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3D•CGI n n n n Damon Riesberg, head of character effects, led the team charged with creating exciting yet believable capes. “Tey got someone to teach them to sew,” Schleifer says. “Tey built their own capes out of various fabrics—cotton, silk, linen. Ten, they filmed themselves on the zip line and saw ho w non-heroic the capes r eally looked. Realism is not heroic. It’s the exact op- posite of heroic.” But, b y applying the pr operties that they discovered in the r eal world to a cloth solv er in Autodesk’s Maya, Riesberg’s team created a solution that worked for the film. “We could have the capes simulated with r ealistic physi- cal properties, but w e could also sculpt spe - cific shapes and animate them,” Schleifer says. “We could go with r eal-world physics, and then when the superher oes blew up the r eal- world physics by moving 1000 miles per hour and stopping in a matter of frames, w e could blend in keyframe shapes to sculpt the perfor- mance of the capes.” Te animators could start with the base simulation, tweak and hand-animate whatever they needed to create the silhouette they want- ed, and then blend back into a simulation. Mega Crowds In addition to the five main characters, hun - dreds of backgr ound characters fill Metro City. “In some of the shots, we had crowds of over 70,000 people,” Schleifer says. “Tey are Megamind’s guiding rod within his character arc; the way the city responds to him helps de- fine his arc through the film. So the cr owds needed to feel special and unique.” Metro Man is the only character who can fly through the enormous CG city and fall without flattening himself on the pavement. The crew constructed and textured buildings in the city procedurally and animated crowds using Massive software. Tus, the studio decided to use Massive software for the first time to control the all- important cr owds. F our animators cr eated motion cycles so the individual Massive agents would cheer, run in terror, boo, stroll around, and react in other appr opriate ways depend - ing on the situation. A cr owd team built the network of brains that trigger ed the cycles. “We had a huge number of motion cy cles for the crowd,” Schleifer says. “Te nice thing is that we can use the brains and cycles for future shows, which will save us a ton of time.” To provide an appropriately large stage for Megamind and the enormous crowds, the ef- fects team built an elaborate city. “We had to use a matte painting to do a city for Mada- gascar,” McGrath says. “Now, we have a [3D] city the size of Chicago, with enormous over- passes, fire hydrants, and details like tar filling in the cracks in the streets. It’s a human-based Well, I trust myself by using tools with my opinion in them. The way to think of the Happy Ratio is that it’s the ratio between interaxial and convergence that makes me happy; the balance between comfort and a 3D effect and an emotional position. In the software, the camera can measure how far things are, so the artists position a plane to measure the nearest object. A calcula- tion then runs in the background that drives the stereo attributes in a way that sets up the shot similarly to the way we have done shots like that on previous movies. It sets up the amount of round- ness for a particular distance and lens, and positions the whole shot based on input from the scene. Are you planning to add to “Happy Ratio” in any way? We’re looking at automating it further. We could almost run an automatic first pass on a sequence to give us more time to make creative decisions. Just like autofocus on a camera means you can concentrate on position. It would be like point and shoot for stereo. How is the stereo pipeline set up at DreamWorks? We have a pool of artists who work on camera and final lay- out—there might be 20 artists all working on the movie at one world. It’s important that our characters live in a tangible, real world. Tere has to be jeopardy and real stakes. We don’t flatten characters if they fall. Metro Man is the only character who can fall and live.” Te environments fell under the pur view of visual effects supervisor Philippe Denis, as did modeling, sur facing, effects, and lighting— everything ex cept character pr evis, animation, and camera layout. “We tried to be smart work- ing with the previsualization team, and they did a good job, but even so, I stopped counting after 75 environments and sets,” Denis says. Mega City Te city was the biggest environment, and likely the biggest ev er built at D reamWorks; it had to accommodate superher oes flying overhead during action sequences. Te crew constructed it entirely with 3D geometry. But, time. In addition to [the] camera [work], they prepare files for ani- mation and set dressing. Each person who opens a shot to work on camera does the stereo settings. At final crunch, we tend to have a smaller group with an eye for stereo work on the shots. And at the end, I jump in. We’re at the stage where all the leads do not yet have full stereo skills and experience. So, I might part- ner with the final layout lead, or head of layout or previs, to make up the stereo gap. But, as the stereo experience increases, the artists take up more and more of that work. How are you seeing the use of stereo changing? We refine the craft every time we work on an animated film at DreamWorks. Megamind shows that we’ve got the craft dialed in. You’ll see not just neutral stereo that doesn’t hurt, you’ll see stereo smoothly integrated into the whole story. It’s an almost invisible contribution. The automated settings, the efficiency have given us more time to craft the 3D the way we want it. With the craft dialed in and the internal tools developed, everyone is confi- dent about their choices. We can do half the movie automatically. So, on each show going forward, the artists can think of their style of stereo, what they want to do creatively. That’s the whole point. 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