document

W O R L DComputer

T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N

$4.95 USA $6.50 Canada

Valiant takes flight with an innovative work flow approach

Top GunDigital Domain

delivers sky-high effects for Stealth

Storage in the StudioStreamlining the

digital process

Bird’s Eye View

September 2005 www.cgw.com

0509cgw_C1 C10509cgw_C1 C1 8/19/05 1:51:33 PM8/19/05 1:51:33 PM

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COMPUTERCOMPUTER

GRAPHICS WORLDGRAPHICS WORLD

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W O R L DComputer

T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N

Also see www.cgw.com for computer graphics news,

special surveys and reports, and the online gallery.

w w w . c g w . c o m SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 1

Departments

Editor’s Note 2

Learning from George

In his SIGGRAPH keynote address, veteran fi lmmaker George Lucas provides a glimpse into his world.

Spotlight 4

Products

Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max 8

Softimage’s Face Robot Technology

Alias’s Maya 7 and MotionBuilder 7

Macromedia’s Studio 8

E frontier’s Shade 8

Video Viewpoint 6Go with the Flow

Facilities need to be creative while establishing an HD work fl ow.

Portfolio 40Ryan Church

Reviews 42Macromedia’s Studio 8

Adobe’s Creative Suite 2

Products 45A look at offerings making news at IBC.

Features

Cover storyA Wing and a Prayer 12CG ANIMATION | Vanguard uses

commercial tools and an atypical

studio approach to complete its

dual mission of establishing a new

animation facility and creating its

fi rst CG feature.

By Karen Moltenbrey

High-Flying FX 22FILM | Stealth’s photorealistic

digital effects fl y under the radar

as they blend seamlessly with the

movie’s live action.

By Barbara Robertson

On the cover:General Von Talon ruffl es the feathers of

Britain’s WW II carrier pigeons in Valiant,

Vanguard’s fi rst CG feature. See pg. 12.

12

22

27

September 2005 • Volume 28 • Number 9

Storage in the Studio 27

Storage Propels the

Creative Process

By Michele Hope

Storage Requirements for

Digital Content

By Thomas Coughlin

Shared File Systems for

Digital Postproduction

By Saqib Jang

SPECIAL SECT ION

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2 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m

editor

’sno

teKelly DoveEditor-in-Chief

Learning from GeorgeSIGGRAPH’s return to Los Angeles this year was just what the industry

ordered. Close to 30,000 people fi lled the halls to “grow their brains,” expe-

rience dynamic technology, learn from one other, and enter to win any-

thing from a custom chopper to a next-generation Xbox.

The highly anticipated keynote Q&A session with George Lucas drew a

standing room-only crowd, as literally thousands of SIGGRAPH storm troopers fi lled

the hall to capacity for an all-too-brief glimpse into his world.

What would we learn from this “godfather of cinematic breakthroughs?” How

does he plan to top Star Wars, now that the entire story has been told? Is it possible

to translate his forward-thinking vision into our own way of working?

Lucas admits he is not a techie—he relies on his talented team to embrace his

visions and help turn them into reality. He does, however, like to push the technol-

ogy envelope—Avid, THX, and Pixar are all prime examples of his past successes.

And, it’s probably safe to bet that he’s not done yet. “I’m a storyteller. Anybody [who]

works in the arts runs into the technology ceiling. You have to know how to use tech-

nology,” explains Lucas. “Cinema requires that you make it believable [to convince

others] that it exists.” Advances in technology defi nitely help make this happen.

Previsualization, which Lucas considers “a fancy word for storyboarding,” is a

very important process in which he unveils his creative ideals. “The problem for me

is that storyboards don’t translate the real movement,” Lucas says. He overcomes

this challenge by working on a simplifi ed previsualization system which, admit-

tedly, is “easy enough” for him to use. Lucas also believes in integrating sound at

the beginning of a project, but realizes it can become very expensive as changes are

made. However, he holds fi rm to the belief that the sound in a movie is 50 percent

of the moviegoing experience and the primary reason he invests heavily in the audi-

tory elements upfront.

Now that Lucas has told the saga of Anakin Skywalker, what’s next? The direc-

tor says he has hundreds of projects he wants to work on and is currently interested

in the art of anime. He’s so interested, that he plans to strike

out in Asia and India to utilize the enormous pool of talent-

ed artists in those countries who work in this creative format.

Television also intrigues Lucas because it’s an “easier medium

to work in, and more fun.”

What about games and fi lm? Are they converging? “I wouldn’t

say at this point they have,” explains Lucas. “I want it to get to

the point where you talk to the game and it talks back.” In fact,

he looks forward to the day when artifi cial intelligence and voice recognition come

together in “intellectually challenging shooter-type games.”

Although experimenting with television and anime are his latest diversion, fi lm

remains a passion for Lucas as he strives for a “purer way” of fi lmmaking that focus-

es on the visual aspect of the art. That’s not to say he is ignoring the digital dream;

Lucas wants to push it to the next level—all-digital sets with seamlessly integrated

characters that tell the story.

“Every fi lm presents new challenges,” says Lucas. “Without those challenges

thrown at you, you don’t grow.”

Anybody who

works in the

arts runs into

the technology

ceiling.

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Autodesk and 3ds Max are registered trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. © 2005 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Tom

Cla

ncy’s

Spl

inte

r Cel

l® C

haos

The

ory™

im

age

cour

tesy

of U

biso

ft™.

So real it renders fear.

Idea:Create the most gripping and realisticstealth action game on the market.

Realized:Ubisoft™ modeled and animated therealistic characters and backgrounds of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell® Chaos Theory™with Autodesk’s 3ds Max to build on one of the most popular series ever. 3ds Max’s work-horse capability helpedUbisoft stay on top of their grueling production schedule and garner a 9.9 out of 10 by Official Xbox Magazine. To learn how Autodesk software can help yourealize your ideas to compete and win, visit autdodesk.com/3dsmax

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spotlightM O D E L I N G / A N I M A T I O N

F A C I A L A N I M A T I O N

Your resource for products, user applications, news, and market research

PR

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PR

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Rock Falcon © 2005 A

vid Technology Inc.

Softimage, a subsidiary of Avid

Technology, previewed Softimage Face

Robot, its new facial animation tech-

nology, during SIGGRAPH 2005.

Face Robot is designed to assist

3D artists in the production of realis-

tic facial animation for high-end fi lm,

postproduction, and game-develop-

ment projects. The technology behind

Face Robot has at its core a new com-

puter model of facial soft tissue. With

Face Robot, artists no longer must

manually create a wealth of 3D shapes

to depict different facial expressions.

The soft-tissue model emulates a full

range of emotions portrayed by the

human face. Through the use of con-

trol points, animators can fully cus-

tomize facial details, such as fl aring

nostrils, bulging neck muscles, and

wrinkles. Further, keyframe anima-

tors benefi t from direct access to facial

expressions within Face Robot, where-

as motion-capture animators are able

to work with fewer markers, speeding

setup and cleanup processes. —CEH

Softimage Delivers Facial Animation Technology

With the goal of helping game developers, visual effects

artists, and graphic designers realize their ideas, Autodesk

Media and Entertainment has upgraded 3ds Max 3D mod-

eling, animation, and rendering software to Version 8.

With this new edition, the com-

pany paid special attention to

the areas of character develop-

ment, advanced modeling and

texturing, scripting, and data

and asset management.

Advanced rigging tools, mo tion

mixing, and motion retargeting

for nonlinear animation add to

the Character Development tool

set within 3ds Max. At the same

time, its Modeling and Texturing area gains support for

DirectX and .fx fi les and new UV pelt mapping, designed

to reduce the time and labor it takes to texture a 3D model.

3ds Max 8’s Comprehensive Development Framework offers

improved software developer kit (SDK) tools and resources,

XML support, an interactive MAXScript debugger, and sup-

port for the free Autodesk DWF Viewer for reviewing, col-

laborating on, and approving 3D

data and designs. Complex Data

and Asset Management within

Version 8 is enhanced by the incor-

poration of the Autodesk Vault

data-management and asset-track-

ing solution.

3ds Max 8 is scheduled to ship

this fall at a price of $3495 for

the full version and $795 as an

upgrade from Version 7. The 3ds

Max Subscription, priced at $400 per year, provides cus-

tomers access to the latest software updates, product exten-

sions, and E-learning materials. —Courtney E. Howard

Autodesk Debuts 3ds Max Version 8

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M O D E L I N G / A N I M A T I O N

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© 2005 A

lias Systems Corp.

Alias announced Version 7 of its Maya

and MotionBuilder applications.

Maya 7 has been upgraded with

Alias MotionBuilder’s full-body IK solv-

er, as well as Blend Shapes and Wire

deformers, simplifying the rigging

and posing of characters. For Version

7, Alias re-architectured Maya’s ren-

der layers functionality. Users can now

manage multiple versions of materi-

als, cameras, lights, Maya Fur, and

Maya Paint Effects in a single scene

fi le. Moreover, users can render layers

with virtually any renderer integrated

into Maya, including the latest version

of Mental Ray.

Collaborative and parallel work

fl ows are supported in Maya Version 7,

granting modelers, animators, and col-

leagues the ability to work on the same

character simultaneously. Additional

features include UV unfolding, tri-pla-

nar and multimesh mapping, Edge

Loop and Edge Ring utilities, and CgFX

and ASHLI plug-ins. Maya Complete 7,

priced at $1999, and Maya Unlimited

7, costing $6999, are now shipping for

use with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS

X platforms.

MotionBuilder 7, Alias’s 3D charac-

ter animation software, delivers new

character extensions that enable art-

ists to more quickly and easily add such

objects as tails, wings, or props to a char-

acter’s control rig. Version 7 also pro-

vides visual feedback on the control rig

and character manipulation enhance-

ments. Productivity is improved by

save reminder and versioning features,

as well as the ability to transfer, repur-

pose, and reuse animation clips with

any character. The Alias FBX fi le for-

mat and new constraints in Version 7

improve the interoperability between

MotionBuilder and other 3D applica-

tions, including Maya. Now shipping,

Alias MotionBuilder Pro 7 costs $4195

for a node-locked version and $4795 for

a fl oating edition. —CEH

Alias Introduces Software Upgrades

Macromedia Unveils Studio 8 Macromedia Inc. has introduced Macromedia Studio 8, a

software suite geared toward video professionals, graphic

artists, Web designers, and developers. Studio 8 combines

the latest versions of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver, Flash

Professional, Fireworks, Contribute, and FlashPaper. For

the creation of Web sites, interactive media, and content

for mobile devices, Studio 8 features new video encoding

tools that assist with producing and publishing interac-

tive video for Web use.

Contribute 3 assists

with modifying and

up dating content,

where as FlashPaper

2 converts various

fi le types into Web-

ready PDF or SWF

fi les. Flash Player 8

includes a higher-

quality video codec, an advanced text-rendering engine,

and improved security. Shipping this month, Studio 8 is

priced at $999, or $399 as an upgrade. —CEH

E Frontier Presents Shade 8E frontier, formerly

Curious Labs, previewed

an upcoming version of

its Shade 3D modeling

and rendering software

during SIGGRAPH 2005.

Scheduled to ship in

the fall, Shade 8 provides users with more than 5000

3D objects on various topics for character modeling,

visualization, and architectural design projects. Shade

sports a more powerful modeling engine with polygon

mesh editing, improved integration with the compa-

ny’s Poser, and faster Radiosity calculation. In the area

of rendering, Version 8 boasts network rendering, a

new toon renderer, and an improved Callisto renderer.

E frontier will offer a choice of two versions of

Shade 8. The Shade 8 Standard 3D graphics suite is

targeted at designers, illustrators, and graphic artists.

Shade 8 Professional is designed to put advanced mod-

eling, lighting, and rendering tools in the hands of

design professionals. —CEH

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view

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ideo

Jay Ankeney is a freelance writer, editor, and postproduction consultant living outside of Los Angeles.


By Jay Ankeney

The Mega Approach

The Post Group, a veritable icon in the Hollywood fi lm and video production commu-

nity for more than 30 years, has new owners with a penchant for streamlining work

fl ow. Recently purchased by fi lmmaker entrepreneurs Matt and David Cooper, The

Post Group combines Lightning Media DVD replication, IO Film’s fi lm scanning ser-

vices, Novastar Sound, and Santa Monica-based production company The Vault to

create a synergistic relationship among the facilities. The result is a communal fi lm-

making environment that offers one-stop production and postproduction services,

along with a well-rounded approach to working with HD and establishing a consis-

tent work fl ow.

“It’s well known that productions for television are rapidly adopting HD as their

source material, so our companies are all focused on handling it effi ciently,” says

Richard Greenberg, executive vice president of The Post Group and its affi liated com-

panies. “When footage comes into The Post Group, whether on fi lm or any of the

existing HD media, like Sony’s new HDCAM SR 4:4:4 RGB format, The Post Group

is capable of providing HD postproduction services—either linear or nonlinear—for

that source material at its native resolution,” he explains. “Throughout the process,

we keep our HD work fl ow in whatever format the client chooses.”

Establishing the HD work fl ow requires a series of processes that must be care-

fully assessed and considered on a job-by-job basis. Is the source fi le digital or fi lm?

What are the delivery destinations? Will content be repurposed at a later date?

To begin, fi lm-originated material is scanned into HD or 2K fi les at IO Film or

The Post Group and processed to an Avid Media Composer Adrenaline HD, Avid DS

Nitris, or Apple Final Cut Pro 5 in preparation for high-defi nition post. If the project

is destined for high-defi nition delivery, after the client has fi nished the off-line edit-

ing, the source fi les are assembled at The Post Group using the original HD material.

The promise and challenge

of creating and delivering high-

defi nition (HD) content con-

tinues to capture the attention

of studios around the world,

as artists and owners come

together to fi nd new ways of turning

the latest technology trends, such as HD,

into the “next big moneymaker.”

Establishing an HD work fl ow can

be as straightforward as hooking a

FireWire cable to your

camcorder and captur-

ing your source material

to a workstation, thanks

in part to the fl exibility

of the IEEE-1394 stan-

dards, which allow you

to control the machine

and transfer media, time

code, and metadata over

a single thin strand.

For other more com-

plex applications, wran-

gling different breeds of

HD signals can involve

advanced engineering.

To see how two dis-

tinctly different com-

panies approach HD

work fl ow in their

operations, I visited

with two studios: The

Post Group, the newest

Hollywood “production

campus” being set up

by the Cooper Brothers,

and Digital Neural Axis

(DNA), an intriguingly high-tech bou-

tique facility on the California coast,

where high defi nition is often used as

the off-line medium for award-winning

effects creation.

Creativity

counts when

putting

together

your HD

workfl ow.

Momentum VFX, at The Post Group, incorporates everything from 2K, 4K, and HD streams

into its work fl ow. This shot is one of many created for NBC’s television show Medium.

Go with the Flow

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If the project is to be recorded out to

celluloid, IO Film will feed the 2K fi les

into a Nucoda Film Master system for

assembly, color correction, and the cre-

ation of digital intermediates (DI), from

which HD versions also can be derived.

Greenberg believes that tailoring the

HD work fl ow to suit a client’s needs

is well worth the effort, but there will

always be instances that require special

treatment. “For example, when it comes

to editing, there are some projects, such

as adding credits to the end of a show,

that are still better suited for the tape-

based linear editing bay. At The Post

Group, this consists of an Accom Axial

3000 controller, a Pinnacle HD Deko

500 character generator, and a Snell &

Wilcox 1010 HD switcher. On the other

hand, a nonlinear disk-based approach

is usually more effi cient for shows that

have complex effects. For those, we

will suggest using the Avid DS Nitris or

Apple Final Cut Pro on a G5.”

The groups of facilities that compose

The Post Group offer services Greenberg

suggests are invaluable to independent

producers. “I look at us as a hospital, and

our clients are the patients,” explains

Greenberg. “Our associates are the sur-

geons and staff. Sometimes independent

producers think they can perform com-

plex operations on their own. But when

they end up in an emergency situation,

they are often left without backup. We are

here to do the surgery right the fi rst time.”

Riding the edge of the HD work fl ow

evolution is Ken Nakada, the managing

director and visual effects designer at

Momentum VFX, which is housed at The

Post Group.

There was a time when all the fi les

Momentum received were scanned from

fi lm negatives to 2K fi les. Today, however,

approximately half of the fi lm scanning

Momentum receives is output to HD,

which is a 60 percent lower resolution

than 2K output and easier to handle on

a workstation. Once Momentum is fi n-

ished with the HD fi les, they go back to

the recording facility to be up-converted

to 2K, to record out to fi lm.

“The HD work fl ow is going in multiple directions,” explains Nakada. “We are

starting to deal with more 2K material from the Grass Valley Viper FilmStream cam-

era for both fi lm and HD fi nished projects. It has such a high uncompressed color

and resolution depth that you never need negatives and can stay digital from inges-

tion to fi nal master.” He continues, “At the same time, we have other clients who are

shooting movies on more compressed HDCAM. Our work fl ow needs to be able to

handle all those formats based on the specifi c client’s needs.”

“Film is not going away,” Nakada insists. “However, 2K fi les scanned from fi lm

are being used less and less for productions intended to be released in high defi ni-

tion. Since there are many more systems that can work faster in HD, we are fi nding

that our work fl ow is tending toward that resolution level. Of course, at the very end,

even the HD material is up-converted to 4K resolution fi les if they are destined to be

recorded out to fi lm.”

Nakada’s 2K, 4K, and HD work fl ow streams across many systems and includes

many types of data—from video to CG. His work fl ow confi gurations include

Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s Discreet Inferno, Discreet Flame, and Discreet

Fire systems, Apple’s Final Cut Pro HD with Blackmagic HD cards, and graphics

workstations with software such as Newtek’s LightWave 3D, Alias’s Maya, Adobe’s

After Effects and Photoshop, Apple’s Shake, and Autodesk Media and Entertain-

ment’s Combustion.

Gregg Katano, one of the executive producers at Momentum VFX, helps to create all

the HD visual effects for the NBC television show Medium, starring Patricia Arquette.

“For our HD work fl ow, we are sent a copy of the edited master in either D5 or HDCAM,

which we bring into our Inferno or Maya workstations along with the EDL, so we can

build on top of the original plates,” he explains. “The off-line editors will send us rough

composites done in their Avid systems, or post a QuickTime fi le on the Web showing

their concepts for the effects. Then we come up with our interpretation of the effect

and respond with a fi le to the FTP site. Once approved, we drop the fi nished version

back into the copy of the master tape and send it back to the producers.”

It’s in the DNA

Not far from the bright lights of Hollywood are Digital Neural Axis (DNA), a bou-

tique visual effects and digital postproduction studio in Venice Beach, California,

that is managing HD work fl ow in its own way. DNA prefers to keep the work load

under one roof, which worked well in the creation of 68 visual effects shots for

Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning movie The Aviator.

DNA streamlines HD work fl ow by rendering QuickTime HD fi les, positioning them

in a Final Cut timeline, and rendering fi nal 2K image sequences in After Effects.

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“Our mission is to always be on the

cresting wave of making real what the

mind can conceive,” says Darius Fisher,

founder and owner of DNA. “We take

advantage of the increasing processing

speed of computers and the most recent

software to operate a home-based boutique

incorporating the latest digital technology.”

A key to DNA’s work fl ow is its abil-

ity to use 1920x1080p HD as an off-line

medium. “For The Aviator, we were orig-

inally given high-defi nition QuickTime

fi les of the fi lm’s dailies so we could do

a mock-up of our effects for a preview

screening,” recalls Fisher. “We used

mostly Adobe After Effects on Apple G5

workstations for the compositing, and

constantly referenced the edit being cut

by the fi lm’s editor, Thelma Shoonmaker,

in New York City.”

Most of the shots DNA created took

place inside a mocked-up fl ight simula-

tor playing the role of the Spruce Goose

cockpit positioned inside a gigantic

greenscreen stage. Then, in order to see

their shots playing in real time within

the context of the story, Fisher and his

associates rendered them as QuickTime

HD fi les and positioned them into the

Final Cut timeline.

Once satisfi ed with the look, the com-

positing, and the way the shots were

working within Schoonmaker’s editing,

DNA rendered the fi nal image sequenc-

es at 2K in After Effects. The work fl ow

incorporated delivering QuickTime HD

fi les for director Scorsese’s approval, and

then a folder full of 2K Cineon DPX fi les

on G-Raid and LaCie FireWire drives for

ultimate inclusion into the fi lm’s fi nal DI.

DNA fi nished a commercial for Ford

that was posted using a distinctive HD

work fl ow developed in conjunction with

the spot’s director Rob Legato and post

supervisor Ron Ames. “It was shot on

35mm fi lm, then transferred to HDCAM

SR tape to maintain the full RGB range

of the negative,” explains Fisher. “Once

the off-line edit was completed, we re-

captured the whole sequence in Adobe

Premiere using a Blackmagic HD card

directly from the HDCAM SR tapes. That

let us do all our fi nishing in the 4:4:4

RGB color space, and we did all our

color correction at Complete Post on the

high-defi nition spot’s master, just as if

it had been a fi lm project.

“Using the HDCAM SR tape format

for transfers, we had more information

available to us for the compositing phase

of the job,” Fisher continues. “We used

the project with HDCAM SR as a test bed

to let us do the color correction on the

effects shots and principal photography

in one session, just as we would have if

we were creating a DI.”

These days many facilities are fi nd-

ing HD work fl ow to be as technically

streamlined as standard-defi nition DV

work fl ow. But the goal of any work fl ow

is not just arriving at the project’s fi nal

delivery, whether on a “production cam-

pus” or in a beach-house boutique. It’s

the creativity involved in getting to that

destination that counts.

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. . . . CG Animation


By Karen Moltenbrey

Veteran fi lmmakers think

outside the studio box to

create the independent

CGI movie Valiant

A Wing Prayerand a

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CG Animation. . . .

is a story about a small but determined bunch with big

dreams and a desire to prove themselves, and how, by using their

willpower, courage, and “birdbrains,” they were able to beat the

odds and triumph where better-qualifi ed colleagues had failed.

On one level, that summary describes the story line for the

new CGI feature fi lm Valiant, about a wood pigeon who, de-

spite his diminutive size,

harbors a big ambition:

to become a member of

the Royal Homing Pigeon

Service for England’s Royal

Air Force during World War

II. When given the chance

to realize his dream, the pi-

geon overcomes seeming-

ly insurmountable hurdles

and, to everyone’s aston-

ishment, succeeds in what

his peers believed to be an

impossible mission.

On another level, that

description can be applied to Valiant’s fi lmmakers, who knew

that their mission of creating a major studio-quality feature at

half the typical price and in half the usual time was considered

a lofty ambition. Yet, despite the huge risks and challenges, the

group accomplished these ambitious goals.

“We did what many said was impossible, but through per-

severance, dedication, and creative thinking, we were

able to complete a $70 million fi lm for $40 million,”

says coproducer Curtis Augspurger, a seasoned vi-

sual effects artist (Shrek, Scooby-Doo, Batman

Forever). “We also established a new bar for an-

imated digital fi lmmaking that has been prov-

en fairly successful in Europe but is only now

being tried in the US.”

Valiant Takes Flight

The concept for Valiant, which originated with

UK writer George Webster, eventually caught

the attention of producer John H. Williams of

Shrek fame, who was looking for projects he could

produce outside of the DreamWorks umbrella. Williams honed

in on the coming-of-age story that’s told from the perspective

of birds and beasts, and enlisted the help of Augspurger and

Buckley Collum, also a coproducer on the fi lm along with Eric

M. Bennett. Altogether, they established a brand-new animation

facility that was an offshoot of Williams’s live-action fi lm stu-

dio, Vanguard Films.

Their goal in establishing Vanguard Animation was to break

the “$1 million per minute of animation” barrier that’s

the norm for high-quality CGI features in the US,

by using a “non-studio” approach. “Although

it had not been done before, there was no reason we couldn’t

make a CG animated fi lm of this caliber for half the usual price

by thinking outside the animation studio box,” says Collum. In

particular, Vanguard streamlined the infrastructure and applied

a visual effects approach to the production. It also eliminated

a tremendous amount of mid-level management. “The credits

for Pixar’s The Incredibles

are enormous; in compari-

son, we had just 35 anima-

tors,” Collum points out.

“Indeed, there are perks with

a large organization, but we

were effi cient and could get

things done fast. We knew

from the beginning where

we wanted to go with this

fi lm, and stayed on course

throughout the production.”

Once the fi lm was

green-lighted in January

2003, Vanguard spent eight

months of preproduction in Los Angeles, working on character and

location design, character modeling, storyboarding, and animat-

ic creation. In September of that year, the group shifted the phys-

ical production to a new facility in London for the production

phase, which included set modeling, character animation, light-

ing, rendering, compositing, post, and editing.

While creating a new studio was fraught with challenges (see

“Building a Birdhouse,” pg. 14), it also had its advantages. “We

didn’t have to carry a legacy paradigm into our production,” says

Collum. “Every new fi lm tries to push the animation bar a little

higher, and some studios are hampered with an existing infra-

structure that includes older equipment and a pre-existing pro-

duction paradigm into which a new production doesn’t fi t well.”

Vanguard decided to use commercial packages in its pipeline

and refi ne those tools as needed, rather than develop all its own

software from scratch. To this end, the group based its frame-

work on Alias’s Maya, mainly because of its robust tool sets and

the ability to extend them via Mel scripts and available plug-ins.

Another advantage was that most hires would be familiar with

the content-creation program. In the end, Augspurger estimates

that about 80 percent of Valiant was done with off-the-shelf prod-

ucts, while the remainder was accomplished with in-house tools.

Bird-watchers

Originally, Gary Chapman assumed the role of the fi lm’s char-

acter designer, but his ideas for the story, the settings, and the

music made him an ideal choice as the fi lm’s director. “One of

my main concerns was establishing a look for the fi lm. It’s a

comedy-adventure, but I thought it was important to have some

sort of homage to reality,” he notes. (Pigeons have saved thou-

sands of lives during WW II, and 31 of the 53 top honors given

Using an atypical approach to CG fi lmmaking, Vanguard Animation success-

fully completed its fi rst mission: Valiant, about a wood pigeon and his fl ock

of misfi t friends who help the Royal Homing Pigeon Service during WW II.

Valiant

Imag

es ©

Van

gu

ard

An

imat

ion

UK

Ltd

. an

d th

e U

K F

ilm C

ou

nci

l.

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to animal heroes have been awarded to

pigeons.) “At no point did we approach

this like a cartoon.”

As Williams points out, the team

tried to keep a consistent period look in

the overall design (objects, gear, back-

grounds), but with some artistic touches

that make it feel contemporary in its tone

and subject. And the jokes and humor fa-

cilitate the story being told, as opposed to

being based solely on pop culture a la the

Justin Timberlake-Cameron Diaz refer-

ence in Shrek 2. “We had to sell our jokes

because they weren’t contemporary.”

In the high-fl ying CGI movie, the lit-

tle pigeon Valiant (voiced by Scottish ac-

tor Ewan McGregor) and his misfi t friends

join the elite Royal Homing Pigeon Service

(RHPS), which has suffered great losses at

the claws of the lethal enemy falcons, com-

manded by the ruthless General Von Talon.

While not fully prepared for duty, the pi-

geons—with the German falcons on their

tails—are sent to retrieve a message from

the French Resistance in occupied France

and deliver it to the Allied Forces. When

Valiant’s feathered friends fi nd themselves

in danger, the little bird not only saves his

wingmen, but he also saves the day.

“The story is one that every child will

be able to ascribe to and every adult has

experienced: It is the plight of someone

who is told they are incapable of doing

something because they are too small

or too young, and then they go off and

prove themselves,” explains Augspurger.

Valiant, though, is told from a bird’s-eye

viewpoint: pigeons, falcons, and other

fowl play the lead roles, while white mice

co-star as members of the Resistance.

Humans appear infrequently, and when

they do, they are obscured, so as to not

pull the viewers, who are mainly chil-

dren, out of this animal-centric world.

Yet, telling the tale from an animal’s

perspective presented Vanguard with one

of its greatest challenges: The team had

to feather and fur every character—a task

that was not in the group’s original fl ight

plan. “We thought we would make pho-

torealistic and visually appealing texture

The fate of Vanguard Animation’s ambitious plans to create a studio-quality CG fea-

ture for half the price and in half the time as was the norm rested on the establishment

of a streamlined pipeline built around commercial software. It also required a visual

effects approach to CG animation that relied on compositing, rather than rendering,

to make quick fi xes.

After months of preproduction in the US, Vanguard transformed part of the for-

mer Ealing Studios in West London into a digital facility of the future, though it had to

endure snags that occur when building a new facility, from getting the servers up and

running properly to testing the tools and techniques during the actual production.

On the logistics end, to qualify for incentives offered by the

UK, Vanguard had to employ a signifi cant number of animators

from the commonwealth and the European Union. As a result of

this mandate and other factors, the multi-national crew—repre-

senting 17 countries and speaking 10 different languages—pro-

vided the team with a broad range of experiences that could be

applied to the production, notes line producer Tom Jacomb.

On the technical side, the pipeline was built around Alias’s

Maya, with Side Effects Software’s Houdini used for the feathering

and the fur. Next Limit’s RealFlow, meanwhile, created the water

and fl uid simulations, and Pixar Animation Studios’ RenderMan ac-

complished the rendering. The renderfarm comprised 500 nodes

of 1000 CPUs, including several IBM Blades; the remaining Boxx

Technologies machines served as DCC workstations by day and renderers by night.

“From the time we began budgeting the fi lm and negotiated the hardware deal,

we saw a threefold performance increase [in the hardware],” notes coproducer

Curtis Augspurger. He points out that in a room a quarter of the size, Vanguard was

able to accomplish the same rendering power for $2 million as PDI/DreamWorks did

after spending $20 million when it made Antz in 1998.

Another large savings resulted from Vanguard’s choice to use Apple’s Final Cut

Pro for editing, rather than an Avid system, allowing for seven editors as opposed

to two. Finally, for storing the digital assets during production, the group used a

Network Compliance NetApp 940. Moreover, the team used a

DI approach throughout the production, working solely with dig-

ital media on hard drives as opposed to fi lm.

“To accomplish our goals, we stood on the shoulders of gi-

ants who have cheapened the price of technology and increased

its power sevenfold,” says Augspurger.

Thanks to Vanguard’s carefully constructed pigeon coop, the

studio was able achieve the goals it set with Valiant. And in doing

so, the group broadened the CG animation talent pool in London,

and Europe for that matter, neither of which had been exposed

to a digital feature of this scale before. And, the paradigm shift

that Valiant represents is likely to make major studios rethink the

way they deliver animated fi lms. —KM

Building a Birdhouse

The artists used Maya’s Cloth to create the simulation for the black leather cape worn by the

evil General Von Talon (center) in approximately 150 shots throughout the movie.

The team employed Next

Limit’s RealFlow simulator

for some fl uid effects, though

Maya was used for this shot.

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maps for the birds,” says Collum. “But

in the early phases of preproduction, we

challenged our effects gurus to devise

a method of implementing feathers on

the birds in a creative way that not only

looked good in tests, but also could be

used in production. So we shifted the con-

cept from faux feathers to real feathers,

and it paid off from a visual standpoint.

But it was not without its share of head-

aches as we tried to improve the look.”

Birds of a Feather

When the artists began the project, they were

using Maya 4, which was limited in how it

handled subdivision surfaces and polygons,

particularly with the controls that would be

needed for the surfacing. “But we knew we

could take the surfaces we were generating

in Maya and export them to [Side Effects

Software’s] Houdini,” Collum says. “So our

pipeline became more complex after the de-

cision to do feathers and fur.”

Because of the tight production sched-

ule, the group built a sophisticated charac-

ter rig in Maya that was common to all of

the birds and, with some adaptation (clip-

ping the wings and adding a tail), was

used for the mice, too. The rig contained a

skeletal system under the face that defi ned

the deformation and blended the morph

targets that controlled the facial animation,

particularly for achieving the phonemes

and portraying emotion. It also allowed

the end fi ve feathers of the birds to be used

as fi ngers as well as part of the wing.

According to Augspurger, the com-

mon rig system ensured that every ani-

mator would be familiar with any char-

acter’s controls. “As the production

shifted, we could move our artists from

characters that were temporarily out of

production to others that were in pro-

duction, thereby maintaining a constant

work fl ow,” he explains.

Furthermore, the team created a cus-

tomized plug-in called Chanko that en-

abled the animators to create a library of

poses and clips—facial and body pos-

es, performances, and so on—that were

shared among all the characters, thereby

giving the shots a consistent look. In ad-

dition, the coding team, led by Mat Selby

and Manne Ohrstrom, set up referenc-

ing technologies and asset management

tools that allowed the artists to access the

key maps and positional maps, as well as

the unique wardrobes of the characters,

which could be swapped out on a per-

scene basis at render time.

Fowl PlayTo cut costs, the Vanguard Animation team had to avoid getting pigeonholed in their work fl ow approach,

thus forcing the artists to look beyond the usual tried-and-true—albeit time-consuming—solutions often

employed during CGI feature animation.

As a result, Gray Horsfi eld, CG supervisor, brought a good deal of transfer technology to the table, light bak-

ing being one of them. Prevalent in the gaming world, light baking for Valiant was accomplished within Mental

Images’ Mental Ray, and used mainly for the “colder” interior environments, such as the evil Von Talon’s lair.

By light-baking the sets, the group could do an initial

light pass with global illumination or radiosity lighting,

then “bake” those maps into the color texture sets,

from which individual renders were based.

By using this technique, the group no longer had

to render the sets with multiple shadow-casting lights.

Although the upfront costs were high, the subsequent

savings for the individual renders were enormous,

maintains coproducer Buckley Collum. “With this

method, we saved a great deal of time on repeated

renders, free from lighting and shadowing calculations

involving many lights in complex scenes,” he says.

According to coproducer Curtis Augspurger, a number of independent fi lm studios are pursuing game

development solutions for use in their productions. “The real inventions are coming from where the big

money is being spent and made, and that is in the gaming industry,” he says. “There, they are pushing

technology to be faster and better looking, and they have taken this to a new level in just the past three

years or so. If you look at the trends being established by game developers, you’ll likely see the visual ef-

fects industry picking them up soon thereafter.” However, while game developers will hit a wall with these

techniques in order to meet the real-time demands of their genre, the digital fi lmmakers can step in and use

the technology for netting a higher degree of realism, he adds. —KM

The images illustrate the feathering process for the character Von Talon: (from top, left to

right) the initial guide feathers, the changed behavior for the guide feathers disturbed by

the wardrobe, the RI behavior for fi nal feather placement, and the fi nal rendered feathers.

The team used light baking, a technique

frequently employed in gaming, to achieve the

lighting effects for the fi lm’s indoor scenes.

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According to Rod McFall, character

development and pipeline supervisor,

each of the 30 main bird characters went

through a rigorous grooming process

that formed the basis for the feathering

throughout the fi lm. After modeling and

rigging the characters in Maya, the team

imported them into Houdini, where shad-

ers were assigned. Guide hairs, grown

from the surfaces, defi ned how the feath-

ers looked and behaved—for instance, if

they were ruffl ed or fl at. Texture maps,

meanwhile, dictated the type of feather,

its directionality, color, and other prop-

erties that guided how they looked and

moved within a given shot.

Each bird model had approximately

50,000 feathers, and once the bird got its

feathers, it retained them throughout the

fi lm, since altering the number of feathers

(because of their size) would have changed

the visual look of the bird. Initially, the art-

ists contemplated rendering the feathers

and then generating an exact match for the

displacement map, so they could render

the displacement maps (and not the feath-

ers) at a distance, while in the far back-

ground, they could simply use a fl at color

projection—all of which, in theory, would

speed the rendering. However, this short-

cut did not provide the desired timesavings.

“The shaders and paradigm were clean, so it

wasn’t as painful as we had initially antici-

pated,” says Collum of the rendering, which

took between 5 and 20 minutes per frame.

Later, the feather information was ex-

ported as a Pixar RenderMan shader, lit

within Maya, rendered in RenderMan, and

composited into layers.

Now and again, however, the artists

faced a recurring problem of pops in the

feathers during the renders. Rather than

redo and re-render the feathers in these

shots, the group employed a 2D solu-

tion, using the Foundry’s MotionRepair

tool within Furnace, a plug-in for Apple’s

Shake, which the team used as its main

compositor. “With the motion-estimation

technology, we were able to interpolate ar-

eas from the surrounding frames so that

we wouldn’t have to re-render the mod-

els and could simply replace the frames

with artifacts by analyzing the surround-

ing frames,” Collum explains.

The team generated the fur for the mice

in a similar way, using RI curves within

Houdini, to which shaders were applied. In

addition, the group used its own InfraFur

plug-in to control the hairs so they would

react properly when interacting with the

tiny armbands, bandoliers, berets, and

other items worn by each furred fi ghter.

Dressed for Success

Indeed, the feathers and fur presented a

huge diffi culty for the group; but having

A Bird’s-eye ViewValiant may be limited in the diversity of the animal characters, but not so for the environments through

which they fl y. Nearly all the backdrops—from the tranquil English countryside and the bustling Trafalgar

Square, to a busy air base and war-torn France—are 3D, augmented at times by mattes and set exten-

sions. “We’re all over the map with our environments, but they keep pace with the emotional pulse of the

fi lm,” states coproducer Curtis Augspurger.

One of the more popular backdrops in the fi lm is a sky populated with a range of clouds created us-

ing a 3D volumetric cloud renderer based on a program by Joshua Schpok, a researcher from Purdue

University. Created as a stand-alone OpenGL-based program, the cloud simulator was retooled by the

researcher to fi t within Vanguard’s Maya-based pipeline, allowing for the real-time generation of realistic

types of clouds, from ominous dark formations to those of a thin, wispy variety. —KM

The artists crafted a wide range of backgrounds, from expansive shots of the French

countryside (top) to the busy streets of London (middle) to the wide, open sky

(below). For the clouds in these shots, the group used a real-time volumetric renderer.

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the characters’ wardrobe and military

regalia interact with those surfaces was

even more daunting. To achieve this, the

group, while developing the grooming

techniques, also defi ned the interaction

between the feathers/fur and the cloth-

ing and objects within Houdini.

Using Houdini’s Attribute tool, the

team extracted data from the clothing,

defi ning areas where the feathers would

need to push down and the gear

would need to push up on the surface,

thereby leaving a slight gap between the

feathers and clothing.

Then, in instances when the feathers

actually penetrated the gear, the anima-

tors used a simple compositing technique

to render out the gear separately with a

“holdout” map for the bird, and then used

Shake to rotoscope little patches of the

gear on top of the animated feathers. As

a result, the team spent only an afternoon

re-compositing a scene as opposed to an

entire night re-rendering it in order to ac-

commodate these intersections.

Because the Attribute Transfer tool

only works procedurally based on prox-

imity, the interaction animated as the re-

lationship between the clothing and the

bird’s surface changed over time. Then,

once the studio networks were in place,

the team set up a Web-based system

that initiated the pipeline using which-

ever combination of character and cloth-

ing was needed for the shot. This ranged

from pliable backpacks to hard helmets

and medals to stiff leather straps.

The process was put to the test in a se-

quence showing the pigeons dressing for

their mission. As Augspurger points out,

audiences usually don’t see many digi-

tal characters getting dressed in fi lms be-

cause of the diffi culty of the cloth interac-

tion. “We took the technology as far as we

could for the sequence—before we broke

it, that is,” he adds.

Yet, the ultimate gear/feather challenge

was presented by the uber bird, Von Talon,

who sports a leather cape, created with

Maya Cloth. The cape had to interact prop-

erly with the falcon’s feathers in approxi-

mately 150 shots.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t schedule

time for the wardrobe, but it was some-

thing that the director wanted because it

gave the characters a look

and feel that was contem-

porary for their time,” says

Augspurger, “and the au-

thenticity of the wardrobe

was key to selling that.”

Therefore, nearly every shot

contains wardrobe against

feathers or fur.

Mission Complete

After 18 months of pro-

duction, Vanguard com-

pleted the movie—slight-

ly ahead of schedule and

budget. In all, the team

created 1200 shots for the

75-minute fi lm, thus proving that a feath-

erweight production paradigm is stron-

ger and more viable than many had pre-

viously believed.

“We just didn’t take no for an answer,”

says Augspurger. “Also, we brought a vi-

sual effects background to the production

process, which is slightly different from

traditional animation in that instead of

using the render tools—which are labo-

rious and time-consuming —for fi xing

little problems, we took a different route

and overworked our compositing team

instead, saving both time and money.”

(See “Foul Play,” pg. 16.)

As a result of this work fl ow, the team

earned its wings, hitting 75 shots on aver-

age per week with a staff of only 150; in

comparison, large studios with 600 art-

ists usually accomplish 50 shots per week.

“We achieved our goal and did so without

compromising the aesthetic we were try-

ing to achieve,” Augspurger notes. “We

bit off more than we could have attempt-

ed a few years ago, but today’s tools allow

you to envision things you couldn’t have

even dreamed about fi ve or 10 years ago.”

Valiant was released in US theaters

August 19, though it debuted this past

spring in the UK, where it soared in the

top slot for a few weeks. Now that Valiant

has fl own the coop, Vanguard is keep-

ing its eye to the sky, waiting as Williams

hatches the studio’s next project.

Karen Moltenbrey is an executive editor at

Computer Graphics World.

Vanguard used Houdini to fur the French Resistance mice. Because the hairs were so fi ne,

they could be rendered at variable rates (100,000 to 1 million hairs), depending on the shot.

Feathering the characters was challenging; having the

feathers interact with the clothing was even more diffi cult.

This task was accomplished with Houdini’s Attribute tool.

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. . . . Film


High-Flying FX

By Barbara Robertson

The underlying question this summer’s

cinematic action-adventure love story pos-

es is a big one: In the future, if unmanned

airplanes fi re the missiles, will we go to

war more easily? As Stealth audiences

quickly discover, that’s not the only prob-

lem an unmanned aircraft might cause.

Directed by Rob Cohen, who brought

The Fast and the Furious and XXX to the

screen, the Sony Pictures fi lm puts au-

diences into the pilot’s seat of a Talon, a

new hypersonic stealth aircraft. Flying

alongside is EDI, an unmanned artifi -

cial intelligence-controlled Extreme Deep

Invader. All’s well until lightning strikes

EDI; the drone develops a mind of its

own and threatens to ignite a nuclear

Armageddon. Can three Navy test pilots,

played by actors Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel,

and Jamie Foxx, save the world?

The Action Is the Story

“Rob [Cohen] had a few basic command-

ments,” says Joel Hynek, visual effects

supervisor. “He wanted everything to be

very clear, not like in Top Gun, which is

a cool movie, but during the dogfi ght, no

one knows where anyone is.”

A second command was to have the

audience see the action from the pilot’s

seat rather than watch it from a third-per-

son point of view. “He embraced the fi rst-

Digital Domain

uses CGI to fabricate

a photorealistic

aerial playground

for Stealth

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Film. . . .

person video gamer POV,” says Hynek.

“He made it ‘gamer cool.’”

And third, Cohen wanted people in

the audience to feel like they were fl y-

ing. “He wanted it to be dynamic, differ-

ent,” says Hynek.

The sum of these parts put much of

the action into the hands of artists at

Digital Domain, who surrounded live-ac-

tion pilots with digital backgrounds and

fashioned entirely CG shots. A crew of

approximately 200 artists worked on 10

sequences (658 shots total) for the fi lm.

“These weren’t wire removals,” says Hynek.

“They were toughies.”

To create the shots, the studio used

Alias’s Maya for modeling and anima-

tion, Side Effects Software’s Houdini for

effects, Pixar’s RenderMan for rendering,

NewTek’s LightWave for shots inside the

airplane engines, Adobe’s Photoshop for

painting, and Digital Domain’s Nuke for

compositing, Storm for simulating natu-

ral phenomena, and EnGen for creating

digital terrain.

Hynek believes the studio raised the

visual effects bar in fi ve areas: allowing

for an unself-conscious, freely moving

camera, mimicking the aerodynamics of

real fl ight, and creating CG clouds, CG

terrain, and CG fi re.

Gamer Cool

To help Cohen sell the idea for the fi lm to

Sony, Digital Domain created a 40-second

sample shot. Engineers from Northrop

Grum man helped design a plane for the

test, then worked on aircraft for the movie.

“There were two planes: the Talon,

which the hotshot pilots fl y, and EDI, the

invader,” says Hynek. “The engineers

helped us fl esh out concepts like where

to put the weapons, and then production

designer Michael Riva gave them a sexy

Hollywood look.”

Once the project was green-lit, the

studio modifi ed X-plane, a PC-based

fl ight simulator, to help design camera

moves. “We had two monitors, two joy-

sticks, one fl ying airplane, and one fl ying

camera plane,” says Hynek. “It was good

for quickly working out different types of

shots, but we ended up doing previz in

Maya in a traditional keyframe manner.”

For this fi lm, the previz not only helped

the storytellers design the action, but the

data sometimes helped create the action

by driving a gimballed cockpit, cameras,

and lights on greenscreen stages.

Special effects supervisor John Frazier

and his crew built the 70-ton gimballed

cockpit on a soundstage at Fox Studios

in Sydney, Australia. The gimbal rotated

360 degrees, rolling multiple times with

a person inside, moved straight up or

straight down, pitched 180 degrees on ei-

ther side, and yawed 60 degrees total, ac-

cording to Kelly Port, digital effects su-

pervisor. The crew photographed it with

a Spydercam, a Technocrane, and hand-

held cameras. Sometimes Navy pilots

“fl ew” this device; other times an actor

rode inside while previz data drove it.

“In the case of the Spydercam, one com-

puter drove the camera, the gimbal, and

the lights,” explains Hynek. “The cam-

era would fl y around and come whizzing

up really close to the actor. It gave one

pause.” Cohen took full advantage of all

the dynamics, according to Hynek, who

provides an extreme example: The Talon

crashes, and just when the plane hits the

ground, the camera fl ies in as Josh Lucas

hits his head on the front of the panel.

For some data-driven shots, the camera

move was often modifi ed or undercranked

(fi lmed at a slower frame rate than normal,

to speed up the action) because the previz

didn’t consider velocity. “In one shot, the

camera moves into the cockpit while the

plane goes up and then dives down, so

we ran the move backwards, and had a

camera upside down and undercranked,”

says Hynek. “We shot it in reverse.”

View From Above

The crew encoded the gimbal and camera

motion when it could, but not the move-

ment of the often-used handheld cam-

era. “In the old days, a few years ago, we

would have shot the background plate

fi rst and then the foreground greenscreen

to match the lighting and perspective of

the plate,” Hynek says. “But Cohen didn’t

want to be a slave to the plate, so we shot

the foreground fi rst. Then we created a

background to match the lighting and

camera perspective.”

To make this possible, every shot went

through Digital Domain’s Track software,

which established the relationship of the

camera and the gimbal. “That gave us

choices,” Hynek says. “We could have

all the movement in the camera, or we

could assume the camera is still and have

the plane moving, or any combination.”

They made that decision during the ani-

mation phase.

Although the previz helped realize di-

rector Cohen’s intent for each shot, once

the action moved into animation, things

changed. “We’d redo the shots in anima-

tion,” says Hynek. The shots varied from

all-CG, to close-ups of the live-action pi-

lot with other planes visible outside the

window, to shots of the live-action footage

extended with CG into a complete plane.

Animators incorporated cockpits tracked

from the live-action plate into the anima-

tion; canopies and visors were added later.

To help director Rob Cohen give audiences the sensation of fl ying, a crew of 200 artists at

Digital Domain created all-CG planes and terrains for 658 shots in the fi lm Stealth.

Imag

es © 2005 C

olu

mb

ia Pictures.

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. . . . Film

Integrating the live-action cockpit

with the digital plane was not always

straightforward. Often, the animators

had to tone down the movement cap-

tured on the greenscreen stage. “We had

20 shots where the gimbal was pitching

so much that when we added the 70-foot-

long plane, it looked like a bucking bron-

co in the sky,” says Port. “So we animated

the plane and then projected the original

photography onto the animated plane.”

Refl ections made the CG visors and

canopies necessary. Visors worn on stage

refl ected that environment, not the fi lm’s

high-fl ying clouds, and those refl ections

were diffi cult to remove; the CG canopies

had to refl ect moving clouds and the sun.

To add realism, the crew aged the cano-

pies with dirt and minute scratches. And

then, they added sun dogs, the little re-

fl ections that radiate in circles when a

sun highlight hits the scratches.

Procedural animation helped move

the fl aps on the airplanes, but animators

did the rest, setting the speed—500, 1000,

even 5000 miles per hour—and keyfram-

ing the action in Maya using aerial pho-

tography for reference. “I’ve been a pilot

for 30 years. I was riding herd on each

shot,” says Hynek.

A Playground of Clouds

One of the key instructions from Cohen

was to place the planes in an environ-

ment where speed became palpable, but

when the planes fl y in a clear, blue sky,

there’s no way to tell how fast they’re

traveling. That meant the crew needed to

fi ll the sky with clouds in the foreground,

mid-ground, and background.

“Cohen’s direction to the animators

was to take advantage of the 3D space

they lived in,” says Port. “He wanted to

get away from the idea that the action

was on a 2D plane in space. So, we cre-

ated a playground of clouds in which the

action took place.” In addition, the crew

created rapidly moving, less-detailed va-

por that interacted with the fuselage and

wings, and streamed into the intakes.

For this, the group used Digital

Domain’s Academy Award-winning Storm

software, creating a library of different

types of clouds for all the environments

in which the planes travel throughout the

fi lm. Houdini provides Storm’s interface;

Digital Domain’s Voxel B, the rendering.

“Storm simulates a true volume and ba-

sically generates 3D volumetric noise,”

explains Port. The rendering is effi cient

because the simulation is stored in volu-

metric buffers and represented internal-

ly on cards that always face the camera.

“We can put lights in there and have it

backlit,” says Port, “and have full control

of the 3D noise.”

Storm also helped the crew put a cir-

cle of fl ames in the sky. At one point, EDI,

acting like a rebellious teenager, decides

to keep the Talon test pilots from refuel-

ing at a dirigible refueling station 50,000

feet in the air. It blasts off one of the fuel

hoses, and fuel spews out into a doughnut-

shaped cloud that EDI then sets on fi re.

Because the pilot’s visor and the airplane’s canopy would have refl ected the equipment on

the bluescreen stage, they were always digital, as is the plane fl ying nearby in this shot.

Without visual cues, it would have been impossible to tell how fast the planes were fl ying. So Digital Domain used a combination of its

volumetric Storm software and Voxel B renderer to create a playground of CG clouds for the digital airplanes to speed through.

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Film. . . .

The crew created both the fuel cloud

and the fi re with Storm. “We used the

density fi eld of the fuel cloud to drive the

animation of the fi re almost like a fuse,”

says Port. The fi re colors were based on

time and density, and generated from a

color lookup table. Because they used

Storm for both types of imagery, the

crew rendered the two simulations to-

gether rather than combining separate

passes in compositing.

Earth Movers

Proprietary software under de-

velopment for two years at Digital

Domain generated the ground

beneath the planes and the at-

mosphere above. With the result,

named EnGen, for Environment

Generator, the crew could view

the Earth from space and zoom down to

a rock on the ground. On the ground, the

terrain could include caves, rocks, roads,

trees, snow, boulders, mountains, rivers,

and so forth.

“It’s not just a simple height displace-

ment,” Port points out. Shadows are soft

when far away and hard when close, and

the color of the atmosphere changes

based on the sun and the viewing angle.

To create terrain for a location in

Stealth, the crew

often started with

publicly available 3D topographic data

and photographs of the location where

the action takes place. Working in Maya,

the team modeled a rough landscape in

3D, through which the director could fl y

a camera. Then, the group moved direc-

tor-approved low-res meshes into EnGen.

Within the software, the crew added

detail using nodes, sometimes as many as

1300 for a location. “We could get down

to the behavior and the look of individu-

al rocks and slopes,” says Port. “There’s

even a node that makes nodes: Give it

a curve, and it automatically creates a

berm or maybe a road.” Artists could

place rocks, create snow and vegetation

using fractal noise patterns, or project a

painting onto the terrain.

A proprietary renderer wrangled the

rendering job, changing the level of de-

tail based on airspeed. The render-

er dropped to half-resolution for terrain

beneath planes moving so fast that the

ground below was blurred. Also, because

the terrains were so huge and contained

With its new EnGen terrain tools, Digital Domain altered the 3D models from topographic data, added such elements as rocks, caves, and

rivers in levels of detail, cast shadows, and colored the atmosphere.

For the huge environments,

a proprietary renderer

automatically altered level

of detail based on the airspeed,

and divided each rendering job

into chunks that were later

assembled into fi nal frames.

Since Digital Domain used its Storm software to create the blackish fuel cloud and the fi re,

the two simulations could be rendered together. Time and density determined the colors.

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. . . . Film

so many elements, the renderer divided

each job into chunks that it assembled

into fi nal frames, and generated individ-

ual atmosphere and terrain passes for

the compositors.

Together Again

For compositing, Digital Domain uses

its Nuke software, and for this fi lm, the

studio pushed the program in new ways.

“We actually used Nuke as a shader,” says

Bryan Grill, compositing supervisor.

Grill explains that lighters created the

underlying airplane look by generating 16

rendered passes with different lighting ef-

fects. “These passes were control

images, and were used as shaders,”

he says. “We called them ‘sham-

posites,’ for shader-composites.”

The technical crew combined

the 16 passes into fi ve layers and

passed them on to the compositors.

Compositors manipulating these

layers controlled the color, refl ec-

tivity, and other lighting effects.

“It takes hours to re-render

something,” says Grill. “But with

these control images, we had the

latitude to change the look.” This

was important because most

of the environments in the 658

shots were all-CG, and the aver-

age shot contained 50 elements—

the visors, canopies, terrain,

clouds, planes, engine effects, live-action

elements, and so forth.

“We couldn’t wait until all the envi-

ronments were done to render the planes,”

notes Grill. By making the lighting pipe-

line interactive, the crew could begin

working on the shots and then later cor-

rect the airplanes’ look as clouds fi lled

the backgrounds. “We might have had

to re-render one or two passes, but never

the whole plane,” he says.

Compositors built the shots by starting

with the terrain, giving the group its sun,

sky, and ground. Each shot had as many

as four different terrains depending on

the airplanes’ altitudes. When the planes

were high enough, the crew generated the

terrain as a “pan and tile” background,

more like a matte painting than a 3D mod-

el. When the camera moved closer to the

ground, the terrain became fully 3D.

“We had Web pages set up so we knew

what the altitude was for each shot,” Grill

says. “We could press a button in Nuke,

and the world would pop down where we

wanted it to be.”

Next, the compositors layered in the

clouds, using live-action shots of clouds

for only around fi ve percent; the rest were

synthetic. Lastly, they inserted the air-

planes, canopies, visors, and such fl ying

effects as jet wash, heat exhaust, wing-tip

vortices, and cloud vapor. Each effect ar-

rived with 20 layers of controls, enabling

the compositors to modify the look of the

effects in much the same way that they

changed the appearance of the plane.

Photoreal

The compositors’ challenge was blend-

ing the CG elements—background, sky,

clouds, airplanes, effects, and live-action

elements—into scenes that looked like

they were fi lmed as opposed to a cine-

ma-sized video game. To help everyone

on the crew see what the elements would

look like when projected in theaters, the

studio created a viewer in Nuke that ap-

plied the color curves used in fi lm.

“Everyone was looking at what the

output should be like through the pro-

cess,” says Grill. “For us, this has been

a long time coming.” Earlier, he explains,

CG artists might have looked at a photo-

graph, looked on-screen at a rendered el-

ement, and when they matched, handed

the element to the compositing team. By

popping the element into the Nuke view-

er, the CG artist saw what the compositor

would work with instead.

“We were creating pictures from scratch,”

Grill says, “and when you’re producing ev-

ery element of a picture, you have control

over every part. But that’s when things

start looking unreal. We had to constantly

educate people about photographic imag-

es—what the sky would look like if we ex-

posed for the plane, what the plane would

look like if we exposed for the sky or the

clouds. We had all this in play.”

In this fi lm, the action is often the sto-

ry, and the visual effects are often the

cinematography. “It takes a real disci-

pline to have all this power and not abuse

it,” Grill says.

And for the people who see this movie

and have ridden in the pilot’s seat, surely

that’s a discipline they will want all un-

manned weapons to learn as well.

Barbara Robertson is an award-winning

journalist and a contributing editor for

Computer Graphics World. She can be

reached at [email protected].

To design three Talon stealth fi ghters and EDI, the Extreme Deep Invader, the artists called on engineers

from Northrop Grumman, and then added a sexy Hollywood look to the planes.

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Produced in conjunction with

■ STORAGE PROPELS THE CREATIVE PROCESS

■ SHARED FILE SYSTEMS ENHANCE POSTPRODUCTION

■ STORAGE REQUIREMENTS FOR DIGITAL CONTENT

S P E C I A L S E C T I O N

magazine

Advanced storage systems and storage networking architectures

enhance work fl ow at digital content creation studios

Storage in the Studio

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S P E C I A L S E C T I O N S T O R A G E I N T H E S T U D I O


B Y M I C H E L E H O P E

For many digital entertainment studios,

storage-centric IT networks are the in-

visible backbone of the creative pipeline.

A vital work fl ow component that can

help or hinder the efforts of artists and

creators who are archiving, accessing,

and sharing data for high-profi le fi lm,

TV, DVD, and video projects, storage so-

lutions can be easily adapted to meet the

needs of any creative environment.

With high-capacity storage more af-

fordable than ever before—6TB of net-

worked storage can be purchased for ap-

proximately $14,000—studios are rapidly

moving toward a more streamlined, all-

digital work fl ow that relies on centrally

accessible, shared disk storage systems to

perform all facets of work in progress, in-

cluding content creation, rendering, edit-

ing, color correction, and review. But the

digital approach is not for everyone. Some

studios still output to digital videotape, re-

ingesting digital video footage back to disk

for further editing.

“Studios really want to get out of the

world of videotape,” says Tom Shearer,

president and CEO of Los Angeles-based

Talon Data Systems, a systems integrator

that serves the broadcast and entertain-

ment industries. “Everybody is pushing

hard to come up with a work fl ow that

lets them stay on disk throughout the

production cycle.”

With an increased interest in central-

ized, networked storage technologies, such

as network-attached storage (NAS), storage

area networks (SANs), or a combination of

the two architectures, shared fi le systems

make it easier to distribute the same fi les

among multiple users simultaneously.

Understand Your Options

Deciding on the right storage technol-

ogy for production tasks can be a com-

plex process. Studios and postproduction

houses today can choose from a wide

variety of NAS and SAN solutions, as

well as shared fi le systems from vendors

such as ADIC, Isilon, Network Appliance,

Panasas, Pillar Data Systems, SGI, and

others. Tiger Technology also offers a

MetaSAN, which emulates a shared fi le

system and works in both Fibre Channel

and iSCSI SANs.

Studios must also choose from a wide

range of disk-drive technologies that

include both high-performance Fibre

Channel drives and lower-cost, higher-

capacity Serial ATA (SATA) drives.

File-based NAS systems are best

suited for projects with many small,

1MB frames, like short-form work with

visual effects, compositing, or frame-by-

frame rendering. In contrast, block-based

SANs work well when you need to quick-

ly move large segments of non-sequential,

uncompressed data, or perform real-time

writing or playback from disk.

To meet evolving storage require-

ments, it’s now common for studios to

have a combination of technologies, such

as SAN and NAS, as well as Fibre Channel

and SATA disk drives. “Often, studios

should also have some type of shared fi le

system,” says Shearer.

A Centralized Plan

In the digital entertainment industry,

success is viewed by how well artists can

focus on what they do best: creating and

editing content, as opposed to waiting for

fi les to open, frames to render, or lengthy

data transfers to complete. Sometimes,

the right storage technology for studios

depends on how well it integrates with

existing processes.

At Reel FX Creative Studios, a Dallas-

based creative group that focuses on

fi lm, DVD, and TV projects, including

commercials such as “JCPenney Back to

School,” creating a successful marriage

of technology and process is what the

company’s executive vice president Dale

Carman calls “working creative at the

speed of thought.”

To accommodate exponential growth

and expansion of its services, Reel FX

upgraded its storage from an initial SGI

Infi niteStorage NAS 2000 system to what

Carman estimates is now about 24TB of

storage capacity on a SAN running SGI’s

CXFS shared fi le system.

Reel FX’s primary reason for the

upgrade was to centralize its storage

resources and provide seamless, simulta-

neous access to the same data by multiple

users. “What it came down to was fi nd-

ing something with enough horsepower,”

explains Carman. “We have 150 people

Digital entertainment and effects studios find innovative

storage solutions for digital content creation

Storage Propels the Creative Process

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accessing the data, plus 400 processors

on a renderfarm accessing the data. The

typical way to do that is to segment it out

with different servers and storage for dif-

ferent users, but then you run into all

sorts of management problems.”

The SGI-based SAN and CXFS shared

fi le system solved Reel FX’s performance,

content sharing, and storage management

issues, and SGI’s guaranteed rate I/O, or

GRIO, feature allows the studio to dedicate

I/O to specifi c tasks, such as rendering.

Divide and Conquer

India-based Pentamedia Graphics Ltd.

focuses on feature fi lms, visual effects,

and animation features such as The

Legend of Buddha, Ali Baba, and Son of

Alladin. With four production groups—

3D modeling and animation, 3D render-

ing, special effects, and digital editing

and mixing—all delivering a wide array

of digital content, Pentamedia moved

away from a centralized storage network

to create a segmented solution based on

the individual needs of the groups.

Pentamedia assigned each of four

5.6TB Nexsan ATABoy2 storage systems to

its own subnetwork (one per production

group), using either 100Mb/sec Gigabit

Ethernet or Fibre Channel connections.

According to Riyaz Sheik, general manag-

er of Pentamedia’s animation and produc-

tion unit, this type of arrangement has

allowed his teams to avoid much of the

resource contention and throughput

issues experienced by some other studios.

“To make the pipeline work better [and

to avoid previous bottleneck problems],

we had to break production groups and

networks into a lot of subnetworks,” ex-

plains Sheik.

The Nexsan storage subsystems, which

are based on ATA disk drives, were se-

lected for a number of reasons, including

pricing, support, and reliability, the latter

of which has been tested under extreme

conditions. “These products can work in

any conditions, from freezing tempera-

tures to hot temperatures and air-condi-

tioning failures,” says Sheik. Because of

this, Pentamedia plans to add up to 20TB

to its existing 22TB-plus Nexsan storage.

All About Speed

Digital Dimension, based in Montreal,

knows what it’s like to almost “top

out” your storage. The 3D animation,

motion graphics, and visual effects stu-

dio recently had to juggle data storage

for two projects simultaneously: Zathura,

a full-length animated feature, and

Magnifi cent Desolation, a 3D stereoscop-

ic IMAX fi lm. Digital Dimension also has

been recently involved in other high-pro-

fi le fi lms, including Monster-In-Law and

Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Joe Boswell, a lead systems admin-

istrator for the studio, claims that work

for Zathura alone required almost 7TB of

storage space to accommodate about 200

shots, many of them miniatures. With

each shot consisting of 100 frames, 30 lay-

ers to a frame, at standard 2K resolution of

12MB per frame, the storage requirements

for the project added up rapidly.

For Magnifi cent Desolation, the stu-

dio had to work with two separate plates

(from two projectors shooting slightly off-

set for stereo), where each 6K frame takes

up about 100MB of storage, multiplied by

two. As the two projects came together

earlier this year, the company anticipat-

ed peak usage and quickly moved to the

Isilon storage system and Isilon’s OneFS

shared fi le system.

To date, Boswell reports that the stu-

dio has been pleased with the system’s

speed, as well as the

low cost and reliabil-

ity of the SATA drives

compared to the more-

expensive Fibre Channel

components. The studio

stores its content on ap-

proximately 16TB of disk

capacity provided by an

Isilon IQ 1920 clustered

storage system that in-

cludes 160GB SATA disk

drives.

The studio’s 2D ren-

dering pipeline requires

Reel FX Creative Studios uses an SGI-based SAN and a CXFS shared fi le system to facilitate

work on commercials such as “JCPenney Back to School.” In this multiple-element sequence

for DDB-Chicago, the character’s body, dressed in an articulated fat suit that Reel FX designed,

was created by shooting a person against greenscreen.

Pentamedia Graphics used four Nexsan ATABoy2 storage systems

in the creation of Son of Alladin.

© P

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0509cgw_30 300509cgw_30 30 8/19/05 2:05:48 PM8/19/05 2:05:48 PM

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the most bandwidth. “Our 2D render

nodes work on shots the artists have set

up and sent to render. The render nodes

are going pretty much all day and all

night, pulling frames from, and writ-

ing frames to, the Isilon system all the

time,” says Boswell, noting that Isilon’s

clustered design provides automatic node

balancing for clients across each of the

system’s eight 2TB nodes.

“We can have eight nodes all pushing

about 95MB/sec, with an aggregate of more

than 700MB/sec. I’ve tested it up to 400MB/

sec, where I was actually overrunning

our switch trunks, which was phenome-

nal.” Isilon’s storage servers use high-speed

Infi niBand interconnects.

Storage performance has also im-

proved. The NAS array the studio previ-

ously used would often slow to a crawl,

creating headaches for the creative team.

“It used to get so bogged down that peo-

ple couldn’t browse directories,” says

Boswell. “There would be days when

we’d have to send people

home or ask artists to de-

lete stuff. Before we in-

stalled the Isilon systems,

storage was always the

bottleneck.”

The Faster, the Better

Meteor Studios, a visual ef-

fects studio with offi ces in

Montreal and Los Angeles,

knows what it’s like to have to send peo-

ple home, or split artists into two shifts,

to better manage the resource-contention

issues that arise when a storage system

is close to capacity and working over-

time to process thousands of read/write

requests per second.

Meteor, which is currently in produc-

tion with the feature Alien Planet, per-

formed complex visual effects work on one

of the longest sequences in the Fantastic

Four fi lm. This process involved more

than 100 artists working on 240 shots de-

picting just three to four seconds in the

Brooklyn Bridge sequence of the fi lm.

With this much digital content to manage,

and more on the way, Meteor began to

explore its storage system options.

The requirements of the storage sys-

tem were straightforward: It had to be

able to handle very high I/O rates while

allowing for rapid expansion in capac-

ity. The studio considered storage sys-

tems from vendors such as BlueArc,

Isilon, Maximum Throughput, SGI, and

Terrascale before opting for BlueArc’s

Titan Storage System.

Jami Levesque, Meteor’s director

of technology, likes the Titan Storage

System’s modular design, which allows

the studio to grow quickly, adding band-

width and capacity as needed, at a rela-

tively low cost.

The ability to handle increased per-

formance was another factor. During

one job at Meteor, the Titan storage serv-

er clocked 140,000 I/Os per second—

well above the studio’s typical peak

throughput rate of 45,000 to 50,000 I/Os

per second. Currently, the studio’s Titan

system includes more than 7TB of capac-

ity on Fibre Channel disk drives and al-

most 3TB on SATA disk drives.

Video Editing Rebels

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network

(MPBN), a nonprofi t network that produc-

es a number of TV shows, including the

award-winning Quest series, has learned

a thing or two about storage in its efforts

To handle complex visual

effects work, Meteor

Studios upgraded to a

BlueArc Titan Storage

System, which features

very high I/O rates and

more than 7TB of capacity

on Fibre Channel disk

drives and approximately

3TB on SATA drives.

Digital Dimension relied on Isilon’s IQ 1920 clustered storage system and OneFS shared fi le

system to help develop this mountain-climbing scene from the movie Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

This 2D composite of actress Kerry Washington was derived from two separate plates: one of

the actress against a bluescreen and another with the background plate of the mountain face.

Intricate rotoscoping work was also performed to show the wind against Washington’s bandana.

© 2005, 20th C

entu

ry Fox Film

Co

rp., M

r. and

Mrs. Sm

ith. Im

ages co

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ital Dim

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n.

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B Y T H O M A S C O U G H L I N

Driven by the demand for image quality

in theaters and homes, feature-fi lm res-

olutions are on an upward trend. In the

high-end feature-fi lm market, 2K resolu-

tion is common, and 4K resolution is gain-

ing ground. With increasing resolution

and storage demands, new solutions will

be needed to store and move those assets

throughout the studio and into theaters

and the home entertainment market.

Nearly all feature-fi lm production is

still captured on fi lm and must be con-

verted to a digital format with a fi lm scan-

ner before postproduction begins. Once

the fi lm is ready for distribution, the digi-

tal content must be copied back to fi lm.

Nonlinear Editing and Effects

Almost all content creators now use non-

linear editing of digitized content, and

most special effects today are done with

digital techniques. This streamlines the

editing process, resulting in faster editing

at a lower cost.

Nonlinear editing is generally done

with uncompressed or slightly compressed

content, since heavy compression increas-

es the overhead of editing and can cause

timing problems. For a large facility with

several editing chairs, shared network

storage allows the local disk storage to be

kept at about 30 minutes per station.

Storage networking has been de-

creasing in price due to the maturity of

Fibre Channel SAN components and the

growing use of iSCSI SANs and network-

attached storage (NAS).

The high-end segment of the nonlin-

ear editing market requires expensive

components to support bandwidth and

latency requirements for 2K and 4K res-

olution. RAM is often used as a buffer

in various parts of nonlinear editing sys-

Higher-resolution content is driving the need for huge

storage capacities and high-speed bandwidth

Storage Requirements for Digital Content

to transform itself into a videotape-free op-

eration. The transformation often required

a video editor to spend up to 10 hours a

week archiving video footage out to tape,

or waiting to re-ingest a tape at anoth-

er station before continuing. Editors at the

station’s Bangor and Lewiston locations of-

ten used “sneakernet” to physically shuttle

tapes between sites in order to share work.

According to MPBN systems integra-

tor Kevin Pazera, the station’s use of Avid

editing stations with non-shareable, di-

rect-attached storage (DAS) creates in-

effi ciencies at the network. As a result,

the economically minded nonprofi t sta-

tion is moving away from proprietary

systems with DAS to a more “open” SAN

confi guration.

MPBN plans to phase in Apple Mac

G5s running Final Cut Pro at both its fa-

cilities. For back-end storage, MPBN will

be using 30TB of storage capacity on two

Fibre Channel SANs from Compellent

(one in Bangor and one in Lewiston). The

plan is to replicate data asynchronously

between the two sites.

According to Pazera, the Compellent

SAN solution will make a huge differ-

ence for video editors, not to mention

the station’s other business units whose

storage needs will also be served by the

SAN. MPBN is using Tiger Technology’s

MetaSAN to handle resource contention

issues. It allows each editing workstation

to bypass the server, connecting directly

to the 2GB/sec Fibre Channel SAN.

Now, MPBN editors can keep all

the raw footage for each story on disk

and work on the footage from any edit-

ing workstation. They can also do away

with the sneakernet and, instead, directly

access fi les on the SANs.

“This will be great for our editors

because we want them to be editing

all the time and not moving data back

and forth,” says Pazera. And in the end,

that’s the ultimate sign that a studio’s

storage is doing its job.

Michele Hope is a freelance writer and can be

reached at [email protected].

Video editors and producers at the Maine

Public Broadcasting Network use two

Compellent SANs at two locations to store

raw and working footage used to create lo-

cal shows like the award-winning science

and nature series Quest.

Imag

e cou

rtesy Main

e Pub

lic Bro

adcastin

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ork.

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tems to help reduce the impact of system

latencies.

Compositing and special effects are

increasingly a staple of fi lms and other

digital content. Demand for more sophis-

ticated results will increase storage re-

quirements (capacity and performance).

Special effects are often done with clus-

tered computers connected to storage

networks. These are generally based on

open computer architectures with propri-

etary data management software.

Archiving

Preserving new digital content and con-

verting historical analog content to digi-

tal form will be the single largest driver of

digital storage capacity. Much of the stor-

age for archiving will be on removable me-

dia such as tape and optical disks that can

be put on a shelf or in a library until need-

ed. Digital preservation allows content to

be available for research and distribution.

Many major digital conversion and

preservation efforts are under way world-

wide. For example, there are very large

libraries of material being converted to

digital archives, such as the 100,000-hour

CNN library. Other major networks such

as CBS and Sony/Columbia are also digi-

tally archiving materials; CBS, has more

than 1,045,000 tapes and 150,000,000 feet

of fi lm, and Sony/Columbia’ has 600,000-

plus reels and tapes to convert.

One of the biggest issues for archiving

is the obsolescence of the storage media

technology. Tapes or optical disks get out-

dated, and if the digital content that they

contain is not transferred to new media,

it will be diffi cult to preserve, cannot be

easily read, and likely will be lost.

As the size of the digital archive increas-

es, it will become more diffi cult to transfer

digital content fast enough to preserve that

content. A serious issue in the future will

be having suffi cient bandwidth available

to convert from old media to new media.

Archiving will not be a static or occasion-

al process. Format conversion of large data

stores may eventually require almost con-

tinuous transfer operations. When the ar-

chive load becomes too large, choices will

have to be made about which content to

transfer and preserve on the new format.

Storage Outlook

Between 2004 and 2010, analysts expect

a 900-fold increase in the required digi-

tal storage capacity for the digital cre-

ation and distribution markets. With the

growth in storage demand for high-resolu-

tion content and the ease with which digi-

tal footage can be acquired, digital storage

demands for content acquisition should

match those for archiving and preserva-

tion by 2010. Analysts also expect that

extensive digital conversion projects will

occur in the intervening period.

In 2004, analysts estimate that 60 per-

cent of the total storage media shipped for

digital entertainment content was on tape,

with 40 percent on optical disks.

By 2010, the change in segment de-

mand will also change the mix in digi-

tal storage media, and tape usage and

optical disks should decrease to 40 per-

cent and 55 percent, respectively, with

hard disk drives comprising a 4 percent

market share.

Thomas Coughlin is president of Coughlin

Associates, a data storage consulting fi rm.

Advanced file systems solve some problems associated

with DI environments and post work flow inefficiencies

Shared File Systems for Digital Postproduction

B Y S A Q I B J A N G

As the world evolves into an infi nitely

digital universe, fi lm studios are break-

ing free of traditional processes and em-

bracing digital intermediates (DIs) to in-

crease effi ciency and reduce costs. DIs

give studios greater creative freedom, in-

crease effi ciency, and reduce costs by re-

placing fi lm labs with digital alternatives

that can match, or supersede, the quality

of a fi lm intermediate.

DI work is performed at high-defi ni-

tion, 2K, and 4K resolutions; the larger the

fi le size, the costlier the image. An uncom-

pressed HD image, for example, requires

about 8MB of data, while a 2K image re-

quires approximately 12MB of data per 10-

bit log RGB frame. A 4K image requires

about 48MB of data, quadrupling storage

and networking bandwidth requirements.

The main task of a DI infrastructure

is to move digital fi lm images between

various equipment in a DI facility. As

high-resolution image fi les predominate,

fi lm sequences require extremely large

amounts of data, from 200MB to 1.2GB for

0509cgw_34 340509cgw_34 34 8/19/05 2:06:18 PM8/19/05 2:06:18 PM

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WARNING TO I.T. PROFESSIONALS:Do not let co-workers discover how reliable, fast

and effortless your Isilon Clustered Storage system is.

They’ll just load you up with a bunch more work.

Isilon Clustered Storage makes managing, storing and accessing digital

content and unstructured data a snap. Set up your system within minutes, and expand your storage and

performance on the fly in less than 60 seconds—all with no extra staff. Contact us for more information.

Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone.

1-877-2-ISILON | www.isilon.com Intelligent Clustered Storage

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�

Time



every second (24 fi lm frames). A DI facil-

ity is typically forced to use several types

of data networking technology, applied

to different areas, to achieve an effi cient

work fl ow to avoid bottlenecks.

To maintain this performance lev-

el, in addition to sophisticated network-

ing technology, applications and storage

systems must continuously handle data

at the required rate and handle the de-

mands on the network by other users.

Therefore, choosing the correct infra-

structure hardware and software compo-

nents and using networking technology

advantageously are imperative.

Storage area networks (SANs) with

dedicated Fibre Channel networking are

the primary method for providing high-

performance shared storage in DI envi-

ronments. That’s because SANs provide

applications with direct access to fi les

and provide faster access to large fi les. A

shared fi le system is a critical component

of a DI SAN infrastructure. Shared fi le sys-

tems are cross-platform software packag-

es that support clients and applications on

different operating systems to access and

share the same storage.

By providing a single, centralized point

of control for managing DI fi les and data-

bases, shared fi le systems can simplify

administration, reduce costs, and allow ad-

ministrators to manage volumes, content

replication, and point-in-time copies from

the network. This capability provides a

single point of control and management

across multiple storage subsystems.

Shared fi le systems can accommodate

both SAN and Gigabit Ethernet-based net-

work-attached storage (NAS) clients side

by side, to share and transfer content.

Although NAS does not perform as well as

SAN, it is easier to scale and manage, and

is often used for lower-resolution projects.

Metadata servers are required to sup-

port the real-time demands of media ap-

plications using shared fi le systems. In

large concurrent postproduction facilities,

for example, thousands of fi le requests for

video and audio fi les come from each ap-

plication. In DI applications, requests

could number as many as 24 fi le re-

quests per second per user. Metadata

servers and the networks that support

shared fi le systems must be able to sus-

tain these access demands. Out-of-band

metadata networks can provide a signifi -

Located in Hollywood, EFilm LLC is a cutting-edge digital fi lm laboratory that has

been breaking new ground in the DI arena since it created the world’s fi rst 100

percent, full 2K digitally mastered feature-length fi lm in 2001—Paramount Pictures’

When We Were Soldiers, directed by Mel Gibson. EFilm’s most recent digital mas-

tering breakthrough was the work on Spider-Man 2, which was the world’s fi rst 4K,

high-defi nition, digitally mastered feature fi lm.

EFilm uses an SGI CXFS-based environment to create digital intermediates that

include high-resolution scanning, color correction, laser fi lm recording, and video

mastering to create high-resolution digital distribution masters for fi lm output, digi-

tal cinema releases, and home video and DVD.

EFilm’s SGI CXFS environment is spread across six color-timing rooms and serves

approximately 100 clients using a Fibre Channel SAN and Gigabit Ethernet LAN with

more than 200TB of storage spread over multiple SGI TP9400 Fibre Channel and

TP9500 Serial ATA storage arrays.

In addition to content on the SANs, EFilm has 20TB to 30TB of local storage distrib-

uted across fi ve color-timing rooms. Cinematographers view projected, digital 1K copies

of movie images and work with colorists in these rooms to correct each fi lm sequence

digitally. Images are typically at 2K and 4K resolutions.

Rounding out the confi guration are four SGI 3800 servers with 16 processors

each, and approximately 5TB of directly attached Fibre Channel storage in each

color-timing room. When a fi lm is being scanned into EFilm’s systems, the studio

uses SGI’s CXFS shared fi le system software to transfer 1K copies of each frame from

the SAN to local storage in one of the color-timing rooms. Final reviews are done at

2K resolution before the fi nal fi lm output.

EFilm uses its CXFS SAN for both 1K and 2K playback in its color-timing rooms.

However, because of other loads placed on the SAN, EFilm chose to implement both

locally attached storage and SAN storage for 100 percent reliable real-time 1K and

2K playback—a must for any DI environment.

Over the next two years, EFilm anticipates adding many color-timing bays, each

supporting 2K- and 4K-resolution editing. This expansion will place an even greater de-

mand on the company’s SAN performance and storage capacity requirements. One

option EFilm is considering is to transfer to an infrastructure that allows editors and

colorists in each color-coding bay to access SAN-based 2K- and 4K-resolution content

directly through SGI’s guaranteed bandwidth product.

EFilm Masters DI

��

Sequential file transfer process

DVTR

Individualstorage

DVTR DVTR DVTR DVTR

Capture Color correctionand grading

Dust andnoise removal

Editing andcompositing

Effects andpainting

��



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©2005 BlueArc Corporation. All rights reserved. The BlueArc logo is a registered trademark of BlueArc Corporation.

Accelerate the Digital World

M I N D

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M E D I A

Performance is critical in the digital world. To be productive, your data has to move into action.

• SPEED rendering and compositing

• REDUCE artist wait times

• ENHANCE artistic quality and effects

• SHORTEN production schedules

• MINIMIZE dropped frames or failed renders

• INCREASE creative collaboration

BlueArc is a world leader in high performance network storage. With a unique architecture, BlueArc solutions deliver tiered storagein a single integrated, virtualized storage pool that scales up to 256 terabytes in a single file system.

Set your data in motion. Call 866.864.1040 or visit BlueArc.com today.

From mind, to machine, to media, and back again.

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�



cant advantage over in-band servers that

share the same network link as the media

content because metadata and content

are not sharing the same bandwidth.

In a hardware-based RAID storage sys-

tem, as the number of concurrent users in-

creases, the stripe group must be increased

to meet the total bandwidth demand and

not drop frames. High-resolution fi les re-

quire signifi cant increases in bandwidth for

each additional user, forcing RAID expan-

sion. As stripe groups increase, it becomes

increasingly diffi cult to maintain data syn-

chronization, calculate parity, drive ports,

and maintain data integrity.

When concurrent high-resolution con-

tent users must rely on large fi le-based

RAID arrays and large network switch-

es, performance is diffi cult to maintain,

and infrastructure problems arise. Often,

when multiple users request the same

content within a stripe group, available

bandwidth is reduced, variable latencies

are created, and the fi le system cannot de-

liver frame content accurately. If a RAID

storage system becomes more than 50

percent full, content data fragments over

time, storage performance drops, and us-

ers lose bandwidth. These infrastructure

issues must be resolved before users can

take full advantage of shared fi le systems

in a high-resolution digital environment.

Future Directions

Shared fi le systems generally address the col-

laboration requirements of DI environments.

Using shared fi le systems lets multiple us-

ers access DI content without time-consum-

ing fi le transfers and data corruption. Shared

fi le systems are good for sharing DI content,

but several infrastructure challenges still

remain, such as the high performance

and reliable delivery of DI data, which

will be the focus of next-generation DI

storage networking infrastructures.

At the root of these emerging chal-

lenges is the requirement for end-to-end

content delivery, from storage to DI appli-

cation memory. This requirement means

that image frames must be delivered at

precisely controlled intervals—24 frames

per second in the case of digital fi lm. If de-

livery is not precisely controlled, the ap-

plication can drop frames

or have buffer overfl ow.

The fundamental

problem with existing

storage architectures de-

ployed in DI environ-

ments is that the storage

and delivery of digital

video and fi lm images are tightly cou-

pled. To deliver 1.2GB/sec, every segment

of the data path, from the storage

through the data link, to the end work-

station adapter, and fi nally to the appli-

cation receiving buffers, must meet the

necessary quality of delivery require-

ment at the same 1.2GB/sec throughput.

The weakest link in the data

path —most likely the storage system—

determines overall system performance.

Storage systems today are based on con-

ventional disk drives, and the I/O perfor-

mance is closely related to the rotational

speed of the disk platter. Despite the rapid

increase in disk drive capacity and reduc-

tion in costs, the overall I/O performance

on disk drives has not been improving at

the same rate as improvements in capac-

ity and density. Also, disk drive-based

storage systems often suffer performance

degradation when multiple read/write

requests are applied to data blocks concur-

rently, resulting in rapid thrashing of the

drive’s read/write actuators. Performance

is reduced by as much as 90 percent when

large numbers of concurrent accesses hit

the storage systems.

Saqib Jang is founder and principal at

Margalla Communications, a Woodside,

CA-based fi rm focusing on the storage and

server networking markets.

Rainmaker is a world-class postproduction and visual effects company based in Vancouver, BC, that has

captured the attention of audiences worldwide with thousands of visual effects in commercial, episodic,

telefi lm, and feature-fi lm projects. The studio has received many accolades, including Emmy nominations

in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001, and a 2002 Leo Award for Best Visual Effects in a Dramatic Series.

Employing more than 150 operators, editors, colorists, and coordinators for digital video postproduc-

tion projects, Rainmaker offers its clients laboratory, telecine, digital postproduction, HDTV, visual effects,

and new media services. With all that data moving in and out of the studio, a reliable storage solution is

a critical component of the creative pipeline.

Rainmaker’s ADIC StorNext environment is spread across 29 Microsoft Windows 2000 systems and

six SGI Origin servers connected via a Fibre Channel SAN to more than 4TB of media storage capacity.

Four of the Windows 2000 servers and one SGI Origin200 server have Alacritech Gigabit Ethernet

TCP/IP offl oad engine adapters that act as “SAN routers.” This allows more than 100 non-Fibre Channel-

equipped workstations and rendering nodes to easily access SAN-based DI content.

Rainmaker’s team of 3D and 2D artists work with various fi le formats and resolutions including HD, 2K,

and 4K resolution, depending on the project at hand—creating special effects and animation for motion

pictures, television, or HDTV. With 35 artists working simultaneously, large amounts of graphic images are

constantly being pushed and pulled to and from the Fibre Channel SAN, and ADIC’s StorNext shared fi le

system plays a critical role in enabling transparent fi le sharing among Rainmaker’s artists.

Depending on media resolution and streaming performance requirements, content sharing may

also require administrative processes as well as fi le transfers from the SAN to direct-attached storage.

Specifi cally, due to SAN bandwidth constraints, informal policies serve to limit the number of concurrent

users accessing 2K or 4K content. Or, artists may transfer high-resolution content from SAN to local stor-

age during off-hours.

Rainmaker’s Push and Pull

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Portfolio

40 | Computer Graphics World SEPTEMBER 2005

Ryan

Chu

rch

Clockwise from top left:

Alderaan View (From Episode III) Created in Corel Painter 6, this image was the result of the artist looking for a more advanced architec-tural style suitable for the planet Alderaan.

Felucia Forest (From Episode III) Crafted with Corel Painter 6, this design is for a completely alien jungle. The heavy use of Painter’s Glow brush helped the artist achieve the desired level of translucency.

Spacebattle (From Episode III) This concept art establishing the look of the opening space battle was created in Corel Painter 6.

Ubervolcano (From Episode III) As an early painting, created in Corel Painter 6, the image was intended to push the meaning of the concept “volcano planet.”

When digital artist Ryan Church was a child, he liked dinosaurs and airplanes. So when

his father, an industrial designer, taught him to draw “properly” at the age of 5 or so, he

would make his own dinosaur books or would sketch things he had seen in fi lms. Today,

Church is still drawing airplanes and creatures, more so than dinosaurs, only now it is for

Lucasfi lm and its digital effects arm, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). Furthermore, he is no

longer the student, but rather the instructor, having recently taught an advanced enter-

tainment design class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

Church, in fact, honed his skills at the Art Center himself years ago, learning industrial

design and illustration. When the school offered entertainment design, “I knew I didn’t

want to be a car designer,” he says. “My heart was more into airplanes and architecture.”

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SEPTEMBER 2005 Computer Graphics World | 41

Now a senior art director at ILM, Church describes himself as a designer who illustrates.

“Painting is the best way I know of recording, actualizing, and sharing an idea.”

Trained as a traditional artist, Church applies those methods to the CG realm. “Digital

work can be noncommittal and far more experimental, and allows you to take chances.”

To create his work, he typically uses a PC running Windows XP Professional and a Wacom

tablet, and on the software side, Corel Painter IX. Most of Church’s current pieces have

been for Lucasfi lm and its ILM branch, including the design of the alien tripod machines in

War of the Worlds. Some of his more compelling art can be seen in the books, The Art of

Star Wars: Episode II and Episode III, on which he was concept design supervisor.

A sampling of Church’s work is featured on these two pages. —Karen Moltenbrey

Clockwise from top right:

Citychase (A personal image) In this piece, crafted in Corel Painter IX, Church wanted to depict speed within a vertical composition illustration that contained a heavy sense of depth. This was achieved using linear and atmospheric perspective.

Sushibar (A personal image) The painting, created in Corel Painter IX, is meant to depict a mundane moment in an extraordinary place.

Utapau Scene (From Episode III) Created in Corel Painter 6, this selec-tion was early concept art of a unique architectural style for the fi lm. While Church describes his overall illustration style as utilitarian and succinct, he notes that his designs are more refl ective of his personal style: a mix of automotive design (the form), aviation engineering (the function), and natural solutions (both form and function).

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by Michael Hurwicz

Macromedia Studio 8

I N T E R A C T I V E W E B D E V E L O P M E N T

The upgrade makes strides in video, compositing, filters, and performance

Guides, the faint green lines displayed above, make it

easy to adjust layers precisely in Dreamweaver.

Macromedia Studio 8 ships with

Flash 8 (for interactive Web ap-

plications and animation), Dream-

weaver 8 (HTML Web development),

Fireworks 8 (Web-focused image editing),

Contribute 3 (Web content editing for end-

users), and FlashPaper 2 (PDF creation). The

Flash authoring tool is the fl agship product,

but Dreamweaver also leads its market.

Two versions of Flash 8 exist: Basic and

Professional. The most exciting new fea-

tures—such as the ability to recognize the

alpha (transparency) channel in dynam-

ically loaded bitmaps (such as PNG and

TARGA fi les) and in video clips—are lim-

ited to Professional. Flash previously only

supported alpha channels in bitmaps em-

bedded in the SWF fi le.

Flash’s dynamic loading results in small-

er Flash fi les. For example, I wanted an ani-

mated penguin created in Autodesk Media

and Entertainment’s 3ds Max to waddle

along the top of text created in Flash. For

comparison, I created two Flash projects,

both with alpha. In one, the animation was

a series of PNG fi les. In the other, it was a

QuickTime fi le. The PNGs gave me a 344KB

SWF (penguin and text). The Flash video

import wizard—a nice new Flash Pro 8

feature—converted the QuickTime fi le to

a 135KB Flash Video (FLV) fi le that loaded

at runtime into a 35KB SWF containing the

text. Alpha support in video cut the total

fi le size in half. Flash encoded the FLV us-

ing the On2 VP6 codec from On2 Technolo-

gies, another important addi-

tion to Flash 8.

Another great new Flash

feature, blends are compos-

iting modes—such as dark-

en, lighten, add, and sub-

tract—that determine how colors blend

with underlying colors. Other video and

image editing programs, including Fire-

works, use blends. Using blends directly

in Flash is a big timesaver. I recommend

the Invert blend mode for a quick silhou-

ette effect. Flash Pro 8 boasts fi lters for

producing drop shadows, blurs, glows,

bevels, and color adjustments. As in past

versions, some of these fi lters are avail-

able through Flash’s Timeline Effects

menu. In Flash Pro 8, however, fi lters are

easier to combine and to continue editing

after they have been combined.

The fi lter effects do not rotate when the

elements they’re applied to revolve. If you

rotate text with a drop shadow, it’s as if the

shadow-casting light always comes from

the same direction. That’s perfect at times;

other times, I’d like to rotate a blur or drop

shadow with its object. Flash Player applies

blends, fi lters, and other effects in real time,

enabling interactive manipulation through

scripting. To prevent the processing load

from bogging down the player, Flash Play-

er can cache a bitmap representation of the

content, eliminating the need for continual

redraws. However, you force a redraw (and

defeat bitmap caching) when you scale or

rotate the content.

Fireworks has more blend

modes and fi lters than Flash. A

raft of 25 new blend modes in

Fireworks offers dizzying cre-

ative possibilities with subtle

shadings. For instance, Differ-

ence, Exclusion, and Negation

are slightly different versions of

a negative fi lm effect. When a Fireworks

PNG fi le is imported into Flash, blends

and fi lters that Flash supports can be pre-

served. This nice integration feature en-

ables you to continue modifying the effects

in Fireworks. The software’s new perspec-

tive shadows add an instant touch of 3D by

simulating shadows cast on the ground by

shapes (such as rectangles or stars), open

paths (including lines or arcs), or text. After

a shadow is created, you can apply fi lters

and blends, move, rotate, scale, or skew it.

A handy new Special Characters panel pro-

vides one-click access to 99 symbols.

I would upgrade to Dreamweaver 8 for

background fi le transfer alone. Previously,

an FTP transfer would monopolize Dream-

weaver; and a large transfer or associat-

ed problems could lock me out of Dream-

weaver for hours or force me to abandon a

transfer to do other Dreamweaver work. It

is a problem no more: I can work in Dream-

weaver while also sending fi les to an FTP.

Dreamweaver now supports zooming

in and out, which works as it does in Flash

and Fireworks. Guides, another Flash/Fire-

works feature now available in Dream-

weaver, are useful when positioning layers,

which snap to guides. It beats editing num-

bers in HTML to position layers precisely.

Finally, since FLV is my preferred video for-

mat, I appreciate Dreamweaver’s new quick-

and-easy FLV import dialog.

I highly recommend Studio 8. The

software is extremely robust and stable—

among the best I’ve seen.

Michael Hurwicz is a writer and animator.

Macromedia Studio 8

Price: $999 ($399 upgrade)

Minimum System Requirements: Windows 2000 running on an 800MHZ Intel Pentium III or equivalent or Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4 running on a 600MHZ PowerPC G3; 2GB of disk space; 256MB of RAM, and a display capable of 1024x768 resolution and 16-bit color. M

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© 2005 by M

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By George Maestri

Adobe Creative Suite 2I M A G E C R E A T I O N A N D E D I T I N G

The new version is infused with more tools, performance, and support

Adobe’s Creative Suite 2 is a col-

lection of applications geared to-

ward creative professionals, such

as those involved in creating images

for graphic design, digital imaging, print

publishing, and Web/mobile projects. The

suite should be all you’ll ever need to cre-

ate still images for any medium.

Creative Suite 2 Standard includes Pho-

toshop CS2 for image editing, Illustrator

CS2 for drawing and vector graphics, and

InDesign CS2 for page layout. The Premi-

um version adds GoLive CS2 for Web au-

thoring and Acrobat 7.0 Professional for

exchanging fi les. Without a doubt, Pho-

toshop is Adobe’s most popular applica-

tion; it’s used virtually everywhere in the

computer graphics community. The CS2

version of Adobe’s fl agship application in-

cludes a number of improvements.

Adobe’s Photoshop Camera Raw plug-

in enables photographers to manage raw

fi les from digital cameras. Photoshop CS2

adds to that capability with the ability to

remember RAW settings and apply them

to multiple fi les, making batch-processing

digital photos much easier. You can now

do common tasks (straighten, crop, ap-

ply gamma correction curves, etc.) on im-

port, for greater control. Photoshop’s new

Noise Reduction fi lter is good at smooth-

ing out rough spots in images shot in low-

light conditions. While not as robust as

some third-party noise fi lters, Adobe’s

works well for most situa-

tions. New automatic lens

correction helps adjust for

barrel distortion in less-than-

perfect lenses. Another nifty

addition is Vanishing Point,

which automates the task of

perspective correction, sav-

ing time and headaches.

3D graphics professionals will be hap-

py with Photoshop’s support for High Dy-

namic Range (HDR) 32-bit fl oating-point

images, lending to more realistic light

sources and textures in 3D animations.

In the past, creating HDR fi les was dif-

fi cult and required a jumble of custom

applications. Photoshop CS2’s Exposure

Merge utility simplifi es the process and

allows you to take a batch of photos with

bracketed exposures and combine them

into a single HDR image.

One of the best new features in Pho-

toshop CS2, Smart Objects enable you to

import images and graphics while retain-

ing a live connection to the original docu-

ment. An Illustrator graphic brought into

a Photoshop design, for example, is up-

dated in Photoshop as the original fi le is

changed in Illustrator. Further, the Illus-

trator fi le will not rasterize until you de-

cide to fl atten the image, and Smart Ob-

jects work with RAW images.

Photoshop’s File Browser has been re-

moved in favor of the broader-purpose

Bridge. It is more ro-

bust, plus it handles

fi les for all programs

in the Creative Suite.

It is useful in intel-

ligently sorting and

managing, as well as

previewing, search-

ing, and retrieving,

various fi le formats.

The one caveat: it’s a separate application

that takes up system resources.

Illustrator CS2, Adobe’s vector graph-

ics program, is used widely by graphics

designers and increasingly by video pro-

fessionals. The application is more com-

patible with Photoshop, offering support

for Photoshop fi lters. The interface now

resembles the Photoshop workspace, hav-

ing adopted the Control Palette, a context-

sensitive toolbar with options for current

editing operations. One of the nicer im-

provements is Live Trace, which turns a

scanned drawing into a vector graphic

with excellent results. Complementing it

is Live Paint, which enables you to paint

an Illustrator fi le much like you would in

Photoshop—by fl ood-fi lling regions.

One of the other upgrades is more of

a collaborative feature. Many creative

types are now using Acrobat’s PDF fi le

format as a way to communicate their

ideas to clients. Acrobat 7 Pro helps this

segment by giving the reader the ability

to add comments right in the PDF fi le.

Upgrades to the rest of the suite round

out the package to bring it up just one

more notch in terms of features and per-

formance. Anyone who needs to create,

manipulate, and manage still images

will fi nd the new tools quite useful.

George Maestri is president of Rubber-

bug, a Los Angeles-based animation

studio specializing in character animation.

Adobe Creative Suite 2

Price: $899 Standard, $1199 Premium

Minimum System Requirements: PC with Intel Xeon, Xeon Dual, Intel Centrino, or Pentium III or 4 processor running Microsoft Windows 2000 or Windows XP or a Macintosh with a PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor running Mac OS X (10.2.8 through 10.4); 320MB of RAM; 650MB (750MB on Mac) of hard-disk space; a 1024x768 display; and a 16-bit video card. A

do

be S

yst

em

s In

c.w

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.ad

ob

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mPhotoshop CS2 offers artists the ability to crop and

edit curves while importing RAW camera fi les.

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products For additional product news and information, visit w w w . c g w . c o m

events


SEPTEMBER9–13IBC2005, held in Amsterdam.

Contact International Broadcasting

Convention (IBC), 44-20-7831-6909,

www.ibc.org.

OCTOBER9–11eDIT, held in Frankfurt, Germany.

Contact 9-69-59-79-71-90,

www.edit-frankfurt.de.

NOVEMBER2–3Montreal International Game Summit

(MIGS), held in Montreal, Canada.

Contact Alliance numériQC,

www.montrealgamesummit.com.

DECEMBER7–9Digital Video Expo West, held in

Los Angeles. Contact 888-234-9476,

www.dvexpo.com.

JANUARY 9–13

Macworld Expo 2006, held in

San Francisco. Contact

www.macworldexpo.com.

IBC2005 H ITS AMSTERDAMThe editorial staff of Computer Graphics World is on hand at the 2005 International Broadcasting

Convention (IBC), at which the following product releases are being announced. Established in 1967, IBC is a technology showcase tailored to professionals involved in the creation, management, and delivery of content for the entertain-

ment industry. Each year, IBC attracts roughly 40,000 attendees hailing from 120 countries, and the industry event continues to grow in number

of both registered attendees and exhibiting companies. IBC2006 is scheduled to take place in Amsterdam on September 8 through 12.

International Broadcasting Convention; www.ibc.org

SOFTWARE

C O M P O S I T I N G

Manipulation with MonetWin • Mac • Linux • Irix Imagineer Systems

is demonstrating the latest version of its Monet

and Mokey software solutions at IBC2005.

Version 2 of the company’s Monet tracking and

compositing tool now offers professional users

in fi lm and video postproduction the ability to

export a project to Apple’s Shake composit-

ing software. The upgrade also boasts a new

Stabilize module for stabilizing elements and a

new Warper for more fl exible warping. Mokey

Version 4 sports a new AdjustTrack module

for adjusting tracking data, a new Patch mod-

ule for tracking cleanplates into shots, and

Conceal for hiding faces, undesired product

branding, and more. Both Monet and Mokey

have been upgraded with a render-to-disk

option, support for the DVS Centaurus video

I/O card, and improved performance with 2K

and 4K Cineon and DPX fi les. Being shown

for the fi rst time in its release format at IBC,

Mofex is a set of plug-ins for Apple’s Shake

that enable users to manipulate elements

being composited, such as through the appli-

cation of shadows, highlights, and tracking

marker fi lters. Monet 2, Mokey 4, and Mofex

are scheduled to begin shipping this month.

Imagineer Systems; www.imagineersystems.com

3 D G R A P H I C S

Weather in 3DWin Having recently completed its acquisi-

tion of Curious Software, Vizrt is debuting the

latest incarnation of its VizWeather 3D weath-

er software at IBC2005. For the creation of

weather-related graphics, VizWeather Version

1.6 is powered by Vizrt’s VizEngine 3D graph-

ics rendering engine. VizWeather enables

users to control and manipulate weather data

and graphics, whether point-based symbols

or high-resolution 3D animations. Weather

symbols, 3D maps, radar maps, temperature,

wind speeds, weather alerts, and correspond-

ing graphic elements can be displayed auto-

matically and in real time through the use of

pre-made templates. VizWeather ships with

customizable, pre-made icons and weather

elements, as well as VizArtist, the company’s

3D broadcast animation and design software.

Vizrt; www.vizrt.com

V I D E O

Detection and CorrectionWin • Unix • Linux Previously only avail-

able as a plug-in to third-party software, The

Foundry’s Forge has been re-engineered into

a standalone application. Forge employs

the company’s motion estimation and dirt-

removal technologies in not only process-

ing digital fi lm scans, but also automatically

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STOCK OPTIONS


H D AT I BC

Artbeats, a provider of royalty-free stock footage, is show-

casing its newest high-defi nition titles during IBC2005 in

Amsterdam. These new collections are the result of Artbeats’

work over the past two years, during which time it conducted

seven fi lm shoots in 12 countries. The company’s new glob-

al HD offerings include footage of lifestyles, portraits, land-

marks, religions, and crowds in Central America, the Andes,

East Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast

Asia, and the South Pacifi c. Among Artbeats’ lat-

est titles are: People of Central America, People of

the Andes, People of East Africa, The Holy Land,

People of the Middle East, People of Southeast

Asia, People of the South Pacifi c, Faces of the

World 1, and Children of the World 1. Artbeats also

is showing new HD adolescent lifestyles, HD aeri-

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Life, School Days, Las Vegas Aerials, Northeast

City Aerials, Florida Beaches, and British Coastal Villages.

For broadcast, fi lm, commercial, video, game development,

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resolutions and priced from $799 to $899 for HD titles and

from $229 to $699 for standard-defi nition collections.

Artbeats; www.artbeats.com

detecting and correcting common problems,

such as dust, dirt, and hair. At the show, The

Foundry also is previewing its Furnace 3 col-

lection of plug-ins for Apple’s Shake. Furnace

3 is expected to ship in December.

The Foundry; www.thefoundry.co.uk

HARDWARE

M O T I O N C A P T U R E

Tracking Times Twelve Polhemeus has debuted its Liberty Latus

(Large Area Tracking Untethered System), a

wireless, 6 Degree-of-Freedom (6DOF) track-

ing system. In addition to a Windows 2000/

XP user interface and Software Developers

Kit (SDK), the Liberty Latus offers the ability

to track up to 12 independent markers over

large areas, while achieving rates up to 94

or 188 updates per second. Each two-ounce,

self-contained marker contains the neces-

sary hardware, including a rechargeable

lithium-ion battery, digital signal proces-

sor electronics, and A/C magnetics. These

markers are tracked by receptors, each of

which provide spherical coverage with an

eight-foot diameter, and require no wiring

between markers.

Polhemus; www.polhemus.com

V I D E O

Codec without CompromiseNew at IBC, Zaxel System Inc. has upgraded its

Zaxel Lossless Compression (ZLC) video codec to

Version 2.3, in response to the growing demand

for high-defi nition television, D-Cinema, and 2K

and 4K image editing. ZLC 2.3 is said to com-

press and decompress digital video with no loss

of data, ensuring bit-for-bit restoration. The sys-

tem performs three stages of compression and

decompression, and boasts an average 2.8-to-

1 lossless compression ratio. Offering real-time

record and playback, ZLC 2.3 runs on Windows

systems with a single CPU for serial standard

defi nition, dual Zeon CPUs for high-defi nition

video, and quad CPUs for 2K and 4:4:4.

Zaxel System Inc.; www.zaxel.com

C H A R A C T E R G E N E R AT I O N

Working with ClarityPixel Power Ltd., maker of work fl ow and

automated graphics solutions, is debuting its

Clarity 5000 and Clarity 300 high-defi nition

platforms during IBC2005. The new Clarity

5000 character generator offers real-time 3D

animation, a video and audio clip player, and

multiple input 2D DVE squeezeback function-

ality. A single-channel, expandable character

generator, the Clarity 300 provides uncom-

pressed clip playback, two channels of 2D

DVE, and SDI preview and program outputs.

Its 3RU frame with a 530mm depth enable

the Clarity 300 to fi t in short racks in broad-

cast production vehicles.

Pixel Power Ltd.; www.pixelpower.com

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September 2005, Volume 28, Number 9: COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD (USPS 665-250) (ISSN-0271-4159) is published monthly (12 issues) by PennWell Corporation. Editorial & Production offi ces at 98 Spit Brook Rd., Nashua, NH 03062-5737. Corporate offi cers are Frank T. Lauinger, Chairman; Robert F. Biolchini, President & CEO; and Mark C. Wilmoth, CFO. Corporate offi ces: 1421 South Sheridan Road, Tulsa, OK 74112, Tel: 918-835-3161; FAX: 918-831-9497; Web Address: http://www.pennwell.com. Periodicals postage paid at Tulsa, OK 74112 & additional other mailing offi ces. COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD is distributed worldwide. Annual subscription prices are $55, USA; $75, Canada & Mexico; $115 International airfreight. To order subscriptions, call 847-559-7500.

© 2005 CGW by PennWell Corporation. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without permission. Microfi lm copies are available through University Microfi lms Inc., Ann Arbor, MI 48106, Tel: 313-761-4700. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specifi c clients, is granted by Computer Graphics World, ISSN-0271-4159, provided that the appropriate fee is paid directly to Copyright Clearance Center Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA 508-750-8400. Prior to photocopying items for educational classroom use, please contact Copyright Clearance Center Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA 508-750-8400. For further information check Copyright Clearance Center Inc. online at: http://www.copyright.com. The COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD fee code for users of the Transactional Reporting Services is 0271-4159/96 $1.00 + .35.

POSTMASTER: Send change of address form to COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD, P.O. Box 3296, Northbrook, IL 60065.

RETURN UNDELIVERABLE CANADIAN ADDRESSES TO: P.O. Box 122, Niagara Falls, ON L2E 6S4

The ad index is published as a service. The publisher does not assume any liability for errors or omissions.

index t

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advertiser phone or web page

Group PublisherMark FinkelsteinTEL: 603-891-9133FAX: 603-891-9297E-MAIL: [email protected]

Associate PublisherRandy Jeter1150 Lakeway Dr. Ste. 217Austin, TX 78734TEL: 512-261-1998FAX: 512-261-7915E-MAIL: [email protected]

ReprintsPARS International Corp.TEL: 212-221-9595Web: www.magreprints.comE-MAIL: [email protected]

United KingdomAmanda LoftusTEL: 44-1793-641571FAX: 44-1793-610001E-MAIL: [email protected]

FranceLuis MatutanoTEL: 33-1-47-91-70-11FAX: 33-1-55-02-03-85E-MAIL: [email protected]

GermanyHolger GerischE-MAIL: [email protected] andJohann BylekE-MAIL: [email protected]: 49-89-904-80-144FAX: 49-89-904-80-145

IndiaRajan SharmaTEL: 91-11-2686113/14/26865103/26861758/268617666861113FAX: 91-11-26861112E-MAIL: [email protected]

KoreaPaek KwonTel: 82-2-420-1293Fax: 82-2-420-1294E-MAIL: [email protected]

JapanAkiyoshi KojimaTEL: 81-3-3261-4591Fax: 81-3-3261-6126E-MAIL: [email protected]

TaiwanTeresa FuTEL: 886-2-8771-9388 ext. 240FAX: 886-2-8773-7066E-MAIL: [email protected]

Hong Kong & ChinaAdonis MakTEL: 852-2-838-6298FAX: 852-2-838-2766E-MAIL: [email protected]

SingaporeJoanna Wong-MonisTel: 65-6836 2272Fax: 65-6735 9653E-MAIL: [email protected]

Internet SalesShaun ShenTEL: 916-419-1481FAX: 916-419-1474E-MAIL: [email protected]

Director,Internet ServicesTom CintorinoTEL: 603-579-9002FAX: 603-579-9030E-MAIL: [email protected]

List RentalBob Dromgoole98 Spit Brook Rd. Nashua, NH 03062-5737TEL: 603-891-9128FAX: 603-891-9341E-MAIL: [email protected]

3D Connexion www.3Dconnexion.com 39

3D Labs www.3dlabs.com 7

Academy of Art University www.academyact.edu 47

Alias Systems www.alias.com C2

Appro Systems, Inc. www.appro.com 10

Autodesk Media & Entertainment www.autodesk.com 3

Avid Technology www.avid.com C3

Blackmagic Design www.blackmagic-design.com 11

BlueArc Corporation www.bluearc.com 37

BOXX Technologies www.boxxtech.com 9

Dimension Printing www.dimensionprinting.com 21

e-Frontier www.e-frontier.com 19, 43

Infortrend Technology, Inc. 408-988-5088 31

IntegrityWare, Inc. 1-858-538-3800 47

Isilon Systems www.isilon.com 35

Microway www.microway.com 15

Okino Computer Graphics, Inc. www.okino.com 47

REALVIZ www.realviz.com 17

Silicon Graphics www.sgi.com/storage 29

Softimage Avid www.softimage.com C4

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© 2005 Avid Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. *All prices are USMSRP for the U.S. and Canada only and are subject to change without notice.Contact your local Avid office or reseller outside U.S. and Canada. Product features, specifications, system requirements and availability are subjectto change without notice. SOFTIMAGE, Avid and XSI are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Avid Technology, Inc. in the United Statesand/or other countries. All other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

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