Digit 2005-04 - Clevernotions.com

animatics
ANIMATICS GIVE
FILMMAKERS
CREATIVE AND
TECHNICAL
CONTROL
characters don’t have to be as fully
developed as full CG. Frankel explains:
“There’s no point in getting bogged
down with complex character animations
that might take days to create. With
Softimage|XSI we created a library of poses.
Characters would sort of skate along, look
left and right, gesture this way and that.”
Extensive planning bore fruit. With the
shots modelled as animatics it was possible
to decide how the physical set was to be constructed
to allow the director’s dynamic shots.
In the end, they built a set like a skyscraper – a
steel box cantilevered so any wall could be moved out.
Director’s cut
Back then that was unusual. Now it’s almost normal. When
Martin Scorsese was directing The Aviator he had immediate
feedback and control and could view different shots, with
different lenses from a “virtual camera” in realtime on a laptop.
When he found a sequence he liked, he pulled it back up and
replayed it on the actual set. The development there was the
use of motion capture software. Using Kaydara MOCAP
resulted in realtime movement through a 3D set. Kaydara’s
roots in game-engine technology helped.
Animatics are not the sole preserve of the director.
For actors working on bluescreen it is often the only visual
reference they have. Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow, stars of
2004’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, spent a month
Aviation, guaranteed
Oliver Hotz was pre-viz supervisor on The
Aviator. Responsible for four major VFX
sequences he and a colleague created 25
minutes of previsualization. “We previsualized
every shot, not just the visual effects shots,”
he says. “That helped all of us, including the
director and editor, get a better feel for the
flow of the sequence. When we moved into
the production phase, the pre-viz was also used
as a bidding template for soliciting quotes from
the model shops and special effects houses.”
In production the pre-viz was crucial.
Complicated shots were planned using
animatics, then programmed into motion
control cameras.
“One of the inherent problems of
shooting motion control is it’s usually very
time consuming,” says Hotz. “We had to
find a quicker way.
“I split up the pre-viz animation into two
parts. One was used to drive the motion-base,
which had the full-scale cockpit on it. The other
one drove the motion control camera used for
the actual filming.
“This process turned out to be so
effective that even on location we could
make adjustments or even frame new shots
within minutes. All we had to do was write
out new control files for the two systems
and we were good to go. If the director on
set wanted to try a different angle or setup,
46 d
Above & right: Machinima
is little known outside the
gaming world, but uses games
consoles to allow users to
create their own animatics.
Spielberg is said to be a fan.
Below right: Antics Pre-Viz
is one desktop solution that
allows real-time editing of
animatic storyboards.
we could quickly accommodate that.
Hotz says Maya was the tool of choice,
since it offered the flexibility he needed. “Even
before we went on set, we could check a mockup
of the motion base and the motion control
camera, and preview what they would do, all
within Maya,” he says. “We had all of the realworld
physical limitations of the platforms built
in so we could easily see if the motion-base or
the motion control camera was reaching its
limits, and adjust accordingly.”
www.oliverhotz.com
acting against a
bluescreen. The entire
movie was previsualized
shot by shot before
shooting began in
London. For Law and
Paltrow playing on an
empty set, the only way
to work was to look at
the animatics of
themselves on screen and then navigate the grids and
markers on the floor which had been plotted there by
the animatic previz.
The future
A natural extension of that, and one which has been toyed
with in Hollywood, is making full length 3D pre-viz films before
green-lighting them. An idea studio accountants would surely
love, but actors deplore.
But as animatics get easier to make, that can’t be far off.
No longer the preserve of a Hollywood elite, off-the-shelf
previz applications are here, creating a perfect pitch-tool
for the advertising and design industry. Antics Pre-Viz and
Realviz StoryViz do similar things, though there’s a big
difference in price – Pre-Viz costs £750, while StoryViz
costs $3,600 (around £1,900).
The software is designed to be user-friendly, building
on game-engine roots, and lets users create animations in
real time. The walking motion of off-the-peg characters is
streets ahead of the “skating” characters developed for use
in Panic Room.
“What sets Antics apart is that it is not another variation
on traditional keyframe animation,” says Antic’s Mark Burton.
“Instead, like a videogame, it harnesses the robust processors
and graphics cards of PCs to offer real-time interactivity.”
Released on March 1 this year, Antics has already been
road-tested on a Hollywood production, says Burton. Its main
selling point, he says, is its ease of use: “It has intelligence
built in. With a simple click, you can direct a character
towards a chair and it ‘knows’ to sit down.”
Users can pick drag-&-drop environments and characters
from a library of content, while characters can be instructed
to move and pick up objects, just like in gaming. “Pick up the
TV and go downstairs” is all you have to type for the animatic
character to do just that, according to the developers
Alternatively, you might like to try: “pick up light sabre, chop
Darth Maul in half”. That’s what George Lucas would do.