
al rocks and slopes,” says Port. “There’s
even a node that makes nodes: Give it
a curve, and it automatically creates a
berm or maybe a road.” Artists could
place rocks, create snow and vegetation
using fractal noise patterns, or project a
painting onto the terrain.
A proprietary renderer wrangled the
rendering job, changing the level of de-
tail based on airspeed. The render-
er dropped to half-resolution for terrain
beneath planes moving so fast that the
ground below was blurred. Also, because
the terrains were so huge and contained
With its new EnGen terrain tools, Digital Domain altered the 3D models from topographic data, added such elements as rocks, caves, and
rivers in levels of detail, cast shadows, and colored the atmosphere.
For the huge environments,
a proprietary renderer
automatically altered level
of detail based on the airspeed,
and divided each rendering job
into chunks that were later
assembled into fi nal frames.
Since Digital Domain used its Storm software to create the blackish fuel cloud and the fi re,
the two simulations could be rendered together. Time and density determined the colors.
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26 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Film
so many elements, the renderer divided
each job into chunks that it assembled
into fi nal frames, and generated individ-
ual atmosphere and terrain passes for
the compositors.
Together Again
For compositing, Digital Domain uses
its Nuke software, and for this fi lm, the
studio pushed the program in new ways.
“We actually used Nuke as a shader,” says
Bryan Grill, compositing supervisor.
Grill explains that lighters created the
underlying airplane look by generating 16
rendered passes with different lighting ef-
fects. “These passes were control
images, and were used as shaders,”
he says. “We called them ‘sham-
posites,’ for shader-composites.”
The technical crew combined
the 16 passes into fi ve layers and
passed them on to the compositors.
Compositors manipulating these
layers controlled the color, refl ec-
tivity, and other lighting effects.
“It takes hours to re-render
something,” says Grill. “But with
these control images, we had the
latitude to change the look.” This
was important because most
of the environments in the 658
shots were all-CG, and the aver-
age shot contained 50 elements—
the visors, canopies, terrain,
clouds, planes, engine effects, live-action
elements, and so forth.
“We couldn’t wait until all the envi-
ronments were done to render the planes,”
notes Grill. By making the lighting pipe-
line interactive, the crew could begin
working on the shots and then later cor-
rect the airplanes’ look as clouds fi lled
the backgrounds. “We might have had
to re-render one or two passes, but never
the whole plane,” he says.
Compositors built the shots by starting
with the terrain, giving the group its sun,
sky, and ground. Each shot had as many
as four different terrains depending on
the airplanes’ altitudes. When the planes
were high enough, the crew generated the
terrain as a “pan and tile” background,
more like a matte painting than a 3D mod-
el. When the camera moved closer to the
ground, the terrain became fully 3D.
“We had Web pages set up so we knew
what the altitude was for each shot,” Grill
says. “We could press a button in Nuke,
and the world would pop down where we
wanted it to be.”
Next, the compositors layered in the
clouds, using live-action shots of clouds
for only around fi ve percent; the rest were
synthetic. Lastly, they inserted the air-
planes, canopies, visors, and such fl ying
effects as jet wash, heat exhaust, wing-tip
vortices, and cloud vapor. Each effect ar-
rived with 20 layers of controls, enabling
the compositors to modify the look of the
effects in much the same way that they
changed the appearance of the plane.
Photoreal
The compositors’ challenge was blend-
ing the CG elements—background, sky,
clouds, airplanes, effects, and live-action
elements—into scenes that looked like
they were fi lmed as opposed to a cine-
ma-sized video game. To help everyone
on the crew see what the elements would
look like when projected in theaters, the
studio created a viewer in Nuke that ap-
plied the color curves used in fi lm.
“Everyone was looking at what the
output should be like through the pro-
cess,” says Grill. “For us, this has been
a long time coming.” Earlier, he explains,
CG artists might have looked at a photo-
graph, looked on-screen at a rendered el-
ement, and when they matched, handed
the element to the compositing team. By
popping the element into the Nuke view-
er, the CG artist saw what the compositor
would work with instead.
“We were creating pictures from scratch,”
Grill says, “and when you’re producing ev-
ery element of a picture, you have control
over every part. But that’s when things
start looking unreal. We had to constantly
educate people about photographic imag-
es—what the sky would look like if we ex-
posed for the plane, what the plane would
look like if we exposed for the sky or the
clouds. We had all this in play.”
In this fi lm, the action is often the sto-
ry, and the visual effects are often the
cinematography. “It takes a real disci-
pline to have all this power and not abuse
it,” Grill says.
And for the people who see this movie
and have ridden in the pilot’s seat, surely
that’s a discipline they will want all un-
manned weapons to learn as well.
Barbara Robertson is an award-winning
journalist and a contributing editor for
Computer Graphics World. She can be
reached at [email protected].
To design three Talon stealth fi ghters and EDI, the Extreme Deep Invader, the artists called on engineers
from Northrop Grumman, and then added a sexy Hollywood look to the planes.
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Produced in conjunction with
■ STORAGE PROPELS THE CREATIVE PROCESS
■ SHARED FILE SYSTEMS ENHANCE POSTPRODUCTION
■ STORAGE REQUIREMENTS FOR DIGITAL CONTENT
S P E C I A L S E C T I O N
magazine
Advanced storage systems and storage networking architectures
enhance work fl ow at digital content creation studios
Storage in the Studio
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S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O
28 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
B Y M I C H E L E H O P E
For many digital entertainment studios,
storage-centric IT networks are the in-
visible backbone of the creative pipeline.
A vital work fl ow component that can
help or hinder the efforts of artists and
creators who are archiving, accessing,
and sharing data for high-profi le fi lm,
TV, DVD, and video projects, storage so-
lutions can be easily adapted to meet the
needs of any creative environment.
With high-capacity storage more af-
fordable than ever before—6TB of net-
worked storage can be purchased for ap-
proximately $14,000—studios are rapidly
moving toward a more streamlined, all-
digital work fl ow that relies on centrally
accessible, shared disk storage systems to
perform all facets of work in progress, in-
cluding content creation, rendering, edit-
ing, color correction, and review. But the
digital approach is not for everyone. Some
studios still output to digital videotape, re-
ingesting digital video footage back to disk
for further editing.
“Studios really want to get out of the
world of videotape,” says Tom Shearer,
president and CEO of Los Angeles-based
Talon Data Systems, a systems integrator
that serves the broadcast and entertain-
ment industries. “Everybody is pushing
hard to come up with a work fl ow that
lets them stay on disk throughout the
production cycle.”
With an increased interest in central-
ized, networked storage technologies, such
as network-attached storage (NAS), storage
area networks (SANs), or a combination of
the two architectures, shared fi le systems
make it easier to distribute the same fi les
among multiple users simultaneously.
Understand Your Options
Deciding on the right storage technol-
ogy for production tasks can be a com-
plex process. Studios and postproduction
houses today can choose from a wide
variety of NAS and SAN solutions, as
well as shared fi le systems from vendors
such as ADIC, Isilon, Network Appliance,
Panasas, Pillar Data Systems, SGI, and
others. Tiger Technology also offers a
MetaSAN, which emulates a shared fi le
system and works in both Fibre Channel
and iSCSI SANs.
Studios must also choose from a wide
range of disk-drive technologies that
include both high-performance Fibre
Channel drives and lower-cost, higher-
capacity Serial ATA (SATA) drives.
File-based NAS systems are best
suited for projects with many small,
1MB frames, like short-form work with
visual effects, compositing, or frame-by-
frame rendering. In contrast, block-based
SANs work well when you need to quick-
ly move large segments of non-sequential,
uncompressed data, or perform real-time
writing or playback from disk.
To meet evolving storage require-
ments, it’s now common for studios to
have a combination of technologies, such
as SAN and NAS, as well as Fibre Channel
and SATA disk drives. “Often, studios
should also have some type of shared fi le
system,” says Shearer.
A Centralized Plan
In the digital entertainment industry,
success is viewed by how well artists can
focus on what they do best: creating and
editing content, as opposed to waiting for
fi les to open, frames to render, or lengthy
data transfers to complete. Sometimes,
the right storage technology for studios
depends on how well it integrates with
existing processes.
At Reel FX Creative Studios, a Dallas-
based creative group that focuses on
fi lm, DVD, and TV projects, including
commercials such as “JCPenney Back to
School,” creating a successful marriage
of technology and process is what the
company’s executive vice president Dale
Carman calls “working creative at the
speed of thought.”
To accommodate exponential growth
and expansion of its services, Reel FX
upgraded its storage from an initial SGI
Infi niteStorage NAS 2000 system to what
Carman estimates is now about 24TB of
storage capacity on a SAN running SGI’s
CXFS shared fi le system.
Reel FX’s primary reason for the
upgrade was to centralize its storage
resources and provide seamless, simulta-
neous access to the same data by multiple
users. “What it came down to was fi nd-
ing something with enough horsepower,”
explains Carman. “We have 150 people
Digital entertainment and effects studios find innovative
storage solutions for digital content creation
Storage Propels the Creative Process
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S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O
30 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
accessing the data, plus 400 processors
on a renderfarm accessing the data. The
typical way to do that is to segment it out
with different servers and storage for dif-
ferent users, but then you run into all
sorts of management problems.”
The SGI-based SAN and CXFS shared
fi le system solved Reel FX’s performance,
content sharing, and storage management
issues, and SGI’s guaranteed rate I/O, or
GRIO, feature allows the studio to dedicate
I/O to specifi c tasks, such as rendering.
Divide and Conquer
India-based Pentamedia Graphics Ltd.
focuses on feature fi lms, visual effects,
and animation features such as The
Legend of Buddha, Ali Baba, and Son of
Alladin. With four production groups—
3D modeling and animation, 3D render-
ing, special effects, and digital editing
and mixing—all delivering a wide array
of digital content, Pentamedia moved
away from a centralized storage network
to create a segmented solution based on
the individual needs of the groups.
Pentamedia assigned each of four
5.6TB Nexsan ATABoy2 storage systems to
its own subnetwork (one per production
group), using either 100Mb/sec Gigabit
Ethernet or Fibre Channel connections.
According to Riyaz Sheik, general manag-
er of Pentamedia’s animation and produc-
tion unit, this type of arrangement has
allowed his teams to avoid much of the
resource contention and throughput
issues experienced by some other studios.
“To make the pipeline work better [and
to avoid previous bottleneck problems],
we had to break production groups and
networks into a lot of subnetworks,” ex-
plains Sheik.
The Nexsan storage subsystems, which
are based on ATA disk drives, were se-
lected for a number of reasons, including
pricing, support, and reliability, the latter
of which has been tested under extreme
conditions. “These products can work in
any conditions, from freezing tempera-
tures to hot temperatures and air-condi-
tioning failures,” says Sheik. Because of
this, Pentamedia plans to add up to 20TB
to its existing 22TB-plus Nexsan storage.
All About Speed
Digital Dimension, based in Montreal,
knows what it’s like to almost “top
out” your storage. The 3D animation,
motion graphics, and visual effects stu-
dio recently had to juggle data storage
for two projects simultaneously: Zathura,
a full-length animated feature, and
Magnifi cent Desolation, a 3D stereoscop-
ic IMAX fi lm. Digital Dimension also has
been recently involved in other high-pro-
fi le fi lms, including Monster-In-Law and
Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Joe Boswell, a lead systems admin-
istrator for the studio, claims that work
for Zathura alone required almost 7TB of
storage space to accommodate about 200
shots, many of them miniatures. With
each shot consisting of 100 frames, 30 lay-
ers to a frame, at standard 2K resolution of
12MB per frame, the storage requirements
for the project added up rapidly.
For Magnifi cent Desolation, the stu-
dio had to work with two separate plates
(from two projectors shooting slightly off-
set for stereo), where each 6K frame takes
up about 100MB of storage, multiplied by
two. As the two projects came together
earlier this year, the company anticipat-
ed peak usage and quickly moved to the
Isilon storage system and Isilon’s OneFS
shared fi le system.
To date, Boswell reports that the stu-
dio has been pleased with the system’s
speed, as well as the
low cost and reliabil-
ity of the SATA drives
compared to the more-
expensive Fibre Channel
components. The studio
stores its content on ap-
proximately 16TB of disk
capacity provided by an
Isilon IQ 1920 clustered
storage system that in-
cludes 160GB SATA disk
drives.
The studio’s 2D ren-
dering pipeline requires
Reel FX Creative Studios uses an SGI-based SAN and a CXFS shared fi le system to facilitate
work on commercials such as “JCPenney Back to School.” In this multiple-element sequence
for DDB-Chicago, the character’s body, dressed in an articulated fat suit that Reel FX designed,
was created by shooting a person against greenscreen.
Pentamedia Graphics used four Nexsan ATABoy2 storage systems
in the creation of Son of Alladin.
© P
enta
med
ia. A
ll ri
gh
ts r
eser
ved
.
Sou
rce:
JC
Pen
ney
, DD
B-C
hic
ago
, an
d R
eel F
X C
reat
ive
Stu
dio
s, 2
005.
0509cgw_30 300509cgw_30 30 8/19/05 2:05:48 PM8/19/05 2:05:48 PM
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S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O
32 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
the most bandwidth. “Our 2D render
nodes work on shots the artists have set
up and sent to render. The render nodes
are going pretty much all day and all
night, pulling frames from, and writ-
ing frames to, the Isilon system all the
time,” says Boswell, noting that Isilon’s
clustered design provides automatic node
balancing for clients across each of the
system’s eight 2TB nodes.
“We can have eight nodes all pushing
about 95MB/sec, with an aggregate of more
than 700MB/sec. I’ve tested it up to 400MB/
sec, where I was actually overrunning
our switch trunks, which was phenome-
nal.” Isilon’s storage servers use high-speed
Infi niBand interconnects.
Storage performance has also im-
proved. The NAS array the studio previ-
ously used would often slow to a crawl,
creating headaches for the creative team.
“It used to get so bogged down that peo-
ple couldn’t browse directories,” says
Boswell. “There would be days when
we’d have to send people
home or ask artists to de-
lete stuff. Before we in-
stalled the Isilon systems,
storage was always the
bottleneck.”
The Faster, the Better
Meteor Studios, a visual ef-
fects studio with offi ces in
Montreal and Los Angeles,
knows what it’s like to have to send peo-
ple home, or split artists into two shifts,
to better manage the resource-contention
issues that arise when a storage system
is close to capacity and working over-
time to process thousands of read/write
requests per second.
Meteor, which is currently in produc-
tion with the feature Alien Planet, per-
formed complex visual effects work on one
of the longest sequences in the Fantastic
Four fi lm. This process involved more
than 100 artists working on 240 shots de-
picting just three to four seconds in the
Brooklyn Bridge sequence of the fi lm.
With this much digital content to manage,
and more on the way, Meteor began to
explore its storage system options.
The requirements of the storage sys-
tem were straightforward: It had to be
able to handle very high I/O rates while
allowing for rapid expansion in capac-
ity. The studio considered storage sys-
tems from vendors such as BlueArc,
Isilon, Maximum Throughput, SGI, and
Terrascale before opting for BlueArc’s
Titan Storage System.
Jami Levesque, Meteor’s director
of technology, likes the Titan Storage
System’s modular design, which allows
the studio to grow quickly, adding band-
width and capacity as needed, at a rela-
tively low cost.
The ability to handle increased per-
formance was another factor. During
one job at Meteor, the Titan storage serv-
er clocked 140,000 I/Os per second—
well above the studio’s typical peak
throughput rate of 45,000 to 50,000 I/Os
per second. Currently, the studio’s Titan
system includes more than 7TB of capac-
ity on Fibre Channel disk drives and al-
most 3TB on SATA disk drives.
Video Editing Rebels
The Maine Public Broadcasting Network
(MPBN), a nonprofi t network that produc-
es a number of TV shows, including the
award-winning Quest series, has learned
a thing or two about storage in its efforts
To handle complex visual
effects work, Meteor
Studios upgraded to a
BlueArc Titan Storage
System, which features
very high I/O rates and
more than 7TB of capacity
on Fibre Channel disk
drives and approximately
3TB on SATA drives.
Digital Dimension relied on Isilon’s IQ 1920 clustered storage system and OneFS shared fi le
system to help develop this mountain-climbing scene from the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
This 2D composite of actress Kerry Washington was derived from two separate plates: one of
the actress against a bluescreen and another with the background plate of the mountain face.
Intricate rotoscoping work was also performed to show the wind against Washington’s bandana.
© 2005, 20th C
entu
ry Fox Film
Co
rp., M
r. and
Mrs. Sm
ith. Im
ages co
urtesy o
f Dig
ital Dim
ensio
n.
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S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O
w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 33
B Y T H O M A S C O U G H L I N
Driven by the demand for image quality
in theaters and homes, feature-fi lm res-
olutions are on an upward trend. In the
high-end feature-fi lm market, 2K resolu-
tion is common, and 4K resolution is gain-
ing ground. With increasing resolution
and storage demands, new solutions will
be needed to store and move those assets
throughout the studio and into theaters
and the home entertainment market.
Nearly all feature-fi lm production is
still captured on fi lm and must be con-
verted to a digital format with a fi lm scan-
ner before postproduction begins. Once
the fi lm is ready for distribution, the digi-
tal content must be copied back to fi lm.
Nonlinear Editing and Effects
Almost all content creators now use non-
linear editing of digitized content, and
most special effects today are done with
digital techniques. This streamlines the
editing process, resulting in faster editing
at a lower cost.
Nonlinear editing is generally done
with uncompressed or slightly compressed
content, since heavy compression increas-
es the overhead of editing and can cause
timing problems. For a large facility with
several editing chairs, shared network
storage allows the local disk storage to be
kept at about 30 minutes per station.
Storage networking has been de-
creasing in price due to the maturity of
Fibre Channel SAN components and the
growing use of iSCSI SANs and network-
attached storage (NAS).
The high-end segment of the nonlin-
ear editing market requires expensive
components to support bandwidth and
latency requirements for 2K and 4K res-
olution. RAM is often used as a buffer
in various parts of nonlinear editing sys-
Higher-resolution content is driving the need for huge
storage capacities and high-speed bandwidth
Storage Requirements for Digital Content
to transform itself into a videotape-free op-
eration. The transformation often required
a video editor to spend up to 10 hours a
week archiving video footage out to tape,
or waiting to re-ingest a tape at anoth-
er station before continuing. Editors at the
station’s Bangor and Lewiston locations of-
ten used “sneakernet” to physically shuttle
tapes between sites in order to share work.
According to MPBN systems integra-
tor Kevin Pazera, the station’s use of Avid
editing stations with non-shareable, di-
rect-attached storage (DAS) creates in-
effi ciencies at the network. As a result,
the economically minded nonprofi t sta-
tion is moving away from proprietary
systems with DAS to a more “open” SAN
confi guration.
MPBN plans to phase in Apple Mac
G5s running Final Cut Pro at both its fa-
cilities. For back-end storage, MPBN will
be using 30TB of storage capacity on two
Fibre Channel SANs from Compellent
(one in Bangor and one in Lewiston). The
plan is to replicate data asynchronously
between the two sites.
According to Pazera, the Compellent
SAN solution will make a huge differ-
ence for video editors, not to mention
the station’s other business units whose
storage needs will also be served by the
SAN. MPBN is using Tiger Technology’s
MetaSAN to handle resource contention
issues. It allows each editing workstation
to bypass the server, connecting directly
to the 2GB/sec Fibre Channel SAN.
Now, MPBN editors can keep all
the raw footage for each story on disk
and work on the footage from any edit-
ing workstation. They can also do away
with the sneakernet and, instead, directly
access fi les on the SANs.
“This will be great for our editors
because we want them to be editing
all the time and not moving data back
and forth,” says Pazera. And in the end,
that’s the ultimate sign that a studio’s
storage is doing its job.
Michele Hope is a freelance writer and can be
reached at [email protected].
Video editors and producers at the Maine
Public Broadcasting Network use two
Compellent SANs at two locations to store
raw and working footage used to create lo-
cal shows like the award-winning science
and nature series Quest.
Imag
e cou
rtesy Main
e Pub
lic Bro
adcastin
g Netw
ork.
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S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O
34 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
tems to help reduce the impact of system
latencies.
Compositing and special effects are
increasingly a staple of fi lms and other
digital content. Demand for more sophis-
ticated results will increase storage re-
quirements (capacity and performance).
Special effects are often done with clus-
tered computers connected to storage
networks. These are generally based on
open computer architectures with propri-
etary data management software.
Archiving
Preserving new digital content and con-
verting historical analog content to digi-
tal form will be the single largest driver of
digital storage capacity. Much of the stor-
age for archiving will be on removable me-
dia such as tape and optical disks that can
be put on a shelf or in a library until need-
ed. Digital preservation allows content to
be available for research and distribution.
Many major digital conversion and
preservation efforts are under way world-
wide. For example, there are very large
libraries of material being converted to
digital archives, such as the 100,000-hour
CNN library. Other major networks such
as CBS and Sony/Columbia are also digi-
tally archiving materials; CBS, has more
than 1,045,000 tapes and 150,000,000 feet
of fi lm, and Sony/Columbia’ has 600,000-
plus reels and tapes to convert.
One of the biggest issues for archiving
is the obsolescence of the storage media
technology. Tapes or optical disks get out-
dated, and if the digital content that they
contain is not transferred to new media,
it will be diffi cult to preserve, cannot be
easily read, and likely will be lost.
As the size of the digital archive increas-
es, it will become more diffi cult to transfer
digital content fast enough to preserve that
content. A serious issue in the future will
be having suffi cient bandwidth available
to convert from old media to new media.
Archiving will not be a static or occasion-
al process. Format conversion of large data
stores may eventually require almost con-
tinuous transfer operations. When the ar-
chive load becomes too large, choices will
have to be made about which content to
transfer and preserve on the new format.
Storage Outlook
Between 2004 and 2010, analysts expect
a 900-fold increase in the required digi-
tal storage capacity for the digital cre-
ation and distribution markets. With the
growth in storage demand for high-resolu-
tion content and the ease with which digi-
tal footage can be acquired, digital storage
demands for content acquisition should
match those for archiving and preserva-
tion by 2010. Analysts also expect that
extensive digital conversion projects will
occur in the intervening period.
In 2004, analysts estimate that 60 per-
cent of the total storage media shipped for
digital entertainment content was on tape,
with 40 percent on optical disks.
By 2010, the change in segment de-
mand will also change the mix in digi-
tal storage media, and tape usage and
optical disks should decrease to 40 per-
cent and 55 percent, respectively, with
hard disk drives comprising a 4 percent
market share.
Thomas Coughlin is president of Coughlin
Associates, a data storage consulting fi rm.
Advanced file systems solve some problems associated
with DI environments and post work flow inefficiencies
Shared File Systems for Digital Postproduction
B Y S A Q I B J A N G
As the world evolves into an infi nitely
digital universe, fi lm studios are break-
ing free of traditional processes and em-
bracing digital intermediates (DIs) to in-
crease effi ciency and reduce costs. DIs
give studios greater creative freedom, in-
crease effi ciency, and reduce costs by re-
placing fi lm labs with digital alternatives
that can match, or supersede, the quality
of a fi lm intermediate.
DI work is performed at high-defi ni-
tion, 2K, and 4K resolutions; the larger the
fi le size, the costlier the image. An uncom-
pressed HD image, for example, requires
about 8MB of data, while a 2K image re-
quires approximately 12MB of data per 10-
bit log RGB frame. A 4K image requires
about 48MB of data, quadrupling storage
and networking bandwidth requirements.
The main task of a DI infrastructure
is to move digital fi lm images between
various equipment in a DI facility. As
high-resolution image fi les predominate,
fi lm sequences require extremely large
amounts of data, from 200MB to 1.2GB for
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WARNING TO I.T. PROFESSIONALS:Do not let co-workers discover how reliable, fast
and effortless your Isilon Clustered Storage system is.
They’ll just load you up with a bunch more work.
Isilon Clustered Storage makes managing, storing and accessing digital
content and unstructured data a snap. Set up your system within minutes, and expand your storage and
performance on the fly in less than 60 seconds—all with no extra staff. Contact us for more information.
Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone.
1-877-2-ISILON | www.isilon.com Intelligent Clustered Storage
0509cgw_35 350509cgw_35 35 8/19/05 2:06:23 PM8/19/05 2:06:23 PM
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Time
S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O
36 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
every second (24 fi lm frames). A DI facil-
ity is typically forced to use several types
of data networking technology, applied
to different areas, to achieve an effi cient
work fl ow to avoid bottlenecks.
To maintain this performance lev-
el, in addition to sophisticated network-
ing technology, applications and storage
systems must continuously handle data
at the required rate and handle the de-
mands on the network by other users.
Therefore, choosing the correct infra-
structure hardware and software compo-
nents and using networking technology
advantageously are imperative.
Storage area networks (SANs) with
dedicated Fibre Channel networking are
the primary method for providing high-
performance shared storage in DI envi-
ronments. That’s because SANs provide
applications with direct access to fi les
and provide faster access to large fi les. A
shared fi le system is a critical component
of a DI SAN infrastructure. Shared fi le sys-
tems are cross-platform software packag-
es that support clients and applications on
different operating systems to access and
share the same storage.
By providing a single, centralized point
of control for managing DI fi les and data-
bases, shared fi le systems can simplify
administration, reduce costs, and allow ad-
ministrators to manage volumes, content
replication, and point-in-time copies from
the network. This capability provides a
single point of control and management
across multiple storage subsystems.
Shared fi le systems can accommodate
both SAN and Gigabit Ethernet-based net-
work-attached storage (NAS) clients side
by side, to share and transfer content.
Although NAS does not perform as well as
SAN, it is easier to scale and manage, and
is often used for lower-resolution projects.
Metadata servers are required to sup-
port the real-time demands of media ap-
plications using shared fi le systems. In
large concurrent postproduction facilities,
for example, thousands of fi le requests for
video and audio fi les come from each ap-
plication. In DI applications, requests
could number as many as 24 fi le re-
quests per second per user. Metadata
servers and the networks that support
shared fi le systems must be able to sus-
tain these access demands. Out-of-band
metadata networks can provide a signifi -
Located in Hollywood, EFilm LLC is a cutting-edge digital fi lm laboratory that has
been breaking new ground in the DI arena since it created the world’s fi rst 100
percent, full 2K digitally mastered feature-length fi lm in 2001—Paramount Pictures’
When We Were Soldiers, directed by Mel Gibson. EFilm’s most recent digital mas-
tering breakthrough was the work on Spider-Man 2, which was the world’s fi rst 4K,
high-defi nition, digitally mastered feature fi lm.
EFilm uses an SGI CXFS-based environment to create digital intermediates that
include high-resolution scanning, color correction, laser fi lm recording, and video
mastering to create high-resolution digital distribution masters for fi lm output, digi-
tal cinema releases, and home video and DVD.
EFilm’s SGI CXFS environment is spread across six color-timing rooms and serves
approximately 100 clients using a Fibre Channel SAN and Gigabit Ethernet LAN with
more than 200TB of storage spread over multiple SGI TP9400 Fibre Channel and
TP9500 Serial ATA storage arrays.
In addition to content on the SANs, EFilm has 20TB to 30TB of local storage distrib-
uted across fi ve color-timing rooms. Cinematographers view projected, digital 1K copies
of movie images and work with colorists in these rooms to correct each fi lm sequence
digitally. Images are typically at 2K and 4K resolutions.
Rounding out the confi guration are four SGI 3800 servers with 16 processors
each, and approximately 5TB of directly attached Fibre Channel storage in each
color-timing room. When a fi lm is being scanned into EFilm’s systems, the studio
uses SGI’s CXFS shared fi le system software to transfer 1K copies of each frame from
the SAN to local storage in one of the color-timing rooms. Final reviews are done at
2K resolution before the fi nal fi lm output.
EFilm uses its CXFS SAN for both 1K and 2K playback in its color-timing rooms.
However, because of other loads placed on the SAN, EFilm chose to implement both
locally attached storage and SAN storage for 100 percent reliable real-time 1K and
2K playback—a must for any DI environment.
Over the next two years, EFilm anticipates adding many color-timing bays, each
supporting 2K- and 4K-resolution editing. This expansion will place an even greater de-
mand on the company’s SAN performance and storage capacity requirements. One
option EFilm is considering is to transfer to an infrastructure that allows editors and
colorists in each color-coding bay to access SAN-based 2K- and 4K-resolution content
directly through SGI’s guaranteed bandwidth product.
EFilm Masters DI
��������� � ������ � �� �� ��
Sequential file transfer process
DVTR
Individualstorage
DVTR DVTR DVTR DVTR
Capture Color correctionand grading
Dust andnoise removal
Editing andcompositing
Effects andpainting
���������������
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©2005 BlueArc Corporation. All rights reserved. The BlueArc logo is a registered trademark of BlueArc Corporation.
Accelerate the Digital World
M I N D
M A C H I N E
M E D I A
Performance is critical in the digital world. To be productive, your data has to move into action.
• SPEED rendering and compositing
• REDUCE artist wait times
• ENHANCE artistic quality and effects
• SHORTEN production schedules
• MINIMIZE dropped frames or failed renders
• INCREASE creative collaboration
BlueArc is a world leader in high performance network storage. With a unique architecture, BlueArc solutions deliver tiered storagein a single integrated, virtualized storage pool that scales up to 256 terabytes in a single file system.
Set your data in motion. Call 866.864.1040 or visit BlueArc.com today.
From mind, to machine, to media, and back again.
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S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O
38 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
cant advantage over in-band servers that
share the same network link as the media
content because metadata and content
are not sharing the same bandwidth.
In a hardware-based RAID storage sys-
tem, as the number of concurrent users in-
creases, the stripe group must be increased
to meet the total bandwidth demand and
not drop frames. High-resolution fi les re-
quire signifi cant increases in bandwidth for
each additional user, forcing RAID expan-
sion. As stripe groups increase, it becomes
increasingly diffi cult to maintain data syn-
chronization, calculate parity, drive ports,
and maintain data integrity.
When concurrent high-resolution con-
tent users must rely on large fi le-based
RAID arrays and large network switch-
es, performance is diffi cult to maintain,
and infrastructure problems arise. Often,
when multiple users request the same
content within a stripe group, available
bandwidth is reduced, variable latencies
are created, and the fi le system cannot de-
liver frame content accurately. If a RAID
storage system becomes more than 50
percent full, content data fragments over
time, storage performance drops, and us-
ers lose bandwidth. These infrastructure
issues must be resolved before users can
take full advantage of shared fi le systems
in a high-resolution digital environment.
Future Directions
Shared fi le systems generally address the col-
laboration requirements of DI environments.
Using shared fi le systems lets multiple us-
ers access DI content without time-consum-
ing fi le transfers and data corruption. Shared
fi le systems are good for sharing DI content,
but several infrastructure challenges still
remain, such as the high performance
and reliable delivery of DI data, which
will be the focus of next-generation DI
storage networking infrastructures.
At the root of these emerging chal-
lenges is the requirement for end-to-end
content delivery, from storage to DI appli-
cation memory. This requirement means
that image frames must be delivered at
precisely controlled intervals—24 frames
per second in the case of digital fi lm. If de-
livery is not precisely controlled, the ap-
plication can drop frames
or have buffer overfl ow.
The fundamental
problem with existing
storage architectures de-
ployed in DI environ-
ments is that the storage
and delivery of digital
video and fi lm images are tightly cou-
pled. To deliver 1.2GB/sec, every segment
of the data path, from the storage
through the data link, to the end work-
station adapter, and fi nally to the appli-
cation receiving buffers, must meet the
necessary quality of delivery require-
ment at the same 1.2GB/sec throughput.
The weakest link in the data
path —most likely the storage system—
determines overall system performance.
Storage systems today are based on con-
ventional disk drives, and the I/O perfor-
mance is closely related to the rotational
speed of the disk platter. Despite the rapid
increase in disk drive capacity and reduc-
tion in costs, the overall I/O performance
on disk drives has not been improving at
the same rate as improvements in capac-
ity and density. Also, disk drive-based
storage systems often suffer performance
degradation when multiple read/write
requests are applied to data blocks concur-
rently, resulting in rapid thrashing of the
drive’s read/write actuators. Performance
is reduced by as much as 90 percent when
large numbers of concurrent accesses hit
the storage systems.
Saqib Jang is founder and principal at
Margalla Communications, a Woodside,
CA-based fi rm focusing on the storage and
server networking markets.
Rainmaker is a world-class postproduction and visual effects company based in Vancouver, BC, that has
captured the attention of audiences worldwide with thousands of visual effects in commercial, episodic,
telefi lm, and feature-fi lm projects. The studio has received many accolades, including Emmy nominations
in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001, and a 2002 Leo Award for Best Visual Effects in a Dramatic Series.
Employing more than 150 operators, editors, colorists, and coordinators for digital video postproduc-
tion projects, Rainmaker offers its clients laboratory, telecine, digital postproduction, HDTV, visual effects,
and new media services. With all that data moving in and out of the studio, a reliable storage solution is
a critical component of the creative pipeline.
Rainmaker’s ADIC StorNext environment is spread across 29 Microsoft Windows 2000 systems and
six SGI Origin servers connected via a Fibre Channel SAN to more than 4TB of media storage capacity.
Four of the Windows 2000 servers and one SGI Origin200 server have Alacritech Gigabit Ethernet
TCP/IP offl oad engine adapters that act as “SAN routers.” This allows more than 100 non-Fibre Channel-
equipped workstations and rendering nodes to easily access SAN-based DI content.
Rainmaker’s team of 3D and 2D artists work with various fi le formats and resolutions including HD, 2K,
and 4K resolution, depending on the project at hand—creating special effects and animation for motion
pictures, television, or HDTV. With 35 artists working simultaneously, large amounts of graphic images are
constantly being pushed and pulled to and from the Fibre Channel SAN, and ADIC’s StorNext shared fi le
system plays a critical role in enabling transparent fi le sharing among Rainmaker’s artists.
Depending on media resolution and streaming performance requirements, content sharing may
also require administrative processes as well as fi le transfers from the SAN to direct-attached storage.
Specifi cally, due to SAN bandwidth constraints, informal policies serve to limit the number of concurrent
users accessing 2K or 4K content. Or, artists may transfer high-resolution content from SAN to local stor-
age during off-hours.
Rainmaker’s Push and Pull
The weakest link in the data path —most likely the storage system—determines overall system performance.
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Purchase a SpacePilot between September 1–30, 2005 with a 14-day money back Purchase a SpacePilot between September 1–30, 2005 with a 14-day money back
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0509cgw_39 390509cgw_39 39 8/19/05 2:06:54 PM8/19/05 2:06:54 PM
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Portfolio
40 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005
Ryan
Chu
rch
Clockwise from top left:
Alderaan View (From Episode III) Created in Corel Painter 6, this image was the result of the artist looking for a more advanced architec-tural style suitable for the planet Alderaan.
Felucia Forest (From Episode III) Crafted with Corel Painter 6, this design is for a completely alien jungle. The heavy use of Painter’s Glow brush helped the artist achieve the desired level of translucency.
Spacebattle (From Episode III) This concept art establishing the look of the opening space battle was created in Corel Painter 6.
Ubervolcano (From Episode III) As an early painting, created in Corel Painter 6, the image was intended to push the meaning of the concept “volcano planet.”
When digital artist Ryan Church was a child, he liked dinosaurs and airplanes. So when
his father, an industrial designer, taught him to draw “properly” at the age of 5 or so, he
would make his own dinosaur books or would sketch things he had seen in fi lms. Today,
Church is still drawing airplanes and creatures, more so than dinosaurs, only now it is for
Lucasfi lm and its digital effects arm, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Furthermore, he is no
longer the student, but rather the instructor, having recently taught an advanced enter-
tainment design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Church, in fact, honed his skills at the Art Center himself years ago, learning industrial
design and illustration. When the school offered entertainment design, “I knew I didn’t
want to be a car designer,” he says. “My heart was more into airplanes and architecture.”
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SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 41
Now a senior art director at ILM, Church describes himself as a designer who illustrates.
“Painting is the best way I know of recording, actualizing, and sharing an idea.”
Trained as a traditional artist, Church applies those methods to the CG realm. “Digital
work can be noncommittal and far more experimental, and allows you to take chances.”
To create his work, he typically uses a PC running Windows XP Professional and a Wacom
tablet, and on the software side, Corel Painter IX. Most of Church’s current pieces have
been for Lucasfi lm and its ILM branch, including the design of the alien tripod machines in
War of the Worlds. Some of his more compelling art can be seen in the books, The Art of
Star Wars: Episode II and Episode III, on which he was concept design supervisor.
A sampling of Church’s work is featured on these two pages. —Karen Moltenbrey
Clockwise from top right:
Citychase (A personal image) In this piece, crafted in Corel Painter IX, Church wanted to depict speed within a vertical composition illustration that contained a heavy sense of depth. This was achieved using linear and atmospheric perspective.
Sushibar (A personal image) The painting, created in Corel Painter IX, is meant to depict a mundane moment in an extraordinary place.
Utapau Scene (From Episode III) Created in Corel Painter 6, this selec-tion was early concept art of a unique architectural style for the fi lm. While Church describes his overall illustration style as utilitarian and succinct, he notes that his designs are more refl ective of his personal style: a mix of automotive design (the form), aviation engineering (the function), and natural solutions (both form and function).
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42 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
revi
ews
stat
s
by Michael Hurwicz
Macromedia Studio 8
I N T E R A C T I V E W E B D E V E L O P M E N T
The upgrade makes strides in video, compositing, filters, and performance
Guides, the faint green lines displayed above, make it
easy to adjust layers precisely in Dreamweaver.
Macromedia Studio 8 ships with
Flash 8 (for interactive Web ap-
plications and animation), Dream-
weaver 8 (HTML Web development),
Fireworks 8 (Web-focused image editing),
Contribute 3 (Web content editing for end-
users), and FlashPaper 2 (PDF creation). The
Flash authoring tool is the fl agship product,
but Dreamweaver also leads its market.
Two versions of Flash 8 exist: Basic and
Professional. The most exciting new fea-
tures—such as the ability to recognize the
alpha (transparency) channel in dynam-
ically loaded bitmaps (such as PNG and
TARGA fi les) and in video clips—are lim-
ited to Professional. Flash previously only
supported alpha channels in bitmaps em-
bedded in the SWF fi le.
Flash’s dynamic loading results in small-
er Flash fi les. For example, I wanted an ani-
mated penguin created in Autodesk Media
and Entertainment’s 3ds Max to waddle
along the top of text created in Flash. For
comparison, I created two Flash projects,
both with alpha. In one, the animation was
a series of PNG fi les. In the other, it was a
QuickTime fi le. The PNGs gave me a 344KB
SWF (penguin and text). The Flash video
import wizard—a nice new Flash Pro 8
feature—converted the QuickTime fi le to
a 135KB Flash Video (FLV) fi le that loaded
at runtime into a 35KB SWF containing the
text. Alpha support in video cut the total
fi le size in half. Flash encoded the FLV us-
ing the On2 VP6 codec from On2 Technolo-
gies, another important addi-
tion to Flash 8.
Another great new Flash
feature, blends are compos-
iting modes—such as dark-
en, lighten, add, and sub-
tract—that determine how colors blend
with underlying colors. Other video and
image editing programs, including Fire-
works, use blends. Using blends directly
in Flash is a big timesaver. I recommend
the Invert blend mode for a quick silhou-
ette effect. Flash Pro 8 boasts fi lters for
producing drop shadows, blurs, glows,
bevels, and color adjustments. As in past
versions, some of these fi lters are avail-
able through Flash’s Timeline Effects
menu. In Flash Pro 8, however, fi lters are
easier to combine and to continue editing
after they have been combined.
The fi lter effects do not rotate when the
elements they’re applied to revolve. If you
rotate text with a drop shadow, it’s as if the
shadow-casting light always comes from
the same direction. That’s perfect at times;
other times, I’d like to rotate a blur or drop
shadow with its object. Flash Player applies
blends, fi lters, and other effects in real time,
enabling interactive manipulation through
scripting. To prevent the processing load
from bogging down the player, Flash Play-
er can cache a bitmap representation of the
content, eliminating the need for continual
redraws. However, you force a redraw (and
defeat bitmap caching) when you scale or
rotate the content.
Fireworks has more blend
modes and fi lters than Flash. A
raft of 25 new blend modes in
Fireworks offers dizzying cre-
ative possibilities with subtle
shadings. For instance, Differ-
ence, Exclusion, and Negation
are slightly different versions of
a negative fi lm effect. When a Fireworks
PNG fi le is imported into Flash, blends
and fi lters that Flash supports can be pre-
served. This nice integration feature en-
ables you to continue modifying the effects
in Fireworks. The software’s new perspec-
tive shadows add an instant touch of 3D by
simulating shadows cast on the ground by
shapes (such as rectangles or stars), open
paths (including lines or arcs), or text. After
a shadow is created, you can apply fi lters
and blends, move, rotate, scale, or skew it.
A handy new Special Characters panel pro-
vides one-click access to 99 symbols.
I would upgrade to Dreamweaver 8 for
background fi le transfer alone. Previously,
an FTP transfer would monopolize Dream-
weaver; and a large transfer or associat-
ed problems could lock me out of Dream-
weaver for hours or force me to abandon a
transfer to do other Dreamweaver work. It
is a problem no more: I can work in Dream-
weaver while also sending fi les to an FTP.
Dreamweaver now supports zooming
in and out, which works as it does in Flash
and Fireworks. Guides, another Flash/Fire-
works feature now available in Dream-
weaver, are useful when positioning layers,
which snap to guides. It beats editing num-
bers in HTML to position layers precisely.
Finally, since FLV is my preferred video for-
mat, I appreciate Dreamweaver’s new quick-
and-easy FLV import dialog.
I highly recommend Studio 8. The
software is extremely robust and stable—
among the best I’ve seen.
Michael Hurwicz is a writer and animator.
Macromedia Studio 8
Price: $999 ($399 upgrade)
Minimum System Requirements: Windows 2000 running on an 800MHZ Intel Pentium III or equivalent or Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4 running on a 600MHZ PowerPC G3; 2GB of disk space; 256MB of RAM, and a display capable of 1024x768 resolution and 16-bit color. M
acr
om
ed
ia
ww
w.m
acro
med
ia.c
om
© 2005 by M
ichael Hurw
icz.
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44 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
revi
ews
stat
s
By George Maestri
Adobe Creative Suite 2I M A G E C R E A T I O N A N D E D I T I N G
The new version is infused with more tools, performance, and support
Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 is a col-
lection of applications geared to-
ward creative professionals, such
as those involved in creating images
for graphic design, digital imaging, print
publishing, and Web/mobile projects. The
suite should be all you’ll ever need to cre-
ate still images for any medium.
Creative Suite 2 Standard includes Pho-
toshop CS2 for image editing, Illustrator
CS2 for drawing and vector graphics, and
InDesign CS2 for page layout. The Premi-
um version adds GoLive CS2 for Web au-
thoring and Acrobat 7.0 Professional for
exchanging fi les. Without a doubt, Pho-
toshop is Adobe’s most popular applica-
tion; it’s used virtually everywhere in the
computer graphics community. The CS2
version of Adobe’s fl agship application in-
cludes a number of improvements.
Adobe’s Photoshop Camera Raw plug-
in enables photographers to manage raw
fi les from digital cameras. Photoshop CS2
adds to that capability with the ability to
remember RAW settings and apply them
to multiple fi les, making batch-processing
digital photos much easier. You can now
do common tasks (straighten, crop, ap-
ply gamma correction curves, etc.) on im-
port, for greater control. Photoshop’s new
Noise Reduction fi lter is good at smooth-
ing out rough spots in images shot in low-
light conditions. While not as robust as
some third-party noise fi lters, Adobe’s
works well for most situa-
tions. New automatic lens
correction helps adjust for
barrel distortion in less-than-
perfect lenses. Another nifty
addition is Vanishing Point,
which automates the task of
perspective correction, sav-
ing time and headaches.
3D graphics professionals will be hap-
py with Photoshop’s support for High Dy-
namic Range (HDR) 32-bit fl oating-point
images, lending to more realistic light
sources and textures in 3D animations.
In the past, creating HDR fi les was dif-
fi cult and required a jumble of custom
applications. Photoshop CS2’s Exposure
Merge utility simplifi es the process and
allows you to take a batch of photos with
bracketed exposures and combine them
into a single HDR image.
One of the best new features in Pho-
toshop CS2, Smart Objects enable you to
import images and graphics while retain-
ing a live connection to the original docu-
ment. An Illustrator graphic brought into
a Photoshop design, for example, is up-
dated in Photoshop as the original fi le is
changed in Illustrator. Further, the Illus-
trator fi le will not rasterize until you de-
cide to fl atten the image, and Smart Ob-
jects work with RAW images.
Photoshop’s File Browser has been re-
moved in favor of the broader-purpose
Bridge. It is more ro-
bust, plus it handles
fi les for all programs
in the Creative Suite.
It is useful in intel-
ligently sorting and
managing, as well as
previewing, search-
ing, and retrieving,
various fi le formats.
The one caveat: it’s a separate application
that takes up system resources.
Illustrator CS2, Adobe’s vector graph-
ics program, is used widely by graphics
designers and increasingly by video pro-
fessionals. The application is more com-
patible with Photoshop, offering support
for Photoshop fi lters. The interface now
resembles the Photoshop workspace, hav-
ing adopted the Control Palette, a context-
sensitive toolbar with options for current
editing operations. One of the nicer im-
provements is Live Trace, which turns a
scanned drawing into a vector graphic
with excellent results. Complementing it
is Live Paint, which enables you to paint
an Illustrator fi le much like you would in
Photoshop—by fl ood-fi lling regions.
One of the other upgrades is more of
a collaborative feature. Many creative
types are now using Acrobat’s PDF fi le
format as a way to communicate their
ideas to clients. Acrobat 7 Pro helps this
segment by giving the reader the ability
to add comments right in the PDF fi le.
Upgrades to the rest of the suite round
out the package to bring it up just one
more notch in terms of features and per-
formance. Anyone who needs to create,
manipulate, and manage still images
will fi nd the new tools quite useful.
George Maestri is president of Rubber-
bug, a Los Angeles-based animation
studio specializing in character animation.
Adobe Creative Suite 2
Price: $899 Standard, $1199 Premium
Minimum System Requirements: PC with Intel Xeon, Xeon Dual, Intel Centrino, or Pentium III or 4 processor running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows XP or a Macintosh with a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor running Mac OS X (10.2.8 through 10.4); 320MB of RAM; 650MB (750MB on Mac) of hard-disk space; a 1024x768 display; and a 16-bit video card. A
do
be S
yst
em
s In
c.w
ww
.ad
ob
e.co
mPhotoshop CS2 offers artists the ability to crop and
edit curves while importing RAW camera fi les.
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products For additional product news and information, visit w w w . c g w . c o m
events
w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 45
SEPTEMBER9–13IBC2005, held in Amsterdam.
Contact International Broadcasting
Convention (IBC), 44-20-7831-6909,
www.ibc.org.
OCTOBER9–11eDIT, held in Frankfurt, Germany.
Contact 9-69-59-79-71-90,
www.edit-frankfurt.de.
NOVEMBER2–3Montreal International Game Summit
(MIGS), held in Montreal, Canada.
Contact Alliance numériQC,
www.montrealgamesummit.com.
DECEMBER7–9Digital Video Expo West, held in
Los Angeles. Contact 888-234-9476,
www.dvexpo.com.
JANUARY 9–13
Macworld Expo 2006, held in
San Francisco. Contact
www.macworldexpo.com.
IBC2005 H ITS AMSTERDAMThe editorial staff of Computer Graphics World is on hand at the 2005 International Broadcasting
Convention (IBC), at which the following product releases are being announced. Established in 1967, IBC is a technology showcase tailored to professionals involved in the creation, management, and delivery of content for the entertain-
ment industry. Each year, IBC attracts roughly 40,000 attendees hailing from 120 countries, and the industry event continues to grow in number
of both registered attendees and exhibiting companies. IBC2006 is scheduled to take place in Amsterdam on September 8 through 12.
International Broadcasting Convention; www.ibc.org
SOFTWARE
C O M P O S I T I N G
Manipulation with MonetWin • Mac • Linux • Irix Imagineer Systems
is demonstrating the latest version of its Monet
and Mokey software solutions at IBC2005.
Version 2 of the company’s Monet tracking and
compositing tool now offers professional users
in fi lm and video postproduction the ability to
export a project to Apple’s Shake composit-
ing software. The upgrade also boasts a new
Stabilize module for stabilizing elements and a
new Warper for more fl exible warping. Mokey
Version 4 sports a new AdjustTrack module
for adjusting tracking data, a new Patch mod-
ule for tracking cleanplates into shots, and
Conceal for hiding faces, undesired product
branding, and more. Both Monet and Mokey
have been upgraded with a render-to-disk
option, support for the DVS Centaurus video
I/O card, and improved performance with 2K
and 4K Cineon and DPX fi les. Being shown
for the fi rst time in its release format at IBC,
Mofex is a set of plug-ins for Apple’s Shake
that enable users to manipulate elements
being composited, such as through the appli-
cation of shadows, highlights, and tracking
marker fi lters. Monet 2, Mokey 4, and Mofex
are scheduled to begin shipping this month.
Imagineer Systems; www.imagineersystems.com
3 D G R A P H I C S
Weather in 3DWin Having recently completed its acquisi-
tion of Curious Software, Vizrt is debuting the
latest incarnation of its VizWeather 3D weath-
er software at IBC2005. For the creation of
weather-related graphics, VizWeather Version
1.6 is powered by Vizrt’s VizEngine 3D graph-
ics rendering engine. VizWeather enables
users to control and manipulate weather data
and graphics, whether point-based symbols
or high-resolution 3D animations. Weather
symbols, 3D maps, radar maps, temperature,
wind speeds, weather alerts, and correspond-
ing graphic elements can be displayed auto-
matically and in real time through the use of
pre-made templates. VizWeather ships with
customizable, pre-made icons and weather
elements, as well as VizArtist, the company’s
3D broadcast animation and design software.
Vizrt; www.vizrt.com
V I D E O
Detection and CorrectionWin • Unix • Linux Previously only avail-
able as a plug-in to third-party software, The
Foundry’s Forge has been re-engineered into
a standalone application. Forge employs
the company’s motion estimation and dirt-
removal technologies in not only process-
ing digital fi lm scans, but also automatically
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products
STOCK OPTIONS
46 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
H D AT I BC
Artbeats, a provider of royalty-free stock footage, is show-
casing its newest high-defi nition titles during IBC2005 in
Amsterdam. These new collections are the result of Artbeats’
work over the past two years, during which time it conducted
seven fi lm shoots in 12 countries. The company’s new glob-
al HD offerings include footage of lifestyles, portraits, land-
marks, religions, and crowds in Central America, the Andes,
East Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast
Asia, and the South Pacifi c. Among Artbeats’ lat-
est titles are: People of Central America, People of
the Andes, People of East Africa, The Holy Land,
People of the Middle East, People of Southeast
Asia, People of the South Pacifi c, Faces of the
World 1, and Children of the World 1. Artbeats also
is showing new HD adolescent lifestyles, HD aeri-
als, and V-Line coastal collections, such as College
Life, School Days, Las Vegas Aerials, Northeast
City Aerials, Florida Beaches, and British Coastal Villages.
For broadcast, fi lm, commercial, video, game development,
and multimedia applications, Artbeats’ footage is available in
HD (1920x1080), D1 NTSC (720x486), or D1 PAL (720x576)
resolutions and priced from $799 to $899 for HD titles and
from $229 to $699 for standard-defi nition collections.
Artbeats; www.artbeats.com
detecting and correcting common problems,
such as dust, dirt, and hair. At the show, The
Foundry also is previewing its Furnace 3 col-
lection of plug-ins for Apple’s Shake. Furnace
3 is expected to ship in December.
The Foundry; www.thefoundry.co.uk
HARDWARE
M O T I O N C A P T U R E
Tracking Times Twelve Polhemeus has debuted its Liberty Latus
(Large Area Tracking Untethered System), a
wireless, 6 Degree-of-Freedom (6DOF) track-
ing system. In addition to a Windows 2000/
XP user interface and Software Developers
Kit (SDK), the Liberty Latus offers the ability
to track up to 12 independent markers over
large areas, while achieving rates up to 94
or 188 updates per second. Each two-ounce,
self-contained marker contains the neces-
sary hardware, including a rechargeable
lithium-ion battery, digital signal proces-
sor electronics, and A/C magnetics. These
markers are tracked by receptors, each of
which provide spherical coverage with an
eight-foot diameter, and require no wiring
between markers.
Polhemus; www.polhemus.com
V I D E O
Codec without CompromiseNew at IBC, Zaxel System Inc. has upgraded its
Zaxel Lossless Compression (ZLC) video codec to
Version 2.3, in response to the growing demand
for high-defi nition television, D-Cinema, and 2K
and 4K image editing. ZLC 2.3 is said to com-
press and decompress digital video with no loss
of data, ensuring bit-for-bit restoration. The sys-
tem performs three stages of compression and
decompression, and boasts an average 2.8-to-
1 lossless compression ratio. Offering real-time
record and playback, ZLC 2.3 runs on Windows
systems with a single CPU for serial standard
defi nition, dual Zeon CPUs for high-defi nition
video, and quad CPUs for 2K and 4:4:4.
Zaxel System Inc.; www.zaxel.com
C H A R A C T E R G E N E R AT I O N
Working with ClarityPixel Power Ltd., maker of work fl ow and
automated graphics solutions, is debuting its
Clarity 5000 and Clarity 300 high-defi nition
platforms during IBC2005. The new Clarity
5000 character generator offers real-time 3D
animation, a video and audio clip player, and
multiple input 2D DVE squeezeback function-
ality. A single-channel, expandable character
generator, the Clarity 300 provides uncom-
pressed clip playback, two channels of 2D
DVE, and SDI preview and program outputs.
Its 3RU frame with a 530mm depth enable
the Clarity 300 to fi t in short racks in broad-
cast production vehicles.
Pixel Power Ltd.; www.pixelpower.com
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48 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
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3D Connexion www.3Dconnexion.com 39
3D Labs www.3dlabs.com 7
Academy of Art University www.academyact.edu 47
Alias Systems www.alias.com C2
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Autodesk Media & Entertainment www.autodesk.com 3
Avid Technology www.avid.com C3
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BlueArc Corporation www.bluearc.com 37
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IntegrityWare, Inc. 1-858-538-3800 47
Isilon Systems www.isilon.com 35
Microway www.microway.com 15
Okino Computer Graphics, Inc. www.okino.com 47
REALVIZ www.realviz.com 17
Silicon Graphics www.sgi.com/storage 29
Softimage Avid www.softimage.com C4
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© 2005 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. *All prices are USMSRP for the U.S. and Canada only and are subject to change without notice.Contact your local Avid office or reseller outside U.S. and Canada. Product features, specifications, system requirements and availability are subjectto change without notice. SOFTIMAGE, Avid and XSI are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United Statesand/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.
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