Making Movies
Aaron Bloomfield
CS 445: Introduction to Graphics
Fall 2006
(Slide set originally by David Brogan)
Making Movies
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Concept
Storyboarding
Sound
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Character
Development
Layout and
look
Effects
Animation
Lighting
2
Concept
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“Nothing gets in the way of the story”
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John Lasseter (Pixar)
3
Storyboarding
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Explicitly define
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Scenes
Camera shots
Special effects
Lighting
Scale
Used as guide by
animators
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Sound
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Voice recording of talent completed before
animation begins
Animations must match the voice over
A puppeteer once told me that the voice makes or
breaks a character
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Character Development
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300 Drawings
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Character Development
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40 Sculptures
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Character Development
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Computer
Models
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Layout & Look
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Build scenery
Match colors
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Matchmoving
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CG camera must exactly match the real camera
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Position
Rotation
Focal length
Aperature
Easy when camera is instrumented
Hard to place CG on moving objects on film
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Matchmoving
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Matchmoving
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Known patterns in live action made it easier to
track – furniture, wall paper
2D – 3D conversion in Maya
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Shooting Film For CG
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Actors practice with maquettes (small scale
models)
Maquettes replaced with laser dots
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lasers on when camera shutter is closed
After each take, three extra shots
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chrome ball for environment map for Stuart’s eyes
white and gray balls for lighting info
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Matchmoving
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Film scanned
Camera tracking data retrieved
3D Equalizer + Alias Maya to prepare (register) the
digital camera
Once shot is prepared, 2D images rendered and
composited with live action
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Water
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Particle
Sim and
Indentation
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Tools
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Compositing
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Compositing
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Lighting
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Facial Animation
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Facial Animation
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Fur
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Cloth
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Buttons and Creases
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Texture
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Companies
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Pixar
Disney
Sony Imageworks
Industrial Light and
Magic (ILM)
Rhythm and Hues
Pacific Data Images
(PDI)
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Dreamworks SKG
Tippett Studios
Angel Studios
Blue Sky
Robert Abel and
Associates
Giant Studios
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Toy Story (1995)
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77 minutes long; 110,064 frames
800,000 machine hours (91 years!) of rendering
1 terabyte of disk space
3.5 minutes of animation produced each week
(maximum)
Frame render times: 45 min – 20 hours
110 Suns operating 24-7 for rendering
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300 CPU’s
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Toy Story
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Texture maps on Buzz: 189
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(450 to show scuffs and dirt)
Number of animation ‘knobs’
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Buzz – 700
Woody – 712
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Face – 212
Mouth – 58
Sid’s Backpack – 128
Number of leaves on
trees – 1.2 mil
Number of shaders – 1300
Number of storyboards – 25,000
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Toy Story 2
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80 minutes long, 122,699
frames
1400 processor render farm
Render time of 10 min to 3
days
Direct to video film
Software tools
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Alias|Wavefront
Amazon Paint
RenderMan
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Newman!
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Subdivision-surfaces
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Polygonal hair (head)
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Texture mapped on arms
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Sculpted clothes
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Complex shaders
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Devil’s in the Details
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Render in color
Convert to
NTSC B/W
Add film effects
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Jitter
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Negative
scratches
Hair
Static
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Images
Shadows?
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Images
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Images
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Stuart Little
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500 shots with
digital character
6 main challenges
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Lip sync
Match-move (CG
to live-action)
Fur
Clothes
Animation tools
Rendering, lighting, compositing
35
Stuart Little
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100+ people worked on CG
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32 color/lighting/composite artists
12 technical assistants
30 animators
40 artists
12 R&D
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Stuart Little
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Final Fantasy
http://www.arstechnica.com/wankerdesk/01q3/ff-interview/ff-interview-2.html
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Final Fantasy
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First ever animated feature to attempt photorealistic CGI
humans
Second biggest box office flop ever (lost over $124M)
Main characters > 300,000 polys
1336 shots
24,606 layers
3,000,000 renders (if only rendered once)
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typically 5 render revisions
render time per frame = 90 min
Most layers per shot 500
934,162 days of render time on one CPU
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they used 1200 CPUs = 778 days of rendering
39
Final Fantasy
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Renderman (Pixar) used for rendering
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direct illumination
many hacks to fake global illumination
Maya used for modeling
Hair
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Modeled is splines
Lighting and rendering complicated as well
40
Star Wars I
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The good
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Jar-Jar’s
ears
(cloth
simulation)
Jar-Jar’s facial animation
Sets
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Were only as high as the
tallest character in the
film
Above that was all CG
Was the first interaction
between CGI and humans
The bad
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Jar-Jar
Jar-Jar
Jar-Jar
Jar-Jar
41
Making Movies
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Production Team
Production Line
Special Effects
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Production Team
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Directors
Modelers
Lighting
Character Animators
Technical Directors
Render Wranglers
Tools Developers
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Shader Writers
Effects Animators
Looks Team
Security Officer
Janitor
Lackey
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