American Cinematographer - December 1997 - 113

and smoke

all the lava." He

on

that "the procedural system
obviously Houdini's strong
point. It made it easy to create
simple animation out of expres¬
agrees

is

sions, and to add Renderman
shaders. There are no real barriers
in

Houdini; you can go around

things, over them, or through them
you never run into dead ends."
While working with

-

Houdini for director Michael

Bay's upcoming picture Armaged¬
(photographed by John

don

owned and

independent subsid¬
iary of SGI. Power Animator is
only one of the company's soft¬
ware
packages, but it features ver¬
satile tools for sophisticated object
modeling, character modeling, and
animation.

One of the program's phe¬
nomenal attributes is the Real
World Camera Lens Package, a

tool that provides a cinematogra¬
pher-style interface for adjusting
the digital camera characteristics
including focal length, f-stop,

-

Schwartzman, ASC), Black Box

lens

Digital's William Robbins has
found the procedural system to be
an ideal interface for
working cre¬
atively with the director. "We've

format.

had Michael

fined real-world lenses based on
standard optical formulas. This

come

in several times

to look at what we're

doing,"

focus, field of view, and film

Allowing for complete in¬
tegration of digital elements with
photographed plates, the system
also provides a library of pre-de-

notes Robbins. "He'll either say,

type of software tool has become

'Yeah, that's great,' or 'No, that
needs a little more.' With Houdini,
I can change the parameters of

essential to the

some

of the SOPs and

instantly

show him a different version. We
have the ability to go back and
forth as often as we need to, in a
very short period of time, until
he's happy. It saves us a great
deal of frustration and effort."
* * *

Before

a

CG element

can

be animated, shaded or rendered,
it must first be modeled. An effects

expert using the modeling process
is somewhat akin to

a
sculptor cre¬
ating an object out of clay. One of
the industry's key tools, especially
for modeling, is Alias/Wavefront's

Power Animator.

Wayne Kennedy, a mod¬
employed Power Ani¬
mator to create the horrific shape of
the Edgar Bug at the climax of Men
in Black (see page 102). "Alias has a
powerful modeler that is great for
sculpting infinite details," he at¬
tests. "The Edgar Bug was incred¬
ibly detailed - the heaviest model
eler for ILM,

that we've

ever

had to build. If I

really want to do a millimeter of
change on an object, I always turn
Alias for those precise measure¬
ments and details."
to

Alias/Wavefront

was

formed in 1995 when the corporate
triad of Silicon Graphics Inc., Alias
Research Inc., and Wavefront

Technologies Inc. merged into one
superpower of digital technology.
The company

is

now a

wholly

industry as film¬
increasingly merge com¬
puter-generated imagery with liveaction footage, requiring the
accurate matching of digital and
optical lens characteristics.
Demonstrating this trend,
Dream Quest Images used Power
Animator extensively for the cre¬
ation and integration of a com¬
puter-generated elephant with a
live-action animal in the Disney
family feature George of the Jungle.
"Shep, the elephant in the film,
thinks he's a dog," explains Paul
Jordan, animation supervisor and
makers

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technical director for Dream Quest.
"We couldn't get a live elephant to

the range of motion re¬
quired to portray this fallacy -
bounding around, panting and
wagging its tail - so we worked
with digital animation to help the
elephant's performance along.
convey

"There were two basic
families of shots that we did," he
continues. "We did a full 3-D el¬

ephant, and what we call 2 V2-D -
where there was an elephant actor
on the set which we enhanced [with
CG alterations]. We composited 3-D
ears, a

2-D

tongue and a tail, and then did

morphing effects
To

ensure

on the eyes."
the creation of

authentic

elephant, the team
hired a practical sculptor who vis¬
ited Tai, the elephant actress, on
an

the set, and then created a threefoot maquette. The model was stra¬

tegically cut and digitally scanned;
this process

produced

a

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American Cinematographer - December 1997

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