Archive for October, 2007
15.10.07 EA Buys BioWare
Just under 2 years ago, then-former President of EA John Riccitiello stood in front of the gathered Edmonton BioWare studio, over 300 of the industry’s best and most talented developers responsible for classic RPGs such as Baldur’s Gate I & II, Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Nights of The Old Republic, and held a Q&A session assuring them that the just-announced buyout by private investment firm VG Holdings would not lead to a focus on quarterly revenues over quality - even citing his departure from EA as a stand against the kind of business model. The promises of share options and security from future publisher buyouts was met with rapturous ovation.
Unsurprising then from such a large group of Star Wars geeks that several colleagues immediately afterwards likened the event to the end of Episode III, when Palpatine delivers the fateful speech that begins The Empire, and Padmé laments “So this is how liberty dies… with thunderous applause”.
13.10.07 Layers of Pixar Polish
The final Adapt Presentation Notes Session, providing information for animators regarding character and rig development, peer-review processes and general acting tips.
Pixar: How Pixar Animation Studios Brings Characters To Life
Andy Schmidt - Animator on Ratatouille
This was an incredibly valuable lesson in the workflow for polishing an animated feature, which has some lessons we can directly employ for our own peer-review processes. The initially self-deprecating yet entertaining Andy Schmidt took us through the challenges of creating the characters for Ratatouille, (namely, how to turn vermin into an appealing character) before moving on to Pixar’s general approach to taking a scene through various levels of polish.
The biggest element of the talk that struck me was the difference between an animated film and videogame cutscene schedule - two supposedly similar projects in concept, with the key being when voice-over is recorded. Below is a comparison between Pixar and what is my experience of the norm for large-scale videogame project storytelling, taking a direct comparison with only the elements shared across mediums.
11.10.07 Morph Management
Another small post, this time on a different approach to morph-target lip-sync.
Di-O-Matic: Efficient methods for creating lip-sync blend shapes
Laurent Abucassis - Founder: Di-O-Matic
A considerably lower-key affair than Halon’s, this talk revolved around a demonstration on how to make phonetic mouth-shapes for lip-sync via blend-shapes (or morphing), something that, while offering more control over mesh deformation than simple bone positions, can be quite a pain to actually create and maintain the multitude of models required to create a blend-shape list.
While it did turn into something of a product pitch towards the end, the educational portion of the talk began with pointing out the first mistake most animators make when creating lip-sync for the first time, whereby they try to for shapes for every letter. However as Laurent said, “A letter is not a sound”.
10.10.07 Transforming Thousands
Now a smaller note-taking session, a result only of the vast amount of content on show so as to keep one’s eyes away from the notepad.
Industrial Light & Magic: VFX Used On Transformers
Todd Vaziri - VFX Sequence Supervisor for Transformers
One of the most entertaining presentations of the week, due to both Todd’s upbeat yet humble attitude and the sheer multitude of videos displayed during the presentations, ranging from multiple render-passes highlighting the various explorations of lighting and materials on the robotic protagonists to behind-the-scene shots of the film plates throughout the various layers of post-production layering.
Incredibly heart-warming were the animation renders illustrating the sheer amount of cheating going on when characters went off-screen. With the original brief requiring 14 robots in total, they scoped for only 14 transformation animations, but ended up creating over 140 due to each transformation being created specifically to sell the particular shot. Some examples shown had Transformers’ legs going through the ground, various parts scaling into the body to be hidden away, even bits flying off only to return just at the moment they were required on camera – just like our cutscenes!
09.10.07 Halon’s Pre-Cognition
I’ve added the second Adapt 2007 lecture notes below…
Halon: The Value of Pre-Visualisation
Dan Gregoire - Pre-viz supervisor on Star Wars Episodes II and III, War of The Worlds, X-Men 3 and Ghost Rider
This talk was especially of interest to me as we were just finishing the pre-vis work for a handful of outlandish actions and animation systems in my current project – a valuable process that not only helped prove their viability, but also how the visual look of the systems will play out.
These notes will be of interest to anyone currently planning out cutscene requirements, or teams looking to pre-visualise how certain gameplay elements or level action sequences might play out in something more advanced than simple documentation or even storyboard form.
With a background in videogames and animated television, Dan was drafted in to create pre-visualisations for effects-heavy scenes midway Star Wars Episode II, then continued this work on the Episode III, choreographing difficult sequences such as the fight between Yoda and Palpatine.
In addition to working on movie pre-viz, Halon is also involved in animated movies such as the upcoming Avatar and Speed Racer, as well as the recent Halo 3 “Believe” adverts. Near the beginning of the talk Dan asked the audience “Who uses pre-viz?”, and was met with a resoundingly lacking show of hands, to which he replied, “You should be”.
09.10.07 Adapting to Halo 3’s Cinematic Tool
In the last few weeks I’ve been getting out to a handful of various presentations, beginning with the IGDA BioShock presentation and most recently a week-long film and videogame visual extravaganza at the 2007 Adapt Conference.
Representatives from Disney, Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic and several high-profile game development studios were in town to share work methods and techniques, for which I am all-ears, with the week ending on a high at the Halo 3 party, whereby I was fortunate enough to come home with a second copy of the game after beating a handful of Ubisoft animators into Slayer submission.
Over the next week I’ll be uploading my notes from the various lectures attended, (in no particular order), beginning with Bungie’s own Feature Presentation below:
Bungie: Creating Movie-Quality Cinematic Moments In Realtime
CJ Cowan & James McQuillan - Lead Producer and Cinematic Director on Halo 3
This talk was unfortunately beset with technical problems throughout, and as such many of the real-time editing features of their engine were unable to be demonstrated. It did, however, offer an insight into a company creating one of the most epic games ever with tools that were so technologically backwards it is amazing they managed to get anything out the door at all.
Despite this, they appeared oblivious to how outdated their systems on show were as they proudly demonstrated tools and processes that I’ve fortunately never had to endure in all my time in this industry. Perhaps Bungie is living in a bubble-shield?