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Animated shorts hit a high note with viewers

At Your ServiceService providers bring 3D scanning to studios

The Race Is OnProject Gotham Racing 3

revs up gaming

Hanging A ShingleThe ‘hidden costs’ of

opening your own shop

Music for the

Eyes

February 2006 www.cgw.com®

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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

W O R L DComputerAlso 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 FEBRUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 1

Departments

Editor’s Note 2

French Inspiration

France has always been known for art, and today, the country has carried over that tradition to the CG realm, teaching and inspiring digital artists to pursue their passions and dreams.

Spotlight 4

Products

Silhouette FX’s Silhouette Paint

Autodesk’s Discreet Combustion 4 for the Mac

Dosch Design’s Viz-Image series

Video Viewpoint 6Adobe’s Suite Production

As video turns digital, a host of new applications are becoming available. With its Production Suite, Adobe is ready to help users migrate to these new markets.

Portfolio 34Jiri Adamec

Digital Training 36A wide range of virtual tutoring and training options allow artists to master software at their own pace.

Reviews 38Bauhaus’s Mirage 1.5

Features

Cover storyShort and Sweet 10ANIMATION | Artists and fi lmmakers test new styles, equipment, and ideas with animated short fi lms, some of which may end up on this year’s Oscar short list.

By Barbara Robertson

Point Person 20SCANNING | 3D scanning technology is proving itself as an important studio modeling tool, and service providers are helping the facilities get this job done.

By Debra Kaufman

The Fast Track 26GAMING | Bizarre Creations revs up its Project Gotham Racing 3 franchise, injecting the title with fi lm-like effects running on the new Xbox 360 engine.

By Karen Moltenbrey

Starting a Small Studio 30BUSINESS TRENDS | Ready to hang your own shingle? Don’t forget the importance of location. Some other things to consider: planning for expenses, fi nding clients, and pricing your work.

By William “Proton” Vaughan

On the cover:Pixar’s “music men” told the story of the

studio’s animated short fi lm “One Man

Band” with music, not words. See pg. 10.

10

February 2006 • Volume 29 • Number 2

See www.cgw.com for a more

in-depth version of this article.

[email protected] story exclusives:

The French Student RevolutionE-Magiciens in Valenciennes, France, showcases animation from some of the most creative students in the country. See the winning entries from this annual event.

Integration is KeyAt Autodesk University in Orlando, Florida, the crowds were big, but the emphasis on “keeping it digital throughout the production pipeline” was even bigger.

Iomega’s REV Drive Backs It UpCheck out this fi rsthand look at the Iomega REV 35GB/90GB drive, a low-cost, portable backup device that redefi nes the way data is archived and shared.

20

26

© 2

006

Pixa

r.

30



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2 | Computer Graphics World FEBRUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m

editor

’sno

teKelly DoveEditor-in-Chief

French InspirationLively, captivating, and often dark, French animation continues to inspire

artists worldwide. And, in Valenciennes, France, art is more than pretty pictures;

it is a way of life—even for the local government.

On a recent trip to Lille and Valenciennes, two cosmopolitan towns near

Paris, I was introduced to a new way of teaching and inspiring artists to pur-

sue their passions while helping them to “achieve the dream.”

It all starts in the schools, where artists are put through rigorous testing to prove their

talents long before they are accepted into an art program. One such school, Supinfocom,

which I visited in Valenciennes, requires students to work on a project, such as a brand

identifi er for a mock company, creating a unique artistic treatment based on a strict list

of criteria. This type of project is a pre-qualifi er for admittance, and only a handful of

students will make the cut—space is limited, and only the crème de la crème students

will be fortunate enough to add the school to their resume. While it would certainly be

easy for the school to expand and admit students who have more promise (and money)

than talent, it’s pretty obvious the school’s leaders value a solid reputation more than a

hefty bank account. Also at Supinfocom is SupinfoGames, which offers similarly struc-

tured admittance requirements, but with a focus on game creation and development.

During the fi rst and second year, students at Supinfocom focus on design and ani-

mation using programs such as After Effects. Teamwork becomes vital in the third year

as groups of three and four students are challenged to use the latest 3D modeling and

animation software to create animated projects. Team-based learning is certainly not a

new concept. The challenge for the small team of students is to work together to create

an animated short—from start to fi nish—and compete against other classmates and stu-

dents from other schools at E-Magiciens, a small trade show and conference similar to

SIGGRAPH in the early days, only with an enormous animation festival/competition.

While there are certainly many training facilities in the US that offer team-based learn-

ing, most are focused on instructor-driven projects and ideas that utilize large groups of

students to produce an animated project. At Supinfocom, the average team size is three

students, and everyone is involved in each phase of the production

pipeline—from modeling and animation to compositing and edit-

ing of the fi nal project. Clearly, as the teams establish a rhythm, the

individual strengths of the team members are identifi ed, and the

team divides and conquers to meet their deadline. The ultimate

goal for the students is to be on the winning team at E-Magiciens;

winners are quickly recruited to join top studios.

Perhaps the most inspirational part of my trip was realized while visiting with The

Valenciennes Chamber of Commerce, and seeing fi rsthand its commitment to the DCC

community. The Chamber funds a business incubator with self-contained offi ces, where

content creators can move right in and get right to business, utilizing their talent with-

out worrying about overhead, business equipment, etc. The incubator has everything

you need—a boardroom, a small television studio, and even a cafeteria—to get business

off the ground. But the gravy train doesn’t last forever. There is a three-year time limit to

get established, and once companies are successful, they must move on to allow for new

businesses to incubate. It’s a commitment to the DCC community that cities in the States

should consider adopting to help more small studio owners “achieve the dream.”

Pretty pictures

help launch

small business

in France.



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spotlightE F F E C T S T O O L S

V I S U A L E F F E C T S

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

PR

OD

UC

TS

PR

OD

UC

TS

I M A G E L I B R A R I E S

PR

OD

UC

TS

Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s Discreet Combus-

tion 4 visual effects software is now available for the

Mac OS. The latest release offers vector paint, particles,

effects animation, and 3D compositing for use in the cre-

ation of motion

pictures, episodic

television shows,

and commercials.

New features in

Combustion 4 in -

clude a diamond

keyer, time warp,

B-spline vector

shapes and group

pointing, custom

capsules, an optimized Gaussian Blur, merge operator,

and enhanced paint tools. Combustion 4 for the Mac is

priced at $995.

Ready for Combustion 4 on the Mac?

Silhouette Paint from Silhouette FX

offers a nondestructive motion-sta-

bilized paint tool for image resto-

ration, dust busting, and wire and

rig removal that the company says

can handle the demands of motion-

picture and television visual effects.

The product is available as an add-on

to Silhouette’s Roto application, a stand-

alone tool, or a plug-in for Adobe’s Final

Cut Pro and After Effects.

In addition to multi-layered match-

moving capabilities, Silhouette Paint

can nondestructively apply color, tint,

erase, blemish, mosaic, and grain

brushes to 8-bit, 16-bit, and fl oating-

point clips. To match a foreground ele-

ment, paint sources can be transformed

on the fl y by rotation, corner pinning,

and scaling in addition to being offset

in time or XY space. Four independent

clone sources are maintained simulta-

neously for added fl exibility.

Silhouette Paint can be integrated

with Silhouette Roto’s Shape tool for

motion tracking, variable-edge soft-

ness, and realistic motion blur. Brushes

can be applied to shape layers and auto-

matically matchmoved. Blemishes, for

example, can be automatically erased

over time. Silhouette Paint is priced at

$495 and Silhouette Roto sells for $595.

Silhouette FX Introduces Nondestructive Painting

See the Forest, the Trees, and the SignsDosch Design has introduced fi ve new collections in

its Dosch Viz-Images series, offering everything from

road signs and streetlamps to plants and trees. Three

new Road Sign libraries each have 500 images that

include hazard, right-of-way, speed limit, construc-

tion and tour-

ism signs and

symbols in

JPEG format.

The Forest

Trees collec-

tion features

100 trees, and the Urban Features collection includes

benches, hydrants, streetlamps, mailboxes, and more.

The images in these two collections are supplied in

uncompressed TIFF, PSD, and JPEG formats. All col-

lections support CAD, 3D design, and image-process-

ing programs, and are priced at $79 each.



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Introducing

The Powerful, Approachable, Complete 3D Solution experience it at eovia.com

InspireYou are the creator. You look for inspiration everywhere. You want your work to inspire others. You constantly desire something that will take your designs to the next level, keep you competitive. Productive. You want to lead, not follow. Something great is here now.



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view

poin

tV

ideo

Kathleen Maher is a senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research, a Tiburon, CA-based consultancy specializing in graphics and multimedia, and editor in chief of JPR’s “TechWatch.” She can be reached at [email protected].


By Kathleen Maher

Adobe has a long history in digital video with its Premiere and After Effects soft-

ware and, in piling it all into one box, the company is trying to give its customers what

they want—true compatibility between the different modules of the Production Studio,

better tools for collaboration, new presets for After Effects, more and better templates,

enhanced ease of use for DVD creation, and fundamental improvements in Audition.

The Pieces of the Production

Adobe’s newest release of Production Studio is available in two versions: Standard,

which includes After Effects 7.0, Premiere Pro 2.0, and Photoshop CS2 ($1199) and

Premium, which adds Audition 2.0, Encore DVD 2.0, and Illustrator CS2 ($1,699).

One of the guiding principles for Adobe’s development is that the use of Photoshop

and Illustrator is almost universal among creative professionals, making back-and-

forth compatibility a built-in advantage for Production Studio users right from the

start. Expanding on this, Adobe has created consistently similar environments for

Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Audition.

Taking intercommunication between the software programs even further, Adobe

has added Dynamic Link, which enables users to work smoothly within modules with-

out having to perform intermediate rendering. I talked to people who were already

using the Production Suite as beta testers for Adobe and they universally tipped their

hat to the power of Dynamic Link.

For example, Michael Kolowich of Diginovations in Concord, Massachusetts, works

with Adobe’s video products to create corporate videos for the area’s universities

and museums. He notes that the freedom of working interchangeably with Premiere

Someday video might replace

newspapers, e-mail, and even

magazines. Not that this would

necessarily be a good thing, but

video is becoming a signifi cant

form of mass communication.

And, as video goes digital, it becomes a

more fl uid medium, moving from the TV,

to the PC, to handheld devices. And it will

have to shape-shift accordingly. Adobe’s

latest lineup of video tools and utilities

is designed to keep up

with new applications for

video and to simplify the

lives of Adobe’s custom-

ers, which is not a simple

task by any stretch of the

imagination.

There are plenty of

contenders for the atten-

tion of video profession-

als, including Avid’s

Pinnacle line of products,

Sony’s Vegas+ DVD suite

and a swarm of upstarts

led by Sonic and Ulead,

Adobe appears to be aim-

ing directly at Apple.

Yet, Adobe is exploiting

several advantages—its

ownership of creative

tools such as Photoshop

and Illustrator (which are

ubiquitous in the indus-

try), its possession of PDF

(the de facto standard

for document exchange),

and its acquisition of

Macromedia’s Flash, a

leading format for small

form animation used

widely in phones and

on the Web.

Adobe

revamps

its video

products and

takes aim

at Apple.

Production Studio’s Bridge component is a centralized fi le browser with media management

capabili ties, allowing users to fi nd and work with all fi les related to projects within any of

the Production Suite modules.

Adobe’s Suite Production



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Pro and After Effects is “incalculable.”

Interoperability, notes Kolowich, actually

makes the programs more powerful than

they would be on their own. For example,

he says that one of the aspects of video

that separates professionals from amateurs

is the skillful use of animated titles. He

has been able to take advantage of Adobe’s

inclusion of text animation and presets in

After Effects since the last introduction of

Adobe’s Production Suite, but now feels

like it is an embedded utility. “It’s like the

Adobe Titler on steroids,” he says.

Other work fl ow improvements in

the Production Suite include Bridge,

Adobe’s name for its centralized fi le

browser with media management that

helps users fi nd and work with all the

fi les related to projects within any of the

Production Suite modules. Also, Adobe

has added DVD creation to its Premiere

Pro program, recognizing that users

may need to quickly output a DVD with

good-looking menus rather than go to

Encore to create a professional-level DVD

designed for distribution.

Adobe’s attention to work fl ow issues

speaks to some of the challenges its cus-

tomers face. A large part of the video

professional market is made up of small

studios—owners are very often the cre-

ative director, the videographer, and the

IT person. For the small house, work

fl ow and communication can be particu-

larly challenging because it involves the

shooting and editing of sound and video,

delivery, client input, and so on.

Chris Randall of Edit 1 Media specializes in wedding vid-

eos and corporate videos. In fact, he fi nds that one business

often feeds the other. Most of the time, Randall and his team

will shoot the video while Randall’s wife takes over the editing

tasks. Randall favors the new multicam features in Premiere

Pro to simultaneously view and work with multiple sources,

since the workloads at small production houses can be stagger-

ing. In fact, he recently was editing 15 video projects simulta-

neously. Randall notes anything that helps make his job easier

and reduce editing time goes straight to his bottom line.

Videographers are also coming to grips with the transi-

tion to HD. Interestingly, video producers are fi nding that

even their wedding clients are becoming interested in HD

video because they’re buying high-def large screen TVs

and looking ahead. Corporate clients are likewise moving

to HD, and, of course, the broadcast industry is racing to get to HD. But the other

reality of video is that it’s big and demanding. Luckily, hardware manufacturers

are coming to the rescue. To keep up with the trend, Adobe has added support for

the Aja Xena HS and also native support for HDV. In addition, Adobe’s support for

OpenGL gives hardware graphics boards the ability to accelerate processes. One

of the most obvious advantages will be support for high dynamic range imagery,

thanks to OpenGL, and also support for effects and plug-ins.

Adobe was among the fi rst to spawn a plug-in community with its SDK for Photoshop

Encore DVD’s fl owchart simplifi es organization when creating interactive

menus, multiple audio tracks, subtitle tracks, and more.



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and, later, for After Effects. It is continu-

ing the effort by reaching outto third-party

partners in video hardware, such as Aja,

for example, and also audio hardware

partners, third-party software developers,

training program developers, and expert

support. The evolution of OpenGL and

Adobe’s enthusiastic exploitation of the

API defi nitely opens up new opportunities

for hardware and software developers.

Adobe has made several signifi cant

improvements to Audition and, as a

result, believes many customers will be

able to work totally within Audition, and

not rely on additional products for audio

work. Features, such as support for ASIO

(Audio Stream Input/Output) for multi-

channel hardware, puts Audition more

fi rmly within the realm of professional

audio products, and Frequency Space

Editing lets users zero in on a particular

sound, or frequency, to actually see the

area that needs work.

The Bottom Line

As always, it’s not about the pieces, it’s

about the whole. Much of the Adobe

Production Studio has been evolving to

this point—some of the features, such

as presets, titles, frequency space edit-

ing for Audition, and so on, were actu-

ally included in earlier versions of the

software. Nor are these features unique,

but they are necessary. Apple’s Final Cut

Pro, for example, has multi-cam features,

Apple introduced Motion to compete with

After Effects, and Apple has very strong

audio editing tools. What’s most impor-

tant is the way the pieces fi t together and

the way in which they enable people to

work with each other creatively. Perhaps

one of the most revolutionary additions

to the Creative Suite Production Studio

won’t even be realized until the prod-

uct is used in the creative commu-

nity. Adobe has enhanced its Acrobat

PDF format to work with video content,

allowing collaborators and customers to

attach notes for items such as sequence

fi xes, additions, deletions, etc.

And, some of the real changes in

the use of video are just taking shape.

Kolowich is encour-

aged by the poten tial

of the wide-ranging

hosts for video and the

merger between Adobe

and Macromedia. As a

former executive with

Lotus and publisher at

Ziff-Davis. Kolowich

is also a veteran of the

vast changes in work

habits caused by digi-

tal technology and the

arrival of the Internet.

In his work with college marketing he sees giant change coming as kids who grew

up swimming in digital media reach college and the workplace. “It’s a tsunami,” he

says of the change in media that’s on the way. As a video producer, he sees that radi-

cal new ways of working will have to be developed to create content suitable for HD

and content that can be sent to mobile phones, media players, and online. Kids, he

believes, will treat video just like they treat words, pictures, and music.

With Production Studio, Adobe is concentrating on the professional side of the

equation but with key technologies in video and communications, Adobe is well

positioned to ride the wave as it changes our concept of media.

Audition’s Spectral View can be used to apply effects or edits to

select frequencies of a particular time span.



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. . . . Animation

Short and For m

any, the art

of animatio

n reaches it

s highest

peak in the

smallest m

edium—sho

rt animated fi

lms. Free f

rom the

strictures of

box-offi ce a

ppeal and c

lient approv

als, these ar

tists expres

s personal

ideas, test s

tyles, and s

ometimes s

imply have

fun. Largely

invisible to

the mass m

arket, the

primary ven

ues for thes

e short pro

jects are fi lm

festivals an

d animation

festivals.

Each year, t

hough, the

Academy o

f Motion Pi

cture Arts a

nd Sciences

honors one

short anim

ated

fi lm with an

Oscar and

at least thre

e with Osca

r nominatio

ns. To quali

fy for the O

scar race, t

he short m

ust

have won a

n Academy

-qualifi ed fe

stival or op

ened in a th

eater. The s

hort-fi lm br

anch of the

Academy n

arrows

the qualifyin

g fi lms into

a smaller g

roup, from

which they

announce

three to fi ve

nominees

in late Janua

ry. Academ

y

members vo

te on the no

minees duri

ng Februar

y, and this y

ear’s Oscar w

inner will b

e announce

d March 5.

Of the fi lm

s likely to b

e on the Ac

ademy’s se

cret list of n

omination c

andidates t

his year, on

ly two were

ani-

mated solely

with 3D co

mputer gra

phics tools:

Pixar’s “On

e Man Band

” and Shan

e Acker’s “

9,” which w

on Best in

Show at SIG

GRAPH 200

5. Two oth

er shorts, th

ough—An

thony Luca

s’s “The M

ysterious G

eographic E

xplorations

of Jasper M

orello,” wh

ich won th

e Grand Pr

ix at the pr

estigious 2

005 Annecy

Internation

al Film Festiv

al, and Céd

ric

Babouche’s

“Imago,” w

hich has tak

en honors a

t several fes

tivals—used

a 2D/3D m

ix: 2D chara

cters in 3D

back-

grounds. In

addition, m

any advoca

tes of hand

-drawn fi lm

s use comp

uter softwa

re these da

ys, if only to

edit and

composite

their scann

ed images,

as did Joh

n Canemak

er for his fi

lm “The M

oon and th

e Son.” The

other fi lm

s

likely up fo

r nominee c

onsideratio

n are the tr

aditionally

animated “

Badgered”

by Sharon

Colman, w

hich

received a S

tudent Osc

ar nominat

ion, “The F

an and the

Flower,” a

black-and-

white hand

-drawn ani-

mation by B

ill Plympton,

and Michae

l Sporn’s “T

he Man W

ho Walked

Between th

e Towers,”

which is ba

sed on the

2004 Cald

ecott Meda

l-winning ch

ildren’s boo

k.

Chances ar

e, three of

these fi lms

will be nom

inated for th

e Oscar. An

d through

these proje

cts, artists

have demo

nstrated th

at animatio

n can be as

rich a

medium as

live-action

fi lms.



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Animation. . . .

Pixar rarely enters its short fi lms in com-

petition these days. Instead, the Oscar-

winning studio releases a short with each

feature fi lm and showcases the fi lms at

festivals, albeit out of competition. To

qualify for this Oscar race, the studio qui-

etly screened its “One Man Band” in a

commercial theater. The short’s world pre-

miere, though, was at Annecy, and its US

premiere during the December opening

of the Pixar exhibition of artwork at the

Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Directed by Mark Andrews and Andrew

Jimenez, “One Man Band” takes place

in an old-world piazza. There, a peasant

child about to toss a coin into a fountain

becomes the focus of a musical sparring

match between a tired, tune-making regu-

lar and a charming, fl ashy new performer.

Bass, the piazza’s one-man band regu-

lar, has his arms fi lled with an accordion,

drum, tuba, clarinet, cymbals, and a few

horns. Treble, the energetic upstart, wields

bows and piccolos. At fi rst, each upstages

the other in turn, but soon the compe-

tition for the little girl’s coin turns into a

cacophony, with both musicians playing at

the same time, one on each side of the girl,

until she . . . well, that would be a spoiler.

Sometimes Pixar creates short fi lms to

exercise new technology; sometimes the

fi lms exercise new talents. This fi lm gave

several artists, from lead animator Angus

MacLane to the directors, their fi rst supervi-

sory opportunities. “Our biggest gain on this

fi lm is that we had new people in every lead-

ership role,” says producer Osnat Shurer.

The fi lm originated as a challenge from

Ed Catmull, Pixar’s founder and presi-

dent, to Andrews and Jimenez.

The pair had followed

di rec tor Brad Bird to

the studio to create

storyboards for The

In cred ibles. Before

that, both had

worked on Bird’s

The Iron Giant.

“He asked i f

we’d l ike to do a

short,” says Andrews

of Catmull’s challenge.

“So, we did lunch and

tried to come up with an

idea. But we kept coming

up with ideas for features.

We had to define the

parameters for a short.” In addition to

length, they listed the following: a single

idea that an audience can get in 10 to 15

seconds, variations on that idea which

predict an outcome, a twist on the pre-

dictable outcome, one or two characters,

and one environment. With this list in

mind, they developed three stories: one

from Andrews, one from Jimenez, and a

third, which became “One Man Band.”

“We’re both musicians, so we won-

dered what we could do with music,”

says Andrews. “That’s how we came up

with the image of a one-man band.”

Then, they added a second character.

“Our idea was to have one character

who is good at something (but doesn’t try

very hard) challenged by someone younger

and better,” says Jimenez. “We showed

the ideas to John [Lasseter, the executive

producer] and he lasered in on this one.

He said, ‘I can see Andy in that character

[Treble] and Mark in the other one [Bass].”

At fi rst, the directors sketched story-

boards that had the musicians perform-

ing for a crowd. Eventually, the crowd

began to shrink until the audience com-

prised a mother and a little girl, and then,

only the child. One reason for the change

was the budget. “The short-fi lm directors

learn to work within creative boundar-

ies,” says Shurer. “There are per-charac-

ter costs and set costs.”

Adds Andrews: “We had to focus on

the center and go for that, and work

with economies of time and

emotion.”

Once the crowd

shrank, the story

changed. “When we

got rid of the crowd,

it gave the fi lm

heart,” says Jimenez.

“Before that, it was

just two guys fi ght-

ing.”

Because the “dialog”

in the story is the music

played by the two per-

formers, the directors

needed a musical score

before they started produc-

tion. Michael Giacchino,

who scored The Incredibles, composed

two themes that escalate and then over-

lap when the one-man bands play simul-

taneously. An orchestra of 38 musicians

played the music.

SweetCG shorts enable digital f i lmmakers to explore

novel styles, stories, and techniques

One Man Band

The character Tinny holds the

coin that prompted a battle of

the one-man bands in Pixar

Animation Studios’ latest short.

© 2006 Pixar.



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. . . . Animation

“[Lasseter] said it had to sound like

live music,” notes Jimenez, “like real

people were playing it. So, we recorded

the sounds of fi ngers sliding on metal.”

Although the animators sometimes

had the characters accurately play the

notes from the sound track, the two

one-man bands don’t have enough

fi ngers to match the music through-

out the fi lm. Instead, judicious use of

close-up shots of fi ngers on strings and cheeks puffed out to

blow horns convince the audience that the characters are creat-

ing the complex sounds.

The number of instruments became an interesting challenge

for the technical team: Each character had many surfaces. “Each

surface needs a shader, a texture map, and application space,”

says Bill Polson, supervising technical director. “You’d open up

a character, and the list of shaders would scroll up and down

the page—10 kinds of brass, the felt on the keys for the trum-

pet plungers, 10 kinds of wood...it goes on and on.” Although

the studio has built an infrastructure to handle that complexity

for the upcoming feature Cars, that infrastructure didn’t exist for

Finding Nemo or for “One Man Band.”

“Our pipeline at that point hadn’t handled characters with 400

or 500 shaders attached to them—it’s not like a fi sh that has four

or fi ve,” Lucas says, “so we just carried around big data fi les.”

To create the city surrounding the piazza, the team began

with six buildings. “If you look at a building from one angle,

you see one arrangement of windows and doors,” says Polson.

“If you turn it 180 degrees, you see a different arrangement.” So,

by rotating the six buildings, they created 12 variations. Five

different roofs and three types of shutters randomly placed in

open and closed positions created additional variations, as did

a mixture of shaders.

“A savvy CG person will see that it’s a parts kit, but the aver-

age viewer will probably see a city,” says Polson.

The crew also used matte paintings in the background and

in the foreground. “If you see shrubbery, that’s a matte painting,”

says Polson. “Our rule is that if we model a building, that’s how

we make a building, and we’ll use it all the way into the back-

ground for continuity. If it’s too heavy, we’ll decimate it. We don’t

have near buildings one way and far ones another way, because

then we’d have to worry about matching.” There is one exception:

The tile roofs on distant buildings were rendered onto cards.

For lighting, the directors made a painterly choice. “The

Zen of lighting was that we had light over dark over light over

dark,” says Polson. That is, they’d place a brightly lit character

in front of something dark, such as a building, and that building

would be in front of something bright, which would be in front

of something dark. To make this lighting seem logical, they cre-

ated a cloudy day, which made it possible to place the characters

in pools of light. Haze fi lters softened any brightly lit buildings.

Pixar uses its own RenderMan for rendering, outputting the

scenes in numerous layers, which were composited in Apple’s Shake.

“With this fi lm, we had a wonderful opportunity to work

with an existing, stable pipeline rather than the latest, greatest

stuff,” says Polson. “I’m becoming a real advocate for that in the

studio.” —Barbara Robertson

Australian animator Anthony Lucas of

3-D Films turned 2D cutouts, stop-

motion animation, and 3D backgrounds

into a 28-minute Gothic horror/mystery/

adventure that has taken the festivals by

storm. It’s a science-fi ction fi lm set in

the past and fi lled with Victorian Rube

Goldberg machines—steam-powered

computers and iron airships.

“It’s a ‘steampunk adventure,’” says

Lucas. “William Gibson did a steam-

punk book set within an alternate uni-

verse in Victorian times. It doesn’t come

from that, but having fi nished the fi lm,

I fi nd myself in that genre.” Instead,

Lucas was inspired by writers Edgar

Allan Poe and Jules Verne.

Although Lucas typically works with

stop-motion characters, the stars of this

fi lm are silhouettes: 2D cutouts. “The

adventure takes place in an alternate uni-

verse where light doesn’t refl ect,” Lucas

explains. “That’s why the characters are

silhouettes. Also, I like the look of it. I

guess I worked out a reason for why this

world is like it is.”

The fi lm is set in the clouds; there is

The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello

The “One Man Band” musicians Treble (at left) and Bass (at right) were modeled after directors

Andy Jimenez and Mark Andrews, respectively. Each character required several hundred shaders.

© 2006 Pixar.



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. . . . Animation

no ground. The star, Jasper Morello, is an

aerial navigator who embarks on a dan-

gerous voyage and, along the way, must

take desperate measures to save his wife.

Lucas started with a script and story-

boards—600 drawings by storyboard

artist David Cook. From those, the crew

created animatics. Then, they redid the

storyboards. “We photographed bits of

junk, like car engines and hubcaps, and

made the backgrounds out of that in

[Adobe’s] Photoshop,” says Lucas. “Then

we put proxies of our characters over these

backgrounds to create new storyboards.

As the scenes came up, I’d print the pages

and throw them in front of the animators.”

The animators used those poses—cre-

ated for about every 12 frames—to com-

plete the animation. Animators worked

with CelAction’s CelAction2D software

to create the characters, animating them

on white backgrounds as if they were live-

action actors on greenscreen stages. “You

make a fi gure as a 2D object, and hinge

it like a puppet,” explains Lucas. “It’s

classic cutout animation. We give it a 3D

spin—they look 3D when they turn their

heads, but they’re not.”

Because the characters are always sil-

houetted, they’re always jet-black, although

the fl at planes have a bit of texture to cre-

ate such detail as buttons. The posed sil-

houettes are output as Photoshop fi les. “We

slide the Photoshop fi les on top of each

other to make it look like the characters

turn around,” explains Lucas.

To create the iron fl yingships that fl oat

through the sky, the crew used Autodesk

Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max; to

create the clouds, they used (Autodesk)

Maya particles. Compositors then com-

bined all these images in Autodesk’s

Discreet Combustion, and added glows

and color tints to the scene. “We put a tint

throughout the fi lm, and the tint changes,”

says Lucas. “Because this is an alternate

universe that echoes Victorian times, or

maybe even longer ago because there’s

still a plague, we wanted a sepia look all

the way through. But, we changed the tint

to echo locations.” Jungles are green, for

example; ice is cool blue.

The characters, however, are always

black. “I didn’t want the characters to look

like normal CG things,” Lucas says. “I

adore Pixar fi lms. As a short fi lmmaker, I

loved ‘Boundin’.’ My kid loved ‘Boundin’.’

Anything with hope in that abundance

should be promoted. But we aren’t Pixar.

This is an independent fi lm. We were

going for a graphic style. If you do cheap,

low-level 3D, it’s not very sexy.”

At 28 minutes, Lucas’s short anima-

tion is rather long, yet its cinematic quality

has caused reviewers to ask for more. And,

Lucas has begun working on ways to con-

tinue the story—with more half-hour seg-

ments and, perhaps, as a feature.

It certainly sounds like hope has

found its way to this animation studio in

Australia, too. —Barbara Robertson

For “Jasper Morello,” director Anthony Lucas

created an environment using photographs

and 3D clouds, made 3D machines, and then

placed animated 2D “cutout” characters into

the environment.

The Moon and the SonFilm historian, author, teacher, animator, and director of the

animation program at New York University’s Tisch School of

the Arts, John Canemaker created a 28-minute animated imagi-

nary conversation with his father that recently won the Fabrizio

Bellocchio Prize for Best Social Content at the I Castelli Animati

animation festival in Genzano, Italy. Film historian Leonard

Maltin calls the animation, titled “The Moon and the Son,”

Canemaker’s “most personal work ever—and his most brilliant.”

Canemaker writes, “I made this fi lm to resolve long-stand-

ing emotional issues I have with my late father. I wanted to fi nd

answers to our diffi cult relationship, to understand the reasons

he was always a feared fi gure in my childhood, why he was

always angry and defensive, verbally and physically abusive,

and often in trouble with the law.”

“The Moon and the Son,” which features the voices of actors

Eli Wallach and John Turturro as father and son, respectively,

was traditionally drawn.

Even so, the fi lm was cut and sound effects were added

with an Avid system; the composure used Apple’s Logic Pro

to compose, print, and mix the music, and Adobe’s Photoshop

to scan and edit three of the scenes. Apple’s Final Cut Pro

helped the team put it all together. —Barbara Robertson

Animator John

Canemaker uses

drawings to per-

sonify emotions

on the screen and

make what’s in

the mind become

alive in his fi lm.

© 2

004

3D F

ilms

/ AFC

/ SB

Si /

Film

Vic

tori

a.Im

ages

co

urt

esy

Joh

n C

anem

aker

.



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. . . . Animation

Created by Cédric Babouche of Sacrebleu

Productions in Paris, “Imago” tells the

story of Antoine, who lost his father in a

plane crash. “He loved his father so much,”

says Babouche, “that he created his own

world to share secret moments with him.

Because he is a child, his perception of

reality comes from fairy tales. So, he

transforms the special moments he spent

with his father into metaphorical dreams.

Because they spent a lot of time near a

tree at the seaside, the tree became a sym-

bol, and when it disappears in a storm, he

understands that he has to grow up.”

The inspiration for this fi lm came from

Hayao Miyazaki’s fi lm Porco Rosso, in

which a plane crashes into a tree. “When I saw that beautiful pic-

ture of the plane crash, I said I would like to use the spirit of that

image for a project,” Babouche says. “Also, my father is a very

special person who I don’t see a lot and don’t really know. So this

fi lm talks about the feeling of missing somebody and the way we

can create our own world to fi ll loneliness.”

The characters in “Imago” are 2D; the backgrounds, 3D.

Babouche used Crater Software’s CTP software for the 2D ani-

mation line tests, Adobe’s Photoshop for painting the scanned

drawings, Cambridge Animation Systems’ Animo for timing,

Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max and the com-

pany’s Maya for 3D, and Adobe’s After Effects and Autodesk’s

Discreet Combustion for compositing.

The fi lmmaker started with a hand-

drawn storyboard, which he scanned

into Photoshop to work on the lighting.

“It’s really important for me to show what

the light will look like as soon as I can,”

he says.

Babouche also created nearly 100

backgrounds by hand. He started with

a 2B pencil on paper, colored the draw-

ings with watercolors and ink, and then

scanned them into Photoshop. He compos-

ited the sequences in Combustion using

that software program’s Particle Illusions

for effects. “Compositing was the most

important step because of the mix of 2D

and 3D,” says Babouche. “I didn’t want to

use any 3D lighting, which is colder than 2D lights, so I drew all

the shadows and lights with masks in After Effects.”

Babouche began working on the script in October 2003, and

began production in July 2004. He fi nished the following April.

He now plans to use the same process to create a feature fi lm for

which he’s nearly completed a script.

“I don’t want to use only 3D because I like the freedom water-

color offers,” Babouche says. “I want my future projects to look

like illustrations.”

Barbara Robertson is an award-winning journalist and a contrib-

uting editor for Computer Graphics World. She can be reached at

[email protected].

Imago

The junkyard world inhabited by the lit-

tle burlap-covered characters of Shane

Acker’s short fi lm, “9,” is a large and scary

one. Though it offers the characters plenty

of opportunities for scavenging—which

seems to be their principal occupation—

it’s also home to a malevolent predator

that hunts them relentlessly. How the main

character, 9, responds to this challenge is a

triumph of reason over instinct, or brain over

brawn. Or, just possibly, good over evil.

A thoughtful plot, with edge-of-your-

seat action and richly detailed and origi-

nal modeling and animation have earned

“9” numerous awards—including Best in

Show at SIGGRAPH’s 2005 Electronic

Theater—making it eligible as an Oscar

contender in the short-fi lm category. The

nine-minute CG fi lm has attracted so

much attention, in fact, that it is going

to be developed into a feature fi lm, with

Acker directing and Tim Burton and oth-

ers aboard as producers.

Success of this magnitude seemed

worlds away during the four and a half

years that Acker spent working on “9.”

He began the fi lm as his thesis project

while a student at UCLA’s Animation

Workshop. He started out with a bit of a

handicap, however: His background was

in drawing and 2D animation, and “9”

marked his fi rst exposure to 3D. Thus, it

was a case of baptism by fi re.

“I bit off more than I could chew with

‘9,’” Acker admits. In fact, the fi lm proved

so diffi cult and time-consuming that

Acker ended up taking periodic breaks

from it (including a stint working on The

Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King for

Weta Digital) in order to earn a living.

One thing that kept Acker going over

the years was the strength of his original

For “Imago,” French animator Cédric

Babouche placed hand-drawn animated

characters on 3D and painted backgrounds.

9

Imag

e co

urt

esy

Céd

ric

Bab

ou

che.



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C A L L 8 8 8 . T O P. C I T Y O R V I S I T O R L A N D O E D C . C O M

where companies dream in hypercolor.

Business is busting at the seams for Orlando’s digital

media sector. Home to top-notch studios like Electronic

Arts, specialized higher-ed training programs, and the

world’s largest concentration of simulation developers,

it’s no wonder companies around here are so animated.



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. . . . Animation

concept. “I had the idea of these little rag

doll creatures that would pick through

their environment,” he explains. That

environment would be more or less post-

apocalyptic, and the rag dolls would rep-

resent the beginning of a new civilization.

In a rough parallel to the way life might

have been for our primitive hunter-gath-

erer ancestors, the rag doll characters look

fairly helpless, but they get by using their

wits. “They’re diminutive in scale,” says

Acker, “and they’re living in an oppressive

world, yet they’re sort of good-natured.”

Another source of inspiration for Acker

was stop-motion animation, especially the

surreal and sometimes downright creepy

works of artists such as the Brothers Quay,

Jan Svankmajer, and the Lauenstein broth-

ers. Acker admired their style, but viewed

it as a jumping-off point.

Acker began work on “9” with the story

itself—an 18-panel storyboard that started

with the main action scene, in which 9 is

pursued by the fi lm’s villain, a mechani-

cal cat-beast. At that point, Acker decided

that a lot more setup was required in order

to invest viewers in the action, so he added

another character—a mentor, called 5—

and also a fl ashback scene that would help

explain the challenges and motivations of

the fi lm’s hero, 9.

Then, Acker created an animatic that

was so highly detailed, “it was almost a

true 2D fi lm—or something in between a

traditional animatic and a 2D fi lm.”

The next step was learning to use 3D

modeling and animation tools—albeit while

he was creating the fi lm. Acker maintains

that “drawing is at the heart” of his fi lm,

though he very much wanted to make use

of CG animation to suggest the stop-motion

look he admired. The fi lmmaker estimates

that he spent about two and a half years

in the preproduction phase of the movie,

doing modeling, rigging, matte paintings,

and so forth, all the while learning to use

Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s Maya.

When it was fi nally time for anima-

tion, that original animatic proved invalu-

able. Acker used it as a kind of road map,

replacing the 2D animation with 3D. In

fact, he notes, the animatic was a kind of

anchor for the fi lm: Since he had to work

on it between paying gigs, it was good for

him to be able to have the animatic as a

guide so he wouldn’t lose focus.

Acker employed keyframing for all the

animation in the fi lm. The cat-beast and its

movements are among the achievements

in the fi lm of which Acker is proudest. The

character is made of cat bones, including a

cat skull, that are interlaced with a metal

armature. The cat-beast moves with a cat’s

sense of purpose, but there is something a

bit reptilian about it as well. Like the rag

doll creatures, the beast is a scavenger, but

also collects living things, and has a grue-

some way of using them literally to add

onto itself. Whatever the creature’s moti-

vations, it clearly wants something that the

rag dolls have. “It recognizes their souls

in them, and is attempting to become like

them,” explains Acker.

In order to create the variety of tex-

tures that are an important part of

Acker’s artistic achievement, he became

a scavenger himself. He collected items

with interesting textures that he could

photograph, scan, and then manipu-

late in Adobe’s Photoshop. He also pho-

tographed broken-down parts of Los

Angeles that would add interest to his CG

environment of urban decay.

Acker employed Maya for lighting and

rendering. “I didn’t use a lot of raytrac-

ing,” he says, explaining that he was aim-

ing at a less-than-real environment that

was somewhat painterly. In fact, there are

quite a few large matte paintings used in

the fi lm. To composite the imagery, the

fi lmmaker used Adobe’s After Effects.

Since “9” has no dialog, the characters’

actions must tell the story. And though

the main plot is simple enough in scope,

the fi lm is full of many small and telling

details—actions that seem random at the

time but turn out to have great signifi cance

later on. Moreover, there are some little

jokes throughout the fi lm. The cat-beast,

for example, hunts for nine characters, or

nine lives. And there is the almost requisite

Pixar-type lamp, albeit a rusty version.

All in all, though, says Acker, he is

happy with the decayed, down-and-out

look and feel of the fi lm. “It’s hyper-

detailed, but it’s also stylized and paint-

erly,” he says. Certainly his attention to

the grit and grime of urban decay has paid

off in that despite its bleakness, there’s a

lot to see in this junkyard world.

In the end, the hero’s brains, and his

use of tools, win the day. The 9 character

rescues the souls of his predecessors, and

in the fi nal scene, seems to be leaving his

bleak world, traveling alone. It’s a hope-

ful scene, and it also sets him up for fur-

ther adventures that just could happen in

the forthcoming feature fi lm.

Jenny Donelan is a contributing editor

for Computer Graphics World. She can be

reached at [email protected].

Like the characters he created for “9,” fi lmmaker Shane Acker himself became a scavenger

of sorts, collecting various textures for the bleak setting of his animated short.

Imag

e cou

rtesy Shan

e Acker.



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. . . . Scanning


lthough modeling and anima-

tion software—and the images

they create—tend to be the

stars of the computer graphics industry,

3D scanning plays a quiet but integral

role in the origin of many digital mod-

els, from props and maquettes to celeb-

rities and stunt actors. Initially, the CG

industry had been fairly slow to embrace

the technology. Today, however, the use

of 3D scanning is prevalent throughout

the entertainment realm, and new appli-

cations continue to emerge.

Cyber-scanning technology was devel-

oped over two decades ago by Cyberware

(Monterrey, CA) as a family hobby,

the brainchild of a retired aero-

space engineer, his artist

wife, and their computer

programmer son.

“My dad wanted

to make a

kind of

sculpting machine that measured the

human face accurately and quickly,” says

Cyberware vice president Steve Addleman,

another son of the inventor. “The device

was hooked to a computer-controlled mill-

ing machine that would carve an image

of what was scanned.” A head scan took

17 seconds, and the resulting carved foam

bust could be completed in a few hours.

What started as a small venture aimed

at artists and sculptors took a huge leap

forward thanks to powerful Silicon

Graphics computers, which, for the fi rst

time, enabled the scanned data to be ren-

dered as a surface. “You could actually see

the data,” recalls Addleman. Soon after,

Hollywood came knocking—in the form of

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in 1986. For

a special effects scene in which the heads

of the bridge crew rolled out of the fog, a

seamless look required computer graphics,

and the project began with scans of the

Star Trek crew’s heads. After that success-

ful experience, Hollywood became a fairly

frequent client of 3D scanning.

The US Air Force was one of the fi rst

groups to identify the value of digital scan-

ning outside the entertainment realm. The

Air Force worked with physical anthropol-

ogists to achieve precise measurements of

the human body, to arrive at standards

for helmets and suits. To achieve this goal,

the military branch provided the money

for Cyberware to develop a full-body scan-

ner that could get the job done quickly—

“a person can only stand still for 15 to 20

seconds,” Addleman points out.

The resulting full-body scanner com-

prised a precise motion system and four

scan heads mounted onto horizontal

arms on tall towers. The new device also

scanned color and, per the Air Force’s

requirement, was “portable” (large trucks

could transport it).

With its focus on designing new 3D

scanners, Cyberware transitioned from

a service provider to a scanning equip-

ment manufacturer; the company

continues to sell customized

scanners for a wide range

Point Person Service providers give studios

easy access to 3D scanning

By Debra Kaufman

A

Service

provider Gen-

tle Giant used its

Cyberware systems

to acquire scanned data

of actor Michael Caine (top

of page) for the effects in the

Austin Powers movie Goldmember.

Imag

e cou

rtesy Gen

tle Gian

t.



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Scanning. . . .

of uses, from archaeology to industrial

design and the military. The company’s

products include the original head scan-

ners, small- and large-object scanners,

and the whole-body scanner, all priced

between $20,000 and $400,000.

Dedicated to Service

According to Addleman, there is a rea-

son why Hollywood fi lm-production

companies and computer game devel-

opers utilize scanning services, rather

than purchasing scanners themselves.

“The scanners are very productive, so it’s

more effi cient for clients to buy the time

rather than the scanner,” he says. A fi lm,

game, or TV commercial can take advan-

tage of the specialized skills of a service

bureau’s experienced staff without incur-

ring the cost of the equipment. They can

also benefi t from the latest technology

developments and customized solutions.

Some of the recent advancements in

the technology include increased reso-

lution and higher-quality texture maps.

Increasing the measured points on a sur-

face provides more detail—for instance,

the valley of a wrinkle or the break of a

lip. Visual effects clients also want high-

quality texture maps with a full range

of colors. “The original systems had one

color value for every X, Y, Z location, or

point,” explains Addleman. “Now, high-

res systems have 16 times the number of

color values, and they’re located on and

in between every X, Y, Z location, which

enables the image to bear much closer

inspection. But it’s still not enough.”

While Cyberware proved the initial

value of 3D scanning, other companies

in recent years have fostered the technol-

ogy’s growth and usage, particularly in

the entertainment industry, by offering

scanning services.

Upping the ante is researcher Paul

Debevec at the Institute for Creative Tech-

nologies in Marina del Rey, California,

where an image-based lighting technique

is being applied to the human face. This

process enables the capture of the human

face from every direction that light can

pass, which results in a perfect-fi delity

image of the face. Debevec’s latest appli-

cation enables the capture of the human

face from arbitrary camera viewpoints

and in performance, which Sony Pictures

Imageworks used to generate digital faces

in Spider-Man 2 and Weta Digital used for

Naomi Watts’s face in King Kong.

Debevec says that although typical 3D

scanning does indeed result in texture

maps for the face and body, it imposes lim-

itations. “If you map a person’s face onto

nicely scanned geometry, you’ve wrapped

a photo around the face,” he

says. “You can only change

that by editing out the

effects of lighting and then

resimulating them, which is

diffi cult. This method cap-

tures shading that tells us

how the face responds to

light, independent of

the illumination

it’s captured in.”

Gentle Giant

Founded in 1995,

Gentle Giant (Bur-

bank, CA) got its

start sculpting physi-

cal maquettes for ani-

mation studios and toy

manufacturers. “We’d

often sculpt a perfect likeness [of an

object], take it into the studio for approval,

and they’d say, ‘Great, but it needs to be 10

percent larger,’’’ recalls Steve Chapman,

vice president of technology. “And we’d

have to resculpt the entire thing by hand.

Then it occurred to us that if we could

digitally scan [the model] and then out-

put it on a 3D printer (rapid-prototyping

machine), that problem would be solved.”

In 1997, Gentle Giant bought a Cyber-

ware scanner, and soon after, started

investing in more 3D scanners and more

printers. And, business boomed.

Whereas many scanning service

bureaus serve several industries, 99 per-

cent of Gentle Giant’s business is from

visual effects facilities serving the motion-

picture industry. According to Chapman,

Gentle Giant’s work sometimes begins in

the preproduction phase of a project, with

the creation of designs and sculptures

for characters; other times, the group

becomes involved in the production phase,

scanning actors and props on set.

How the team provides the resulting

datasets to the VFX companies depends

on the client. “[Industrial Light & Magic],

for example, has an intrinsic work fl ow

for dealing with scanned data, so we give

them raw data,” says Chapman. “Other

companies may not have the employees to

process the data from raw points to some-

thing animatable, so we’ll do it for them.”

Rhythm & Hues recently had Gentle

Giant scan actors, maquettes, and props

for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the

Witch and the Wardrobe. “We probably did

100 cyber scans for the fi lm,” recounts Bill

Westenhofer, the studio’s visual effects

supervisor. “They did a lot of the polygon

cleanup, and we got a high-res scan. Then

we created a low-res model that’s specifi c

to our needs for animation.

Processing the data is a simple mat-

ter of taking a random triangle layout and

turning it into ordered polygons. “You ide-

ally want to keep everything,” Chapman

says, “but there are ways to make it more

manageable, such as using displacement

maps instead of polygons to defi ne

texture and bump maps.”

Below shows actress

Jessica Vallot while she

is scanned in “Light

Stage 2” at USC’s

Institute for Creative

Technologies. Right is

the virtual image of

Vallot’s face.

Pict

ure

s co

urt

esy

Pau

l Deb

evec

.



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. . . . Scanning

According to Chapman, the benefi ts of a produc-

tion studio using 3D scanning go far beyond those

of the fi lm’s basic completion. “When Warner Bros.

creates a Harry Potter, it’s not just creating a movie, but a market-

ing franchise that includes other ancillary products,” he says. “The

same data used to animate Harry for the movie is also used for the

video game as well as for the related toys and products.” For a VFX

facility, though, the focus is on the job at hand. So it’s hardly surpris-

ing then, that even though Rhythm & Hues is a major effects studio,

the company has no interest in bringing high-res scanning in-house,

comments Westenhofer. “The meat of our work is effects,” he says.

“There isn’t enough scanning [needs] for us to amortize the costs.”

Sony has also relied on Gentle Giant for scans the studio used

while creating effects in Spider-Man, The Polar Express, Spider-Man 2,

and, now, Spider-Man 3. Digital effects supervisor Peter Nofz reports

that Gentle Giant usually delivers the data as high-res polygonal

meshes in three formats, “to make sure that whomever needs it will

have it.” He also requests the raw scan for cross-reference.

Nofz is enthused about what he calls “the next leap” in 3D scan-

ning: instant photographic scans. “These photographic scanners

will get the information and provide much more accurate meshes

instantaneously,” he says. “I hoped we would see it for Spider-Man 3

but now it’s [likely we’ll have it for] Spider-Man 4.”

Eyetronics

Like Cyberware, Belgium-based Eyetronics—founded in 1998—

manufactures digital scanners. Infrascan, a body-scanning

solution, derives a 3D model from a single image. To accom-

plish this, a person is placed in the da Vinci pose (standing with

legs and arms fully spread), and a pattern is projected onto the

subject while a camera takes a snapshot. Meanwhile, software

automatically calculates polygonal data based on the pattern

deformations on the person. The total scanning process takes

less than fi ve seconds, and measurements are calculated within

30 seconds. With the company’s Facesnatcher, designed for cap-

turing face and hair details, two cameras take images while a

beam projects multiple patterns onto the subject’s face.

When Eyetronics opened its Redondo Beach, California, offi ce

in 2000, vice president of operations Nick Tesi pursued indus-

tries as disparate as games and medical, providing systems rather

than services. Eyetronics sold its software, which calibrated the

X, Y, Z positioning of a projected grid, while users bought their

own camera and slide projector. But the number of different cam-

eras made that business model diffi cult to support, and the com-

pany subsequently switched to providing 3D scanning services.

In 2001, Eyetronics built a housing for the actual grid that

contained just one camera—currently an 8.3 megapixel Canon

EOS 20D that uses a fl ash that gives a 12-in. depth of fi eld; a

secondary fl ash provides a texture map. “It’s not a black box,”

explains Tesi. “The hardware is an open system that allows us

to bring in new technology as it becomes available.”

According to most vendors and users, the biggest challenge

to using digital scanning is the postprocessing of the data. In the

case of Eyetronics, it uses computers sporting 3 GHz processors,

Nvidia Quadro FX cards, and 2GB of RAM. The end result is pro-

vided to a client as a fi le in any chosen 3D animation software,

such as Autodesk Media and Entertainment’s 3ds Max or Maya

format. Delivering a 3D model that has a 4K color map and is ready

for animation makes the technology an easy sell to movie studios

and game developers.

The three markets that Eyetronics serves are fi lms, games,

and broadcast. Recent fi lm work includes Batman Begins, Racing

Stripes, and The Legend of Zorro. Tesi notes that Eyetronics has

recently seen an increase in business on the computer gaming side

as a result of the increased quality demands of next-gen gaming.

Continuing to raise the bar in digital scanning and the tech-

nology’s profi le in the marketplace, Eyetronics has developed a

system for facial performance capture, which was used by Café

FX to create the Invisible Man in The League of Extraordinary

Gentlemen and by VFX supervisor Jeff Okun to generate a digital

stunt double of Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. Also, the Motion

Picture Company utilized the system to create multiples of actor

Deep Roy for the oompa loompas in Charlie and the Chocolate

Factory (see “Eye Candy,” August 2005, pg. 16).

At Café FX, technical animation supervisor Domenic Di

Giorgio recalls that, to create the Invisible Man, the group fi rst

Eyetronics used its ShapeCam device (inset) to capture the

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