Post Magazine

July 2012

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cover story By CHRISTINE BUNISH cbpen@aol.com Cruder than your average bear B ringing a child's teddy bear to life might sound like a warm and fuzzy VFX assignment, but Ted, the brainchild of the multi-talented Seth MacFarlane, of Family Guy and American Dad fame, is like no other plush toy you've ever seen. Tippett and Iloura team up on Seth McFarlane's film, Ted. This CG star is the companion since childhood of the live-action John Bennett (played by Mark Wahlberg), and he has seri- ous R-rated skills, including a mouth that would make a truck driver proud. But their friendship is tested when John, who is about to be married, asks Ted to move out at his bride's behest. Will their almost 30-year friendship survive? Jenny Fulle, the film's VFX producer, came on board when Ted was a glimmer in his daddy's [MacFarlane's] eye, she quips. Before the pro- duction, which marks MacFarlane's feature directorial debut, was greenlit she started exploring how to bring the stuffed bear to life in a way that fit the movie's budget. "Seth knew he didn't want Ted to look cartoony; he had to look photoreal. After the first five minutes you're supposed to forget he's a CG bear," says Fulle of Culver City's The Creative-Cartel (www.the-cartel.com). MOCAP MacFarlane, who intended to voice Ted, also wanted "to infuse his character in the bear," Fulle reports. "He felt strongly that he wanted to use motion capture, which can be expensive." Enter the Xsens MVN motion capture Tippett's Blair Clark was the film's VFX supervisor. solution. A full-body, camera-less inertial mocap system, the flexible MVN can be used indoors or outdoors to capture clean and smooth data for animators via inertial sensors attached to the body. "Seth wore the MVN suit while he was directing in Boston," says Fulle. "We could record his interaction with Mark while a Sony PMW-EX3 [XDCAM EX] camera was trained on his face recording his expressions for the animators. We wanted to document as much as possible for post." The MVN suit gave MacFarlane the ability to work anywhere; no mocap volume was required for a dedicated shoot. Although "VFX likes planning," the comedy process likes to be fluid, she notes. "We didn't always know if things worked until we saw the cut. We were changing things 'til the eleventh hour. And we got a lot of the comedy on set." The suit's ease of use also enabled MacFarlane to quickly record new 12 Post • July 2012 The Xsens MVN camera-less mocap system allowed director/voice of Ted, Seth McFarlane, the freedom to refine the comedy on set. (www.tippett.com) in Berkeley, CA, and Iloura (www.iloura.com) in Melbourne, Australia, keeping sequences intact. Tippett Studio has done its share of talking animals (Cats & Dogs, Beverly Hills Chihuahua) reports Blair Clark, VFX supervisor for the pro- duction, who worked closely with in-house supervisors from both VFX houses — Scott Liedtka and Jim Brown from Tippett Studio and Glenn Melenhorst and Avi Goodman from Iloura. But no talking animal was quite like Ted. "We thought initially that Ted wouldn't be a huge stretch, but he had to be a photoreal, lightweight plush toy, perform a wide range of physical gags and convincingly 'act' among his human co-stars," says Clark. "The VFX artists expertly took all that into account." Working with an early mocap test of Mac- Farlane, Iloura hit upon the final design of Ted. "Iloura's test was based on a loose piece of key art, and they nailed it," says Clark. "It was great to have the design approved so early, and that early test became the standard that both com- panies followed. [But] we were a little worried www.postmagazine.com like competition. I can't praise Iloura and Tip- pett enough." Both houses animated in Autodesk Maya, with most compositing han- dled in The Foundry's Nuke. Tippett's renderer was RenderMan, while Iloura's was a combina- tion of 3Delight and Chaos Group's V-Ray. Most of the Ted-Wahlberg dialogue scenes were aided by a run-through with a practical bear fabricated by Mark Rappaport's Crea- ture Effects (www.creaturefxinc.com). Known as "The Stuffy," it was puppeteered during the rehearsal to help the actors know where Ted would be and what he would be doing. Then he was replaced with an eyeline tool (a metal stand with balls for eyes) to give the actors a reference point during the actual takes. Mac- Farlane would perform as Ted, either in the MVN suit or just with his voice, as he watched the video feed on a monitor out of frame. The Stuffy was also used for scenes before young John's wish brings Ted to life. THE ANIMATION Once in post production, MacFarlane was motion during post production if needed. "It took a while to develop the look and movement of Ted," says Fulle, "but once we understood who he was and how he moved, everything went smoothly. We all became intimately knowledgeable about Ted: when he was angry, sad, happy." Fulle was on set during portions of the shoot; The Creative-Cartel's associate visual effects producer Eric Torres was there daily. Once the mocap team processed the data collected, they handed it off to Tippett Studio about getting a final Ted that would be shot- production ready and still match this test that Seth and the producers were so in love with. But that proved to be more of a theoretical concern than a practical one. " Clark reports that Tippett Studio and Iloura worked seamlessly together. "We didn't share models, but we shared information, settings and comparison renders to make sure our Teds matched as closely as possible, " he says. "Both studios were concerned about coming up with the best final product, and it never felt

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