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ON THE COVER

SEE IT IN

Digital Domain, recognized for its cutting-edge work in thevisual effects industry, once again performed technical magic,re-creating the complex world of TRONincluding the iconic

Lightcyclesfor a new generation. See pg. 6.

Q&A with Michael Tronick, editor ofGreen Hornet.

The agency/post house relationship.

Posts best bets for Oscar.

Trends: VF X for spots.

Features

Inside Job

61In 1982, when computers (and computer graphics) were relatively new,audiences were transported into cyberspace, to the world of TRON, by agroup of ambitious CG pioneers. Nearly 30 years later, we are taken backthere again, but this time that world has changed drastically, thanks to a newgeneration of CG pioneers.

By Barbara Robertson

pu

For a trip back in time, visit www.cgw.com as Frank Vitz, who worked on the

originalTRON

effects, discusses that groundbreaking work.

Going for Gold

21Yet again, the year featured a plethora of feature films containing stunningvisual effects and rich computer graphics. With the Oscars around thecorner, we asked a number of industry experts to comment on whichmovies hit their mark.

ByDebra Kaufman

31 Making it WorkGaining employment today is moredifficult than ever. Education institutions are teaching students thenecessary A, B, Cs, but other factorssuch as talent, hard work,and personalityare important factors, too.

36 Web Enabled The Internet has spawned new businessmodels, new ways to communicate, and new ways to learn. Findout how a pair of artists have used the Net to get discovered.

Special Education Section

COVER STORY

December 2010 Vol. 33 Number 12 I n n o v a t i o n s i n v i s u a l c o m p u t i n g f o r D C C p r o f e s s i o n a l s

DepartmentsEditors Note Go Back to the Grid

2 Tis the season for many things, including catching the latest film atthe local theater. One movie that is sure to please is TRON: Legacy,this years VFX holiday extravaganza. While youre at it, There are manyother tent-pole movies worth the price of admission. And if you stillhave time on your hands, check out the years top hits on DVD beforethe Oscars roll around.

Spotlight

4 Products NewTeks LightWave 10. News The PC graphics chipmarket is down overall, but Intels numbers have soared.Back Products

40Recent software releases. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx x

Whats a QR code? Find out in this monthsEditors Note.

CGWPreferred Partner Series

Animation Evolution: A Biopic Through the Eyes of Shrek

The advances in animation are clearly visible in each subsequent Shrekfilm, thanks to the increasing talent of the filmmakers and advancements inprocessing power.

http://www.cgw.com/http://www.cgw.com/http://www.postmagazine.com/

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EditorsNote

This Holiday, Go Back to the GridThe Magazine for Digital Content Professionals

EDITORIAL

KAREN MOLTENBREYChief Editor

karen@cgw.com (603) 432-7568

CONTRIBUTING EDITORSCourtney Howard, Jenny Donelan,

Audrey Doyle, George Maestri,Kathleen Maher, Martin McEachern,

Barbara Robertson

WILLIAM R. RITTWAGEPublisher, President and CEO,

COP Communications

SALES

JEFF VICTORDirector of SalesWest Coast

jvictor@cgw.com(847) 367-4073

GARY RHODESSales ManagerEast Coast & International

grhodes@copcomm.com(631) 274-9530

KELLY RYANClassifieds and Reprints Marketing

kryan@copcomm.com(818) 291-1155

Editorial Office / LA Sales Office:620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, CA 91204

(800) 280-6446

PRODUCTION

KEITH KNOPFProduction Director

Knopf Bay Productionskknopf@copcomm.com (818) 291-1158

MICHAEL VIGGIANOArt Director

mviggiano@copcomm.com

CHRIS SALCIDOAccount Representative

csalcido@copprints.com (818) 291-1144

Computer Graphics World Magazineis published by Computer Graphics World,

a COP Communications company.Computer Graphics Worlddoes not verify any claims or

other information appearing in any of the advertisementscontained in the publication, and cannot take any

responsibility for any losses or other damages incurredby readers in reliance on such content.

Computer Graphics Worldcannot be held responsible forthe safekeeping or return of unsolicited articles,

manuscripts, photographs, illustrations or other materials.Address all subscription correspondence to: ComputerGraphics World, 620 West Elk Ave, Glendale, CA 91204.Subscriptions are available free to qualified individuals

within the United States. Non-qualified subscription rates:USA$72 for 1 year, $98 for 2 years; Canadian

subscriptions $98 for 1 year and $136 for 2 years;all other countries$150 for 1 year and $208 for 2 years.

Digital subscriptions are available for $27 per year.Subscribers can also contact customer serv ice by calling

(800) 280 6446, opt 2 (publishing), opt 1 (subscriptions) orsending an email to csr@cgw.com. Change of address canbe made online at http://www.omeda.com/cgw/ and click

on customer service assistance.

Postmaster: Send Address Changes toComputer Graphics World, P.O. Box 3551,

Northbrook, IL 60065-3551Please send customer service inquiries to

620 W. Elk Ave., Glendale, CA 91204

2 December 2010

continued on page 40

T

he holidays are here, and no doubt many of you will visit the movietheater at least once during the break. It seems a bit odd, dont you

think, that right about the time when we are thinking about summer,there is a big rollout of blockbuster movies? The same holds true for theChristmas holiday. Instead of anticipating a relaxing time with fam-ily and friends, we are lining up at the ticket counter to see the yearssecond wave of these tent-pole films. Studios have their reasons forputting movies on our holiday list. One, of course, is money. Peoplelove to go to the theater during these times. It seems like it is thechicken-and-egg scenario: Do these top-billed movies drive peopleto the theater, or do people want a bit of fun and relaxation duringtheir time off from work, opting to take in a flick? I am sure thereare facts and figures to back up one theory or the other. The reasondoesnt really matter much. The fact that audiences love a great holi-

day flick is whats important.Last year,Avatarraked in more than $800 million at the world-wide box office following its mid-December release. This year, Disneyexecs are hoping to do the same with its highly anticipated release/remake:TRON: Legacy. In July 1982, Disney gave us TRON, a science-fiction flickthat boasted all-digital shots inside a video game, at a time when few studiosknew how to create CG effects. Despite the cutting-edge work by facilitiessuch as MAGI, Triple-I, Robert Abel and Associates, and Digital Effects,the work, unfortunately, was ignored by the Motion Picture Academy ofArts and Sciences Visual Effects Branch. And the filmwith a budget of$17 milliongrossed just $4.8 million on its opening weekend (but wouldgo on to earn $33 million overall), bested byET, Tootsie, Rocky III, Porkys

(gulp), and a host of others. While the original TRONwas appreciated byour industry, only a handful of outsiders looked at it as a cult classicuntilrecently, that is. Now, its status has risen tremendously over the past yearin anticipation ofLegacy, which has hacker Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) stilltrapped in the game grid. The sequel, which was nearly three decades incoming, shows off the leaps and bounds that CG effects have made sincethe original film debuted. We might be amazed by the techie look of thecycles and environments in the remake, but dont overlook the fantasticde-aging of Bridges done by the experts at Digital Domain, who onceagain set new standards for creating digital actors, building upon the workthey did for Benjamin Button just two years ago. (For a behind-the-sceneslook at TRON: Legacy, see Inside Job on page 6.)

There are many out there who are billing Legacyas this years answertoAvatar, what with the full-CG environments and all. Indeed, CG runsdeep throughout the film, as it did inAvatar. But, will the stunning digitalwork be enough to earn Legacyan Oscar for Best Picture? Or, will non-VFX movies like The Social Networkor The Town be 2010s answer to TheHurt Lockerwhen it comes to Oscar night? Its hard to say, with VFX-in-fused films such as Inception also vying for this honor. And what about ToyStory 3? Does the CG feature have enough story power to sway voters? Onethings for sure, there are a number of effects movies and animated filmsthat have huge Oscar potential, if not for Best Picture, then in their respec-tive categories of Best Visual Effects or Best Animated Feature. There are

EDITORIAL

Karen moltenbreyChif edi

karen@cgw.com (603) 432-756836 East Nashua RoadWindham, NH 03087

Contributing EditorsCourtne Howard, Jenn Donelan,Audre Dole, George Maestri,

Kathleen Maher, Martin McEachern,Barbara Robertson

WILLIAM R. RITTWAGEPublisher, President and CEO,

COP Communications

SALES

JEff VICTORNational & Midwest Sales

jvic@cgw.c(847) 367-4073

GARy RHODESEastern and International

grhodes@copcomm.com(631) 274-9530

Kelly ryanmkig Cdikran@copcomm.com

(818) 291-1155

Editorial Oices: New york, Boston and Los AngelesLA Sales Oice:

620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, CA 91204(800) 280-6446

PRODucTIOn

KEITH KNOPfProduction Director

Knop Ba Productionskeith@copcomm.com (818) 291-1158

MICHAEL VIGGIANOArt Director

mviggiano@copcomm.com

JASON CROWLEyProduction / Web Design

jcrowle@copcomm.com (818) 291-1162

mailto:karen@cgw.commailto:karen@cgw.commailto:jvictor@cgw.commailto:jvictor@cgw.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:kryan@copcomm.commailto:kryan@copcomm.commailto:keith@copcomm.commailto:kknopf@copcomm.commailto:mviggiano@copcomm.commailto:mviggiano@copcomm.commailto:jcrowley@copcomm.commailto:csalcido@copprints.commailto:csr@cgw.comhttp://www.omeda.com/cgw/http://www.omeda.com/cgw/mailto:karen@cgw.commailto:karen@cgw.commailto:jvictor@cgw.commailto:jvictor@cgw.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:kryan@copcomm.commailto:keith@copcomm.commailto:keith@copcomm.commailto:kknopf@copcomm.commailto:mviggiano@copcomm.commailto:jcrowley@copcomm.comhttp://www.omeda.com/cgw/mailto:csr@cgw.commailto:jcrowley@copcomm.commailto:mviggiano@copcomm.commailto:keith@copcomm.commailto:kryan@copcomm.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:jvictor@cgw.commailto:karen@cgw.comhttp://www.omeda.com/cgw/mailto:csr@cgw.commailto:csalcido@copprints.commailto:mviggiano@copcomm.commailto:kknopf@copcomm.commailto:kryan@copcomm.commailto:grhodes@copcomm.commailto:jvictor@cgw.commailto:karen@cgw.com

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Jon Peddie Research (JPR), the indus-trys research and consulting firm forgraphics and multimedia, announcedits estimated graphics chip shipmentsand suppliers market share for the thirdquarter, and the results are mixed, withthe market slumping, Intel soaring, andNvidia making a comeback.

Overall graphics chip shipments werean unseasonably 1 percent down fromthe second quarter due to the 8.4 percentdrop in notebook sales despite an 8.4percent growth in desktop sales, reflect-ing the increasing impact of the notebookmarket. The possible cause for the declinein notebook sales could be the iPad, andthe related shift from netbooks.

Embedded graphics processors, orEPGs, from Intel (Clarksdale and Pine-view) showed strong growth, up 50

percent from the second quarter, whilethe total IGP shipments from all thevendors in the space slowed to a modest1.4 percent growth quarter to quarter.

Overall, market shifts occurred for all

vendors, even though the quarter-to-quar-ter total shipments were basically flat.

AMD attributed its slip in market shareto weakened demand and OEMs lettingtheir GPU inventory run down to avoidbeing stuck with leftover processors.Due to real and perceived shortagesin supply, some customers shifted their

purchases to rival Nvidia. And there mayhave been some de-emphasis on GPUsafter a significant weakening of the euro,with laptop makers settling for cheaper,integrated graphics instead. AMD graph-ics revenue decreased 11 percentsequentially but increased 33 percentyear over year.

Intel reported revenue from client chip-set and other of $1.75 billion, up from$1.68 billion in Q2.

No one knows how much cannibaliza-

tion there is in tablets, says Intel presi-dent and CEO Paul Otellini, but thenumbers are relatively small. About eightmillion iPads shipped in the third quarter,which is 11 percent of an estimated 70

million notebooks and netbooks overthe same period. Intels Atom processorrevenues were down 4 percent in Q3,which some observers are attributing tocannibalization by tablets. In June, Intelannounced it would make new chips fortablets, and previewed Oak Trail tablets,scheduled for release in 2011.

Nvidias fiscal quarter straddles thecalendar quarters. Its next quarter endedOctober 31.

This edition of the Market Watch reportincludes breakout numbers for the ship-ments of the new category: EPGs. Withthe advent of new CPUs with integratedor embedded graphics, we will see therapid decline in deliveries for traditionalchipset graphics or IGPs. The EPGshipment numbers are included in thetotal integrated graphics number in this

release.The Q3 2010 edition of JPRs Market

Watch is available in both electronicand hard copy editions, and can bepurchased for $995.

PC Graphics Market Slumps

NEWS: GRAPHICS CHIPS

Following a sneak peek at SIGGRAPH, NewTek is now ready

to roll out LightWave 10, the latest version of its digital contentcreation software that, among other capabilities, enables inter-active viewpoint rendering and real-time stereoscopic preview-ing, supporting the companys billing at a production-readyversion of LightWave.

Version 10which leverages the technologies developed forLightWave COREcontains a number of new features, andamong the most impressive are those that are specifically tunedto stereo 3D work, whether done by individual users or artistsworking within a studio pipeline.

With the new Viewport Preview Renderer (VPR) and AnaglyphStereoscopic Previews real-time interocular, red-blue anaglyph-

ic separation, users can now view updates to their stereo work

in real time, and see changes to lights, textures, volumetricsand more as they happen. Support for the InterSense VirtualCamera Tracking System (VCAM) and 3Dconnexion 3D mousefacilitates user interaction with models and scenes. Also, theversion purports the first complete linear colorspace workflow,supporting custom LUTs for more realistic lighting.

New data interchange toolsincluding support for MDD,Autodesk Geometry Cache, FBX, and COLLADAmake iteasier to move data from one application to another, while anupdated user interface lets artists work more intuitively.

For a limited time, LightWave 10 will be priced at $895, withan upgrade price from Version 9 of $495.

NewTeks LightWave 10 Makes Its Debut

PRODUCT: MODELINGANIMATION

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Pioneers, people say, catch arrowsin their backs, and that was certainly true orDisneys groundbreaking lm TRON. Re-leased in 1982, it was the rst eature lm touse CGI extensively. Not to create photoreal-ism, but to visualize computer technology inthe uture. oday, many people credit TRON

with the birth o computer graphics in eaturelms, and the story about why TRON didnot receive a visual efects Oscar is the stuf oCG legends.

It did not get nominated or a visual efects

Oscar because AMPAS [the Academy] saidthat using computers was cheating, says SeanBailey, a producer oTRON: Legacy, Disneys2010 ollow-up to the pioneering lm.Whenyou see how were making [TRON: Legacy],its pretty damn ironic.

It was ironic even in 1982, given TRONsstory line: Kevin Flynn, a video game devel-oper played by actor Jef Bridges, searchesthrough a Master Control Program (MCP) toprove that another programmer had stolen hiscode. Digitized by a laser beam, Flynn enters

the computer, a dark place where circuits olight outline characters, objects, and vehiclesin an expansive virtual world. Once inside,Flynn, the computer User, battles capturedPrograms in lie-or-death games, sometimes

while riding speedy Lightcycles inside a GameGrid. Helping Flynn is Clu, a hacker ProgramFlynn wrote that looks like a mirror image ohimsel. Flynn escapes at the end, but MCPde-rezzes Clu.

Te guys who made that lm were verymuch ahead o their time, Bailey says. Steve

December 2010

nnCG Environments

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Lisberger [writer, director] envisioned peopleliving as avatars in a digital world, and that

was in 1982, when most people didnt havecomputers.

oday, visual efects and computer graph-ics are synonymous, people live as avatars indigital worlds, computer games are nearlyphotorealistic, and the ormer writer/directorhas now taken the role o producer. I mademyTRON,Lisberger says. I didnt want tocompete with mysel 28 years later.

Jef Bridges, however, does compete with

himsel 28 years later. With the help ocomputer graphics, he plays two charactersin TRON: Legacy. One is Kevin Flynn, atBridges current age. Te other is Clu 2.0. Inthe story, we learn that Flynn re-entered theGrid and programmed a new version o Cluabout two years ater the rst. Clu 2.0 lookslike a clone o Jef Bridges at about age 35.

A team at Digital Domainled by visualefects supervisors Eric Barba and Steve Preeg,

who had won an Oscar or the efects in Ben- jamin Buttonperormed the technical and

artistic magic. Tis time, not to imagine an el-derly Brad Pitt, but to replicate a amiliar ace.

And this time, they created a digital human instereoscopic 3D.

One o the reakiest things was when wescanned Jef [Bridges], Lisberger says, reer-ring to one step in Digital Domains Emotionsystem that was a acial capture o Bridges withMovas Contour sotware. Te scan produceda lielike, animated digital doppelganger. Forthe rst lm, I just made up that idea, Lis-berger says. Now, I could see it on the Grid.

In TRON Legacy, Sam Flynn

battles Programs deep

within his fathers digital

world, a world once again

created with state-of-the-

art computer graphics

By Barbara Robertson

December 2010

CG Environmentsnnn

Images 2010 Disney Enterprises, Inc.

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Back to the Future

As TRON: Legacyopens, we learn that Flynndisappeared when his son, Sam, was a child.Now 27 years old, Sam (actor Garrett Hed-lund) nds himsel investigating a strange signalapparently sent rom his athers old video-game

arcade. He discovers his athers hidden work-

room and, while there, the same laser beam dig-itizes and sends him into Kevin Flynns digital

world. Once there, we discover that when hisather revisited and upgraded the digital worldhe had let, things didnt work out so well.

Flynns creation, Clu 2.0, took control o thesystem and trapped him. Te Grid is now evenmore dangerous than beore, and Sam mustght gladiatorial games to survive.

All told, TRON: Legacyhas close to 1500visual eects shots, o which approximately170 eature Clu 2.0, the younger version oBridges. When Joe asked us to do this job,

we knew wed do the character Clu here basedon our work on Button, Barba says, reerringto director Joseph Kosinski. But we also hadto create an entire world in 3D, a world neverseen beore. We kept the major sequences thatestablish TRONhere at Digital Domain: thedisc game battle, the iconic bike sequence,the small, difcult character pieces. And Joe

wanted to keep the two big sequences at theend here. We ound outsource partners to dothe rest.

Tose partners included Mr. X, Ollin Stu-

dio, Prana Studios, Prime Focus, Whiskeyree, and Yannix. Electronic Arts did motioncapture in Vancouver, where Kosinski shotthe lm, and House o Moves assisted in post-production.

Approximately 25 trackers worked on TRON: Legacy, someas long as a year. We had the whole flm, says Ross Mac-Kenzie, 3D integration supervisor, 1500 shots, and they werelong shots. Most were over 300 rames, and they kept gettinglonger and longer.

Although trackers at Digital Domain sometimes use com-mercial sotware, the mainstay at the studio and the workhorseor TRON: Legacywas the studios in-house sotware Track,or which sotware engineer Doug Roble received an Acad-emy Award in 1998. Simply put, Track calculates the positiono the camera used to flm a shot as it moves through three-dimensional space, rame by rame. Similarly, the sotware canalso track the path o any objects or characters as they movein the scene. With this inormation, artists can position a virtualcamera in a 3D scene built to match ootage shot on set, insert

CG objects into the ootage, and/or replace something in thescene with a CG object. Once rendered, the inserted objectsft correctly into each rame o the 2D scene, even as the cam-era changes perspective.

I started writing Track in 1973, 17 years ago, Roble says.Every once in a while I come back to it, and or TRON, I real-ized, well everybody realized, it needed signifcant upgrades.The sotware has 175,000 lines o code. I probably modifedabout 20 percent o it, and I added things that we needed.

Roble primarily updated the user interace and added mathto manage more than one camera and do calculations withenough precision or stereo. I wrote my tracking camera witha main camera in mind, Roble says. With TRONand other

movies nowadays, people have learned that witness camerasand other cameras on set can really help. So on TRON, a loto the shots had the two main let- and right-eye cameras, plusmultiple witness cameras. I had to add a heck o a lot moredata and make it easy or the artists.

The artists begin by lining up one rame and attaching mark-ers to various eatures in the flmed ootage to help the sotwarecalculate the camera path. Its all about managing errors, Roblesays. The pipeline was to track the main camera, choosing oneeye [camera] as the main eye. Then, i everything was perect, youwould only have to know how ar away the other eye was. Butnothing is perect. There might be an error in the let eye that younotice only because the right eye is o.

The mechanical rig might have vibrated one camera morethan the other, or one camera might have pointed up a little

more than the other, and that would mean the tracked pointswould be in dierent positions rom one rame to the next.In the CG world, you assume perect cameras and perectlenses, but in the real world, the lenses arent even exact,Roble says. Moreover, simply fnding points to track wasntalways easy.

Lots o sets have brick, corners, and other details the com-puter-vision programs can hang onto, Roble says. We hadsmooth sets. All we had were lines separating one smooththing rom another. Even the corners were nicely roundedand smooth.

We used pieces o dust, MacKenzie adds. We used whatwe could. We also had a lot o reerence photography that we

Track Stars

A 50-polygon Recognizer in the 1982 TRONbecame this giant machine in TRON: Legacythat capturesSam when he frst arrives in the digital world. All enemy vehicles and Programs have orange glow lines.

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So that crews at the outsource partnersand at Digital Domain could publish assetsdirectly into shots and move into shot produc-tion quickly, previs and layout supervisor ScottMeadows led a team that blocked out the en-tire flm in stereo. Te flm was conceived tobe flmed with a 3D system rom the frst,Kosinski says. We spent a year getting ready.

We shot the flm in 75 days, and then spent ayear and a hal in postproduction.

Also to help speed postproduction, se-quence supervisors at Digital Domain gavethe outsource partners assets and asked them

to switch to Te Foundrys Nuke, AutodesksMaya, and Chaos Groups V-Ray. Addition-ally, we gave them scripts in Nuke to handlevertical disparity [or mis-aligned stereo cam-eras], Barba says. We got them up to speed

on a short schedule.

On Set

Kosinskis director o photography, ClaudioMiranda, shot the flm in stereo using six Sony

CineAlta F35 cameras on three Pace Fusion3D rigs; the second unit used a ourth rig andcameras. Joe [Kosinski] wanted to build setsor the actors to interact with, to ground usand to lighten our load, so we shot much o

the flm on sets, Barba says. Te disc gamesand Lightcycle sequences, however, are pre-dominately ull-CG, as are two climactic se-quences at the end o the flm, which includea spectacular Lightjet dogfght.

used to reconstruct the geometry. We brought those photosinto Track and used them as an additional camera.

The artists could also use data rom the witness camerasand survey datameasurements o the setwhich gave thetracking team the distance between objects in an image. Wehave a strong survey team, MacKenzie says. We can eedtheir measurements into the sotware, and Track will solve us-ing those parameters.

In act, the artists could add new points at any time, and thosepoints could aect the track. Tracking becomes an organic pipe-line o adding and building enough points, Roble says. The solv-ers take in identifed points on the image and any other inormationwe have in the scene, and as you add new data, the original tracksget better. Its an iterative process.

Once the artists tracked the camera, they ran test oot-age and looked or any problems, checking to see i thetrack looked good in both stereo eyes, that is, rom thelet- and right-eye camera views. This was especially true

or the tracked head. To replace Reardons head with ClusCG head, the team needed to know the exact position o thebody doubles head in every rame.

When these guys were tracking Reardons head, theyd fg-ure out where the camera was, and then fgure out where thehead was in the scene, Roble says. But, tracking deormableobjects like a head is particularly difcult. I it moves, or i theeyes move, or i the hair moves, the track is squishy. Theres nosolid place on the head that you can rely on. The points shitall over the place. Theres a point at the top o the nose whereit meets the eyes, but even that part moves when someonerowns. The back o the head attaches to the neck, and theneck changes shape all the time.

To have Clus digital hair all properly rom his CG head ontothe image o Reardons collar and jacket, the trackers alsoneeded to precisely determine where the body doubles cos-tume was in 3D space. We had to be careul that there wasno high-requency jitter that would cause the hair simulation toreak out, MacKenzie says.

Even though a track might look good visually, any vibrationin the collar would aect the simulation. The hair is like tinysprings, Roble says. I there is any vibration, the hairs wouldbe like a needle on a record player bouncing like crazy; theyddo a little dance. The precision had to be rock solid. Everythingis sub-pixel accurate.

I the animators saw that the CG model didnt match thebody doubles headClus chin might not dip as much as Rear-dons, or exampletheyd send the track back or a better ft,even i the track was correct. Youre putting someones headon another persons body, MacKenzie says. Nuance playsinto it. Sometimes you need to be less objective and more ar-

tistic. Otherwise, they just dont look right together.Beore Roble updated Track, he spent time researching com-

puter-vision literature and technical papers, looking or ways tocompute the tracking calculations. He didnt fnd much help.

There isnt much research in deormable head tracking,deormable object tracking, he says. A lot o the computer-vision literature deals with tracking rigid objects or reconstruct-ing scenes. I ound other papers on tracking deorming things,like cloth. But most o that research was in constrained circum-stances. We had moving cameras, moving sets, moving every-thing, and we had to track deormable objects. We could usesome help rom the academic community [on this problem].Barbara Robertson

At let, actors ought disc games on bluescreen stages. Artists rotoscoped the images to create ac-curate refections on the glass foors. At right, crowds o digital agents surrounding the ever-changingcourts cheered the action.

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nnCG Environments

Te narrative sequences lmed in the Endo Line Club and inside Kevin Flynns house,on the other hand, take place on enormoussets built with glass foors. I wanted to cap-ture as much in camera as possible, Kosinskisays, the characters refections in the foor,the sets, each others eyes.

Each actor on set wore a costume patternedwith TRONs iconic glow lines, oam rubbersuits laced with encapsulated wiring that con-nected to electroluminescent lamps on the sur-ace. Te lamps, made rom a fexible polymerlm, emitted yellow glow lines on Clus suit,orange on the other bad guys, and white andblue or the heroes. Extras on set controlledtheir own suits, but principal actors had theirglow lines operated by remote control.

Costume designers conceived the Lightsuitsusing Autodesks Sotimage and PixologicsZBrush, and scaled the designs over digi-

tized bodies o the actors. Quantum CreationFx sent the data to computer numerical-controlled (CNC) manuacturing machines.

It was un working out what sort o Pro-

gram I was, says actor Michael Sheen, whoplays the famboyant club owner Castor, pro-vider o any and all entertainment and diver-sions. But, it took skill to make it look like Icould breathe and move easily in the suit.

On each Lightsuits back is an all-important

disc. Te disc contains the characters identity,and when removed, becomes a dangerous,Frisbee-like weapon. Glow lines outline thediscs, as they do or the suits, vehicles, andother objects and structures in TRON. Teprop discs housed batteries and inverters, andglowed thanks to 138 LEDs.

Tese glow lines would become a majorpart o the visual eects eort: Artists xedand enhanced the light on the real suits, imi-tated the light on the digital doubles, added aglowing jagged edge to the discs, and createdthe light or the vehicles and the CG environ-ments (see Glow in the Dark pg. 16).

Te key to this movie is how light inte-grates into every object, says Darren Gilord,production designer. And that includes theCG characters.

Clu 2.0

wo supervisors at Digital Domain, JonathanLitt and Greg eegarden, led lighting teamsthat altogether included approximately 40artists. We basically divided the work intothe Je Bridges acial replacement shots andeverything else, and it ended up pretty muchequal, Litt says. Tere are around 170 headshots, so thats a small part o the total work,but the amount o mental eort is high.

o create Clu 2.0that is, the young JeBridgesDigital Domains artists tted ananimated digital head onto a stunt actorsbody using many o the same methods theyhad developed to put an aged version o

Brad Pitts ace onto a child-sized body (seeWhats Old Is New Again, January 2009),and many o the artists who worked on thatlm moved onto TRON: Legacy. But, there

were dierences, and the dierences mattered.Clu is the most dicult thing weve ever

done, Barba says. We had just come oBen- jamin Button, which was the most dicult

thing then. Tis, however, proved to be muchharder. No one knew what Brad Pitt wouldlook like at age 80, but everyone knows what

Je Bridges looked like when he was young-er. And little Benjamin was a bit passive; hemoved through the world, but he wasnt adriving orce. Our character Clu is the oppo-site. Hes a major character who gives majorspeeches. Hes a bad guy, the one Je Bridgesplays against.

It may be the rst time that an actor hasperormed in scenes with a younger versiono himsel. And, in one fashback scene,Bridges does double digital duty when a

young Kevin Flynn shares a close-up scenewith his clone.

Capturing the Performance

We started with the same methods we hadused and learned rom on Benjamin Button,Preeg says. Te main dierence was that withBrad [Pitt], we did everything post shoot, but

Je wanted to be Clu in the moment.As they had or Benjamin Button, the team

began by capturing Bridges perorming a set oFACS expressions with the Mova system to helpmodelers identiy which acial muscles the actormoves and how much they move as he smiles,rowns, and creates other acial expressions, andas he enunciates particular phonemes. Modelersused Movas captured data to sculpt shapes theyapplied to a digital model o the younger Bridg-es/Clu. o build that model, they reerenced ascanned Rick Baker maquette o a young Je

Bridges head, scanned into the computer likein the [rst] lm, Kosinski says with a smile.But we did it or real.

Te studio also captured lighting reerence

rom the maquette using a system rom Light-Stage, but aterward, the lmmakers changedClus age. Te original maquette was no lon-ger valid or what we wanted to do, so we had

to scrap it and rebuild the model at a youngerage, Barba says. Animators worked with alow-resolution version o the nal model andblendshapes, while lighters received a higher-resolution version.

For Button, ater the director had lmedthe shots, Pitt had watched the ootage withthe double playing his part, and then per-ormed the dialog in a controlled environ-ment. He was locked into position with ourhigh-denition cameras shooting him, Preegsays. Tat made it easier or Digital Domainto accurately motion-capture and track hisperormance. Bridges, however, perormed

At left, the actor Jeff Bridges as he appears in the role of Kevin Flynn. At right, Clu 2.0, a digital cloneof Bridges at age 35 created by Digital Domain and animated using dialog and facial expressionscaptured from Bridges.

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his scenes on set with the other actors.At rst, the crew thought Bridges might do

the entire perormance and Digital Domain would apply motion data rom his peror-mance to a CG character. We were ready tocapture the body and ace simultaneously,Barba says. We did some tests, but no ofenseto Jef, hes not 35 now. You could tell in themotion capture that he was older.

So instead, the crew captured Bridges acialperormance as he acted out the scenes withthe other actors, while John Reardon, his bodydouble, watched. Ten, they shot the sceneagain with Reardonin Clus Lightsuit cos-tumeacting the part. Because the trackingteam would need to locate Reardons head inthe lmed ootage so they could replace it withClus CG head, Reardon wore a gray hoodie

with markers and had dots on his ace.I had told Joe [Kosinski] that the key

would be in getting a body double who couldmimic Jef [Bridges] as closely as possible,Barba says. John Reardon was perect. Henailed Jefs nuances, timing, movement, andthe eye lines.

o capture Bridges on-set perormance,Digital Domain put 52 marker dots on his

ace and a helmet on his head. Te helmet hadour cameras mounted on it, two on each sideo his ace near the jaw linelip sync wouldbe especially important or this character. Tecameras were arranged so that two o them

would see every point and we could triangu-late and get true positions in spacelocators

in space or every marker, Barba explains.In addition, two witness cameras and two

sets o primary stereo cameras (our cameras)shot the perormanceor a total o 10 cam-eras. We would shoot with Jef [Bridges], andthen we would shoot with Reardon, whichmeant we could use data rom 20 cameras orany shot, Barba says.

A Data-Driven Double

Te team ran the triangulated data rom theour helmet cameras into a converter thatproduced FACS-based individual muscleringscurves the animators could use inMaya to tweak the perormance. We spent adecent amount o time on that and got prettygood results, Barba says.

On Benjamin Button, they had relied onImage Metrics to provide that data. Tis time,the team brought the process in-house. We

wanted to give the animators direct control othe data, Preeg says. Te animators deter-mined whether what was coming out o themotion-capture solver was in line with Jefsperormance. Tey could put weighting on

shapes, solve only or the eyebrows, and soorth. Tey could interact quickly with thedata and make decisions.

o make sure the solvethat is, theconversion o data rom dots to animationcurveswas accurate, the crew decided not tointerpolate the motion or a younger Bridges.We wanted to know precisely how ar hepulls the corner o his mouth to the let in hiscurrent age because thats where the data camerom, Preeg says. And in act, when theycompared the FACS data captured rom dotson Bridges ace during his perormance to thedata captured rom his skin with the Mova sys-

Hair TodayTo give Clu a hairstyle appropriate or a 35-year-old Je Bridges, Digital Domain

artists relied on an in-house system that works within Autodesks Maya. To move

the hair, they used a proprietary dynamics solver written by Mattias Bergbom,

digital hair supervisor, and Robert Luo, hair technical director. As with most hair

systems, artists place guide hairstypically between 500 and 700to shape the

style. We had dierent styles to t dierent sequences, Bergbom says.

The guide hairs are curves with controls points, usually between 15 and 30,

that become 30,000 to 200,000 when interpolated. Once you interpolate the

hair, it tends to look like cotton candy, so we added clumping to break it up and

get enough negative space to convey the shape, surace quality, and depth,

Bergbom says. Its like sculpting. I you look at artists sculpting hair out o clay,

whats important is where they carve the gaps and spaces. We used negative

space to show detail at a distance. For close-ups, we had a dierent groom.

Texture maps and parameters controlled clumping, color, stiness, how prone

the hair is to clump and break apart, and so orth.

The dynamics were the big challenge, Bergbom says. For Button, we used

Mayas nCloth or Maya hair, but we had such extreme variation in the shots orthis show, we needed to have more fexibility and control. So, we based our

solver on literature coming out o Stanord University on mass and springs, like

a sot-body solver.

In one shot, or example, Clu is skydiving, and the artists needed to send wind

through his hair at high speed without having it look too extreme.

Once we had the solver and whole dynamics ramework, it was easy to nd

the balance in wind orces, Bergbom says. We might add more turbulence and

less wind drag to give the hair the right motion. The artists didnt want to mimic

skydiving reality; they wanted to mimic an actor working on a soundstage with

a big an.

People are so used to seeing actors with hair blown by a an that when you show

them the real thing, it looks too extreme, Bergbom says. Barbara Robertson

Costumers created the Lightsuits using 3D software and computer numerical-controlled (CNC)manufacturing machines; a disc on the back contains batteries and inverters to power the glow lines.A video camera inside the windowless helmet gave the actor playing Clu his eyes on the world.

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tem, they discovered a good correlation.Te animators, however, saw Bridges at

his younger agethat is, as Clu 2.0. Teyrelooking at a 35-year-old Je, but behind thescenes, the rig is Je at his current age, Preegsays, reerring to a system rigged to give ani-mators control over the shapes that orm acialexpressions. When we interpolate to a young-er skin, we look at that movement to see i itlooks like skin moving on a younger version o

Je. I there is inaccuracy, we can x the skinmovement as part o an artistic process, but

we know the underlying motion is correct, as-suming we did the conversion well.

As the animators worked, they could look atvideo o Bridges perormance in a single viewor with our cameras at a time to compare thecaptured movement they had tweaked on thedigital head to that perormance. Tey alsoused the perormance rom the body double,

Reardon. I the eye line depended on the dia-log, we used Jes eye line, Preeg says. I there

was a lot o head and body movement, wewould get the eye line rom the body doublebecause it related more to the head motion.

wo o the biggest challenges remained:tting the CG head onto the body doublesbody, and making the CG Clu look, not justmove, like a young Je Bridges.

Find the Head

Because TRON: Legacyis a stereo 3D lm, thedigital head had to sit on the stunt actors bodyprecisely; the t had to be sub-pixel precise,not just rom camera view on a 2D image, butin depth. Otherwise, stereo would reveal themagic trick.

Beore anyone could place the CG head onReardons shoulders, a tracking team neededto nd Reardons head in three-dimensionalspace in every rame o the ootage rom bothcameras in the stereo rig, the camera shoot-ing the let-eye view, and the camera shootingthe right-eye view. racking is never easy, even

when all a studio needs to do is, say, place a

CG car on a highway shot with a locked-ocamera. racking moving cameras and movingobjects in stereo is much more difcult.

Tis was the toughest tracking show Ivebeen on, says Ross MacKenzie, 3D integra-tion supervisor. It was hard to begin with,and stereo amplied any error. We had headreplacement, disc tracking, multiple objectsto match in both cameras. Any 2D cheatingthat we were used to doing on a non-stereoshow became apparent right away. So, we gotthe Button band back together. We needed theexperienced trackers, the best we could nd.

Te tracking team sometimes began work-

ing on a scene by using commercial sotwareprograms that they have in the studio: 2d3sBoujou, Te Pixel Farms PFrack, Anders-son echnologies SynthEyes, among others.Tey were a good startingpoint, MacKenziesays. Ten, [our] rack came into play. A loto the other sotware programs orce you intoa solve, and i its wrong, youre stuck with it.

And, there is no way to lock a parameter. Forshots with Bridges body double, the artiststracked the cameras in each rame; that is, de-termined the viewpoint and movement o thecamera, and then they tracked Reardons headand other objects, such as discs, i need be.

Doug Roble, sotware engineer at DigitalDomain, received a echnical Achievement

Academy Award in 1998 or rack, the stu-dios in-house tracking sotware. For TRON:Legacy, Roble updated and modied the sot-

ware to handle data coming rom multiplestereo and witness cameras (see rack Stars,pg. 8). Even so, tracking was so difcult andimportant that many o the tracking artistsstayed on the show until the end. Tere wasalways something that needed to be tweaked,MacKenzie says.

Having the digital head mouth Bridgeswords correctly, and placing the digital head

on the doubles shoulders precisely, took theteam halway toward photorealism. Te rest

was up to the artists who rened Clus look.

Looking Good

People know what Je Bridges looked likeat 35, Barba says. But, i an image o Clucomes on screen and its supposed to be Jeat 35, your riend might remember him romthe lmAgainst All Odds, and you might re-member him rom Starman. So youre tryingto match peoples memories o Je, not his re-ality. Plus, hes a movie star. He looks dierentin dierent roles.

Moreover, creating young digital humansis more difcult than creating believableolder characters. All the wrinkles, age spots,and so orth that we had on Benjamin Buttonhelped us visually, Litt says. Younger Je hassmoother skin. We had to nd that Je-ness,his essence, with less help physically. Everylighter had a dozen or more photos o Je.

We were always thinking about what we couldchange to capture that Je-ness.

A technique the crew had tested and usedslightly on Benjamin Button helped: high-reso-lution displacement maps tied to the anima-tion. Modelers working in Autodesks Mudbox

At top, lighters used maps with tones ranging rom white to gray to modulate the sharpness o deeprefections in suraces. At bottom, body double John Reardon, wearing Clus Lightsuit, matched JeBridges perormance as Clu leads his pack o Programs. Digital Domain then replaced Reardons headwith a CG head to create the clone o young Bridges.

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painted Clus ace in high-resolution 3D andconverted ne details, such as pores, to displace-ment maps. Te displacement maps, based onshapes captured rom Bridges and massagedor the younger clone, added other details be-yond those in the model used by animators.

Tere wasnt enough resolution in theanimation model to capture subtle wrinkles,nasal labial olds, crows eet, things like that,Litt says. We had between 50 and 100 othese high-resolution displacement maps touse in lighting, and we created a pipeline tohave them blend properly. Its all dynamic; ithappens on the fy in every rame. You dontreally see it in Maya until you render. Te sys-tem builds a nal map in Nuke every timeyou render.

For rendering the CG head, the crew usedMental Images Mental Ray to match theuturistic lighting used on sets and the blue-

screen stage. Usually Clu appears with othercharacters, sometimes CG, sometimes actors,but all wearing Lightsuits. Tere was lightingunder the glass foors and glow strips on thecharacters suits, Litt says. We had to add thehead to a body lit with those lights. And, there

was a lot o blue in the light, but when skin istoo blue, its scary-looking. Or, in a couple se-quences, hes in entirely red light, which is alsoscary. And some environments werent avail-able until later in post. So, it was dicult.

In act, in the disc game, the Lightcycle se-quences, and in most o the nal sequences,light denes the environments and the action

within.

Light the Way

Objects in the Grid are made o metal andglass, all o which refect light, oten primar-ily rom the glow lines on vehicles, structures,and the characters suits. Tus, one o the mostinteresting lighting challenges was modulatingthe sharpness o refections across suraces. Forrendering those reerences, the team devel-oped interesting techniques within the V-Ray

raytracing sotware.On buildings, we used panel maps to

change up the refections rom sharp to broad,to create a layer o depth, eegarden says.

Te maps had tone values that could rangerom white, which told the renderer the sur-ace was a mirror, to gray, which told the ren-der to increase the cone angle o rays bouncinglight onto the surace until the refection be-came diuse. eegarden used these maps, orexample, during a sequence in which Quorra(Olivia Wilde), wearing a Lightsuit, drives avehicle outlined with glow lines across a mish-mash landscape o refective geometry at vari-

Glow in the DarkThe suits, discs, Lightcycles, Lightjets, all the vehicles, and nearly all the objectsin the TRON world had glow lines, whether practical or digital. I think guringout how to deal with the glow lines was the most challenging part o shading,says Jonathan Litt, lighting supervisor. There wasnt an out-o-the-box way togenerate them.

One question was whether the glow should emit light. Initially, we turned[the digital glow lines] into lights or achieved the same eect with global illumi-nation, but we decided not to do that unless they needed to shine on a head,says Greg Teegarden, lighting supervisor. Having them cast light made onlyabout a two or three percent dierence. It didnt buy us anything.

Another question was color. We started with about 12 colors, says lightingsupervisor Jonathan Litt. But it was conusing, and the glow line was so in-tense we couldnt tell the dierence. Instead, they settled on our colors: yellow,orange, blue, and white.

For the original 1982 TRON, the crew had lmed people wearing suits withlines in black-and-white on black sets, printed the images on high-contrast lm,and rotoscoped the images to create the glow lines. The result was not consis-tent. Thus, to pay homage to the original lm, compositors added a glow passthat gave the Lightsuits worn by actors a subtle, pulsing ficker. The glow lineson the costumes were impressive and actually emitted light, Litt says. I onecharacter walked in ront o another, the glow lines would light up the ace. Theycouldnt have shot the movie without that. But, we tweaked them or color andother things.

Also, the suits would sometimes switch o or ficker on their own. So, ratherthan shooting the scene again, compositors oten would x the problem in post,

sometimes, ironically, by rotoscoping the glow lines. We had to come up witha methodology or pulling keys or rotoing the glow lines when Joe wanted thembrighter, Lambert says. And in some shots, where the suits had ripples in themor sections turned o, we had to roto in those lines. It was painul. We out-sourced a lot o that work.

To give digital characters and objects their iconic TRON glow, lighting artistsstarted by sampling values rom the live-action plates. Our glow lines mimic thebehavior o a neon tube, Teegarden says. The illumination emits rom the coreand alls o at the outside edges.

Painted maps specied the color and amount o allo: quite a number omaps to control the glow lines, adds Litt. We used shaders provided by therenderer and combined everything into a network. Two-thirds o the networkdealt with glow lines. Barbara Robertson

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ous angles. Te map changed the refectionsrom sharp to diuse depending on the angle.

o do this, a raytracer needs good controlo how it samples the suraces, Litt says. Wecould hit perormance bottlenecks, but it wasdoable. Its pleasing to see something with thesubtlety o blurry refections.

Te lighting supervisors worked closely with compositors to build the lighting tem-plates and then, or consistency and to makecompositing aster, tried to output images

with as much o the nal look accomplishedin rendering as possible. Tis was especiallyimportant or the Lightcycle sequence. Dur-ing this sequence, Sam and our or ve Pro-grams, all wearing the Lightsuits with glowing

white lines, race motorcycle-like bikes, alsooutlined with white light, against Clu, in aLightsuit glowing yellow, and his riders, wear-ing suits and riding bikes outlined in orangelight. railing streams o white or orange lightstretch wide and ar behind all the bikes.

Te Lightcycle sequence was the hardest,eegarden says. We had three layers o glassand characters riding these bikes up and down

the glass. And then the Game Grid has squaresstenciled onto the surace with glow lines. Asa result, we also had to gure out how muchlight theyd cast. I we treated the suraceslike real glass, they would be two mirrors ac-ing each other, which got conusing quicklyand skyrocketed the render time. So, wecheated. Te bike refects on the surace it istraveling on, but that surace doesnt refecton the one above. It probably took a good60 to 90 days to nail down, but its my avor-

ite. When people think oTRON, the thingthat pops into their head is guys in suits withglow lines on light bikes [Lightcycles] on aGame Grid.

Compositing supervisor Paul Lambert notesthat this sequence would not have been pos-sible to create using environmental refectionmaps. For this show, the refections needed tobe physically correct. When an object is closeto the surace, the refections on that suraceneeded to be sharp, but the part o the objectarther away needed to all o into nothing,especially when viewed in stereoscopic 3D.

We shotTRONwith two cameras and cre-

ated the CG with two cameras, and that givesit a dierent look, Lambert says. Its a shiny

world, stylistic and beautiul, and you see re-fections everywhere. I you tried to create thatusing projected textures, you wouldnt get thedepth in the refections and reractions. You

just couldnt do it; the refections would be onthe surace. I you look closely at the light-bikesequence, you can see that our refections havetheir own depth. Te glass foors are refectiveand have a surace texture. You can see when arefection is ar away.

Although the Lightcycles are basic blackoutlined in light, they do have wear and tear.Te vehicles and environments arent pris-tine, says Nikos Kalaitzidis, sequence supervi-sor or the Lightcycle and Lightjet sequences,and look development supervisor or tent-pole shots through the lm. Tey have paintscratches, chipped paint. Its a realistic world

even though its inside a computer. We had alot o texture painting or each asset as part othe look development phase.

o put riders on the Lightcycles, the teammotion-captured stunt actors riding a rig, ap-plied that data to CG doubles, and then pro-

jected photographs o aces onto the bodies.For the disc game, though, the director shotthe actors on bluescreen.

Our biggest challenge was developing thelook o this world, getting it right, and gettingthe approvals, Kalaitzidis says. We were re-sponsible or the look development on each oour sequences.

Te disc game takes place in a huge stadi-um with glass courts foating in the middle.Tousands o cheering and booing spectatorsring the stadiumdigital people/Programs allcontrolled by Massive Sotwares crowd-simu-lation sotware. Te studio also used Massiveto march Clus army o digital prisoners laterin the lm.

Ater the opponents battled, the glass courts would recongure themselves based on theoutcome, so the crew built digital models they

could rotate and view rom any angle.We had rotomation done o all the actors

so we could generate refections, says Kaliat-zidis. Te refections had to be accurate be-cause [the characters] were running around ona glass surace.

Its during this game, which takes placesoon ater Sam enters the RON world, thathe and the audience see de-rezzing or therst timeinitially when part o a glass foorshatters into tiny cubes, and then when Samres his disc at his opponent and a Programexplodes into similar tiny glassy cubes (seeDe-rez, pg. 19).

At top, the Lightcycle and the riders are digital; motion captured rom stunt actors on rigs helped theanimators perorm the digital doubles. At bottom, a digital Lightjet fies through digital clouds in ashot during an all-CG sequence.

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Pulling It Together

Te lighting team lessened the work thatcompositors otherwise would have done, andcompositors, or their part, reduced some othe work that might otherwise have been donein rendering. For example, a special techniquedeveloped in compositing changed the inten-sity o the glow lines based on distance. It wasslow to do, Lambert says. We would have20-minute renders to pre-comp. But in CG, it

would have taken days and days.Te compositing team also developed a

system that helped them quickly deocusobjects in a scene. Wed pick up a channelrom the animators that told us where thecamera ocused, and then applied de-ocus-ing to the appropriate elements, Lambertexplains. It would be extremely heavy to dothat during the render, and its way easier iyou need to break apart an image i it doesnt

have any orm o de-ocus applied.Using the same system but with inorma-

tion rom the camera rather than the anima-tors, the artists composited CG objects andcharacters into live-action plates. Tat way,the background CG and oreground CG wereoptically correct, Lambert adds.

Te team relied on Nuke or all the compos-iting, using Te Foundrys Ocula plug-ins orNuke to deal with the stereo shots. It was theonly option, Lambert says. Its so ecient.

O all the stereo shots, those with bluescreenelements were the most dicult or the com-positors to work with. Te image shot withone camera gets polarized dierently rom theother, so we have dierent specular intensi-ties rom one to the other, Lambert says.We worked with Te Foundry or about sixmonths and came up with a technique thatsairly automatic. Tey incorporated that into

Ocula, which really helped us out.Te compositors also occasionally needed

to adjust or vertical misalignmenttimeswhen one camera was slightly higher than theother. Wed have to cut out the oreground,x the background, and put it back togetheragain, Lambert says. It was painul.

Troughout the lm, they added particlesto the air, in stereo, ollowing the conceit thatas Flynn had evolved his digital world, he hadadded atmosphere. In act, in the climacticshots at the end that have everyone racing to-

ward the portal through a sea o simulation,the ormerly stark black and light environ-ment lls with clouds.

Te shots in the Lightcycle sequence, which didnt have atmospherics, had about100 layers, Lambert says, the bikes on threelayers, refections through three panes o glass,the stadium, the crowds, and so orth.

But the shots toward the end, with the char-acters racing toward the portal, had even more.Tose shots had an entire atmospheric envi-ronment with clouds, the portal beam, andthe Lightjets in there, as well, says Lambert.Tey had the most layers o any sequence.Probably 150 to 200 channels.

Because all the sequences are in stereo, thecompositors couldnt use any o the smoke andcloud live-action elementsusually a avoritetechnique to add photorealism, whereby art-ists place the photographed elements on cardsand insert them into a 3D scene.

We wanted to avoid any kind o card-likeeel, Lambert says. As soon as you put an ele-ment into a certain z-depth, it looks fat, es-pecially when everything else is rendered cor-rectly. So we rendered all the atmospherics inthe lm with [Side Eects Sotwares] Houdiniand in-house sotware.

Te climactic sequence takes visual eectsbeyond anything the lmmakers on the origi-nalTRONcould have imagined possibleoneo many such sequences in TRON: Legacy. Butthose creating this stunning lm stand on the

shoulders o that original crew, CG pioneerssuch as Robert Abel, Dave Inglish, Ken Perlin,

Judson Rosebush, Frank Vitz, Chris Wedge,and many other highly respected people inthe computer graphics community. Te Acad-emy voters snubbed the groundbreaking workdone by that crew because they couldnt see theuture. Te uture is now on screen in stereo-scopic 3D. Its a good bet the crew oTRON:Legacywont suer the same ate. n

Barbara Robertson is an award-winning writer and a

contributing editor forComputer Graphics World. She can

be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net.

De-rez

All the material in the TRON worldUsers, Programs, buildings, discs, Light-cycles, the Game Grid everythingis made o 3D voxels. When Sam swingshis wand to orm a Lightcycle or Lightjet, the vehicles rez onthat is, changerom wires and cubes into their 3D orms. When one thing smashes into an-othera disc fung during a ght into a Program, one Lightjet into anotherthe

object explodes into tiny cubes. Theyre like glassy ice cubes, says sequencesupervisor Nikos Kalaitzidis. The material o the object is on an outer shell, andthe inside is a glassy surace.

Eects lead Byron Gaswicks team developed a procedural particle-basedsystem within Side Eects Houdini that uses rigid-body dynamics to managethe colliding cubes when something de-rezzes. But, causing something to rezon or o was a combined eort between animation, eects, lighting, and com-positing. Animators would have a certain amount o geometry to provide thetiming or when the eect starts and ends, says Kalaitzidis. Once approved, e-ects artists did all their crazy things. Once the cubes come out o eects, theygo to lighting or rendering in [Chaos Groups] V-Ray. And that output goes tocompositing or pretty glows, color, and fares. And then you see piles o cubesacting like they would in the real world. Barbara Robertson

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celebrating 25 editions of

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It should come as no surprise, giv en the economic for ces,that visual e ects movies and the companies that pr oducethem have had a tough go of it this y ear. e last domino

in the moviemaking series, some VFX houses w ere knockeddownor even knocked outby economic forces that mademiddle-budget movies an endangered species and moved worko -shore. is year, like so many years before, the blockbust-ers loomed large. S ince many of these fi lms are e ects- andCG-heavy, they have continued to generate wor k among thestudios. Nevertheless, M ark Breakspear, VFX super visor atCIS in Vancouver, worries that the tent poles are overshadow-ing the smaller fi lms. A lot of small mo vies that came out

wont get recognition, he says, pointing out Knight and Dayas one example. ere are always three obvious movies thatyou know will get in.

is year, there are five spots for nominations, so even withthree obvious (pick y our favorites), it could still be any onesyear. e good newsand the bad newsis that visual e ectshave matured. All the mo vies are technically superb , saysVES president/visual e ects supervisor Je Okun. ere wasa time when youd get a movie done and it was the pinnacle ofthe art, the best they could do . Today the entire industry hasbecome so sophisticated, and the tools are commoditized. estate of the art is so advanced as to be transparent. Now it isntabout software and hardware. Its about the artist.

So, what have some of these amazing ar tiststhe best andthe brightest in the ar eas of visual e ects and animationserved up for us during 2010 that ar e worth talking about?Lets take a look.

VISUAL EFFECTS

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage

of the Dawn Treader

Release date: Dec. 10

Production companies: Fox 2000 Pictures, Twentieth

Century Fox Film Corp., Walden Media

is is one of many sequels that came out this y ear, andwhen the first movie in the series was as well acclaimed as thisone appears to be, it s a har d act to follo w. Nonetheless, theCG lion Aslan is still amazing, and Narnia fans look forwardto Dawn Treader. Mark Breakspear, visual e ects supervisorat CIS in Vancouver, thinks the VFX in this fi lm will be welldone (this story was fi nished prior to the fi lms release). Itsgot all the har d components of character wor k, physical ef-fects, water, and fire, he says. Its got everything, and peoplerespond to that.

This years five nominations ups the ante for those

vying for an Oscar By Debra Kaufman

going for

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Clash of the TitansRelease date: April 2

Production companies: Legendary Pictures,

Warner Bros. Pictures, Thunder Road Pictures,

The Zanuck CompanyIts tough to remake a classic visual eects

lm and get the approval o the VFX crowd,especially those who revered the originalRay Harryhausen version. Tis was a lmthat we loved in our childhood, says DavidDozoretz, ounder/CEO o Persistence oVision.

Saints LA visual eects supervisor/ownerMark Larranaga and SWAY visual eects super-visor Aaron Powell both especially enjoyed thescorpion battle. It elt so real, and the eects

were really great, Powell says. All the battlescenes were aggressive and, o course, every-thing had to be CGI.

Larranaga and Powell also both liked thetwist on the character Medusa. Medusa withthe longer snake tail was cool, says Larranaga.Powell notes that they made Medusa morebadass by giving the audience the sense thatshe didnt just try to turn people into stone,but that she was a great archer and movedquickly. Look FX co-owner/senior visual e-ects supervisor Anthony Max Ivins pointsout that, among the good VFX, were all the

water eects. Tats all hard to do well, henotes.

Tis movie had a 3D stereo conversion,however, that a ew VFX experts elt was toorushed. In order to do a conversion correctly,you have to spend time on it, says Dozoretz.Okun notes that the lmmakers didnt initiallyknow it would be converted to 3D. Its not

a ailure o the process,but o the reprocessing,he says. Prime Focus dida great job. But I have toagree with James Cameronthat it was actually 2.8D.

Harry Potter and the DeathlyHallows: Part 1Release date: November 19

Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures,

Heyday Films Adapting a bookespecially a beloved

oneis extremely difcult, but that is wherethe Harry Potterranchise has shone. I expectit to be great, says Ivins, who declares him-sel a big an o all the Harry Potterlms.Te work is always completely solid, saysDozoretz. Te entire ranchise isbrilliant. Also a huge an is KernOptical executive producer RoseDuignan. Te work is always sooutstanding, always A+, she says.Its also a great story with greatcharacters.

Although Okun doesnt consid-er himsel a an o antasy movies,hes looking orward to seeing thelm. Te work in the stories has progressedat a phenomenal pace, he says. Te story isgetting tight, and Im looking orward to see-ing what they do.

Okun applauded the decision to hold o on a3D version. I youre going to shoot somethingnew and in stereo, shoot it in stereo, adds Do-zoretz. Only convert library titles. Im a big pro-

ponent o that.

InceptionRelease date: July 16

Production companies: Warner Bros. Pictures,

Legendary Pictures, Syncopy

Tis eature lm had a lot o critics and anstalking, and with its unusual olding and ex-ploding cityscapes, was a big hit among visualeects experts. Tis was my avorite moviethis year, says Ivins. It wasnt easy to gureout how they did the weightlessness. Tere

were a lot o hmmm moments in the lm. Aside rom building everything in 3D, they

did a lot o large-scale rigs and camera setupsto achieve everything.

Larranaga notes that the eect o suspend-ing a character in midair was achieved in the

Matrix movies, but Inception took it to anentirely dierent level. We get the wholemovement in zero gravity, he says. Te waythey used that eect to create a dreamlikestate and eeling was really something dier-ent. Going three layers deep into the lm andkeeping the audience in the story was also abig accomplishment.

Okun says that watching the city o Paris oldover was the coolest visual eect hes seen. Notonly was the work stunningly great, but it wastransparent to the story, he says. Te work

was all in service o the story, and the story wasso resh and new that it allowed the VFX olksto stretch and come up with stunning visualsthat were justied or the story. Rising Sun Pic-

tures co-ounder/visual eects supervisor onyClark agrees, saying, It was one o the mostoriginal story lines o the season; the lm gotme thinking. It was antastic work, helped bythe act that the lm itsel is so strong.

Zoic Studios senior VFX supervisor oeatures Rocco Passionino notes that the

visual eects were so seamless that many view-ers might not realize the extent that they wereincorporated. Framestore did a antastic job,he says. Its a perect example o integrationo visual eects into a very creative story wherethey melded together perectly. Duignannotes the work o New Deal Studios in creat-ing a complex miniature sequence when the

hideout slides down the mountain. Tey didgreat work, she says. Hats o to them. ForDuignan, its about the heart and soul oa movie. Tat still matters, she says. Tismovie transported you rom the rst rame tothe last.

Inception was totally cool, says DigitalDomain animation director David Andrews.I had to suspend my disbelie a bit o the way,but I didnt care. It was really engrossing andcaptivating to me, story-wise. It was a success-ul weaving o story and eects.

A new aesthetic that played around with re-ality was what intrigued Dozoretz. Te visual

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eects were used or new storytelling reasonsand showed us something weve never seen be-

ore conceptually, he says.Visual eects, at its bestuses, should be able to cost-eectively tell a story in anew way, and this support-ed innovative storytelling.

Iron Man 2Release date: May 7

Production companies: Paramount Pictures,

Marvel Entertainment, Marvel Studios, Fairview

Entertainment

Entertaining and clever is how Break-spear characterizes this movie and its eects. Iliked the movie, and the work was good, hesays. So many people worked so hard.

Passionino notes that, although some o theeects were done in the rst Iron Man, the se-

quel had some antastic moments. Te speed-racing scene in which Whiplash severs the carin hal and Iron Man fies through the air anddons a portable Iron Man suit was incrediblyclever, he says. Te eect was gorgeous.

Powell, who loves building costumes orHalloween, appreciates the CGI work that

went into creating Iron Mans suit. Its sointricate and was tracked really well, he says.Its so cool to see all the other designs o thesuits and the integration. ILM always does anamazing job o integrating CGI into the en-vironments. Te robots looked believable be-cause they are scratched up, have battle dam-age, and arent pristine.

Iron Man 2s fying sequences were excel-lent, says Dozoretz, who also enjoyed all themachinations o the suit. Clark comments that

the work is all o a very highstandard. I love to see thedetailed mechanical ttingo the suits, and the seam-less integration o that intolive action, he adds.

The Last AirbenderRelease date: July 1

Production companies: Paramount Pictures,

Nickelodeon Movies, Blinding Edge Pictures,

The Kennedy/Marshall Company

Although not everyone liked the story, VFXsupervisors liked its eects, which were doneby ILM. Te VFX were eective to tell thestory, says Ivins. Tey did a good job oshowing how he controls the air and ghts

with it. It was well done.Te ability to do water and re eects

both o which are complicatedwas notablein this movie, says Passionino. It had somecool eects. Dozoretz comments that al-though re has been done well, all the eectsaround the wind elt resh, like a new aes-thetic. And thats the harder thing to do,he says. Showing us something weve neverseen beore is tough. Even i they aesthetical-

ly change a bit about thewind, say the way it curvesor integrates with the live-action plate, it helps a lot.

And they did that with

the wind eect.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians:The Lightning ThiefRelease date: February 12

Production companies: Fox 2000 Pictures,

1492 Pictures, Imprint Entertainment, Sunswept

Entertainment, TCF Vancouver Productions

Dozoretz, whose company, Persistence oVision, worked on this lm, recounts that theprevisualization was done in a storyboard lookrather than a CG look. It was interesting, likean animated black-and-white comic book, he

says. I thought the VFXwere all excellent. Water e-ects used to be incrediblycomplicated to do, and Ithink water has absolutelybeen nailed now.

Prince of Persia:The Sands of TimeRelease date: May 28

Production companies: Walt Disney Pictures,

Jerry Bruckheimer Films

Powell characterizes the eects in this lmas beautiul. He particularly liked all the dust

eects, as well as the reversing o time eect.Once they showed it to you, you bought intoit, he says. Te scene reverses around him,like a ghost image, and its a neat eect, and aninteresting way to approach it.

Te eects may have been over the top, butthey were very well executed, says Ivins. Forme it was less about the execution than the

design, which was a littleheavy-handed. Te execu-tion was ne. Dozoretzlikes what the movie did

with sand. It was all goodwork, he says.

Robin HoodRelease date: May 14

Production companies: Universal Pictures,

Imagine Entertainment, Relativity Media, Scott

Free Productions

Robin Hooda visual eects movie? Its oneo those movies that thereare so many visual eects wedont see, says Breakspear. Ireally enjoyed it and thoughtit was a good movie.

Breakspear particularlyappreciated the battle scenesthat were not overdoneor overstaged, as well asthe simple bow and arrow

work and the gore.As a child, Breakspear va-

cationed in the area in Waleswhere the movie was shot. Knowing the loca-tion and knowing how many houses they hadto erase, I was impressed with the amount o

work they did, he adds. I elt immersed inmedieval England.

Breakspear additionally liked how they litthe eects as well as the matte paintings: Tevisual eects didnt jump out, but I liked howit all worked.

Larranaga also loved the matte paintingso the castles. Tey did their homework,

he says, reerring to the level o detail con-tained in the work. Tis is another moviethat used eects well. Rhythm & Hues work

was seamless.Powell agrees that the visual eects were

integrated well to the point where you dontnotice whats a visual eect. Te Armadacoming across the channel has so many boatsthat you know they didnt build them, hepoints out. But its still convincing. I it was50 years ago, they would have built that manyships and hired that many extras. With thevisual eects in this movie, theyre integratedso well you never elt it was an eect.

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SaltRelease date: July 23

Production companies: Columbia Pictures,

Relativity Media, Di Bonaventura Pictures,

Wintergreen Productions

Salt was another great example o a mov-ie rie with invisible eects, says Dozoretz.Tere were a lot o invisible eects that were

well done, such as in the car/truck overpasschase sequence halway through the flm,

he adds. Tat was great.Sway calls the eects inSaltover the top in termso the action, but notesthat the action eects werenicely done.

The Sorcerers ApprenticeRelease Date: July 14

Production companies: Walt Disney Pictures,

Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Saturn Films, BrokenRoad Productions, Junction Entertainment

Andrews enjoyed the dragon that busted upChinatown. o me, that was visually stimu-lating, he says. Te design o the dragon

was good, and it was a good staging o a bigbeast where you only get to see parts o it. Itmoves quickly and blends in with the fre-

cracker red background oChinatown. It was a gooddragon. Adds Clark: Te

work is o consistentlyhigh quality that serves thestory well.

TRON: LegacyRelease date: Dec. 17

Production companies: LivePlanet, Walt Disney

Pictures

For many visual eects proessionals andafcionados, TRON is the most hotly antici-pated flm in years. TRON, says Dozoretz, isthe visual eects industrys dirty little secret.Tose o us who say we got into the flm in-dustry because oStar Warswe love TRON

just as much, he says. Im ecstatic about thismovie.

Tis is the reason Im in this business,

admits Andrews. I have been a TRONreaksince 1982, and I cant wait. Te stakes arehigh, and Im waiting or it to come out withincredible anticipation. Te new generation

will get hooked! Ivins says TRON was, inhis generation, the biggest eects movie thatcame out. It showed us how it was done. Itsan icon or VFX, so everyone is going to beeager to see it.

Although Ivins could only rely on clips hehad seen, he likes what he saw. Its classicTRON, updated, he points out. Im cau-tiously optimistic that itll look great. Teydid a good job o updating it without radicallychanging it.

Dozoretz looks orward to seeing the digitalace the production puts on Je Bridges. Itmay not be breaking that much ground be-cause oBenjamin Button, but its the thingthat stands out as a technical achievement in

the flm, he says. Ive heard the stereo worksquite well.

TRON will do well because its so vi-sual, adds Breakspear. Te ace technologythat Digital Domain did in Benjamin Buttoncould be put to amazing use or making JeBridges look young again in certain shots. Inthe proo-o-concept trailer rom Digital Do-main, I saw a clip o Je Bridges, young again,on a motorbike, and it was well done.

Using visual eects in the right way is whatshould be rewarded, and TRON alls intothat category, adds Breakspear. I think itllbe tried-and-true visual eects done very welland en masse.

ANIMATION

Alice in WonderlandRelease date: March 5

Production companies: Walt Disney Pictures,

Roth Films, Team Todd, The Zanuck Company

Alice in Wonderlandhad some nice twists to

the story line, and Andrews likes that. WhatI liked about it was Alices problem, about notbeing orced to marry the wrong person andbeing an independent woman, he says. Heloved the sense o scale throughout the movie,rom the Queens overlarge head to how theymade Alice small. Te scale o that big Band-ersnatch bearing down on Alice is hard to do,he says. When you have a gigantic beast in themovies, you have to rame them that way.

Dozoretz enjoyed the very interestingaesthetic style. I loved how the Queen oHearts head was huge, and the characters thatgo through a wall and right into the Queens

territory, he says. Te Jabberwocky at theend was un, as well. And I loved the sol-

diers made out o cards. Iliked their 2D quality andhow they were really pho-torealistic. Te CheshireCat, the rabbit they

were all good.

Despicable MeRelease date: July 9

Production company: Illumination Entertainment,Universal Pictures

Tis stylish animated flm rom newcomerIllumination Entertainment illustrates the

work rom French studio Mac Gu Ligne.Te movie, about a lovablevillain who wants to stealthe moon, pushes the stateo the art in animationperormance, while deliv-ering a unique look.

How to Train Your DragonRelease date: March 26

Production companies: DreamWorks Animation,

Mad Hatter Entertainment, Mad Hatter Films,

Vertigo Entertainment

Te look o this movie is more cinematicthan other animated eatures, says Dozoretz,

who notes that the dragon was exceptionallywell lit. Te production [team] worked withreal cinematographers about how certain lenses

would capture certain light, he says. And youcan see the results, rom concept art throughto the fnished flm. It had much more real-

istic lighting than animated flms usually do.Its pushing a little more toward photorealism,and thats inspiring to me. I applaud Dream-

Works or pushing the envelope!Breakspear also loved the movie. I cared

about the boy and his dragon, he says. Ilooked at dads beard and thought how hard it

was to do. All the dierent dragons were great.When you see a movie thats a good idea andis done well, I react warmly to it, and How toTrain Your Dragon was one o those movies.

From Duignans point o view, the charac-ters were completely engaging, and the drag-ons were brilliant. Dragons are hard because

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