Indigo Days…

3d programming, design and animation is something I really do take for granted, and while I may not have a huge interest in it, a lot of the activities which consume my modernized life are based around it and its creations.

It is very rare that I will turn on my Xbox or computer to play a game and not see a classic example of what 3d animation is. And many of us go to see a film and don’t even catch on that even in special effects of films that aren’t even 3d animated, there is still a strong presence of 3d within it.

A classic example of this would be the Matrix Reloaded, pictured below…

There is a scene called the Burley Brawl in which there was so much fighting and so many replica’s of the enemy whom the hero is fighting against, that 3d was used in order to capture most of the fighting shots which the actors or stunt doubles were unable to do. Not to mention the use of 3d to create the replica’s to begin with. The scene in question is shown here…

To develop the technology needed for the Burly Brawl, Eon and Warner Bros. launched ESC, a visual-effects skunk works in an old naval base across the bay from San Francisco. ESC ultimately produced more than a thousand visual-effects shots for the two sequels, and the company has operated in stealth mode until now. The word Matrix didn’t even appear on the scripts’ title pages; instead, they were tagged with a code name, The Burly Man.

The Burly Brawl became Special Effects Supervisor Gaeta’s personal obsession. Like many in the film industry, he has been talking for years about the promise of virtual cinematography, a confluence of technologies that would allow directors to sculpt actors’ performances with the ease of tweaking a CAD file. The traditional ways of doing this, however, reduce the world to the kinds of data that computers easily understand, and the result often ends up looking like a glorified videogame. That wouldn’t work for the Burly Brawl, a fight that erupts in a virtual prison indistinguishable from the real world.
The standard way of simulating the world in CG is to build it from the inside out, by assembling forms out of polygons and applying computer-simulated textures and lighting. The ESC team took a radically different path, loading as much of the real world as possible into the computer first, building from the outside in. This approach, known as image-based rendering, is transforming the effects industry and is being taught to us in 3d classes all over the world…including Frankston Chisholm. Classic examples of this go into many of the short lessons you have shown us Simon. Such as when you used the real life Jeep to create the 3d animated Jeep as well as using the texturing of the apple in 4 different sections to give a much more life like look. But back to the Matrix…
When the hero; Neo and the villain; Agent Smith walk into the courtyard, they are the real Reeves and Weaving. But by the time the melee is in full effect, everyone and everything on the screen is computer-generated - including the perspective of the camera itself, steering at 2,000 miles per hour and screaming through arcs that would tear any physical camera apart.
Effects designers have been swapping CG faces onto the heads of stunt doubles for more than a decade, but typically, these faces were seen for only brief moments, from afar, or were occluded by other effects, like flames or smoke. Previous attempts to render faces with enough verisimilitude so that a camera could linger produced virtual visages that had a plastic, androidal quality, like the all-digital actors in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Pictured and trailered below…

For the most part, a 3d animation and rendering program called Maya was used for shot development, digital sets, rendering, camera animation for Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. They also used Maya for modeling and design. Rendered the scenes with mental ray using proprietary shader library and light extraction algorithm. For the night scenes, the sets were built around the ESC virtual background tools for photogrammetric reconstruction and extended dynamic range texturing methods. Responsible for the sets around the freeway chase, the jet shot and the night flight in Matrix Reloaded. Responsible for the city design for the sky fight sequences in Matrix Revolutions.

In comparison to other 3d rendering programs such as 3d Studio Max which was first released much earlier on, Maya’s first version was released in 1998. Making it a late starter but also able to have a lot more recent advances within the program, as well as an improved layout (pictured below) which made it easier for users to navigate and create their pieces. Thanks to wikipedia, I was able to track down the different versions and their release dates… listed here…

* 2009 (Support for Windows Vista, 10.0)
* 2008 Extension 2, Only to subscribers(9.2): February 2008
* 2008 Extension 1, Only to subscribers(9.1): December 2007
* 2008 (Support for Windows Vista, 9.0): September 2007
* 8.5 SP1: June 2007
* 8.5: January 2007
* 8.0: August 2006
* 7.0.1: December 2005
* 7.0: August 2005
* 6.5.1: December 2005
* 6.5: January 2005 (last shipping IRIX Version)
* 6.0: May 2004
* 5.0: May 2003
* 4.5: July 2002
* 4.0: June 2001 (no Mac OS X Version)
* 3.5.1: September 2002 (Mac OS X only)
* 3.5: October 2001 (first shipping Mac OS X Version only)
* 3.0: February 2000 (first shipping Linux Version)
* 2.5.2: March 2000
* 2.5: November 1999
* 2.0: June 1999
* 1.5: October 1998 (IRIX only)
* 1.0.1: October 1998 (Windows Version)
* 1.0.1: June 1998 (IRIX Version)
* 1.0: June 1998 (first shipping Windows Version)
* 1.0: February 1998

What I was most surprised about was the fact that Maya was first created as a combination of 3 different 3d software programs. These included; Wavefront’s The Advanced Visualizer (in California), Thomson Digital Image (TDI) Explore (in France) and Alias’ Power Animator (in Canada). In 1993 Wavefront purchased TDI, and in 1995 Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI) purchased both Alias and Wavefront (due to pressure from Microsoft’s purchase of Softimage earlier that year) and combined them into one working company, producing a single package from their collective source code. In the mid-1990s, the most popular pipeline in Hollywood films was a combination of tools: Alias Studio for modeling, Softimage for animation, and PhotoRealistic RenderMan for rendering. This combination was used for numerous films, such as Jurassic Park, The Abyss and Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The combined company was referred to as Alias|Wavefront. It took Alias|Wavefront two more years after the merger to release Maya.

Maya became a popular, integrated node-based 3D software suite. The software is released in two versions: Maya Complete and Maya Unlimited. Maya Personal Learning Edition (PLE) is available at no cost for non-commercial use, although the resulting rendered images are watermarked which is what we had to work with for quite some time at the start of the year. Maya was originally released for the IRIX operating system, and subsequently ported to the Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. IRIX support was discontinued after the release of version 6.5. When Autodesk acquired Alias in October 2005, they continued Maya development. The latest version, 2008 (9.0), was released in September 2007. An important feature of Maya is its openness to third-party software, which can strip the software completely of its standard appearance and, using only the kernel, can transform it into a highly customized version of the software. This feature in itself made Maya appealing to large studios which tend to write custom code for their productions using the provided software development kit.

A Tcl-like cross-platform scripting language called Maya Embedded Language (MEL) is provided not only as a scripting language, but as means to customize Maya’s core functionality (much of the environment and tools are written in the language). Additionally, user interactions are implemented and recorded as MEL scripting code which users can store on a toolbar, allowing animators to add functionality without experience in C or C++ programming and compilers, though that option is provided with the software development kit. Support for Python scripting was added in version 8.5. The core of Maya itself is written in C++.

But as grand as Maya in its youth is, it still does not overcome it’s competitors in the software market. Here is a list of the top 10 sold 3d animation and rendering software products on a well known seller of 3d computer software Trinity3d. Website: http://www.trinity3d.com

1. ZBrush 3.1 for PC
2. Softimage XSI Foundation 6
3. Rhino 4
4. Softimage XSI Essentials 6.5
5. ZBrush 3.1 for PC (Academic)
6. 3ds Max 2009 - 3D Animation Software
7. Xfrog 3.5 Light
8. CINEMA 4D R10.5 - Spring Promo
9. Maya Unlimited 2008
10. Maya Complete 2008

Out of all the software listed here, the most recognized would have to be 3DStudio Max. Which i responcible for effects shots and imaging in these movies to name a few:

Classic example of 3D within the motion picture: The Mummy

* Battlefield Earth
* Black Hawk Down
* Blade: Trinity
* Cats & Dogs
* Die Another Day
* Dr. Dolittle 2
* Driven
* Final Destination 2
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
* Hellboy
* I, Robot
* Jurassic Park
* K-19: The Widowmaker
* Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
* Lost in Space
* Mighty Joe Young
* Minority Report
* Mission: Impossible II
* Panic Room
* Paycheck
* Planet of the Apes
* Reign of Fire
* Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
* Sin City
* Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
* Spider-Man 3
* Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith
* Swordfish
* The Cathedral
* The Core
* The Day After Tomorrow
* The Green Mile
* The Incredibles
* The Italian Job
* The Last Samurai
* The Majestic
* The Mummy
* The Thirteenth Floor
* The Truman Show
* Toy Story
* Toy Story 2
* Traumschiff Surprise - Periode 1
* X-Men
* X-Men 2
* X-Men 3

The original 3D Studio product was created for the DOS platform by the Yost Group and published by Autodesk. After 3D Studio Release 4, the product was rewritten for the Windows NT platform, and originally named “3D Studio MAX.” This version was also originally created by the Yost Group. It was released by Kinetix, which was at that time Autodesk’s division of media and entertainment. Autodesk purchased the product at the second release mark of the 3D Studio MAX version and internalized development entirely over the next two releases. Later, the product name was changed to “3ds max”. It is the most widely-used off the shelf 3D animation program by content creation professionals according to the Roncarelli report. It has strong modeling capabilities, a flexible plugin architecture and a long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is mostly used by video game developers, TV commercial studios and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization. The layout has been criticized in comparison to that of younger software developments such as Maya as I mentioned earlier on in this report. However 3DS Max has opposed those critizisms with the latest releases of their software which have a much cleaner, sharper and modernized look and feel. and A picture of latest 3DS Max layout is shown below.

In the end, it all comes down to which software a user is more comfortable with. There are few functions which one can do that the other cannot, and there are many, many more rendering and animation software tools. So I guess one could say, that just as technology is limitless, the software used to run that technology is also limitless and must keep up that infinite role as time goes on…