Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/10459
[ cont. from 21 ] BUSINESS MOVING IN STEREO tory has been to embrace it.” [ cont. from 27 ] MCGUIRE: ”In recent history we've been able to benefit more and more from Moore's Law. New computer formats and software have enabled us to work faster and smarter.We have 10 times more ren- dering power than we had two years ago.We've more than quadrupled our storage capacity in the last two years across the board.This allows us to be more flexible in producing the different jobs that are shot on multiple formats.We've also expanded our Inter- net capabilities that enable us to communicate better with our agency clients and production companies. Another Country is now doing 7.1 surround sound mixing in our new audio room. Emerging media is part of our everyday business now:We're working on television commercials, new media, digital signage and much more. It's a very exciting time to be in our busi- ness and for someone like me who loves creativity, it’s just fun!” rooms, as well as Disney’s Man- hattan screening room. The DCP makes life for 3D stereo producers — indies included — much easier, Athos says. “Up until [recently] we’ve been screening left-and-right or side- by-side files” created with “home-brew methods,” he says, to produce, edit and display 3D. Going back a couple of years, UVPH did the CGI and post on Bjork’s Wanderlust video — a Tibetan fantasy/tour de force including yaks — in 3D.”That was designed and filmed in stereo, and all the post production, live ac- tion and CG creation was done in stereoscopic.” Looking ahead, Athos wants to see adaptations of stereo 3D in “the big NLEs” shown at the recent NAB. “The thing with stereo post production is that you have to shoot it correctly,” he says.“There’s a new lan- guage in the way you frame the shots; in the way you edit it together and pace things; and the way you bring about the thematic realization of your project.You can’t always fix something in post. Even if you shoot it correctly and post it correctly, if your final projection is off, even by a little bit, the whole 3D effect disappears.” Athos recommends framing a shot a little wider than usual. As far as editing, “You tend to cut from masters to close-ups and then, maybe, to medium [shots].You will never cut from wide to medium to close-up — it’s too jarring for the eye.” With help from like-minded friends, Athos is putting together a tips-and-tricks book for those interested in getting into 3D stereo.This collection might also be helpful for those involved in big-budget 3D shoots. “The stereo palette is completely new — you need to function differently,” Athos says. Sometimes, when producers and film students dive into 3D and get back their footage, they wonder “Why doesn’t this work?” “The baton fell to us to try and help because the more good 3D there is out there, the more it encour- ages our work artistically and commercially.” MOCAP & KEYFRAME [ cont. from 31 ] doesn’t currently offer a facial solution,”Taylor re- ports. Instead, Pendulum developed its own head-mounted facial capture system, called AlterEgo, which gives them a turnkey, full performance cap- ture solution. Pendulum is a Maya-based studio, but they often call on MotionBuilder for animation, even though it’s thought of as a motion capture-based tool. AlterEgo is a in-house suite of tools that works alongside Maya and many other 3D systems, including 3DS Max and the Unreal engine. A recent project that used both motion capture and keyframe anima- tion was for the Iron Man 2 game for SEGA and Marvel.Working directly with SEGA, Pendulum provided about 20 minutes of in-game cinematics using a realtime engine, as well as a pre-rendered trailer, which is also being used as a prologue intro. Each in-game cinematic (IGC) and each game developer tends to re- quire a slightly different pipeline and a different array of technologies. For the IGC work on Iron Man 2,SEGA was working with a modified version of the Unreal engine.Together SEGA and Pendulum developed a smooth pipeline to blend the keyframe and motion capture animation in their Maya/MotionBuilder/AlterEgo toolset, which was then exported into their engine. “We are working with a property full of recognizable actors who we are trying to recreate digitally… and they are all human, so there is a tremendous value to having realistic human motion throughout the IGCs and trailer,” says Taylor.“We chose to go with mocap for obvious reasons, but there were a slew of robots flying around in the cinematics and major fight scenes, so we let our animators create those characters with keyframe animation.There are times you’ll see Iron Man running through a scene, then leaping and blasting skyward.The run is mocapped, but when he is jumping and flying off, his motion smoothly transitions to keyframe animation.” A big challenge for Pendulum, when creating the pre-rendered pro- logue movie, was that SEGA and Marvel wanted to inject as much differ- ent content and action sequences as they could, but it had to fit into just two minutes.“So we tried to fill those two minutes with dramatic perfor- mances and action packed animation sequences,” explains Taylor. Some other projects where both motion capture and keyframe tech- niques were employed include Golden Axe, also for Sega, which features monsters, medieval dragons and deadly sword play; and the upcoming Ac- tivision game Singularity, for which they provided in-game cinematics and a TV spot using realtime technologies from Unreal. The animation conundrum Historically, traditional 3D keyframe animators turned their noses up at mocap, and there are still some that feel it’s a cheat on their craft. However, most character animators today don’t look it as an either/or decision, but turn to mocap as yet another tool in their arsenal. As head of production at Vicon House of Moves, I By BRIAN RAUSCH VP of Production House of Moves Los Angeles www.moves.com oversee both the motion capture stages and a prolific in- house animation team.We combine motion capture and keyframe animation on a daily basis, and rather than recommend one over the other,we recognize they’re both extremely valuable tools to be used interchangeably depending on the job at hand. There are a plethora of variables to consider in choosing the perfect combi- nation of tools for the job, including desired turnaround time and quality expec- tations — is your desired effect to have humanistic, signature motion, or some- thing more stylized? When a job comes my way for animation,we work with a client to develop storyboard breakdowns to help decide which portions of a project should be mocapped and which should be keyframed. In storyboard breakdown we evalu- ate our options — if a character is jumping off the top of a building,we might actually motion capture the action of him jumping off the edge to get the pres- sure in the launch, then we would blend that in to keyframing to animate the freefall — things such as wind resistance and slight trajectory changes that you would expect as a character falls to the earth. In the recent God of War III cinematics, some of the scenes were built from a motion capture base.We would start by cutting away some of the motion cap- ture and re-timing the animation, then by strengthening poses and adding in sec- ondary and facial animation,we arrive at a beautiful animation hybrid that brings to life the drama that is God of War. On a recent game title shoot where our client required high-volume,multi- ple character animation,we were able to capture the full performance of nine actors simultaneously on the mocap stage.This was not only quite a technical feat, but also a huge timesaver for our client. However, with this shoot and most others, our keyframe animation team gets involved to massage shots, punch poses and lend the level of polish and artistic touch that takes an animation project from good to spectacular. www.postmagazine.com May 2010 • Post 39