Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/110536
The SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival is always the highlight of the conference and exhibition. Computer Animation Festival the captured data for the performances���the superhero suits have a more heroic build than the actors, and the performances needed to be more dramatic, as well. To choreograph the ���ghting, the animators motion-captured themselves ���ghting on ILM���s stage. They could see the action applied to characters in a virtual set, ���lm it with a virtual camera, and then show it to Snow for approval. ���It was fun for the animators to act the shots out themselves,��� Chu says. ���They weren���t getting data handed to them. It was their own data. They were War Machine, Iron Man, and Whiplash.��� Everything and . . . When the animators ���nished a performance, the shots often moved to Timothy Brakensiek in the creature-development department for rigid-body simulation and other e���ects, and then back to Holcomb. ���We wanted the damage to look realistic,��� Snow says. ���We wanted to rip up Woodall and Holcomb are especially proud of the damaged goods they created for this show. ���We tried to make it look like the damage on automobiles,��� Holcomb says. ���Sometimes we���ve gone in with only a couple days left to make a bend look better.��� Woodall adds, ���It���s something we���re always chasing. You always want to do better in the next ���lm. Things don���t happen for real in CG. You have to make them look like they���re real.��� Surprisingly, though, the two describe something quite ordinary as their most di���cult challenge. They built suits for superheroes, working weapons, and military drones. They even created the interior of a C-17 for this ���lm. They built everything, but the hardest asset was the kitchen sink. During a sequence early in the ���lm, Tony Stark gets drunk at a party in his house and puts on his Iron Man suit. Rhodey puts on the silver Mark II and tries to calm Stark down, but Stark rips the sink out of an island in his kitchen and SIGGRAPH 2009 Computer Animation Festival Guide is made possible by Computer Graphics World, a longtime SIGGRAPH media partner; Produced by COP Communications, Sponsored by ACM SIGGRAPH. This year, CGW has again partnered with SIGGRAPH to present the Computer Animation Festival guide, providing show-goers with daily schedules and detailed information for this important event. Reserve your ad space today: sales@cgw.com Space closes June 4th Distribution daily on the SIGGRAPH 2010 show ���oor 22 May 2010 War Machine powers through the climactic battle using weapons added to what was once a silver Mark II Iron Man suit. To light the suit in this shot and others, ILM developed new tools and RenderMan shaders to take advantage of the studio���s new energy-conserving lighting algorithms. the metal and see it bend and ���are open. We built entire interiors so when we chop the drones apart, we can see inside, and we hand-modeled the peeling open. It was a cottage industry.��� Holcomb, Garcia, painter Jean Bolte, and Woodall created the suit damage, with Walker managing the levels of damage in the shaders. To slice the drones, they used two versions of one model: one for above and one for below. Shaders drove the slicing; Smythe revised a technique similar to one he had used to decapitate C-3P0 in the droid factory in Star Wars: Episode II, and suck pit droids into engine parts during a pod race. ���We make the part that���s cut o��� invisible, then add the displacement that distorts the shape right at the edge,��� Smythe explains. ���Then we put the opposite of that on the other piece and make the other half invisible. That way we could have the top half fall o��� while the bottom stands there.��� smashes it into Rhodey. Then he tears the kitchen apart. ���We turned the kitchen into a pristine asset and damaged it,��� Holcomb says. ���It was a di���cult process.��� Woodall adds, ���A guy in a suit of armor is one thing, and because he���s moving, we don���t ���xate on it. But, everyone has seen a kitchen counter. It needs love.��� For the ���rst ���lm, Favreau concentrated on character development. He didn���t sacri���ce character development for the sequel, but the action de���nitely exploded. And when the action explodes on screen, there is an equal and opposite reaction in postproduction. Fortunately, ILM and the other visual e���ects studios that created the action for the ���lm were up to the challenge. ��� Barbara Robertson is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for Computer Graphics World. She can be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net.