Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/12812
n n n n Science/Medical However, due to constraints, Baby- center decided to commission fewer animations that instead would encompass broader time periods—weeks one through nine, for instance, and weeks 10 to 14—as opposed to chronicling the development on a bi- monthly basis. “We tried to pick key points throughout the preg- nancy when different things were happening, so we could add a few milestones into each animation without it being overwhelming, while still fitting into a 90- to 120- second segment,” says Ferriola. To ease delivery, Babycenter decided to send an e-mail notification with a link to the animations on its Web site, rather than attach the animations. Te animations them- selves, from conception through delivery, took a year to complete, though actual production work took about eight months total. According to Zurch- er, whose background in- cludes a bachelor’s degree in scientific/medical illustration, one of the project’s biggest vi- sual challenges was coming up with a look for the ani- mations that was enticing yet medically accurate. “We developed our look to complement the Baby- center Web site by pulling in some of the colors and keeping it as friendly but as realistic as possible,” he says, “and then carried that throughout all seven pieces.” Zurcher describes the look of the animations as “styl- ized realism”—medically accurate but without the gore. “Te fetus is as real as it can get, aside from the creative end of the col- or palette we chose,” he says of 3 Dart’s models. Documenting such a medi- cal journey without the use of CG is 24 June 2010 nearly impossible to do. Videos from National Geographic and Discov- ery, for instance, have done so using live shots with a latex- crafted fetus. However, some of the information that Babycenter wanted to show could not be done practically, Zurcher notes. “With CG, we could show the development as it goes from one stage to the next quickly though morphing,” he says. To ensure that 3 Dart’s work was on target, doc- tors and medical advisers were involved in every step of the project, which attributed to the lengthy time frame of the project. In some instances, the art- ists took a bit of liberty by cre- ating a little more space around the fetus than is normal, to al- low them to move the cam- era around so that the in- formation being conveyed was clearly visible. Making a Baby Zurcher and Ferriola, along with lead mod- eler Christopher McCabe, worked with a writer assigned to the project by Ikana. Zurcher and Ferriola, though, did extensive legwork and re- search, and helped develop the script, written to sup- port what was occurring visually in the animation. Research came from a host of medical textbooks, the Internet, and Babycenter. com’s own library of informa- tion. “We did a ton of research,” says Zurcher. To build the base models, the artists used primarily Autodesk’s 3ds Max, how- ever oftentimes switched to Autodesk’s Softimage 3 Dart artists used mainly 3ds Max and ZBrush to model and animate a realistic depiction of fetal development. to assist in the modeling process. Ten, they imported the models into Pixologic’s ZBrush, where they sculpted all the details as well as the environments. Surfacing was done in ZBrush as well as Adobe’s Photoshop, with hand-paint- ed textures. Afterward, the artists brought the textured model back into 3ds Max, where they lit it and applied shaders, which were gener- ated in Max. Rendering was done using Mental Images’ Mental Ray and managed using Prime Fo- cus Software’s Deadline. “We used subsurface scattering on almost everything, and rendered things in multiple passes—20 to 30 passes per shot,” says Ferriola, “an ambient occlusion, beauty, diffuse, shadow, environment pass, and so on.” Te group then composited all the ele- ments together with Adobe’s After Effects, with which they also color-treated the imagery. Nearly all the animation was keyframed by hand within 3ds Max, with one exception. In some shots, the fetus is interacting with the umbilical cord, and to tackle that, the artists used a few different techniques depending on the number of shots and the particular mo- tion. Sometimes they animated the umbili- cal cord in 3ds Max using standard IK bone chains, other times they moved it with a dy- namics simulation within Softimage, or key- framed a custom rig. When watery effects were needed, the group added them in post using a small amount of warp distortion. “Other than the cord’s dynam- ics, everything else was keyframed. Tere were no other simulations used,” maintains Ferriola. According to Ferriola, the first nine weeks were by far the most challenging to create, with three distinct environments, four vastly unique stages of fetal development, and an ar- ray of technical issues requiring some creative problem-solving methods. In order to allow the viewer to see multiple key aspects of devel- opment within each stage, 3 Dart developed creative transitions that didn’t interrupt the flow of the animations, yet kept them within the two-minute time frame. Not surprising, the last stage, which involved labor and delivery, was also tricky to re-create: “Tere is a certain sequence of events that hap- pens with the mom’s uterus contracting and the baby coming down the birth canal, and we had to get that perfect,” says Zurcher. Indeed, the project was labor-intensive for the team, and the gestation period for the animations was longer than what is required for an actual baby. But the results were worth the wait. n Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor for Computer Graphics World.