Transformers week draws to a close with this video training from Dan DeEntremont. Master key animation skills in this Transformer-style tutorial as you rig a robot to animate its transformation from train to humanoid

To celebrate Digital-Tutors’ new Transformation training, we thought we’d make an event of it and post online all things Transformery!

We’ve already posted up two making-of Transformers articles:
The making of Transformers
The making of Transformers 2

And you can also read a making-of article on the cult Transformers-style advert for Citroën – The Embassy: The art of Robotics

To complete the Transformers roundup, here’s the train-transforming video tutorial from issue 119 of 3D World magazine.

Rig your own Transformer in LightWave

This article demonstrates the workflow for creating a transforming robot, similar to the designs in the live-action Transformers movies.

The films’ director, Michael Bay, is well known for taking the level of special and visual effects over the top in his films. These Transformers are not the simple ones everyone has seen in the cartoon show, but a gigantic mass of moving metal that somehow manages to form a human-like (or sometimes animal-like) robot. The transforming train that you’ll rig and animate has about 300 moving parts.

There are three videos available to show in detail the techniques described here. The first two videos focus on setting up the upper arms of the robot: you can take the principles you learn and apply them to the remaining parts of the figure. The first video will focus on rigging the upper arms. In this section, you will also be setting up the rig in a way that helps to cut the animation time nearly in half, using the useful Follower modifier. Bones will be used for moving the parts instead of separate layers.

In Video 2, we will continue with the animation of the rigged upper arms. Here, I will demonstrate how to bring each piece to its destination position without causing geometry to intersect. I will also demonstrate a number of key techniques to help the movement of the different sections to be more realistic.

Video 3 has a completely rigged transforming train. This video focuses on animating the transformation from a train to a robot, ending in a cool pose. A proxy version of the train will be used in this video. IK/FK Blending will also be implemented to allow smoothness in the transformation. If you get stuck at any point, the CD includes completed scene files you can study.

Click Next to begin the train-transforming video tutorial

Find out how this atmospheric, painterly animated short was created using Maya, Photoshop and After Effects. Watch the film here too

For the Remainder depicts the last moments of a house cat who bids farewell to its home before leaving to perish. The short was a graduation project created by Omer Ben David while studying at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Israel. Ben David first began working on the plot in November last year.

“I was dwelling on a concept of a cat that leaves his house and searches for his final resting place for some time before then,” he says. “I pondered on that notion since hearing the rumour that old cats sometime leave their home to die somewhere else unseen by their beloved ones or enemies. I felt that this essence of a story is very poetic and thus should be treated as a song rather than a narrative.”

First impressions

After developing the main plot, the director carefully considered the importance of the film’s characters and what role each would play.

“From the beginning, the story was about a cat and a house,” Ben David explains. “The cat’s owner was also a main character but I wasn’t sure if he would be performing or his presence just suggested. The spider came somewhat in the middle of the storyboarding stage, when I was searching for a death motif to allow the cat to deal with.”

“I was greatly inspired by sketches and calligraphy, and some colour blocking when searching for the look of the characters. I figured the house, as a character, should be mostly colour blocked while the cat should be wired so they were in contrast.”

Creating perfect brush strokes

The film’s unique style was inspired by a number of sources. “I was very moved by a series of paintings by Lukasz Pazera called Postcards from the Zone and his brilliant Dog of Zone, which I figured would be awesome animated,” Ben David says.

While researching, the director also watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. “I thought it to be the exact poem-like atmosphere I was searching for both visually and musically. I love the ambiance and slow rhythm,” he says. “I was also greatly inspired by color block paintings such as Gerhard Mozsi’s, and the dreamy feel and pace in animated films such as Tekkonkinkreet or Ghost in the Shell which I adore.”

One of the film’s main influences was a series of paintings by Lukasz Pazera called Postcards from the Zone. You can see similarities in tone and style between them and For the Remainder

Ben David’s extensive research and inspirations helped him to develop the unique painterly style of the film. In order to achieve this in 3D, he turned to the powerful tools of Maya. 

“This software was vital to production,” he explains. “It was an inherent rendering method that got the look for my characters and objects, combined with the overlapping textures on the sets. Photoshop was of course crucial for painting the textures, but Maya allowed me to rig and control almost everything I needed.”

The film’s style, however, also presented some technical challenges. “The whole sketchiness and painterly look was the biggest technical issue,” says Ben David. “I did a lot of research about NPR (non photo realistic) rendering before developing the technique for creating it, and it was pretty much an experiment throughout the entire process. I didn’t have a clear point of reference on a technical level on how to achieve this look, and so I did a lot of testing until I reached a certain point where I knew that the composited render would satisfy me.”

Despite extensive research and testing, Ben David managed to complete the film within a fairly short time period. “It took me around nine months to finish the short,” he says. “I did some touch-ups, on and off, for a few months afterwards as I was not completely happy with some renders and I’ve worked some more on mastering the soundtrack with Onili. I’m very pleased with the final result. Both on the aesthetics and the feel of it.”

Like this film?

Check out the selection of other awesome animations on our shorts page

Make sure you visit next week for more Friday Animation Fun!

Cinesite has completed 831 VFX shots and converted 87 minutes of film into stereoscopic 3D for Disney’s John Carter, which hit cinemas last week

The 3D work in John Carter – Andrew Stanton’s first live-action feature film, based on Edgar Rice Burroughs ‘Mars’ series of novels – was split between three leading London FX houses: Cinesite, Double Negative and The Moving Picture Company.

Cinesite, renowned for its photoreal environment work, was responsible for creating and populating the majority of environments for John Carter. The team of 310-strong completed 831 visual effects shots, which included creating and populating the majority of environments for the film. They also converted 87 minutes of the film into stereo 3D.

Cinesite’s VFX supervisor Sue Rowe spent several months on set in the UK and Utah. Due to the scale of the project, Rowe divided the work between four other VFX supervisors.

Christian Irles supervised work on Princess Dejah’s city, Helium. The city presented a challenge as it had to match the art department concept stills. While this was easy enough to do in matte painting, it was very time-consuming and render heavy to get actual full 3D renders. Projections were created for the terrain and these were worked up in matte painting to achieve the level of detail required.

Cinesite created a matte painting of the outside of the city of Helium and, using projections, built up the terrain using high-res stills taken on location in Utah

The shots presented the city as a whole with both Helium Major and Helium Minor visible, resulting in a huge amount of texture maps and shaders. Render time was very high for these shots and all layers, such as crowds, terrain, etc were rendered separately.

Helium stats:

• 346 models in the city structure
• 74 individual props created

The mobile city of Zodanga crawls like a myriapod across the surface of Mars: giving the city a sense of scale and animating the digital legs was challenging

Jonathan Neill supervised Cinesite’s work on the mobile city of Zodanga, a mile-long rusty metal tanker that crawls like a myriapod across the surface of Mars. The city was heavily textured using a combination of Photoshop, Mari and Mudbox in tandem with bespoke shaders and lighting development, to give an industrial look and feel.

A handful of sets were built which were locations within the city, but these needed considerable extension work to make the depth and scale of the city believable. Cinesite modelled thousands of pieces of geometry for the city buildings, and created hundreds of CG props to dress the sets.

Cinesite filled the city with warships and troops, before dressing it with hundreds of CG props

With 674 legs, the mobile city was technically challenging to animate: Timed animation caches were used to ensure the digital legs moved in a random fashion. “Variations in movement and secondary animation such as cogs and cabling were used to create interest in the leg movement,” says Cinesite.

Zodanga City Model stats:

• 291 structural element models
• Up to 20,000 objects in a single shot
• 1-2 billion polygons, dependent on camera position and detail required
• 242 CG props created to populate the city

Zodanga City Legs stats:

• 674 legs
• 44 claws

The texturing and detailing of the giant airships had to be spot on since they feature in many close up shots

Ben Shepherd oversaw the huge aerial battle between Zodanga and Helium. His team created each side’s airships which use solar wings to travel on light, as well as explosions, fire, people and set extensions.

The giant airships needed to be finely detailed for close-up shots. A challenge for look development was that they were required to be more like a 19th-Century sailing ship, than the type of spaceship which a modern-day audience might expect.

For Sab’s flagship corsair, a partial set was created for the bridge/cockpit and one deck of a single ship. This was scanned and photographed for reference and recreated. The remaining areas were created as full CG models.

Dejah’s ship and the flagship Helium ship, the Xavarian, were created in 3D also. Each ship had a full set of wings which were sized and laid out specifically for each ship. These were controlled by pulleys and ratchet-type controls to give a sailing look. Each of the wings was covered in hundreds of individual solar tiles which needed to be able to be controlled in animation.

The entire Thern effect system was designed and built from scratch using a combination of Maya, Houdini and custom software developed in house

Simon Stanley-Clamp directed work on the Thern sanctuary, a huge underground cave that forms around Carter and Dejah as self-illuminating blue branches as the characters walk through it.

The entire Thern effect system was designed and built from scratch using a combination of Maya, Houdini and custom software developed in house. Based on the principles of nanotechnology, the system provided a semi-automated way to ‘grow’ Thern into any environment and geometry. It took a full year of development time to evolve and bring to the big screen.

These ‘growing Thern’ shots were some of the most complex VFX shots Cinesite undertook, and can be seen to great effect in 3D

In the sequence, as the tunnel itself ends, the main Thern Sanctuary room is seen to build itself, opening out within the Thern matrix of the pyramid interior. This shot required extensive Thern simulation and growing effects, blending multiple elements together in Nuke to build the shot up.

John Carter is in cinemas now. We’ve not seen the film yet, and reviews so far seem to be fairly mixed, so if you do go, let us know what you think of it via the comments box below, or on Facebook or Twitter

The making of John Carter

This article focuses on Cinesite’s contribution to the film, but the 3D work was split between three leading London FX houses: Cinesite, Double Negative and The Moving Picture Company.

Read the making-of John Carter article in issue 155 of 3D World magazine, where Renee Dunlop takes us behind the scenes of all three VFX facilities.

Issue 155 of 3D World goes on sale on 27th March

Weta Digital embarked on a new quest with The Adventures of Tintin, complete with crashing waves, pirate battles and an extremely stylish wardrobe. Renee Dunlop takes us behind the scenes

As the Blu-ray of The Adventures of Tintin goes on sale, we thought we’d share this article from issue 152 of 3D World magazine.

If you haven’t watched the film already, we suggest you do – The Adventures of Tintin looks like a mix of live-action and CG, which adds up to something unique on screen. It’s possible that The Adventures of Tintin missed out at the Oscars this year because of this very thing, which is a real shame as we think the film has some of the best CG we’ve ever seen.

Weta’s Adventures of Tintin

Weta Digital is delving into a new world – that of the journalist. Enter Tintin, a popular post-World War One comic strip hero who travels about with his dog, Snowy, cracking cases with a little help from his friends. Created in 1929 by the artist and writer best known as Hergé, the stellar artists of Weta, led by director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson, have brought the story to 3D animated life on the big screen.

It took some of Weta’s best to tackle the wide array of arduous effects required to complete the film. Keith Miller, one of five VFX supervisors, was among those appointed to the task. He was in charge of roughly 340 shots.

An epic sea battle required Weta Digital’s team to simulate stormy ocean waves

For Miller, the big challenge was the pirate battle. “It’s such a dynamic sequence,” he says. “There are nearly 60 pirates running about, two ships that are sailing in 60-metre seas complete with lightning storms, rain, hurricane winds, fire, explosions – you name it, it’s all there.” The most difficult challenge was the water, with 60-metre waves interacting with the ships that needed to compositionally match the representations provided by the pre-viz team.

Miller’s team approached the work from a few different angles. “First, we updated our FFT [fast Fourier transform] library, a system of generating waves using measurements collected in oceanic research,” says Miller. They also completely rewrote their library using a more up-to-date spectrum that provided the ability to incorporate the ideas of the depth of the ocean and the fetch, or the distance that wind stays at a constant velocity. “We added those new variables into the system and we were able to generate much more realistic wave scenarios for the high wind systems,” he adds.

Weta’s FX team did quite a bit of work approximating the surface velocity from the newly generated ocean surfaces and applied those to Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) particle simulations, much of which was used for the white water simulation, breaking waves that rode on top of the ocean surface. These were pushed through Weta’s in-house 3D effects solution, Synapse, a node-based system that’s a container for solvers. In some cases, Naiad data was also incorporated into Synapse for the initial bounded simulation elements.

The battle sequence combines water, fire, wind and lightning, and featured as many as 60 pirates in combat

In addition to reworking the FFT system, senior water TD Chris Horvath updated Weta’s shading model for raytraced water, using an improved model for participating media for underwater light extinction and scattering. He also made improvements to the procedural texture foam system.

Creating the hands

While Miller and his team battled with the pirate ships, Weta’s digital creature supervisor Simon Clutterbuck focused on some of the smallest of details through his modelling department. “We build the animation puppets, the deformation rigs, we do all the cloth and hair simulations, muscle dynamics, flesh dynamics – anything that has to do with the monster or character,” he says. “We interact with all the departments in the studio to produce stuff for them to use, like the puppets or the baked light, and we work closely with shots and animation.”

The creature department work includes providing all the puppets for the animators. “Our animation puppet isn’t the thing that gets cached and ends up in the shot,” says Clutterbuck. “The animation puppets are kind of an interactive, almost real-time version of the character. They don’t have to see amazing hand deformations to pose the hand correctly, so they’re just posing [and] animating this thing that’s much lower resolution.” Clutterbuck’s Creature Department provides the animators with approximations of clothes and low-res hands and bodies that allow for faster animation. “Then the animation data is cached off of that puppet and plugged into a high-resolution creature rig, which gets cached and given to lighting,” he says. “This way there’s no requirement for interactivity in our actual deformation models.”

A single complex rig was used as the basis for all characters’ hands

It’s hardly all low-res work, though. “There’s a big focus on faces and hands in the show, so a good deal of time was focused on building a detailed hand rig,” says Clutterbuck. “We had all these incredibly close shots of Tintin’s hands. It’s a treasure hunt, so there are all these clues that lead to the treasure, and there are lots of shots where he’s inspecting things. The shots are incredibly long, so you’ll have minutes focused on their face or hands. The stability of the cloth solve, the fidelity of the hands [and] the deformation all had to be very high. It was pretty unforgiving.”

Weta Digital’s workflow uses a generic model called Gen Man as a baseline for building humanoid characters. This starting point is used for reference, scanning and motion capturing, tailoring clothes, and even cross-referencing MRI data. Clutterbuck explains: “We produced a whole bunch of life casts in all different poses that were used to build support moulds, 36 in all, that went into the MRI machine, so the character could put his hand into a similar pose and hold it there. Then we could derive the meshes of his joints from the MRIs.” The result was a series of high-resolution joint meshes of his actual skeleton in the selected poses.

The story is a treasure hunt, so there are lots of shots where the characters have to pick things up and be able to manipulate them

“The metacarpals in the wrist do all these crazy rolling motions – it’s really complex,” Clutterbuck says. “We couldn’t build that complexity into the animation puppets because it would have been prohibitive to animate with, but we also needed the correct degrees of freedom in the wrist and joints to give us the right deformations of the hand.” It took nearly five months to get the hands working the way they wanted.

“The hand rig looks pretty amazing,” says Clutterbuck. “The hand model propagates out into the show, procedurally warped into new shapes, so we built one hand rig and it was fitted to all the characters’ hands. We have a process that was developed on Avatar to transfer the rig and deformation data onto other models.”

Weta Digital’s model supervisor Marco Revelant was responsible for all the assets created in the model department and was involved with grooming and developing the fur system from the user side for the dog, Snowy. However, it was the clothing that both Clutterbuck and Revelant found the most challenging. The multiple layers and the way the different fabrics fell and moved presented a daunting task.

Folding the clothes

Weta Digital set up a Tintin-specific costume department that helped define the design of the clothing, offering insight into how the fabric would drape and move over a character. “The problem is,” says Revelant, “when you do digital clothing and give it to a modeller, the modeller will try to put in features like wrinkles and folds, but won’t necessarily take into account the quantity of fabric.”

Care was taken with getting clothing folds to animate correctly

To manage this issue, the Creature Department worked closely with modelling, providing tools that helped drape the character as they were modelling so that they could see how the fabric was behaving, rather than waiting until the Creature Department ran their simulations. Weta used NCloth in Maya, but spent a huge amount of time up-front shooting parameters and getting the topology in the models and construction correct, especially in cross-sections such as sleeves.

There are eight principal characters, and several have multiple costumes. In all, there were 551 individual costumes to build for the film

Several characters had multiple layers of clothing, requiring layers of geometry to simulate friction. There were eight principal characters, and several – including Tintin, Captain Haddock and Sakharine – have multiple costumes. In all, there were 551 individual costumes to build for the film. “Take the Captain,” Clutterbuck says. “He had a big woollen jacket, a woollen jumper, trousers, and socks and shoes.” Again, proper reference was key. Weta filmed a man running on a treadmill wearing a tailored suit they provided, and gathered reference on how cloth breaks across the seams, collecting data on details such as the effects of double versus single stitching.

Weta first tried just solving the visible clothing, but found that it didn’t quite look correct. “We ended up going for full coupled solutions where everything was solved,” says Clutterbuck. “Tintin might enter with his trench coat on, then take it off and toss it onto the back of a chair, and continue the scene wearing the rest of his costume,” says Clutterbuck. “We had to handle this level of complexity where we had all these variations of costume elements and they had to solve coupled. We hadn’t really done anything that complicated before in terms of clothes.”

Coupling affects even supporting characters such as Silk, who dresses in a formal jacket, a waistcoat and a shirt. “We didn’t solve the shirt, then put the waistcoat on, then the jacket,” says Clutterbuck. “We solved everything at the same time, so the solutions were all fully coupled. All the costume elements are plugged into one solver. Since they’re all plugged in, they all interact.”

Weta defers everything to its render wall. The costumes were assembled as a master file that contained a costume description. During the baked simulation step that file would assemble the costume, plug it into all the solvers, bring it in, attach it to the character, then do the simulation. The result was a final sim and a series of files generated to show what Weta calls pre-files, which are pre-simulation. The individual costume assets are iterated in parallel as an ensemble of costume elements.

“There’s a big focus on faces and hands in the show, so a good deal of time was focused on building a detailed hand rig,” says Clutterbuck

The costumes took several minutes a frame to simulate, but there was no interactivity requirement because that’s all happening on the render wall and animation was working with real-time puppet versions. “So we have these two parts of every character, with the puppet which goes to animation and the creature deformation model that’s the thing the animation curves get plugged into that simulates on the wall,” says Clutterbuck.

Weta’s flexible pipeline paid off, according to Miller. “I know a lot of facilities tend to lock down their technology, branch it off and continue developing it outside of current shows, but that’s very different from how Weta works,” he says. “It’s got pros and cons for sure, but it’s one of those things that helps us to stay at the leading edge of technology. We’re constantly throwing in new technology and updating and developing new aspects, and trying to get it pushed into production all the way through the course of the show.”

Setting the scene

The entire Tintin project was done in-house at Weta Digital, including the artwork for the environment and character studies. The translation of the environments from 2D to 3D was left to Weta’s modelling department under modelling supervisor Marco Revelant’s guidance. An internal art department was assembled to research information about the time when the film takes place.

“Every element that was drawn in the book, we tried to find the respective real element from that period that could have been the inspiration for the Hergé drawing," explains Revelant. "Everything was checked against real period data.”

“One important thing is [creator] Hergé was very careful in depicting a kind of reality that was around the 1940s,” explains Revelant. “Every element that was drawn in the book, we tried to find the respective real element from that period that could have been the inspiration for the Hergé drawing. Everything was checked against real period data.”

Creating the hair

Weta was working on Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Tintin at the same time. While the requirements for hair on Tintin weren’t anything near what they were for Apes, some of the aspects translated over. Tintin required wind effects, wet hair and a lot of development to get the hair to work coupled with the clothes.

Character hair in The Adventures of Tintin has to interact with objects and the environment

With the hat on, the Captain has a groom, styled so his hair doesn’t stick through the hat. When the hat is off, the hair is groomed appropriately. Sometimes the Captain put his hat on or took it off, so transitional shots with appropriate grooms were needed. The Captain’s hair ended up having a very dense particle set on the hair and collision objects with the hat, and his hair would spring up a bit during the transition.

Buy issue 152 of 3D World magazine to read the full article

Buy the Blu-ray of The Adventures of Tintin via Amazon

Find out how this ultra photorealistic film was pieced together using 3ds Max and V-Ray. Watch the animated short here too

The Accuracy of Time is a depiction of part of the process of building a watch, more specifically the ceramic crown. Created by art director Javi Martinez, the short was made as a case study for his upcoming CGI training roadshow TAOT2012.

The idea was to replicate a real advertisement and the entire production process behind it. The film will be used as part of the roadshow training to highlight some of specific challenges currently facing digital artists.

The project was created using a 3ds Max and V-Ray pipeline. “The decision to use this software was simply to make a technical demonstration of the many capabilities offered by the two working together,” explains Martinez.

3ds Max and V-Ray: an ideal combo

“3ds Max allowed us to develop the short very easily using the new MASSFX to perform physical dynamics and the ceramic particles and at the same time offered great performance in the modelling and animation of objects and cameras. The reason we chose V-Ray was the quality of representation of light, versatility, simplicity to recreate materials and the optimisation of production times.”

More-than-reasonable render times

Rather amazingly, The Accuracy of Time was created using only one workstation! It just goes to show what can be achieved if you’ve got the right amount of dedication: “The short includes the processing of raw materials [to create the watch], the material injection to obtain the piece itself, then it passes through the baking stage and ends with the exposure of the product with elegance and quality,” says Martinez. “But the whole film was in fact a very simple macro CG production playing with a basic geometric model, a virtual light and virtual camera. Given that the piece was produced using a single workstation, the render times were very manageable, ranging from five to 35 minutes per frame.”

Playing with the look

It wasn’t all plain sailing, however. Due to the style and close-up nature of the short, Martinez had to work out solutions in order to achieve the correct look. “The animation treatment and lens blurs were resolved by ZD channels and working on it in post,” Martinex explains. “The animation of the camera lens can easily change the meaning of a sequence so experimenting with this technique was very attractive to me.”

Overall, the short took Martinez approximately just under a year to complete from start to finish. “The 10-month production time was an amazing experience,” Martinez says. “But it led to a lot of sacrifice and [it was a] joy to finally get my work out to reach the community of artists in an industry which is so difficult and exquisite.”

Watch the new animation short:

Watch The Accuracy of Time making of video:

Want more animated shorts of the same calibre?

If you liked this film, check out a selection of other awesome animations on our Shorts page

Do you remember the original Transformers-style Citroën C4 spot? Five years ago it became a worldwide cult hit and we asked The Embassy’s CG team to reveal some of the ad’s technical secrets. Catch up as Transformers week continues…

To celebrate Digital-Tutors’ new Transformation training, we thought we’d make an event of it and post online all things Transformery!

We’ve already posted up two making of Transformers articles:
The making of Transformers
The making of Transformers 2

We plan to post up a train-transforming walkthrough tutorial this week too, so remember to check back.

Here’s the Embassy’s making of the Citroën ‘Runner’ spot

ABOUT THE ORIGINAL AD

Created for the launch of Citroën’s C4 range, The Embassy Visual Effects’s original 2004 ad, ‘Alive with Technology’, opens with a hand-held camera shot of a car that transforms into a robot, performs an impromptu series of dance moves and then reverts back to vehicular form.

The Embassy Visual Effects’s original 2004 ad, ‘Alive with Technology’, opens with a hand-held camera shot of a car that transforms into a robot, performs an impromptu series of dance moves and then reverts back to vehicular form

As well as making other VFX teams green with envy, the spot proved to have unexpected longevity. A full two years on, it was regularly appearing on TV, picking up fresh awards, and inspiring numerous spoofs and tributes, including a memorable parody replacing the C4 with a rather less glamorous Citroën 2CV and a viral for Danish bacon. The Mill even got a shot at producing a follow-up, before The Embassy itself jumped back on board for a third in the series.

“It’s hard to say what it was about that original ad that hit people,” says studio president Winston Helgason. “Technically we did a good job, but something else struck a chord with them. While the ad has that geek factor, it’s just really fun to watch.”

Television audiences got their first taste of vehicular dancefloor magic back in 2004. A relative newcomer to the field of CG, Vancouver-based VFX studio The Embassy Visual Effects had already turned heads with its viral short film Tetra Vaal and some impressively photoreal ads for the likes of Nike.

But it was the Citroën ‘Alive with Technology’ ad that really put the studio on the map – and a spring in the step of CG‑based car ads. Fusing perfectly believable virtual visuals, directorial flair, and some seriously cool dance moves, The Embassy created what is now regarded as a genuine classic.

Watch the Citroën ‘Alive with Technology’ spot

Now the studio is back on board for the third spot in what is becoming an increasingly long-running campaign, and has been working hard to push the concept of a car that transforms into a robot to even greater heights.

In contrast to the original spot, for which director Neill Blomkamp utilised a virtual camera and 3D environment constructed from photographs, the new ad’s director, Trevor Cawood, chose to undertake a live shoot in South Africa – a location chosen principally for its favourable lighting conditions. A new transforming CG vehicle was then integrated into the plates with the help of elements rebuilt in 3D to aid the creation of shadows and reflections.

“The brief was pretty open,” says The Embassy president Winston Helgason. “The idea was to have the robot running, but other than that, it was simply ‘make it look cool’. The client did come back and ask if we could find something else for the robot to do, though, so we came up with the rail slide [which the bot performs along the restraining barrier by the side of the road].”

Here, the studio’s 3D and compositing staff reveal just how their cybernetic star was rigged and animated to perform such a stunt. They also explore some of the shading and lighting techniques used to generate the photorealistic renders of the modified car necessary to composite it seamlessly into the background plate.

Helgason reveals that the studio’s preferred tool for this kind of work is LightWave 3D’s own renderer, its raytracing proving particularly well suited to hard surface lighting. Dropping HDRI set data into the program and adding additional lights, the studio is able to get a scene fully lit in a matter of minutes. But ultimately, he says that the real secret of photorealism in the Citroën ads is simply attention to detail.

“The most important thing is to understand how lighting really works, and then learn to match the way it reacts to metallic surfaces,” he says. “That, and then adding loads of extra model detail is what makes the results so effective.”

Watch the Citroën ‘Runner’ spot

Click Next to read about how ILM had to rip apart the original robot design

Real-time 3D animation tool, iClone, has everything you need to set up your directorial 
debut. But is it too limited, asks Paul Champion?

PRICE
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 Upgrade from $120. 

Other editions: Standard, $80


PLATFORM
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MAIN FEATURES:

• Real-time animation

• In-screen motion editing and puppeteering

• Advanced timeline editing with transition curve

• Animate in real-time with motion-capture device



DEVELOPER: Reallusion

Converting your finished story idea into a pre-viz or polished animation often presents some daunting challenges, and selecting the right software applications to use can be a key factor in the time (and cost) spent completing it.

iClone5 Pro offers a happy medium between high-end applications that have seemingly endless options to tweak, and frustratingly feeble, user-unfriendly low-end software. The latest version of iClone has new animation tools, is still a breeze to use and remains competitively priced.


Now you can create your own version of Pixar’s The Incredibles, in a park and on a merry-go-round!

If you’re unfamiliar with iClone, it’s primarily a template-based hassle-free solution for real-time animation with plenty of bells and whistles. In terms of workflow, you’re limited to working with the rudimentary content supplied with the application, unless you’re prepared to buy additional assets via Reallusion’s Content Marketplace (which always seems to have some sort of deal on offer).

Getting your own assets into iClone5 Pro is quick and easy, but it requires Reallusion’s 3DXchange4, which converts files from applications such as ZBrush, Photoshop, Blender, Poser, Daz Studio, Vue and Maya, and costs $80 for the Standard version. You’ll need 3DXchange4 Pro ($120) to use assets in FBX, 3DS, OBJ and SKP formats. 


Pre-viz users or anyone presenting a concept pitch to clients should find that the content provided is more than adequate for demonstration, where the actual look of assets is less relevant. End users, who will no doubt grow tired of the limited content provided, will be disappointed that they have to shell out for 3DXchange to import more material.

With the assets in place, it’s time to animate, and there are many new tools to help you with this.



Whether it’s sexy girls, gym kits or vampires you’re after, the marketplace has plenty of assets for you to buy

New features



Direct Puppet lets you record your actor’s animation in real time, and if necessary lock body parts to locations. MixMoves enables seamless blending between motions. Body Motion Puppeteering enables the user to control the animation speed and direction. 


Simple floor contact is taken care of with Human IK Motion Editing for Actors, and allows props (which can now be animated in real time) to be held onto realistically. The Timeline has been updated so that animation curves can be varied in playback by adding curve adjustments such as Ease In and Ease Out. For physics animation there are Rigid and Soft Body options for simulation, and other uses such as game prototyping.


Effects can help to enhance your movies, but they are limited to a maximum of five within a project

The premium new animation tool being touted for use with iClone5 Pro is the Mocap Device plug-in. With this you can act out your animations in real-time – the recorded mocap data is then applied to actors.

At $140, this is a lot cheaper than buying your own professional mocap studio, although it requires you to have an Xbox 360 with Kinect. It’s also only compatible with the Pro edition.

The plug-in is a significant add-on that falls outside the remit of this review. Judging by forum responses, however, it’s a successful product and great for anyone who wants to physically generate their own movement.


Other notable tools and settings, with which Reallusion is catching up with market competitors rather than introducing groundbreaking innovations, include Ambient Occlusion, which improves the quality of visual output with barely any impact on render times; post-FX tools for colour and blur, which are easy to apply; and cartoon rendering, which can be achieved with just a few clicks and some minor texture corrections. 


Rigid body simulations can pep up high-speed chases. In iClone5 Pro they are easy to deploy

There’s still plenty of room for improvement in the renderer. The options are minimal and simplistic – which is part of the general charm of iClone, but it doesn’t always do justice to the end result. Multiple cameras and Picture-In-Picture features offer greater control between shots. Much-requested duplication settings enable you to instance objects with ease, and adjustable pivots, snapping and aligning tools are now possible for objects.


More resource-hungry improvements include higher poly counts for actors, with notable increases to head meshes, which enable more natural deformations. In practice this works far better than before, and since faces are areas that most viewers’ eyes are naturally drawn to, it’s a clearly visible improvement. However, it can still be difficult and time-consuming to tweak.

The new Toon Shader is found in the Atmosphere section of the Stage tab, and can be adjusted for your project needs

Cartoon character facial controls have been advanced to include exaggeration. Height Map Terrains now allow bigger landscapes, but they are limited to just five. Smart iProps have been updated for game-like interaction.


During testing, these new tools all worked admirably, yet iClone crashed a number of times for no apparent reason. When pushed to reasonable extremes for any shot – such as 20 actors set up with different parameters and animations applied – iClone responded well. But other times it would crash with, for example, a fairly empty scene during terrain set-up. Ordinarily, this would only be a minor annoyance, but since there’s no autosave option in the program, it becomes more 
of a frustration.


Hardware-wise, iClone doesn’t require an overly demanding system. Rather misleadingly, it’s listed as being 32-bit and 64-bit Windows compatible, but it’s not actually a native 64-bit release, so it won’t take advantage of any extra memory installed over 32-bit limitations. It’s rumoured that a 64-bit update will be released, although this was unconfirmed as we went to press.


Overall, iClone5 Pro remains an easy-to-use application, and it can be a real time-saver for pre-viz work and presentations. The learning curve isn’t too steep, and setting up shots is intuitive. For existing iClone users, it should be a no-brainer to upgrade because content from previous versions is compatible, the upgrade price is good, and the new tools (and mocap plug-in, if you choose to buy it) will enhance its usability. New users will need to assess whether they have the funds for additional content and a copy of 3DXchange.

VERDICT

PROS

• Simple for novices without previous animation experience

• Easily modifiable preset models

• Ready-made animation categories

• Intuitive editing

• Options for advanced animators



CONS

• Facial profiles are difficult to tweak

• Additional content incurs extra costs
• Rendering options still limited

• Not a true 64-bit application



A speedy solution for pre-viz but hampered by limited content options, basic render settings, and lack of true 64-bit support

About the author


Paul Champion is the demonstrator for undergraduate and postgraduate 3D and VFX courses at the National Centre for Computer Animation, Bournemouth

Win a copy of Reallusion’s iClone5 Pro

Enter our iClone5 Pro prize draw for your chance to win one of four packages featuring Reallusion’s real-time animation suite, worth $1,352 in total

Remember the phenomenal CG trailer that Bioware released a few weeks ago? Don’t worry if you missed it: as Mass Effect 3 goes on sale in the UK, we take a look at Bioware’s cinematic for the final installment of the massively popular RPG

We’re so lucky that big budget games can’t be released without an accompanying cinematic teaser to go alongside the standard gameplay trailer, as the animations produced are truly stunning.

Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 trailer is a fine example – the teaser features children, aliens and devastating lasers. The cinematic action really gets your adrenaline pumping.

One YouTube user commented that if the video keeps going like it does, [the character you play] Shepard has only got about 30-35 minutes to take back Earth, tops, before it’s completely annihilated!

Watch Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 trailer online

Want to learn how Bioware created the cinematic?

So do we, that’s why we’ve asked Bioware to contribute a ‘making of’ article for 3D World magazine. So look out for that in the next issue!

Want more like this?

Watch Platige Image’s Witcher 2 trailer and making of video

Find out how this new short about a fascinating sensory condition was created using a combination of Maya, After Effects and Photoshop. Watch the film here too

Synaesthesia tells the life experience of a synaesthete; a person with a condition where two or more of the five senses that are normally experienced separately are involuntarily and automatically joined together. Synaesthetes can experience sounds, tastes, smells, shapes, or touches in almost any combination. Synaesthesia features a character as a small boy, an adult worker and a retired man, who can see and feel shapes and depicts his different reactions to the phenomenon.

The short was a final year project created by four students – Tien Hee, Kasumi Saito, Leo Chida and Nikko Hull – of Massey University, New Zealand. The quartet had to think of an idea to suit the brief of the school, which had a self-driven component as well as a pre-defined part. “This was basically to pick a topic and find a need or something that needs changing etc,” says Hull. “We chose Synaesthesia.”

Things shaped up nicely

In order to tackle such a complicated condition, the team spent a lot of time researching Synaesthesia and how it was going to affect their characters and set designs. “We decided during the research stage what we were going to do,” says Chida. “Each character was associated with a shape as were the environments. These were contrasting, for example, the first scene the kid was a circle, round and innocent and the environment was a triangle, sharp, scary and alert.”

The team also used many sources of inspiration to achieve the look and style they were after. “For the environments, I looked at lots of animations, Studio 4°C, Team Cerf, Tekkonkintreet etc and mixed them all together to get the end result,” says Saito. “It was hard to simplify the forms to get it right. We ended up mixing all of these with our own ideas to get the style we came up with.”

Added Layers

With set and character designs completed, the team began creating the film’s assets in Maya and UV layout tool, Headus. “This software is pretty awesome, I was really happy with how Headus sped things up,” says Chida. They also adopted a rendering technique which helped with production times.

“The process was quite simple, which also helped in a way,” says Hull. “Each layer was kind of easy, it was just a matter of putting it all together in After Effects. We found the technique demonstrated (kind of) on Deviant Art, I can’t remember the specific artist, but then we tried to figure it out in Maya and it worked quite well. But we didn’t choose that because of its ease, we chose it because of the style.”

The scenes were separated to make the whole process more manageable. “The old man walking down the hall is a good example,” says Hull. “We had the walls, which were all on different render layers. The background and walls were a single layer and frame. Then anything which was moving, so the phone and the character, were on their own layers and were the only sequences. There also had to be a sequence for the shadows so they could cast on the walls. Then we had diffuse, shadows, highlight, AO and particle layers. This all went into After Effects with some lights and colour correction.”

After two semesters worth of work, the student team completed the film and are pleased with the final result considering their prior experience in animation. “Up until the end, you have no idea what it’s going to turn out like,” says Chida. “But it was so rewarding finding out that all the effort wasn’t wasted and the film actually looked OK. I mean, some was wasted but we’re learning so it’s all good. Our degree consisted of lots of general design and even fine art so we’ve only really had about a year of animation training (in total). With this in mind, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.”

Like this film? Check out the selection of other awesome animations in our shorts section

Make sure you visit next week for more Friday Animation Fun!

Watch the jaw-dropping animation in the trailer for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Then catch Platige Image’s ‘making of’ video too…

In January, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and CD Projekt RED released the epic and impactful CG intro trailer for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, produced by the award-winning animation studio, Platige Image.

We were simply blown away when we watched this four-minute cinematic online at the start of the year. Directed by Tomek Bagiński and produced by Platige Image, this trailer is packed with stunning animation and effects. Watch it below.

Now Platige Image has produced a behind-the-scenes look at the production of the trailer, from the early renders and mocap sessions to the final clip. You can also watch this three-minute video below.

Behind the scenes of Witcher 2

“The idea of the script came from CD Projekt couple years ago, right after the premiere of ‘The Witcher’. It was so called ‘soft’ version and we used it as basis for the work. In spite of vast changes we made, the project went on hold for almost two years until it was brought back to life in Xbox 360 version.”

“As it turned out these two years gave both parties necessary perspective. Once we started working on the script again we were able to create new, better and richer version very fast.”

“What was left from the original is the ship and main characters. All the rest has been changed. For example in the first version a hornet’s nest was used in the attack. The ship was turned into chaos – all crew started running around. They looked like a group of crazy or electrocuted people. Well… we got rid of this ‘dance’ but left the chaos and add a lot of steroids. It helped,” says director Tomek Bagiński.

“It was one of the most demanding projects in Platige Image history. The script set up very high standards. As for such a short movie there were a lot of main, detailed characters, difficult face close-ups, very dynamic action full of special effects: cloth and particles simulation and hard slowmotion shots.”

“The ship also became one of the main characters. First our graphic artists created a fantastic scenery and most of all great, very detailed sailing ship. Then the particles simulation team went rough with it. They created a vast interaction system covering the whole construction with milions of ice crystals and they smashed the whole thing,” adds CG Supervisor Maciek Jackiewicz.

The team of 40 graphic designers and animators was involved in the project for couple moths.

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is due on on Xbox 360 on 17 April. The Windows version is shipping now.

Watch the Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings trailer:

Watch the making-of video for the cinematic:

Read a longer interview with CG supervisor Maciej Jackiewicz on CGSociety

If you liked this, look out for our ‘making of’ Mass Effect 3 cinematic, due in the next issue of 3D World

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen blasts your eyes with thousands of hard metal parts, spinning and sliding gears, wheels, crankshafts, pistons and headlamps as nearly 60 jaw-dropping robots fight to the bitter end. Read how Industrial Light & Magic rose to the challenge of animating the Transformers sequel

A couple of days ago, Digital-Tutors unveiled its new Transformation training, and we thought we’d make an event of it and have a Transformers week.

Over the week we plan to bring you a train-transforming walkthrough tutorial, a step-by-step tutorial by the Embassy of the infamous Transformer-style advert for Citroën C4, and two making of Transformers articles.

We’ve already posted the first making of Transformers article, and here’s the second making of article, published in the August 2009 issue of 3D World.

The making of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

For 2007’s Transformers, which raked in more than $700 million at the box office, lead VFX studio Industrial Light & Magic turned the cool little 1980s Hasbro toys into 14 bone-crushing giants that crashed through the streets of Los Angeles, smashing buildings and each other in over-the-top, rock-hard action sequences. But that was just a warm-up for Revenge of the Fallen…

Many of the digital stars of the original film return in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, including Optimus Prime and Bumblebee

The sequel blasts your eyes with thousands of hard metal parts, spinning and sliding gears, wheels, crankshafts, pistons and headlamps as nearly 60 jaw-dropping robots take their battle to seven states, three countries, and one alien planet. Add in another 40 CG vehicles, and the total count is more than 100 major 3D assets.

Massing the troops

As before, ILM took the lead in the effects work, creating both the lion’s share of the robots – 45 in total – and the largest and most complex machines. The studio created all of the heroic Autobots, including their returning leader, Optimus Prime; and many of the evil Decepticons, including both Megatron – seemingly destroyed at the end of the first movie – and the megamonster Devastator, who is five times the size of Optimus Prime.

“The locations, the effects, the style are all huge,” says ILM’s Scott Farrar, who reprises his role of VFX supervisor from the original movie. Rendering shots for Transformers took between 16 and 20 terabytes of disk space in the studio’s renderfarm. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen took 140 terabytes. “The amount of render time is colossal,” Farrar says. “The whole movie is that way.” Bay’s own studio, Digital Domain, created 13 Decepticons, ranging in size from little ball-bearing ‘microcons’ that transform into a razor-bladed creature called Reedman to the enormous Soundwave, which links up to communications satellites. Digital Domain also created Wheelie, a rascally little bot transformed from a remote control vehicle, and Alice, the ‘pretender’ who transforms from a human seductress.

In Transformers 2, both Autobots and Decepticons take on more human characteristics. Bumblebee ‘cries’ tears of windscreen-washer fluid in key scenes, for example

Such human qualities are one of the most significant ways in which the robots in Revenge of the Fallen differ from those of their predecessors. “People will be amazed at the interaction of the robots with the environment,” Farrar says. “They kick up dirt. They interact with trees. And they sweat, spit, drip, and squirt fluids like blood.” The fluids, which help give the robots a more organic feel, were added almost as an afterthought.

For a shot in which Starscream, one of the returning Decepticons, has to react to Sam, ILM was tasked with finding ways to make the interaction more dramatic. The solution was simple, but crucial: “We decided to have Starscream spit at Sam,” says associate visual effects supervisor Jeff White. The effect worked so well that the animators began looking for more opportunities to have the robots dispense water, sparks, gas and smoke.

This more organic approach carried over into the design of the Transformers themselves. As the Anatomy of an Autobot page reveals, the robots’ faces have been given significantly more human characteristics, enabling them to act, emote and talk. In total, 40 of the robots have at least one line of dialogue.

With little more than a year to complete the effects, ILM significantly increased the size of the animation team to cope with the increased scope of the project. “We had fewer than 20 animators on the first film,” says Benza. “This time, we had over 50 because we had so many more robots, and three times the complexity of the work.”

With animators often facing complicated 500-frame shots with three robots, Benza cast his staff according to their skill sets. “Some animators were interested in animating particular scenes, so I’d shift things around to give them a chance to do those shots,” he says. “Specialists in animal behaviour would get the Ravage shots because he was a cat-based Decepticon. Others were specialists in dialogue and acting performances.”

To create these performances, team members were aided by a rigging system developed by ILM for the previous movie, through which they could choose what parts of the model to connect. “An animator can animate any individual part or any groups of parts,” Benza says. In addition, a new system provided the animators with a little procedural help on the more complex shots. “The creature development team gave us the flexibility to put the robots into any pose and not have interpenetrations in adjoining areas,” Benza says. “With so many moving parts, it’s quite a task to make sure every individual part doesn’t collide with its neighbours.”

But even with the rigging system to call upon, the first pass at preventing penetrations was carried out by hand – and with Benza, normally in charge of procedural animation, busy in a supervisory role – there were no shortcuts for final-quality animation, either. For example, the Decepticon Scorponok, which was procedurally animated on the original movie, is now entirely keyframed.

A question of scale

The scale of the task ILM’s animation team faced on Revenge of the Fallen becomes even more apparent when you consider the movie’s showpiece scenes: the transformations of the robots from one form to another. The biggest transformation is unlike any seen in the previous film, and it’s for the biggest Decepticon ever. Standing 100 feet tall, the Devastator has 13 million polygons and 52,632 parts. Moreover, he’s formed out of six separate robots.

Devastator is made up of six robots, each with a ‘hero build’ as complex as that of Optimus Prime. Despite this, on seeing the first version of this shot, director Michael Bay felt that it was boring, causing ILM to add yet more detail to both the foreground and background of the composition – for even higher render times

“The idea we came up with was that the Devastator forms in a violent fashion,” Benza says. “We rooted his transformation in the biggest Constructicon.” The ‘Constructicon’ in question, Scavenger – a big red mining excavator – transforms first, then smashes itself into one construction vehicle after another, each transforming and connecting to the previous bots to form the giant monster. His head is all mouth: a cement mixer. It’s a tremendously dramatic scene, and the effects are awe-inspiring.

Devaster kills ILM’s computers!

To make matters more complex, Devastator is so big and has so many parts that the animation crew couldn’t treat him as a single asset. “When we tried to load the entire model in high res, it would grind the machines to a halt,” Benza says. “We had two machines fail trying to work with him. One literally smoked. We don’t know for sure if it was a direct result of working with this character, but it certainly did get overloaded – and fried.”

The scene of Devastator forming was completed in 4K resolution for IMAX screens. The scale of the work forced the crew to develop a set of tools that enabled the animators to work in layers of complexity. “We had seven choices for resolution,” says digital production supervisor Jason Smith. Options for the level of detail at which each part of the model was displayed ranged from proxy geometry and 25K resolution at the low end to 1,300K resolution at the high end. “To control the system, animators had what we called ‘Mr Potatohead buttons’,” says Smith. “They could select any part. For example, they could set Devastator’s arm at 25K resolution, and his head at 31K.”

The scope of the work was also increased by the need to render for IMAX. In certain key scenes, Optimus Prime appears life-size on an IMAX screen

While the level of detail system speeded up the animation work, when it came to final output, truly massive rendering power was still required. In one of the film’s biggest scenes, Devastator climbs a pyramid in Egypt and once at the top, begins ripping the massive structure apart. For this shot, which was also at 4K resolution, ILM used a fluid simulation to move the sand and a rigid body simulation to break the pyramid into millions of blocks.

With ILM’s effects occupying 51 minutes of screen time, rendering the shots took up a mammoth 140 terabytes of renderfarm space

“Some frames would have taken 72 hours to run on a single processor,” Smith says. “We used multiprocessors – 26 processors – to chew through the work faster.” But for all of the new technology ILM developed for Revenge of the Fallen, not to mention the complexities of wrestling with IMAX resolution for several shots, the studio describes the key innovations of the movie as creative, not technical.

First, the VFX supervisor and animation director shot plates on location and provided guides for the film’s editors. For a three-minute fight scene set in a forest between Optimus Prime and several Decepticons, Farrar and Benza ended up supervising the plate photography, and took first cut at editing the footage. “We don’t typically get involved with editorial decisions,” Benza says. “But because we shot the material and knew what the plates were intended for, we took a first pass at putting the forest back together as a template for the editors.”

Key desert sequences were shot on location in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on a set close to that used for the Scorponok sequences in the first fi lm

Second, the animators contributed dialogue and choreographed two key fi ght scenes in the movie: both the forest battle and a sequence in which Bumblebee literally tears Rampage apart, giving a little satisfied nod of the head after he has decapitated the Decepticon.

“We designed the first version of the fight not knowing how it would be used in the movie, with Bumblebee and the cop car robot from the first movie, Barricade,” says Benza. “Michael Bay liked how tight the edit was and the brutality when Bumblebee tears the limbs off, so he found a place for the fight in the movie and substituted a different robot.” And finally, the director ‘shot’ scenes directly on ILM’s motion-capture stage, working in collaboration with the animators. “We blocked out the scenes, loaded them up on our stage, and put a virtual camera into Michael’s hands,” Benza says. “On the set, you often see Michael behind the camera, so we wanted to give him a hands-on experience for the digital scenes.”

The resulting movie is an enormous human achievement, not only considering the vast scale of the work undertaken, but also for the way in which ILM’s staff became involved in tasks traditionally thought to lie outside the control of visual effects artists.

The crew considers Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as one of the most collaborative films they have worked on. As visual effects steadily become a part of the production as well as the post-production process, it only remains to be seen where Industrial Light & Magic’s increasing level of creative control will take the studio – and the movies it works on – next.

VITAL STATISTICS

Title: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
Lead Studio: Industrial Light & Magic
Other Studios: Asylum, Digital Domain
Budget: $200 million (estimated)
Project Duration: 16 months
Team Size: 350
Software used: Maya, Zeno, Nuke, Photoshop

Read the making of Transformers (2007)

Elsewhere, you’ll find VFX breakdown videos as ILM reveal the VFX of Transformers: Dark of the Moon

For the Anatomy of an Autobot click Next

If you’ve decided working in 3D is for you then check out this article. Our 10-point guide will help you to craft job-landing showreels

You’ve probably seen movies, games and adverts full of amazing CG elements and thought, “I wonder how they do that” and “I’d like to give that a go”. So now that you’ve decided working in 3D is for you, how do you go about applying for 3D jobs?

In this article, you’ll discover how to create a job-winning showreel with a ten-point guide created by the people who hire.

And don’t forget to follow the links at the bottom of this page for more guidance on getting started in 3D.

What will you need for a job application?

Before you apply for a job in the CG industry, you’ll need three things: a covering letter, a CV and a showreel.

Writing a CV, or resume, and a covering letter are relatively easy tasks and there’s loads of help online that’s applicable no matter what job you’ve going for.

But there’s an art to creating a winning showreel, and since it’s one of the most important pieces in getting a job in the 3D industry, it’s important you get it spot on.

Physical reels are quickly going out of favour, at least on unsolicited applications. In our experience, all studios accept and many prefer, online reels; although some still require a physical reel at the interview stage. If possible, host the reel on your own website. If not, put it on a video streaming site. The quality on Vimeo is acceptable for most studios; YouTube less so.

TEN GOLDEN RULES

What should you put on your showreel?

Visualisation artists: don’t switch off just yet, the same principles apply to print portfolios.

Keep it short

In large studios,recruiters may have to watch over a hundred reels in a day. Don’t make this more painful than it needs to be. Less is most definitely more.

Put your best work up front

For the same reason, many studios say that you have only around 30 seconds to make your mark. If they haven’t seen anything they like by then, it’s in the bin.

Only include your best work

Anything else raises doubts in the studio’s mind as to whether the good stuff at the start was a fluke, or, just as bad, that you can’t see the difference.

Include contact details

Give your current phone number and email address, and put them on the title screen of the reel: packaging often gets lost or binned when reels are stored.

Include a CV

A single side of A4 or Letter paper, tops. Put any commercial experience up front. And if you have a degree, no-one needs to hear about your GCSEs.

Don’t plagiarise anyone

It may seem like a big industry, but it isn’t. Try to pass off anyone else’s work as your own, and you will be found out. This kills careers.

Provide a physical shot list

Most people still expect one. But you should also put the information on your reel itself, as captions at the bottom or side of the screen.

Say exactly what you did on each shot

Studios see the same graduation short on reels from every team member. If you only did the lighting, put ‘Lighting only’ at the foot of the screen.

Keep the music discreet

Music is the norm, but loud dance tracks or anything with lyrics distracts from your images. Many studios will turn the sound off, anyway.

Don’t come over all Orson Welles

Do not begin with ‘Written, produced and animated by…’. Who else’s work could it be? A title screen with ‘John Smith, Animator, john@animator.com’ suffices.

Want more help in finding a job in 3D?

Follow these links to help kick-start your CG career:

10 simple steps to getting a job in CG

How to get hired in 3D
Main image created by Graham Linfield. Graham’s showreel was so good it helped him to win a job at Taylor James! Here you can watch showreels and see portfolios that helped graduates to land their dream jobs.

3D World Jobs brings together CG job-seekers and studios

Tips for getting that 3D job

Find a 3D Course

Savannah College of Art and Design: Animation courses

Watch the stunning animation in the movie trailer for Ice Age: Continental Drift and check out ‘The Artist’ parody trailer too

Ice Age: Continental Drift, co-directed by Steve Martino and Mike Thurmeier at Blue Sky Studios, is due this summer and we can’t wait. Will Sid, Diego and Manny evade the seafaring pirates preventing them from going home?

The trailer shows some truly truly stunning animation and the storyline doesn’t look too bad either! Make sure you watch ‘The Artist’ parody trailer below too.

The story continues

Scrat’s nutty pursuit of the cursed acorn, which he’s been after since the dawn of time, has world-changing consequences – a continental cataclysm that triggers the greatest adventure of all for Manny, Diego and Sid. In the wake of these upheavals, Sid reunites with his cantankerous Granny, and the herd encounters a ragtag menagerie of seafaring pirates determined to stop them from returning home.

Take a peek, and let us know if you are excited to see it!

Watch Ice Age: Continental Drift – International Trailer

Watch a new promo for Ice Age: Continental Drift parodies The Artist

20th Century Fox has just released a new promo which parodies this year’s Oscar frontrunner ‘The Artist’ to attract attention.

Ice Age: Continental Drift is scheduled to be released in 3D in July

Learn how to make your very own Transformers – Digital-Tutors has released the first volumes of the highly anticipated Transforming Robot Production Pipeline

A little while back, Digital-Tutors announced that it was working on something special, teasing you to get ready for the Transformation.

Now Digital-Tutors has released the first three volumes of the Transforming Robot Production Pipeline.

These volumes cover the initial concept and design and the modelling and texturing of the truck, which will eventually transform and composite into live-action footage with the release of new training content in April.

Volume 1: Concept and Design
Volume 2: Truck Modeling
Volume 3: Truck Texturing

You want more articles on Transformers too?

To accompany Digital-Tutors new release of its most requested training in the history of the company, we thought we’d make an event of it and have a Transformers week.

So, over the week we plan to bring you a train-transforming walkthrough tutorial, a step-by-step tutorial by the Embassy of the infamous Transformer-style advert for Citroën C4, and two making of Transformers articles.

Read the making of Transformers (2007)

Watch the Transforming Robot Production Pipeline Trailer:

Watch the What’s new in March 2012 video:

Visit Digital-Tutors

They’re 30-foot-high shapeshifters. They’re made out of thousands of moving parts. And they’re out to beat the living cogs out of one another. Transformers might have posed something of a problem for an average VFX studio. Fortunately, ILM is anything but average…

As Digital-Tutors unveils its new Transformation training, we thought we’d make an event of it and have a Transformers week.

Over the week we plan to bring you a train-transforming walkthrough tutorial, a step-by-step tutorial by the Embassy of the infamous Transformer-style advert for Citroën C4, and two making of Transformers articles. (This is the first one.)

All of these will be coming to a computer screen near you over the course of the week, so if you like the sound of all that, why not bookmark this page so you can revisit easily?

Elsewhere, you’ll find VFX breakdown videos as ILM reveal the VFX of Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Here’s the first making of article, published in the September 2007 issue of 3D World:

See page two and three of this post for ILM’s step-by-step guide on how rigs, match move and live-action footage were used to make the Transformers come alive, and to find out some jaw-dropping statistics on individual Transformers.

ROBOT WARS

When Industrial Light & Magic began working on Michael Bay’s Transformers, the VFX crew thought they would be modelling three or four hero robots that might do 14 transformations. One year later, the team had assembled 60,217 vehicle parts and over 12.5 million polygons into 14 awesome automatons that smash each other, flip cars in the air, crash into buildings and generally cause enough mayhem to make even the most jaded moviegoer feel like a 10-year-old again.

To add tyre treads, dirt, scratches, colour and other textures, painters applied 34,215 texture maps to the parts. Animators and character developers transformed the robots 48 times, moving digital headlights, bumpers, engines, tailpipes, doors, gaskets, bolts, tyres, and other pieces to and from CG jets, cars, helicopters, trucks and other vehicles.

The animators and character technical directors crafted each transformation by hand, manipulating the machines by using 144,341 rigging nodes, and sent them into battle. If you haven’t already guessed, these aren’t the lovingly remembered TV cartoon robots. They’re 21st-century, giant, badass, big-screen fighting machines.

VFX supervisor Scott Farrar has a toy Optimus Prime on his desk at ILM, one of the original Autobots. It has 51 parts; he can hold it in his hand. The Optimus Prime that ILM created for Transformers has 10,108 parts and stands 28 feet tall.

Things have changed since Hasbro and Takara introduced the first Transformers toys in 1984. Since then, the robot aliens from the planet Cybertron that can disguise themselves by transforming into different types of vehicles have starred in comic books, video games, a television series, and an animated film.

But, until now, the huge robots have never fought their war on earth in a live-action film.
The movie stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox as Sam and Mikaela, the two kids the Autobots protect, and who become caught up in the action when Sam buys a secondhand Chevy Camaro, which turns out to be the Autobot Bumblebee in disguise. (In a nod to the original cartoons, Sam skips past a Volkswagen Beetle – Bumblebee’s original form – when picking out the car.)

All told, ILM created around 450 shots for the film, with Digital Domain supplying another 95, including a transforming ‘Nokiabot’, a digital Mountain Dew machine and an Xbox, and contributed to the flashback and desert sequences.

Digital transformations

However, this is very much Industrial Light & Magic’s show. ILM built and transformed all the hero robots, and built CG cars and military vehicles for the transformations.

The Autobots include Ratchet, Jazz, Bumblebee – who appears as both a 1974 and 2007 Camaro – Ironhide, and Optimus Prime. The Decepticons are Bonecrusher, Starscream, Megatron, Brawl, Barricade, Blackout, Soundbyte and Scorponok. Although a real ‘puppet’ of Bumblebee appears standing fairly still in some close-ups, all the running, jumping, fighting and transforming robots are digital.

Before production began, pre-viz artists worked with Bay to develop the fighting sequences and at ILM, animation supervisor Scott Benza worked with the director to develop the robots’ characteristics. In part, this simply involved archive research. But Benza also asked Bay to pick reference characters from movies to help establish each robot’s personality, especially the Autobots.

For example, “[Bay] picked Michael J Fox in Back to the Future as Bumblebee,” Benza says, “and Liam Neeson as Optimus Prime, the leader, who is soft-spoken but has a big presence. One of the first things I was surprised to see is that Optimus Prime has a completely articulating face and a speaking role. In the cartoon series, he had a battle mask that he spoke through, but Michael felt it was important for this character to connect with Sam and with the audience. To care about him and have him deliver an emotional performance, we needed to see his entire face.”

To create facial expressions, the modelling team, led by Dave Fogler, created sliding pieces for the cheeks and jaws, multi-segmented parts for the lips, and a turbine system for the eyes that turned to simulate pupils dilating. Optimus Prime had around 200 facial parts, and the animators could move each one.

The Transformers’ physical performances were even harder to nail than their facial expressions. “We had to find a balance between selling the weight of these heavy characters and athleticism,” says Benza. “Michael never wanted to see these guys as lumbering robots. He wanted them to be agile, not limited by their weight. It was always a problem. In animation, you need to slow movement to get [the convincing impression of] weight.”

Athletic martial arts move

Working from Bay’s animatics, Benza motion-captured fight scenes and used those along with footage of a variety of stunts as reference to create some shots of robots fighting. The results were promising, but Bay wanted more of a martial arts feel.

“He wanted the action to be fast, so he shot reference of stunt guys doing the spins, kicks and the martial arts actions he wanted,” says Paul Kavanagh, one of five animation leads on the show. “We got that footage and knew exactly what he required. But the action Michael wanted was performed by a 160-pound martial arts guy, and we were animating 6,000-pound robots!”

To bring the animation back into the realms of plausibility, the animators added extra frames to the reference footage of the stunt actors to slow their movements. “We could animate one-to-one to the reference, then go into the animation curve and stretch it out until it looked right to get a little more weight,” says Kavanagh.

On other occasions, the team kept the same frame rate, but added an extra action in the middle of a shot.
The animators also discovered that the closer the robots were to the camera, the faster the movements they could get away with. When their entire bodies were visible, the robot had to slow down. For emphasis, the animators even moved the robots from real time to slow motion within a shot.

“Michael had an amazing eye,” says Kavanagh. “He was always pushing us to get more and more action into each shot; to be more and more creative. We animated things over and over again until he’d say, ‘That’s how I saw it.’ I can’t think of any shots he didn’t turn up to 11 on the cool factor scale. We were psyched. We knew we were doing something special.”

Fitting in

When the modellers were building the robots and the vehicles, they did so without regard to the transformation. The CG vehicles had to match real vehicles and the robots had to match the approved concept art. “There’s not a lot of logic in how the parts function in the robots,” says Fogler. “Trying to reconcile the robot artwork to the car was pretty much impossible because the robots were so abstract in their shapes. We left it to the animators to work out the transformations. It was a leap of faith, but it worked.”

As a result, the animators worked closely with TDs to do the transformations, each one hand-animated from scratch for the camera view. Kavanagh collaborated with character TD Keiji Yamaguchi on one of the first transformations, where Barricade changed from his robot form into a police cruiser.

‘We had only the model of the car and the model of the robot,” says Kavanagh. “We didn’t have an in-between model. But it turned out not to be as complicated as we thought it would be.”

To make it possible for the animators and TDs to control creatures made from thousands of parts, ILM developed a dynamic rig. “We could select any piece of hi-res geometry or any group of pieces, create an animation controller, and choose where to put the pivots,” says Kelly.

When he animated Bonecrusher’s face smashing to pieces, he did so by selecting various parts and creating transformation controls. “We could connect parts from anywhere on the body and give them a unified pivot point,” he says. “We could move anything on these guys anywhere at any time. It was the most liberating experience.”

To create the transformations, the animators would start by animating the Transformers in one of their extreme forms: usually the robot, but sometimes the vehicle. Next, they’d fold the robot into the vehicle, doing whatever they needed to do to get it to fit. “Sometimes we had to break legs or shoulders and push arms through the chest to get the robot in the car,” says Kavanagh.

The last stage of the whole process was to animate the transformed robot standing up and moving toward the camera.

“Say you have Optimus Prime moving down the highway in his truck form and he needs to transform,” says Kelly. “We’d animate the truck as it slams on its brakes and starts skidding, and animate the robot all folded up in a position similar to the truck, and then animate the robot standing up and running away.” Once the animators received a sign-off on the animation, they then gave the pieces to Yamaguchi, or another creature TD.

Transformation super-ninja

All of the TDs’ work took place during the seconds when the robot is getting up out of the hunched position. “Keiji was the transformation super-ninja,” says Kelly. “The stuff he did was crazily complex and really intense. He used our timing and motion, but he’s the one who cut the robot into pieces and figured out how to get the pieces into the pose.”

Although he had animatics to start from, he always drew the transformation before he began animating. “The rhythm was very important for the transformations,” he says. “Also the silhouette. I wanted something very stylish, like Japanese animation or Hong Kong fighting. I also thought of gymnastics, when the gymnasts flip in the air and come down perfectly on the balance bar.”

To ease the process, Yamaguchi looked for familiar, recognisable parts in the designs – a window in Optimus Prime’s chest, for example – and moved them from the truck to the robot. He hid the small parts in the back. “I’d sketch each moving part and arrange them like orchestration for music,” he says. Once he had animated the main ‘performance’, he might use procedural animation for some of the hoses and other dangling parts, but this was a trick he used sparingly. “Simulation doesn’t have a rhythm,” he says.
“This was an action movie. It needed to be strong and vigorous.”

All in all, Yamaguchi’s longest transformation was 300 frames; the fastest was of Megatron transforming into a jet. He also transformed Bonecrusher from an army truck, Starscream from a fighter jet in flight, Optimus Prime, Jazz and Blackout.

Kavanagh also animated transformations, including Bumblebee transforming from a 74 Camaro, Blackout transforming from a helicopter, and the first Barricade transformation. “At first, the TDs had to put controllers on the geometry, but once we started using the dynamic rigging tools, the workflow got easier,” he says.

The animators also used the dynamic rigs to add secondary motion, to fix intersections which had occurred between the thousands of parts, and to move pieces that blocked the camera. “It was a key to getting this movie to work,” says Kavanagh.

During the past few years, like many other digital animation studios, ILM has been perfecting its character and creature tools; hard-surface models, on the other hand, have received much less attention. “The hard-surface shows were seen as being not as difficult as creature shows, with their issues of skin and hair, but Transformers proved to be extremely challenging,” says Russell Earl, associate visual effects supervisor. The pain was partly self-inflicted, however. “One of the early shots we finished was of the helicopter transforming into a robot. We saw that and said, ‘We have to do more of this.’ I don’t want to say we made it difficult for ourselves – but we did set the bar high early on.”

As a result, ILM had to solve problems ranging from rigging characters with thousands of parts, to lighting shots with thousands of reflecting surfaces, to managing the level of detail sufficiently to make rendering the shots feasible. “We’ve never done a hard-body show at this level before,” says Farrar.

Fact file

Lead VFX Studio: Industrial Light & Magic
Estimated budget: $150 million
Project duration: One year
Team size: Peaked at 350
Software used: Maya, Zeno, mental ray, RenderMan, Photoshop, Shake, in-house tools

With Transformers, Industrial Light & Magic pushed the limits of what can be achieved in computer animation, but find out how they took the second film to another level in our second Transformers article: The making of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Now check out ILM’s step-by-step guide showing how rigs, match move and live-action footage were used to make the Transformers come alive, by clicking Next

Get inspired and watch some of the best games content from around the world created using 3ds Max, Maya and Softimage

Another Game Developers Conference (GDC) is upon us, and Autodesk whets our appetite with its Games Show Reel 2012.

Obviously when Autodesk goes to a tradeshow its primarily to show its customers what it’s doing and what solutions it has available, but it’s also to show people what customers are doing.

This four-minute wonder of a reel features work from the likes of EA Sports, Blur, Epic Games, Naughty Dog and Ubisoft.

You’ll see aliens, battle ships, plasma guns, dragons, explosions and all sorts of other whizzy gamey stuff. Also, try to guess the game titles as the showreel plays.

Watch Autodesk Games Show Reel 2012

Visit Autodesk’s GDC 2012 webpage

Let us know if you think Autodesk has missed anyone from its showreel via the comments section below, or on Facebook or Twitter.

So you’ve set your sights on a career in 3D, but with the vast variety of roles involved in the industry how will you know what direction to take? Check out our handy guide to help you get started in 3D

You’ve decided a career in 3D is for you, but with so many varied roles involved in every project, from modellers and animators to texture artists and riggers, you need to take a look at your 3D skillset to see where your future lies.

Do you know what career in 3D you’d like?

Texture artist

The games, architectural visualisation and film industries offer a variety of careers that make use of your 3D skills. One such you’ll see advertised is that of texture artist. In this highly creative role you would be responsible for the creation of 3D texture maps for use in games, animated flythrough scenes and CGI films. It involves the creation and application of textures to models and meshes as well as ensuring that the scene has a consistent texture style.

Of course traditional art skills are a big plus as is experience of programming and an aptitude for maths and physics. You also need to be on the cutting edge of games to know just how complex your texture maps can be – and how much you need to fake things – in order to match the processing power or your platform. Such techniques include normal mapping, occlusion maps and multiple texture sheets, all of which generate highly detailed textures without demanding all the system memory needed for the game or architectural visualisation.

You’ll also need to be proficient in 2D graphics software such as Photoshop or Deep Paint, and be able to demonstrate this with a mixture of low-resolution textures and normal maps.

Lighting artist or Lighting TD

A lighting artist creates the different lighting situations for games, 3D artwork, animated films and most architectural visualisations. Knowledge of photography, as well as cinematography, is a must.

You should understand how natural and artificial light is set up and how it changes mood, as well as possessing a firm understanding of the rendering process. You’ll need to be able to light all 3D scenes from shadowy interiors with shadows or underwater shots to external environments at the mercy of sunlight, reflections and the effects of weather – as well as being able to convincingly control all such lighting in an animated sequence.

CAD Artist

Working in Computer Aided Design you’ll probably be equally at home with 2D vector-based drafting systems as with 3D packages. The latter can be divided into solid and surface modelling. Solid modelling, where you define solid geometric shapes, normally by extruding or sweeping from 2D sketches, is used in mechanical product visualisation and prototyping, medical imaging and engineering analysis.

Surface modelling, used in automotive design and product design, more closely resembles the manipulation of curves and points on surfaces that is found in 3D modelling for the entertainment industry. CAD doesn’t just involve modelling however. You might be involved in strength testing and dynamic analysis of mechanical assemblies or using animation to simulate how products behave or appear from different dimensions. If you decide to take the CAD route you might find yourself designing anything from a small mechanical component to a complete factory.

3D Modeller

This is one of those jobs that appear across the many sectors of the 3D industry- building and manipulating polygon meshes and moulding them into objects, characters and scenes.

For games and VFX, proficiency with software like Maya or 3DS Max is required for this career – this is best demonstrated by having a mixture of low-polygon models and more complex high-poly meshes in your showreel.
In common with product design for industry, the modeller in games and other 3D sectors creates objects like furniture and vehicles, at various levels of detail depending on how close to the ‘camera’ they will be used in the production.

You’ll be expected to build up a library of reusable assets and have some knowledge of industrial design techniques. For character modelling, more organic techniques will be used, so tools like Mudbox are useful to learn. Modellers in the gaming world meanwhile may also have to create levels and design an environment that includes backgrounds, sets and objects.

Animator

Also spanning games and visual effects is the job of animator, which can be further broken down to various roles. As any kind of animator you’ll need more than artistic skills, but designing characters, drawing storyboards and creating models obviously require a high degree of creative talent. As a general animator you will work out the timing of movements and making sure things meet the script and soundtrack requirements. As a character animator it’s essential that you know how a character or object in motion should walk, run, jump and so on, so life-drawing classes are a good step.

Learning the classic 2D animation techniques of Disney artists is another smart move.

You also need to know how to shape and animate the mouth to match voices and other vocal sounds while knowledge of ‘timing’ is essential for everything. (The latest issue of 3D World features a tutorial on creating phonemes, which you may find useful.)

An aptitude for creating storylines and creative camera movement is also a plus. Software such as MotionBuilder and Face Robot are great applications to learn in this field as is an understanding of motion capture.

Rigger

Riggers are artists who set up the skeleton of the character or creature, and prepare it for animation – they’ll need to know how human and animal bodies move, so some life drawing skills and knowledge of anatomy is essential. They also need to know how to limit animation, such as how joints bend and how muscles contract and expand – and how these constraints affect the realism of the model.

Riggers set up skeletons made of interlinked bones then bind these ‘rigs’ to the character, a process known as skinning. The next step is defining the constraints and deformations, then build in controls for the animators to control the movements of the CG character or objects.

Work by Andrew Mitchell, studying for an Master of Fine Arts in Visual Effects at SCAD. Andrew gives a student's view of SCAD in our CG Training Course Guide in issue 154 of 3D World, now on sale in the UK

Effects animation, where you create VFX like fire, smoke, floods and explosions and so on, will likely involve getting on first name terms with particle systems, fields, expressions, scripts, soft bodies, rigid bodies, cloth dynamics and particle instancing/flocking.

All of these require an understanding of physical dynamics and natural phenomena, while a strong background in computer programming, preferably in C or C++ and UNIX, as well as knowledge of scripting is helpful. Effects animation isn’t just for unnatural effects, however, nowadays you’ll find that many films that feature crowd scenes with thousands of independently animated characters use techniques developed in this field.

What is certain, however, is that for all animation jobs, indeed most jobs in the 3D industry, teamwork is essential. So the ability to work with others, shoulder your part of the work and be consistent in all things (timekeeping, quality of work, willing personality) is crucial.

Follow these links to help kick-start your CG career

10 simple steps to getting a job in CG

How to get hired in 3D

Tips for getting that 3D job

Find a 3D Course

5 tips to get started in digital illustration

For more help, grab a copy of 3D World issue 154

In the latest issue 3D World, you’ll find a CG course training guide, showcasing some of the places you can go to study, such as the Savannah College of Art and Design and Vancouver Film School.

Lead image from Adam Strick’s graduate showreel. Adam now works at DreamWorks Animation

Side Effects Software releases Houdini 12, a major new update to its industry-standard 3D animation and VFX software. Check out the new features and watch the overview video…

Side Effects Software recently released Houdini 12, the latest version of its 3D software. This major release should make a host of 3D solutions with Houdini more effective and faster.

With a rewritten geometry engine, Bullet solver integration, improvements in simulation and rendering speed, Pyro FX 2, faster FLIP fluids, an Alembic exporter and a reworked OpenGL 3.2 viewport, Houdini 12 is looking very sleek indeed.

Along with the new additions, the release also includes improvements to Houdini’s Mantra renderer. Mantra now enables physically-based rendering for volumes such as smoke and fire.

During beta testing, the significantly faster simulation times were particularly popular, especially when using the GPU to run fire and smoke simulations using OpenCL

Press release excerpts

Built on a powerful new geometry engine, Houdini 12 includes targeted optimizations to dynamics and rendering and a reworked OpenGL 3 viewport. Houdini 12 also includes Bullet solver integration, Pyro FX 2, faster, more accurate FLIP fluids, production-ready cloth, an Alembic exporter and much more.

Houdini’s Mantra renderer, recently recognized with a Scientific and Technical Achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, now brings physically-based rendering to volumes such as smoke and fire. Mantra also includes a 300 times speed improvement when instancing to points.

The performance enhancements in Houdini 12 are already having an impact on how Houdini artists work. During beta testing, many studios opted to put the new version into production. The significantly faster simulation times were particularly popular, especially when using the GPU to run fire and smoke simulations using OpenCL.

What’s new in Houdini 12?

Watch the overview video embedded below:

Houdini 12 can be downloaded now. Houdini Escape is available for $1,995 and Houdini Master is available for $6,695. The free Apprentice Edition can also be downloaded today and Houdini Apprentice HD is available for an annual fee of $99.

For more information on Houdini 12 visit www.sidefx.com

Find out how Chile-based studio DAf used Cinema 4D and After Effects to create this awesome spot to launch Victrelis – an inhibitor drug used to treat Hepatitus C. Watch the full commercial here too

Chilean production company DAf was recently invited to produce a campaign for global healthcare company Merck to launch Victrelis – a protease inhibitor used to treat Hepatitus C.

“The drug’s key factor is its accuracy in locating and fighting virus replication,” explains founder and director of DAf Felipe Dacaret. “With this in mind, we helped focus the campaign on one decisive representation: the precise attack of a fencer.”

Daf first heard about the project after being approached by executive creative director Enrique Heredia of global marketing communications company Corbett Accel Healthcare Group (CAHG), New York.

“We were sent an initial request to create the visual treatment for the Victrelis campaign, in particular video and still photography,” says Dacaret. “The concept focused on the precision of a fencer fighting against a creature made of the Hep C viruses. For the treatment we worked on a short animation made completely in 3D and fortunately we won the pitch.”

There was one decisive representation used in the campaign: the precise attack of a fencer

DAf quickly got started on the spot’s production. The team was responsible for the art proposal, live action and stills in New York, and finally the 3D animation and image post-production carried out at their offices in Chile.

Cinema 4D shows its power

Cinema 4D was used for all of the 3D elements, with its MoGraph module proving to be particularly useful. “MoGraph and its cloner application were instrumental to us creating a lot of particles with the same behavior,” says Dacaret. “Dynamics using cloner is an easier effect to handle and really helps achieve the animation you need.”

Cinema 4D’s tools also enabled the team to overcome the projects most tecnical challenge – creating a rigged character made of moving particles and getting it to react to a hit from the hero fencer.

“We used Cinema 4D and After Effects to overcome this,” says Dacaret. “Firstly, we used the morph effect in Cinema 4D to form the virus and make it disappear.

Secondly, we composited the shots in two layers: the first with the character and his rigged particles; then as a second layer we made lots of particles with dynamics to be used in compositing to enhance the reaction effects after the attack of our hero fencer. The two layers in compositing really created the magic and flow effect in the scenes.”

Like this spot? Check out the selection of other awesome ads on the showcase page

Why is Savannah College of Art and Design a key destination for animation students and what can you expect if you choose to train there?

As you might expect, North America is home to more schools and animation courses than anywhere else in the world.

Savannah has a general population of 131,510 and an overall student population of 40,594. Approximately 9,906 of Savannah’s students are enrolled in schools that offer computer animation programmes.

Attracting students from over 90 countries, Savannah’s largest computer animation school is Savannah College of Art and Design and it has been teaching the arts for over 30 years now.

In 2010, 218 students graduated with a computer animation degree in Savannah.

If you decide to attend a computer animation school in Savannah, you can expect to pay an average yearly tuition of $28,265.

In addition to tuition costs, you should plan on spending an average of $2,400 for books and supplies each year while enrolled in a computer animation programme in Savannah.

And if you live on campus, you will face an additional expense of $10,780 per year, on average, for room and board at Savannah-based computer animation schools. Students who live at home can cut this cost down to approximately $33,473.

On top of tuition fees, you should plan on spending an average of $2,400 for books and supplies each year while enrolled in a computer animation programme at SCAD

Computer Animation salaries and career outlook in Savannah

If you decide to work as a computer animator in Savannah, your job prospects are good.

By the year 2018, the number of computer animators is expected to increase by 25% in Savannah. This projected change is faster than the projected nationwide trend for computer animators.

Career opportunities

3D animator
Character technical director/rigger
Digital modeller
Texture/lighting technical director
3D previz artist
Traditional 2D animator
Digital cel animator
2D layout and background artist
Character designer
Art director
Mixed-media animator
Stop motion animator
Animation producer
Storyboard and concept artist
Teacher/demo artist

With so many roles on offer in the CG industry, it’s important to know where your future lies.

Different skills are needed for different careers, so if you don’t know whether you want to be an animator, rigger or texture artist, take a close look at your skillset and check out our Getting started in 3D guide.

What SCAD expects

Having said that, SCAD’s dean, Peter Weishar, says, “We’re not looking for the same skill sets that we’ll be teaching. We’re looking for artists. If we see somebody with a sense of composition, lighting and story, then that’s the kind of student we want.”

Still from The Line, an animation by Savannah College of Art and Design BFA students

Savannah College’s school of Digital Media offers animators the opportunity to study for BFA, MA and MFA degrees.

At the postgraduate level, the MA program is designed for those looking to further their 3D prowess, while the MFA is more geared towards academic research and artistic problem-solving.

Work by Andrew Mitchell, studying for an Master of Fine Arts in Visual Effects at SCAD. Andrew gives a student's view of SCAD in our CG Training Course Guide in issue 154 of 3D World, now on sale in the UK

How the course runs

Animation students enrolling at the Savannah College of Art and Design first undertake a two-year core curriculum of introductory liberal arts and general education classes. Only then do they begin upper level study, developing skills in 2D and 3D character design and animation, look development, and on through a more electives-based final year through to postproduction.

Two postgraduate courses are also offered, with a one-year MA programme aimed at those looking for additional exposure to advanced 3D techniques, and an MFA that enables students to engage in academic research and artistic problem solving.

Still from Nightblooming by Bridget Underwood, Savannah College of Art and Design BFA animation student, Lake Oswego, Oregon

Top industry links

Weishar says extensive industry experience is a top priority for faculty – in the Savannah campus’s animation department alone, the wealth of talent includes ex-Blue Sky star Jan Carlée, Iron Giant and Beowulf TD Brian Schindler, Tina O’Haliey from Walt Disney Feature Animation ex-DreamWorks animator Scott Wright and Bafta nominee Jeremy Moorshead, plus veterans of Rhythm & Hues and DNA Productions.

The university also boasts an impressive advisory board line-up, featuring the likes of Blue Sky’s Carl Ludwig, Steven Chiang from Zynga and the legendary Phil Tippett.

Portfolio reviews are often given by representatives from studios such as Activision, Blue Sky, Blue Sky Studios, Digital Domain, Electronic Arts, Industrial Light & Magic, Lucas Arts, Pixar, Rhythm & Hues, and Tippett Studio.

Graduates work at studios including Sony Imageworks, DreamWorks and Nickelodeon.

The college also hosts the Savannah Film Festival, and participates in Siggraph.

Visit Savannah College of Art and Design for more information

The latest issue of 3D World features the Savannah College of Art and Design in our in-depth guide to finding the perfect college and qualification for you.

Get Ahead in Animation

We also have 25 top animation tips, rigging tank tracks in Maya, projection mapping in modo, and 60 minutes of V-Ray videos (on the disc).

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IKinema has launched an update to its motion capture plugin for Maya, IKinema Action 2

Designed to enhance the Maya tool-set, IKinema Action 2 is the fast real-time solving solution for rigging, retargeting, marker solving, streaming, animation and motion capture re-work.

Leading studios, such as Framestore, Disney and ILM, have had great success in integrating IKinema Action into their pipelines.

More recently, the technology has been used in other products: The full body IK solver in modo 601, released yesterday, is based on IKinema technology.

Press release excerpts

Industry heads are turning to IKinema for its powerful full body solver, and advanced animation processes. Leading studios, the likes of Framestore, 20th Century Fox, Disney, and Industrial Light & Magic have since integrated IKinema Action to help with their motion capture, marker solving, and retargeting work. Now, Audiomotion Studios, UK motion capture experts are fast realizing the advancements made to their pipeline using IKinema’s technology.

Action enhances Maya’s toolset, and outperforms other solvers for speed and robustness. After realizing the artists’ need for increased flexibility to bone manipulation, StretchIK became an important addition to the newly released 2.0.

Always looking to advance their pipeline, Tim Doubleday, Audiomotion’s Creative Director comments. “In the past we’ve relied on MotionBuilder for our body solving from markers and more recently we’ve added Vicon’s Blade software into the pipeline. These solutions work well but still limit some body movement, mainly getting the arms and clavicles to move naturally as well as the spine and neck.”

Audiomotion makes use of Action’s advanced features for a one to one match of an actor’s skeleton. The spine and neck stretch capabilities come into play where the rig behaves more naturally, and especially for hard to solve poses.

Doubleday points out, “A classic example of this and one which is very common in videogames is when the actor is in a squat position with their shoulders hunched forwards. There are a number of things that are affecting the rig, the position of the hips and the bend of the knees. There is also a lot of compression on the spine and finally there are the clavicles which are arched forwards.”

He found that traditionally individual input was required to achieve better results, for example, manually keying hip position, adding pull to arms to bring clavicles forwards. He goes on to say: “By using IKinema’s full body solver and the new stretch feature, this becomes less of an issue.”

Doubleday’s testing of 2.0 beta found StretchIK a time-saving addition. Scalable bones increased the look of his animation, and aided the solver for complex moves, “Our goal is to try and match what our actors do as closely as possible and IKinema takes us one step closer to achieving this.”

Enabling the user to perform direct changes to skeleton and animation assets within Maya’s viewport, Action provides a simplistic and manageable environment. Smooth and speedy integration are key ingredients to pull a studio to its feet, taking Audiomotion only a couple of weeks. Feeling like he’s just ‘scratching the surface’, the more Doubleday uses Action the more ideas are revealed, “I’ve recently being animating fingers using IKinema, and we’re looking to use it for real-time streaming from Vicon Blade.”

On comparisons between IKinema to other products, Doubleday comments, “We’ve used both MotionBuilder and Vicon Blade in the past but IKinema offers a lot more control and flexibility when it comes to full body solving. We’ll definitely offer it to our clients and continue to use it internally.”

For more information on IKinema Action 2 visit www.ikinema.com

Ikinema was shortlisted for the Plugin of the Year Award in our CG Awards last year

Modelling, texturing and rendering app finally gets character animation as part of its ‘most significant release ever’, not to mention dynamics, volumetrics and retopology tools

Luxology has ended years of press and forum speculation by adding character animation to modo 601, complementing the existing modelling, texturing and rendering tools.

“For some reason, people got really freaked out that we didn’t have a character animation system,” said Luxology president Brad Peebler. “It was actually quite insulting to be asked when modo would become a ‘full’ application.”

The new release finally consigns that insult to history, adding additional deformers, bones and a switchable full-body IK solver to modo’s toolset.

As might be expected of a product whose users don’t all come from a conventional 3D animation background, version 601 includes a number of features aimed at making the process more intuitive, including the option to create animations by pulling characters into position with the new Pose tool.

Dynamics and volumetrics and rendering, oh my
Character animation is just one of many toolsets overhauled in this update. Luxology describes modo 601 as its “most significant release ever”, with a product checklist running to over 50 major new features.

Dynamics is one of the other big additions. The Recoil system – formerly a $199 plugin – has now been integrated into modo itself, featuring hard and soft-body dynamics based on version 2.79 of the Bullet engine.

modo 601 also adds a dedicated retopology viewport and a new Topology Pen tool, described by Luxology as the “Swiss Army knife of topology modelling”. Beta testers we spoke to compared it favourably to specialist tools such as TopoGun.

The rendering and shading toolsets have also been significantly overhauled, with the addition of new volumetric rendering capabilities, render-time Boolean and bevelling operations, and new hair and skin shaders. Cel, contour and halftone shaders provide scope for generating renders in a range of non-photorealistic styles.

The Preview Renderer can now be used to progressively refine an image to full quality, with the option to restrict calculation to a specific period of time per frame; and there is a comprehensive new render pass system.

Better, faster, stronger
Modelling and texturing receive a number of enhancements, including blob modelling and the option to ‘paint’ or ‘sculpt’ with particles.

Performance has also been improved, with Luxology quoting reduction in load times of up to 10 times over modo 501 in certain of its test scenes.

However, it will almost certainly be those character animation tools that garner most of the headlines – along with a special place in their developers’ hearts.

“[Using tools like these] one or two people could produce an entire animation,” Peebler said. “That’s very special to me, because it’s what got me into the industry in the first place.”

modo 601 is available now for Windows and Mac OS X, price $1,195.

Visit the Luxology website for more information

In a separate announcement, Luxology also released two dedicated ‘loaders’ for importing CAD models into modo 601. The $495 Basic CAD Loader imports files in XT format, while the Advanced CAD Loader adds support for STEP and IGES files and costs $695.

Updated 7 March 2012:

Watch modo 601: Overview

Watch modo 601: Volume cloud fly thru

Luxology has just posted a new video online showing a quick fly through of the modo 601 volume item

Watch two children’s imagination race away in this short animation and find out how it was created using 3ds Max, ZBrush, Photoshop and a bunch of third-party plugins

Insert Coin is a story about the playful nature of two children, Lucas and Theo, who imagine themselves as the drivers in a racing game. As they successfully reach higher levels, their vehicles become newer, much faster models, that is, until their money runs out…

The short was a final-year project created by four students – Alisson Thiébaut, Beucler Louis, Garcia Tunon Nicolas and Mathieu Tiger – of the Albert Jacquard School of Namur, Belgium.

The initial idea for the film came about during a warm summer afteroon. “We were thinking about scenarios,” says Louis. “The window was open and we heard children laughing, screaming and making noise with their bicycles on the stone pavement outside. We began to think of a story about two little boys running on a pavement, which lead us to the idea of a race.

“We had some graphical goals, we wanted to model a lot of different things and different environments so we thought our characters could travel in different worlds on vehicles that went faster and faster.”

Drawing inspiration from the greats

Both the set and character designs were carefully considered by the student team. “We looked at a bunch of great characters we found in animations from Pixar, Dreamworks and Disney,” says Thiébaut.

“I tried to figure out what made their characters special and appealing. So we defined a personality for each boy. Lucas, with brushed blond hair, is taller and more serious with his vintage glasses. His friend Theo is a smaller, bad boy with his purple reversed cap.”

With the film featuring many different environments, the team were able to have some fun with their designs. “We really wanted to enjoy making this short,” Nicolas. “The end-of-study work is the last chance you have to work in team on a really personal project. We wanted to have fun with things we like or liked when we were children.”

The quartet also wanted each of the sets to be unexpected. “We wanted to give a specific look for each environment and make each one of the them a big surprise,” explains Louis. “We looked at Bip-bip the Runner & Coyotte, we looked at Donkey Kong on Super NES, 101 Dalmatians and Star Wars, of course. We had a lot of other ideas: bobsleigh, planes, etc but selected the most aesthetically interesting.”

To create the multiple environments and assets, the student group used 3ds Max for modelling and animating, ZBrush for adding fine detail to the characters, V-Ray for rendering and Photoshop for final composition.

Alongside these applications, the team also made use of maxscript and third-party plugins such as Multi-Scatter, PEN-Attribute and BonyFace.

“I think BonyFace was one of the most useful scripts,” says Nicolas. “Rigging a face in 3ds Max has never been easier. The other greatest feature was our custom scripts. I developed two character UIs to quickly access every part of our character rigs, and I also created a script that setup the scene before rendering. It was a small script that would just hide and show specifics layers or apply a black material to specific objects. It saved us a lot of time and gave us peace of mind.”

Coping with millions of polys

Scripts and third-party plugins did not, however, provide the answer of how to cope with the film’s biggest hurdle. “Our scenes were really heavy, from 2 to 10 millions of polys for 3ds Max’s poor viewport,” says Nicolas.

“Our biggest technical challenge was to optimise our scenes, for which we used V-Ray proxies a lot. Sometimes we had to import the high-res model of ZBrush inside 3ds Max to avoid loosing details. We used camera mapping for some shots. For example, the grass of the first shot was too long to render for the animation and we had GI flicks. So we rendered a still image of the grass that we projected on the existing ground planes for the final animated render.”

After 15 months in production, the student group are pleased with the final film. “We had other projects at school while creating this one,” says Nicloas. “If given more time, we would’ve added more FX like fire or fog, and worked more on the animation. But I’m really happy that we didn’t cut anything, everything we wanted to put in this movie is there and we had a lot of fun creating it.”

Like this short?

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