Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/815991
22 cgw m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 7 NEW UE TECHNOLOGY • MULTIPLE IMAGE STREAMS OF UNCOMPRESSED EXR IMAGES (AROUND 1.8GB/SEC) • DYNAMIC SKYLIGHT IBL (IMAGE-BASED LIGHTING) FOR LIGHTING THE CARS • MULTI-ELEMENT COMPOSITING, WITH EDGE WRAP, SEPARATE BG AND FG MOTION BLUR • FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM (FFT) BLOOMS FOR EXTRA BLING • PCSS SHADOWS WITH DIRECTIONAL BLUR SETTINGS • BENT NORMAL AO WITH REFLECTION OCCLUSION • PROTOTYPE FOR NIAGARA, A NEXT-GEN, NODE-BASED VFX TOOL • COMPATIBILITY WITH NVIDIA QUADRO GRAPHICS CARD • SUPPORT FOR GOOGLE TANGO-ENABLED DEVICES (CURRENTLY LENOVO PHAB 2 PRO) Meanwhile, Epic will be including much of the new technology resulting from Project Raven into future game engine releases. The Mill is looking at applying the technology to commercial productions. "We are always looking for new ways to tell stories and help directors get their vision visualized. This will help them create and support stories in new ways we never thought of before," says Kneale. And there's no doubt that the imagi- nations of many are running wild at what Project Raven has now made possible. Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of CGW. In the race between a human driver and autonomous futuristic vehicle, who will win? In "The Human Race," a real-time live-action short film with VFX, the prize goes to The Mill and Epic Games for the groundbreaking pro- duction. But looking down the road, it will be the filmmakers and viewers who will benefit from the technology that merges live-action storytelling and real-time visual effects. Creating the short required new tools to support the inventive workflow, which incorporates traditional processes with new approaches. The Mill artists had received pre-tessellated, high-poly meshes of the car models (the 2017 Camaro ZL1 and the FNR concept car) from GM. These meshes then went through several rounds of decimation and re-topologizing until the crew found the best balance of quality and resolution for ingest into the Unreal Engine. "What we ended up with is two versions of the car: a high-quality film version, ready for close-up shots, and a heavily optimized version (under one million polygons) for use with Mill Cyclops," says Joji Tsuruga, real-time supervisor at The Mill. Once edits were completed, the team used Science-D-Vision's 3DEqualizer and The Pixel Farm's PFTrack to handle both the fine tracking of the camera and objects. Along with tracking data imports, all modeling, rigging, and animation tasks were done in Autodesk's Maya. Texturing was done using Allegorithmic's Substance Painter. The Foundry's Nuke was used for plate cleanup, 360 lat-long stitching, cam- era post moves, lens distortion maps, and creating additional layers. Finally, UE was utilized to combine exports from all of the above for shot setup, editing, lighting, compositing, and rendering in real time. A combination of Lidar scans and photo- grammetry were utilized to re-create parts of the shoot location, which was essential for shot layout and accurate proportions. "We were also given access to a prototype of UE4's new particle system, Niagara, which allowed us to create incredible effects that were simply not possible with their previous system," says Tsuruga. Without question, creating the film required a unique approach and was a novel endeavor. "This was truly a pivotal project to be a part of because it gave us a glimpse into what current workflows will evolve into over the next few years," says Tsuruga. 'THE HUMAN RACE'