American Cinematographer - December 1993 - 49

Opposite:
Shaking up the
effects world,
clockwise from
lower left, are:
ILM senior
visual effects

supervisor
Dennis Muren,
ASC; Jurassic
Park visual

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CbySaecosauernfteys,y

effects

co¬

supervisor Mark
Dippe; lead
animator Eric

Armstrong; and
animator Steve
Williams. This
page:

A

computer

composite that
it all.

says

Phot s

to be

supported by a physical rig.
impossible to get your

It's almost

dinosaur to fall down and roll

because you can't get the rig

over,

to do that very

easily. In the com¬
puter world, we have total free¬
dom of movement, and we can
also simulate all of the attributes
of a living dinosaur, like muscle,

bone, skin, sweat and blood. We
can't do those

with

a

things

very well
latex creature. I felt that by

using CG, we could make our di¬
nosaurs run and
jump and fight,
and we could have herds of them!
But there was still a lot of doubt
on Dennis'
part."
In December of 1991,

Dippe enlisted the aid of his
friend Steve Williams, and to¬

gether they set out to

prove that
the best way to bring Ju¬
rassic Park's dinosaurs to the

CG

was

screen.
more

Williams, who

at home

behind

seems

Harley than
a
computer, is a graduate

of Sheridan

on a

College, Disney's

East Coast training school.
Though his background is prima¬
rily in cel animation, he intu¬
itively grasped that the two-di¬

mensional world of cartoons and
the three-dimensional realm of
the computer were oddly similar.
"If it doesn't work in 2-D, it won't
work in 3-D," he says with a grin.
"Dennis knew that Phil Tippett's

walk cycle on it and everyone
freaked out."
After the film's produc¬

shop was on this Jurassic Park
project, but he also knew that if
he let this little wild pack of dogs,
namely me and Mark Dippe,
loose on this CG problem, we'd
solve it. I figured the easiest thing

results to Spielberg. They also
offered to give ILM's guerilla unit
some additional funds to test a

to do

rus rex
so

to make

tyrannosau¬
skeleton and animate it,

was

a

I had my brother-in-law send
down the complete schemat¬

me

ics of

an

18-foot T-rex from the

Kathleen Kennedy and Frank
Marshall, saw Williams' test, they
agreed it was time to show the
ers,

sequence of gallimimus, as well
to build a convincing skin on

as

top of the bones. By this time, six

people were working on the task.
Dippe and Williams took Stan
Winston's Vs-scale

tyrannosaurus
maquette (which ironically

rex
was

slated to become the Go-

Motion animation

Tyrell Museum in the badlands. I
just scanned that in and began
building bones in the computer,
using the Alias modeling system,
until I had put together a rex.

puppet) to
Cyberware, where the sculpture

Next, I had [Lead Technical Di¬
rector] Stephen Fangmeier do a

where I remade it and fit it to¬

render of it

iams recalls. "It

on a

rotating table

was sliced into cross-sections and
laser-scanned onto a computer
disc. "I took the data back to ILM,

gether

could

use it," Will¬
inefficient
to take the direct data and

so we

was

using the RenderMan program so

for

could all look at it. It looked
like a real T-rex skeleton, with

try to build a rex in the computer,
but I could

shadows and all of the correct

as a

fluting

on the skull and so on.
Then I used Softimage and did a

essentially a digital wireframe
puppet of a T-rex."

December 1993

American

we

me

use

Winston's model

template to make what

Cinematographer

was

47
American Cinematographer - December 1993

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