Computer Graphics World

September 2009 1 O N TH E C OVE R S E E IT I N In the CG animated fi lm Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, the team at Sony Pictures Imageworks has fun with food, fi lling scenes with delicious items of all sorts and sizes, and never letting the audience go hungry for visual excitement. See pg. 14 for the story. • How The Colbert Report goes off without a hitch. • Post pros add video cameras to their bag of tricks. • Hoyt Yeatman talks about G-Force. Features Food for Laughs 14 In Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, a mad scientist turns water into food, but at Sony Pictures Imageworks, it was the 3D artists who were responsible for the transformation—and everything else—in this CG feature fi lm. By Barbara Robertson Power Play 21 As graphics processors continue to grow in strength, people are now rethinking how they use them for a wide range of applications. By George Maestri Alien Achievement 24 CG aliens play a major role in the live-action District 9. Visual effects house Image Engine created the alien cast, while The Embassy crafted a mechanical exo-suit for the fi nal battle scene and Weta Digital built the spaceships. By Barbara Robertson 3D Wow! 30 Comic books, which have been a very traditional 2D medium, are beginning to venture into the 3D realm, as creators turn to digital techniques to add more punch. By John Gaudiosi A Stitch in Time 36 In the feature fi lm 9, CGI is used to bring a dark, post-apocalyptic world to life, while evil forces do their best to destroy its inhabitants. By Karen Moltenbrey Networking in Animation 45 Networking is the key to success when seeking employment. By Eveyln Gabai COVER STORY Web Exclusives Go to www.cgw.com for a variety of Web-only stories, including a wrap-up of the Comic-Con show and an uplifting story of how the graphics community gave back to New Orleans. September 2009 • Volume 32 • Number 9 I n n o v a t i o n s i n v i s u a l c o m p u t i n g f o r t h e g l o b a l D C C c o m m u n i t y Departments Editor's Note Graphics, Gumbo, and More 2 Attendance at this year's SIGGRAPH was surely lacking, but the attitude was extremely positive. Spotlight 4 Products Adobe's Flash Platform becomes open source. Apple's Final Cut Studio updates. Autodesk's Suites for Digital Entertainment Creation. Dell's Precision M6400. AMD's ATI FirePro V8750. Autodesk's Maya 2010. Intel's Media Software Development Kit. Nvidia's Quadro Plex solutions. News Graphics take a hit but are ready for a comeback. Viewpoint 10 The highly parallel structure and computational power of today's GPUs make them effective for handling more general, computationally intensive, and demanding algorithms. Back Products 47 Recent hardware and software releases from SIGGRAPH. 21 14 30 36 24

• Cover