This article by Sabine Hatzfeld originally appeared in DP 03 : 2015.

For the film project “Le Gouffre”, Thomas Chrétien, Carl Beauchemin and David Forest quit their jobs, formed the Lightning Boy Studio and moved in together for cost and production reasons. A Kickstarter campaign brought the animated film with the unusual look to completion, which was nominated for an animago AWARD in the “Best Short Film” category in 2O14.

The trio met in 2006 at the Canadian college “Cégep du Vieux Montréal”(www.cvm.qc.ca). Carl Beauchemin and David Forest studied 3D animation, Thomas Chrétien 2D animation. In the third and final year of their studies, they decided to work together as filmmakers in the future. Thomas went on to complete a two-year 3D degree programme, while Carl and David gained their first experience in the industry.

After six months of developing the story, production finally got underway at the beginning of 2012 – despite all team members now working full-time. Carl and David worked as 3D animators at Modus FX on the first Canadian 3D feature film “The Legend of Sarila”, while Thomas worked as a VFX artist for mobile games at Gameloft(www.gameloft.com). There was only time for “Le Gouffre” at night or at weekends. So after six months, all three of them quit their jobs to work on their film full-time and only from time to time. To save costs, they also moved into a flat. We spoke to Carl Beauchemin about the project, which was successfully financed via Kickstarter towards the end. The film and makingof have been online on Vimeo since February this year(bit.ly/1zgSovu and bit.ly/1zMo3C1).

DP: Hello Carl, why didn’t you consider a crowdfunding solution or funding opportunity right from the start?

Carl Beauchemin: Our original plan was to get a government grant. But when you make a film for the first time, nobody trusts you. Our application was rejected three times in a row. At the same time, we realised that no company would support us as long as there were no presentable shots. That’s why we abandoned crowdfunding. Without actually rendered shots, how do you hope to convince people that you can make a good film?

DP: What hardware equipment did your budget allow for?

Carl Beauchemin: Each of us still had a good computer from our student days – because of the 3D homework. We also had a special computer at our disposal: in 2007 David submitted an illustration to a competition organised by cgsociety.com – and promptly took first place! The prize was a Maingear Shift(www.maingear.com), which we nicknamed “the beast” and which lived up to its name in the rendering.

DP: How was your pipeline structured?

Carl Beauchemin: The lion’s share of the work – i.e. modelling, animation, rigging, VFX, rendering – was done in Softimage. We also used ZBrush for the detailed work on some of the models. Concept art and storyboards were created traditionally on paper or in Photoshop. The compositing was done in After Effects and the editing was done in Sony Vegas. We also worked with Slipstream VX from Exocortex, a plug-in for Softimage. We used it to implement every particle simulation that can be seen in the film(exocortex.com/products/slipstream).

DP: How were Previs and Animatics used?

Carl Beauchemin: They were essential parts of our workflow. We spent months working on the animatic. We wanted to make sure that the timing was right and that the storyline was coherent. With the help of the Previs, we were able to create a rough version of our sets to get an idea of the proportions.

DP: What inspired you to make this film?

Carl Beauchemin: “Le Gouffre” is set in an undefined location. We did look at pictures of canyons, but we didn’t copy them one-to-one, we changed the scale and adapted them to our desired film look. For the characters, we focussed on a timeless look. We left out details such as zips or logos so that the design didn’t come across as too modern. Our aim was to give the film a special atmosphere, comparable to a legendary tale.

DP: How did the unusual look come about?

Carl Beauchemin: We had a very specific look in mind and it took us a long time to realise it. In the end, we had to paint all the textures by hand and find a clever way to put the shots together. During this process, we realised that in order to create a unique visual style, we had to forget everything we learned about compositing in school. Instead, we looked for a way to do it all in Photoshop with layers and paint brushes.

DP: How did you actually realise this for the sets?

Carl Beauchemin: For the sets, we first unfolded the meshes with UVs to assign the textures in medium resolution everywhere. This allowed us to make sure that everything looked good and looked painted from a distance. Up close, on the other hand, it sometimes looked really bad, but that didn’t matter: in such cases, we took a screen capture of the set from the camera angle of the shot and painted all the high-resolution details in Photoshop. We also often quickly created a greyscale texture shader for rendering in order to get more details on a new texture. Then we just had to project the whole thing back onto the original mesh. Of course, this only worked if the camera panning was not too strong. Otherwise you would have seen that the projection was expanding in a somewhat strange way.

DP: How did you approach the look of the characters?

Carl Beauchemin: Because they were animated, we couldn’t use the same projection technique. Instead, we relied on good, hand-painted textures and lots and lots of passes. We had a separate mask for the head, hands, eyes and hair, as well as for each individual item of clothing. We treated each light as if it were a colour layer. So we selected the exact colour we wanted to use in the lit scene and assigned it as a solid colour instead of having the layer in an additional mode. That helped us a lot to get rid of that classic CG look.

DP: Did you actually consider using an inexpensive MoCap system for animation references?

Carl Beauchemin: No. Firstly, that was never our intention and secondly, our budget wouldn’t have allowed it anyway. However, we ran through all the shots ourselves and edited them into a reference real film. This allowed us to see whether the flow of the film worked. We always tried to place the cameras in the same way as in the animated film so that we could also test whether the cuts worked. But the biggest advantage of the video reference material is that you can see all the fine little movements. This allowed us to make the animation in the film look as real as possible.

DP: What challenges did you face when rigging the film?

Carl Beauchemin: We already knew how to rig in Maya. But as we wanted to realise the project in Softimage – the programme we mainly worked with after our studies – we had to learn everything from scratch. So the first character rig was quite a challenge. It took us a month to finalise it. But after that it was just a matter of repeating the same steps. We made sure that the same parts of the rigs had the same names for all the characters. This allowed us to transfer the animation of one character to another, which sped up production considerably. This mainly concerned movements such as running, cheering or sowing. To simplify the process of animating faces and fingers, we had Visual Panels at our disposal. This allowed us to select animation controllers quickly and intuitively. But our biggest challenge was the bridge. It consisted of over 70 duplicated individual parts, so the rigging had to be well thought out right from the start.

DP: Which ZBrush tools were useful to you?

Carl Beauchemin: We used the ClayTubes brush the most, which is great for refining details, especially when used in conjunction with the Smooth brush. The brush also behaves very similarly to the one we used in Photoshop to paint our textures. Other useful brushes I can mention are Pinch and Slash3, which we used to paint all the crevices and details of the rock face or the folds in the clothing. The Decimation Master also turned out to be a lifesaver. We often had to create high-resolution set elements in close-up at the last minute. This plugin helped us to export meshes that had a lot of detail but could still be rendered quickly. ZAppLink also proved useful in our painting process, as it allows you to seamlessly integrate image editing software – in our case Photoshop – into ZBrush.

DP: How did the work with Sony Vegas go?

Carl Beauchemin: This editing software was used for the entire editing process. We updated the edit almost every day. That was brilliant for keeping an overview. We always knew exactly what had already been done and what hadn’t. We stacked many video tracks on top of each other: 2D animatic, film references, animation captures and final renders. When we added a new clip, we could play the whole sequence to make sure everything ran smoothly.

DP: Which renderer did you use?

Carl Beauchemin: Since we didn’t have the resources to render complex shaders and lighting, we used basic shaders, mostly surface shaders and lamberts. All the details were in the painted textures, so we didn’t need anything more complex than that. We even faked the subsurface scattering in some textures, such as the ears of the characters. Rendering was done in Mental Ray, the default renderer in Softimage. The renderer did a good job and produced our frames at a decent speed.

DP: How long did the rendering take?

Carl Beauchemin: We rendered frames every night and at weekends – for over a year. I can’t tell you the exact number of hours, but it must have totalled around 15,000. We couldn’t use the services of a render farm for budgetary reasons.

DP: How did Kickstarter help you in the end?

Carl Beauchemin: This crowdfunding platform was our last resort – and our best decision during the entire project. We ran out of money in mid-2013 and were looking for ways to pay our musicians and sound designer. This meant that a campaign, wherever it was launched, simply had to work. One crucial point was that we already had followers. Not many, but just enough to reach a few hundred people who shared our Kickstarter page with their friends after the launch. One of our goals right from the start was to build a fanbase. To do this, we set up a production blog and published concept art, insider information and lots of tips and tricks that we had learnt from our work there every fortnight. At the same time, we filled our Facebook page and continually posted in various CG forums. After a year and a half, we had quite a decent number of followers. But it took a long time and a lot of effort to build up this fanbase.

DP: But at that point you were already able to show your first results.

Carl Beauchemin: That’s right, we were already very far along in the film production. So, fortunately, we were not only able to show a lot of shots, but also cut a trailer that caught people’s attention. It was also very obvious that we had already invested a lot of time, effort and money in this project. So the message was not: “Give us money so that we can realise our dream”. Rather, it came across that we had already done everything we could on our own. Now it was just about that little push we needed to complete the project. I think this approach touched people and helped make this campaign such a big success: With 711 backers, we raised a whopping 24,155 Canadian dollars instead of the planned 5,000.

DP: Looking back, would you do anything differently?

Carl Beauchemin: No, I don’t think so. The biggest problem for us was that we misjudged the time. It took us two years to produce the album instead of one year as planned. Looking back, there was no other way to achieve the quality we wanted. Basically, our naivety and enthusiasm were an advantage. Because if we had known beforehand that it would take two years, we might have waited a few years until we had more money together. One of us would probably have changed our minds and decided to call the whole thing off. “Le Gouffre” probably wouldn’t have turned out like this if we had waited longer.

DP: What’s next for you?

Carl Beauchemin: The film has finished its festival run and is now online. It has been incredibly well received and we couldn’t be happier. From the beginning, our goal was to get the attention of people working in the film industry. We wanted to show what we can do as a team. We hope that this project will lead to new partnerships. As Lightning Boy Studio, we want to develop and direct projects. However, we are keen to work with other studios that take on the administrative parts such as renting space and hiring staff. We also all have our own jobs: after completing “Le Gouffre”, David and his wife founded “MrCuddington”(mrcuddington.com) and now create illustrations for board games from home. I now work as a 3D artist at Pascal Blais Studio(www.pascalblais.com), which specialises in animations for commercials, and Thomas works as a director and VFX artist at Hibernum Creations(www.hibernum.com), a mobile games company.

The post The power of the crowd first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

This article by Michael Krimmer originally appeared in DP 05 : 2010.

There are not many successful German games developers who survived the boom years of the 80s and still regularly bring titles to market today. One veteran of the German games studio sector is Blue Byte. And this studio is still successfully developing games 22 years after it was founded.

Blue Byte, founded in 1988 by former employees of the German studio Rainbow Arts in Mülheim an der Ruhr via Blue Byte GmbH, specialised in the development of strategy games and simulations from the very beginning.

The first major success was the tennis simulation “Pro Tennis Tour” from 1989, which sold a good 500,000 copies in total. This was followed by such successful titles as “Battle Isle”, which made its debut in 1991 and received a total of two sequels.

However, none of Blue Byte’s many titles were as successful as the first version of “The Settlers”, which was launched in 1993. To date, more than 8,000,000 copies of The Settlers games have been sold.

Today, 17 years after the release of the first version, Blue Byte launched version 7 of the Settlers series on the market in March 2010 and is expected to continue the success of the previous versions. One reason for this success, in addition to the steadily growing target group over the years, may also be that “The Settlers” is still not only being developed for Windows PCs, contrary to what has been announced in the meantime. A large fan base has also formed among users of Apple’s Mac OS, who have contributed to the success of The Settlers, episode after episode.

In 2001, Blue Byte was taken over by the French publisher Ubisoft. Ubisoft paid 26 million marks for the acquisition and also acquired the rights to all previous Blue Byte game titles. In retrospect, this investment was probably worth it for the rights to the Settlers series alone. As part of the integration into the Ubisoft studio group, Blue Byte moved to the Ubisoft headquarters in Düsseldorf in 2003.

Blue Byte was integrated into the worldwide network of Ubisoft studios. This network consists of 24 studios in 17 countries, making it the second largest in-house development resource in the world. Ubisoft employs around 5,300 people in the area of production. Well over 120 employees work on a project like “The Settlers 7”. In the case of “The Settlers 7”, external service providers also contributed to the game’s soundtrack, for example.

The Ubisoft studios in Montreal and Bucharest were also involved in the production process, working closely with their colleagues from Blue Byte on the internet connection for the multiplayer mode or supporting the quality assurance test area.

Ubisoft relies on a combination of organic growth and acquisitions and acquires studios and brands from time to time when the opportunity arises. In 2007, for example, the German publisher Sunflowers was acquired along with the rights to the “Anno” series. “Anno” is a popular economic simulation game that has been around since 1998, when the first instalment of the series, “Anno 1602”, was released. This was followed by “Anno 1503” in 2002, “Anno 1701” in 2006 and “Anno 1404” in 2009. The rights to “Driver”, a type of driving simulation previously owned by Atari, were also added to the Ubisoft portfolio.

The result was a heavyweight in the games industry that generated a turnover of 1.058 billion euros in the 2008/2009 financial year and was the number three independent publisher in Japan. And with further acquisitions, the Ubisoft project could slowly but surely develop just like a healthy city in “The Settlers”.

About Blue Byte GmbH

Blue Byte was founded in 1988 by former Rainbow Arts employees Thomas Hertzler and Lothar Schmitt. The company was based in Mülheim an der Ruhr. Right from the start, successful titles were developed, but the final breakthrough came with the building strategy simulation “The Settlers”.

In 1994, a subsidiary was founded in Northampton, England, so that the English-speaking market could also be served. Just one year later, a branch was opened in Schaumburg, Illinois. This additional branch was intended to help the company become active on the North American market.

This was followed by several successful years, but also some that went less well. in 1997 and 1998, Blue Byte had to cope with the departure of some veteran employees who founded their own studio: Funatics. The development studio Funatics is still in business today and has developed several titles for the French games developer and distributor Ubisoft in recent years, including some based on “The Settlers”. It was also Ubisoft that took over Blue Byte in February 2001 for around 26 million marks.

As part of the takeover, Blue Byte relocated its headquarters to Düsseldorf in 2003, where Ubisoft Germany also has its headquarters. Web: www.bluebyte.de

Interview | Benedikt Grindel

Benedikt Grindel, born on 6 March 1969, has been working as a producer at Blue Byte since April 2001 and was significantly involved in the production of “The Settlers 7”. In an interview with DIGITAL PRODUCTION, he talks about the production of the latest instalment in the Settlers series.

DP: Does Blue Byte develop exclusively in Germany or are games also created in your own studios abroad, in a kind of round-the-clock workflow?

Benedikt Grindel: The game is largely developed in our studio in Germany. However, we also use resources from other Ubisoft studios, such as the one in Montreal, as well as other outsourcing partners. The cut-scene sequences in “The Settlers 7” were created in France at the Chez Eddy studio. Dialogue sequences and in-game animations were made in Dresden by PiXABLE. We simply drew on expertise from the film industry to further emphasise the new graphic style. The fact that the soundtrack comes from service providers is nothing new. Very few studios have their own composer. However, our major studios in Montreal and Shanghai have their own sound studios.

DP: How long does the visual polish take in post-production once the game itself is finished?

Benedikt Grindel: It’s difficult to say, because the finishing touches don’t just start in post-production. In the last two months of development, we worked almost exclusively on the finishing touches, but this was also done beforehand, especially for buildings and characters.

DP: What software do you use to develop your games?

Benedikt Grindel: The programming mainly uses C and LUA, in graphics we used 3ds Max for 3D modelling, Photoshop for texturing and Softimage for creating the animations.

DP: What hardware equipment do you have at Blue Byte?

Benedikt Grindel: We use powerful PCs, mostly dual- or quad-core, which are also all equipped with fast graphics cards.

DP: How high is the proportion of a game’s post-production compared to the other development stages?

Benedikt Grindel: That is also difficult to quantify. One estimate: the visual polish takes up around 30 per cent of the time spent on creating the graphics.

DP: Does Blue Byte or Ubisoft outsource the post-production work or is everything done internally?

Benedikt Grindel: As already mentioned, this is essentially done internally, even for assets that we have created externally. In individual cases, such as animations, our partners have also been involved in post-production.

DP: How great is the pressure for developers when you continue a series like “The Settlers”, which is expected to be commercially successful with every sequel?

Benedikt Grindel: It’s pressure on the one hand, but it’s also a good starting point. I believe that the risk of commercial failure is greater with a new brand launch than it is with Ubisoft’s own CGI studio for a well-known title.

DP: Which Blue Byte production was the highlight of the past few years?

Benedikt Grindel: For me, THE highlight of the last few years is Settlers 7.

DP: What are you currently working on?

Benedikt Grindel: We’re still working on The Settlers 7, but I’m not allowed to say anything else here.

Interview | Odile Limpach

Odile Limpach, born on 9 March 1971, has been with Ubisoft since 1996 and is currently Managing Director & Product Development at Blue Byte.

DP: Founded in 1988, Blue Byte was acquired by Ubisoft in 2001. What is life like under the umbrella of one of the world’s largest publishers and what about studio freedom?

Odile Limpach: We are fully involved in the development processes at Ubisoft, but we have a lot of freedom in our decisions. That’s a great situation: with Ubisoft behind us, we have access to the expertise and technology of over 5,000 developers worldwide. We benefit from the methods, processes and experience of the Ubisoft Group and the studio network, which consists of 24 studios in 17 countries.

DP: Given the history of the Settlers series, was it foreseeable that “The Settlers 7” would also be a success or is it always a risk until the launch, as with any other game?

Odile Limpach: There is always a certain risk because markets change. But with the quality delivered and the brand loyalty of our Settlers fans, we were very confident.

DP: And how is the current seventh instalment in the Settlers series selling?

Odile Limpach: It’s still too early to make a real judgement because Settlers games traditionally sell for a very long time. We are satisfied with the initial sales.

DP: Is it more of an advantage or a disadvantage these days to develop computer games in Germany?

Odile Limpach: Germany still has some catching up to do, especially in terms of training, promotion and social recognition of our industry. But there are some initial positive developments. We like being in Germany and want to stay here.

DP: Many sectors have suffered from the economic crisis in recent months. How hard has Blue Byte/Ubisoft been hit and how are things looking at the moment?

Odile Limpach: The crisis has not left us unscathed, but it has not hit the industry and our company as hard as others.

DP: What were the strategies to avoid failure during the crisis?

Odile Limpach: We focussed on what we do best: Publishing good games and monitoring the market for new niches.

DP: Which three titles have been the commercial highlights of the past few years?

Odile Limpach: For Blue Byte, The Settlers and the Anno series. For Ubisoft worldwide, Assassin’s Creed I and II, probably the most successful new brand launches in our sector for a long time.

DP: Are there any international co-operations, mergers or acquisitions planned?

Odile Limpach: Blue Byte and Ubisoft have invested a lot in recent years, and our internal development resources have continued to grow even during the crisis. Unfortunately, I can’t give any details about future developments here.

The post The law of the series | Retro article first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

This article (“War of the Worlds”: ET’s bloodthirsty successors) by Barbara Robertson originally appeared in DP 05 : 2005.

Steven Spielberg’s interpretation of “War of the Worlds” will be remembered for several reasons: Firstly, there is the skilful weaving of today’s fears of terror into H.G. Wells’ 1898 story of an alien invasion of Earth, then there are the pleasing box office sales, the acting performances of megastar Tom Cruise, young Dakota Fanning and the cryptic Tim Robbins. Equally impressive are the images by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski – and finally the photorealistic visual effects by eight-time Oscar winner Dennis Muren and Oscar nominee Pablo Helman, which were created at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM).

In the VFX scene, the film will also be remembered for the speed with which ILM achieved such high-quality effects. The effects studio itself, on the other hand, will probably be remembered above all for the fact that these effects were created using its brand-new third-generation pipeline. “‘War of the Worlds’ was a test run,” admits Muren.

Restrained use of effects

Shooting of the first sequences began in November 2004 and allowed ILM to shoot one of the most difficult shots – the first appearance of the alien spaceships – in December. Shooting finished at the beginning of March and Paramount released the film in cinemas at the end of June. “We finished half of the finals in the last four weeks,” says Muren. All in all, ILM created around 400 shots, many of which included models and miniatures.

“We could have got away with computer graphics, but the explosions wouldn’t have looked as real,” reveals Muren. “So we built a bunch of models and miniatures. But we only inserted them into the shots where we needed them. We endeavoured to do as much on location as possible so that the effects interfered with the concept of the picture as little as possible. Steven was aiming for an organic look for the whole film. Everything is dirty and dusty, and the camera movements resemble the amateur footage from 11 September. We didn’t want to impose the constraints of post-production on the shoot.”

Animatics as a high-precision shooting template

The pre-visualisation helped to make this possible. Daniel D. Gregoire from JAK Films, who had worked with George Lucas on “Star Wars: Episode III”, created animatics that corresponded to the real locations and actual camera lenses. “Once they had the locations, they probably spent two or three months at the beginning checking the shots with animatics,” reports Muren. “It was a pre-visualisation like I’ve never experienced before. Once we were on location setting up a shot, Steven would ask Dan what lens the animatic was shot with. Dan would say, for example, ‘It was a 21, and the camera was 8.20 metres off the ground and tilted six degrees down’ And then we started exactly like that. That gave Steven the confidence to shoot exactly what he wanted on set, knowing that he had already gone through four or five alternatives in the previs.”

ILM started with a team of 50 people working on the first sequences that came in. Over the last five weeks, the team grew to 179 people. Most of them came in about eight to ten weeks before the end, when work on “Episode III” ended. The schedule only allowed for twelve weeks of post-production, which was by no means easy.

Sophisticated compositing

“In terms of compositing, this was the most complicated film I’ve ever seen,” explains compositing supervisor Marshall Krasser, whose credits include directing the compositing on “Lemony Snicket”, “Van Helsing”, “Hulk”, “Star Wars: Episode II” and “Pearl Harbor”. “Making the connection with the source material was a challenge.

Krasser started with five compositors, but ended up with 45. With as much of the film shot on location as possible, the compositors had to blend digital elements, matte paintings and footage of models and miniatures into images full of dust, smoke and debris. For some sequences, they took the footage, literally took it apart and then put it back together again.

For example, to create the sequence in which the Tripod, the 45 metre high alien fighting machine, unscrews from the ground in the middle of Ray Ferrier’s (Tom Cruise) shabby neighbourhood, the compositors started with the live-action footage. In this scene, all the cars have come to a standstill. Numerous lightning bolts have struck the ground in the centre of an intersection. A crowd of people crowd around the resulting hole. The pavement begins to crack open, the monster slowly rises to the surface and everything on and around the junction begins to shift. A simulation by ILM created the cracks, the compositors created the shifts.

To tear apart the church seen in the scene over several frames of the sequence, the team combined photographs of miniatures in various stages of destruction with shots of the church projected onto the geometry. “We cut everything out of the image that could move and placed it on separate parts of the geometry,” says Krasser: “Telephone poles, traffic lights, stop signs, street lamps and buildings.” The team used ILM’s camera projection software Zenviro and Comptime, the studio’s own compositing software. Zenviro makes it possible to project textures, which can consist of photos or moving images, onto 2D maps or 3D objects in a virtual environment.

Painters – or anyone else – can retouch these images based on what they see through a virtual camera that follows the camera from the source image. Once the elements were connected to the geometry, the compositors moved them as if they were being influenced by the rising tripod. They animated frame by frame. “It’s amazing how that little bit of extra effort makes the shot more believable,” Krasser praises.

Similarly, the compositors combined source footage, miniatures and 3D objects to destroy a freeway that runs through Ferrier’s neighbourhood on elevated pillars. “The upper part of the bridge was 3D geometry that was bent and animated,” Krasser explains, “but the concrete pillars were miniatures. The exploding petrol station and the houses being blown apart by a tanker truck were also miniatures. They matched the real houses shot on location so precisely that we didn’t even use the real houses.”

Tripods and aliens as pure CG constructs

The tripods and the aliens (only seen briefly in the film), on the other hand, were made entirely of CG. The tripods are designed to look more like illustrations from Wells’ book than the spaceships from the 1953 film – they look like tanks on long, slender legs. “They were robotic, mechanical and organic with occasional in-between stages, depending on the setting,” explains animation supervisor Randal Dutra. Dutra, who had previously worked with Spielberg and Muren on “Jurassic Park” and “Jurassic Park: Lost World”, left the VFX industry a few years ago to pursue a career as a painter. Muren convinced him to return for this film. He led 19 animators at ILM who worked on 123 character shots, some with multiple characters. “We had three months and three weeks to create all the animation,” says Dutra: “Steven used to edit sequences quickly after shooting. The fast pace kept everyone on their toes. Everyone worked quickly, which was great. We were able to maintain focus, goal-orientation and enthusiasm.”

In addition to the task of making the tripods move believably on their skinny legs, which actually seem unsuitable for carrying the heavy “head”, the animators developed nineteen tentacles that served as probes. In one scene, one of these probes glides through a cellar where Ray Ferrier and his daughter are hiding. “We animated it as a cross between a snake and an eel gliding through the water,” says Dutra. “The whole trick is getting the intervals of movement right.”

For shots in which several tentacles appear like medusae, the animators got help from the technical directors (TDs), who developed procedural animations for the background tentacles. For the tripods’ headlights, the compositors created an effect reminiscent of wavy, gaseous, steamed-up glass. “We designed a two-dimensional fractal noise pattern,” explains Krasser, “marked some tracking points on the head of the tripod and fixed our effect on the tripod using the animation data we obtained. As a result, the animated effect moved with the tripod and remained attached to it.”

Sometimes it doesn’t have to be a shader

For the gas and smoke emitted by the tripods, the compositors combined fog elements – film footage of fog – with two-dimensional fractal noise. “Why write shaders when you can also use real or two-dimensional techniques to create something you’ve never seen before?” asks Krasser rhetorically.

Like their tripods, the aliens also have three legs and each leg has three toes. “I modelled them on red-eyed tree frogs,” reveals Dutra. “As they move around, they put their hands on the walls rather than on the ground.” The animators switched back and forth between Maya and ILM’s new pipeline toolset, called Zeno. The TDs, modellers, match movers, painters and lighters, on the other hand, all worked with the new tools. “With every job, we always do something we’ve never done before,” says TD Michael Di Como: “This time, we replaced our entire pipeline.”

New pipeline with input from Europe

Parts of the new ILM pipeline have been in development since the pre-production of “Star Wars: Episode I” in 1998 and 1999, for example the award-winning camera tracking software for the pod race and later Zenviro, the camera projection mapping software. However, the actual development of the new, standardised toolset took place in the previous two years, triggered by the planned move to new premises. When “War of the Worlds” came up, ILM decided to pick up the pace once again. “If you don’t take risks, if you don’t do something under pressure, firstly it will never be finished,” Muren lectures, “and secondly it will never work properly. So the only way is to combine it with a job, and that’s what I decided to do.”

With the move to the new premises in mind, and knowing that after the final episode of “Star Wars” ILM would be processing 2,000 shots a year rather than 4,000, Muren was tasked with finding ways to reinvent ILM. Part of the result was standards for Zeno’s user interface. “We needed tools that would enable artists to take on more than one task in image creation,” he explains. “In Europe, a lot of work is done by one or two people who do everything from match moving to rendering.

We weren’t set up like that before, but I think our people are ready to take that step. It all starts with an easy-to-use toolset.” ILM’s first pipeline was based on SGI Inventor. The second, which was primarily designed to produce living creatures, was based on scene files from early versions of Softimage animation software. The centrepiece of the new pipeline is now a scene file developed and controlled by ILM. “Zeno manages all the data at the scene level,” explains Chief Technical Officer Cliff Plumer: “It’s a core toolset with a timeline, scene graph and a curve editor that loads the tools the artist needs.” This approach means that the pipeline is open to innovation.

Everything under one roof

All of ILM’s older proprietary tools have been rewritten. And by integrating the Python scripting language, new modules can now be easily added. A simulation engine that calculates clothing, liquids, hair and skin is the centrepiece of the achievements. Models can consist of subdivision surfaces, polygons or nurbs. A new lighting package called Lux delivers what TD Di Como calls “true 3D lighting for particles and creatures”. And there is a two-way connection between renderers such as Mental Ray, Renderman or Brazil and Zeno’s compositing module. Live links allow software such as Photoshop, Inferno and Shake to appear as modules within Zeno, making it easier for users with experience of commercial software to get started with Zeno. ILM’s software is also fast: the solution, which is programmed in 64-bit throughout, accesses Nvidia graphics cards directly.

The most important change, however, is in the workflow: artists now work with a standardised user interface that is based on Maya and allows them to work easily with any tool from the toolset (just as Dennis Muren had planned). Also built into Zeno is what software developer Alan Trombla calls “non-destructive overwriting” – it ensures the integrity of all elements in a scene, regardless of who edits an element and when. “Zeno keeps everything separate, but to a TD it looks like everything is merged. Modelers can paint, painters can animate and compositors can simulate. TDs can light, paint, animate and model. If they want to.

“The new pipeline challenges artists to rethink,” says TD Curt Miyashiro. “Animation used to be cached. Now TDs can adjust, change, fine-tune and add correction shapes to the animation to enhance an animated model.” Miyashiro provides a simple example from the film: “We had to change the direction of the tripod headlights to fit the shot,” he says. “In the past, we would have had to rely on the animators to do that.” One of the shots was actually created from start to finish by modeller Michael Koperwas. “It was a shot of a spider crawling up Dakota Fanning,” explains Miyashiro: “He modelled it, painted it, rigged it and lit it.”

How much impact the new pipeline will have on ILM’s artists remains to be seen. But if initial tests are any indication, it will likely help the studio meet the growing demand for high-quality, yet quickly created effects. And because the pipeline was co-developed and will be shared by Lucas Arts, the game development arm of Lucas Digital, there are many possibilities yet to be discovered. “I’ve seen the difference in the energy with which people have approached the work,” summarises Muren. “Some of them really enjoyed it and I think they got their things done faster. The culture still needs to change, but we have initiated a philosophy that we are open to people wanting to learn. It will probably take a year.” After a moment’s thought, he corrects himself: “Maybe six months.”

The post War of the Worlds | Retro Articles first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Patrick Poti.

This article by Sabine Hatzfeld originally appeared in DP 06 : 2014.

A special film school opened in Mannheim at the beginning of this year. The non-profit organisation “Flimmermenschen” views film as a holistic cultural phenomenon. The programme is aimed at students, hobbyists and people from outside the industry, as well as short film makers and trainees – such as media designers for image and sound – who want to deepen their knowledge.

Behind the “Flimmermenschen” association is Dr Marc Reisner, a video artist and director(www.flimmermenschen.de). Reisner has produced over 100 intermedia theatre productions to date, from 3D and 2D to 16-millimetre film. He has worked with Christoph Schlingensief, Achim Freyer and Jimmy de Brabant, among others, and has already realised a theatre production in a real-time bluebox with 3D backgrounds.

He has also been teaching theatre, film and 3D animation at universities since 2000. He has noticed that many of his students are more film fans than film connoisseurs, and that the universities are training the film-making elite. But what happens to the rest? With the model maker who is interested in 3D printing? With the short film maker who wants to learn about VFX? Or students who want to know how an animation studio works?

The idea of founding an association was born and the first half of the year was characterised by the pilot project “Polygon Racing”. This was not only about designing and animating cars, but the participants also investigated the laws of physics and turned their attention to topics such as the cultural adaptation of trailers or the merchandising concept of Disney/Pixar’s “Cars”. The subject of film is thus examined from several different angles. The course costs are quite reasonable and are on a VHS level: participants paid a total of 150 euros for twelve evenings over three months and received a certificate of attendance at the end of the course. This course was offered twice and there was also an expert course. This marked the end of the pilot phase. From September, the Flimmermenschen will then expand their programme to eight workshops. We spoke to Marc Reisner about the organisation’s concept and its plans.

DP: What exactly do you criticise about the current training situation? Marc Reisner: There are media education projects and film schools, but nothing in between. I like to use a football club as a comparison: not everyone wants to become a professional footballer, but even amateurs don’t want to remain at ball-stopping level, but perhaps achieve more. In other words, not everyone who studies film wants to become a filmmaker later on. But they also don’t want to sit in front of a trick box all day or have someone who has never been on a film set explain to them how to make a film. Universities only train the top end of the film industry. But who takes care of the rest?

DP: How did the organisation come about?

Marc Reisner: The association was founded in Mannheim at the beginning of the year. For years, everyone has been saying that Mannheim is the city of music, but that something needs to be done about moving images. There are a lot of great funding opportunities in Germany, but if you get little or nothing from them, it can happen that nobody gets moving. That’s why I said last year: we’ll just do it now. My experience in the theatre has shown that once the ball starts rolling, a lot of things happen by themselves.

DP: What is your goal?

Marc Reisner: Of the hundreds of students I’ve taught so far, almost all were film fans. But none of them had the slightest understanding of film. Most film schools have the same problem: People apply who can list film titles but don’t know what happens in the 90 minutes in aesthetic and technical terms. But that’s only one aspect. Conversely, the medium of film influences our language and shapes our role models. The mobile phone was invented by an Enterprise fan, Dr Martin Cooper. Minority Report” showed us what good, interactive design is all about. The disco boom was triggered by “Saturday Night Fever”. You don’t even have to go to the cinema to be influenced by film. Our society breathes film.

DP: The advisory board is made up exclusively of academics – what about industry professionals?

Marc Reisner: Our target group is people who are interested in film for whatever reason, who want to learn more about it or who are looking to enter the industry. Didactic concepts are also of particular interest to us. Hence the scientists. We have the professionals on board through the advocates.

DP: Your first course “Polygon Racing” is designed to teach 3D knowledge to non-professionals. But isn’t that what 3D professionals are for?

Marc Reisner: Exactly. That brings us back to the football club. In our first course, for example, there was a set designer who wanted to spice up his models. He bought a 3D printer for this purpose. Building a propeller out of wood is pretty time-consuming; printing one out is not. You don’t always have to think of Hollywood films to make good use of 3D. Another course participant from the automotive industry has a lot to do with Previs in order to explain the functionality of industrial robots, which are difficult to take to customers. An agency would charge huge sums for a virtual representation, but the participant is now so fit that he can produce simple visualisations himself. This saves time and money and does not result in any transfer losses.

DP: Do you also target young people who are interested in training in the field of animation/VFX?

Marc Reisner: Most young people watch a Pixar film and then think that they want to do this professionally because animation is cool. We give them an overview of how an animation studio is organised, which departments are involved and what the basic work steps are. If you know afterwards that you’d rather study graphic design after all, you’ve already gained something. As I said before, my impression is that most young people have no idea what it means to work in the film industry. This is precisely the knowledge we want to impart.

DP: To what extent could professionals also benefit from a course?

Marc Reisner: The expert course is not intended for real 3D professionals, but for those who have completed the basic course and already have a basic knowledge of 3D. We don’t want to train digital artists, we just want to open doors. There are plenty of training opportunities for 3D artists. To be honest: far too many.

DP: How is Flimmermenschen financed as a non-profit organisation?

Marc Reisner: Through donations, voluntary work and small grants from the city. We are also generously supported by Musikpark Mannheim through the premises they provide and by Autodesk, Adobe and Dosch Design.

DP: How do you communicate real conditions in the industry?

Marc Reisner: As I have shot a lot myself and also taught lighting for a long time, I would like to bring in real film practice. At the moment, however, there is still a lack of equipment in every nook and cranny. Our first course also focussed on 3D because the technical requirements in this area are somewhat lower. Real framework conditions are demonstrated using examples from current cinema films. In “Polygon Racing” we take a detailed look at “Rush” and work out with the participants what 3D is actually needed for in the cinema. There will also be “Flimmertalks”, where film-makers will talk about their day-to-day work, such as Chris Vogt from Pixomondo.

DP: With “Polygon Racing”, you combined animation knowledge with expertise from collaborations with racing drivers and car specialists – but is that how all the big studios work? Why do you think your approach is so special?

Marc Reisner: Because we are not a film studio and it is sensational for the average German to think outside the box. It may be normal for film-makers to absorb the topic they are currently working on. However, many students or people from outside the field first have to take this step. Which brings us back to the topic of methodology: How do you find out where the centre of rotation of a car is when it is moving around a bend? We filmed with a chassis designer who explained this. And then every course participant was able to try it out for themselves.

DP: Why is “Polygon Racing” being offered in a different form in the new programme?

Marc Reisner: There are several reasons for this. Firstly, we have received a few enquiries from outside the city. People who don’t live in Mannheim won’t be travelling to us once a week for two hours. It was therefore clear that we had to offer our courses in blocks if we wanted to appeal to people from the surrounding area. Secondly, I myself had the feeling that the course was becoming more and more like software training. And that’s exactly what we don’t want to offer. We want to demonstrate the concepts and not spend hours clicking buttons.

DP: Who are your lecturers?

Marc Reisner: I taught “Polygon Racing” on my own. That was our pilot project, which allowed us to try out a lot of things. As I said, from the autumn we will be switching to a workshop programme with courses running from Friday lunchtime to Saturday evening. As a result, we have also been able to attract lecturers who simply take a weekend off for us. For example, director and digital artist Andreas Dahn will be coming along and doing something on the subject of VFX planning. Music video legend Robert Bröllochs will also honour us (editor’s note: Modern Talking, Scooter, Xavier Naidoo …) and offer something on the subject of filming with amateur actors. Together with Tilman Bischoff from “Planet Schule”, I’m currently developing a course on space physics and cinema. “Gravity”, for example, is very much about realism, but in the decisive scene the dramaturgical element prevails. That’s why we want to ask the ESA what materials an astronaut’s safety rope is actually made of. There certainly isn’t one like the one in “Gravity” in reality.

DP: What hardware is the “einsnull” spacecraft equipped with?

Marc Reisner: There are eight iMacs (i5, with 8 GB). They are all networked together and as a lecturer I can access every computer. If you’re working with young people, you can always put two on one computer. The adults prefer to try things out for themselves.

DP: Which software packages do you work with?

Marc Reisner: As we are sponsored by Autodesk and Adobe, we work with Maya and the usual suspects such as Photoshop, After Effects and so on. For our space project, we realised that physicists can’t do very much with the rigid bodies in Maya. That’s why we are once again looking for software that allows physically correct simulations. We also have a direct line to Sebastian Dosch from Dosch Design, who provides us with everything our hearts desire. Autodesk is an important partner for us, because they have a lot of experience with 3D programmes at the intermediate level, especially in the English-speaking world. We were able to learn a lot from them, for example how to use Maya for biology lessons. In any case, people in America like to work on a project basis, which is very similar to our approach. In Germany, practically nobody dares to tackle the subject. It only starts at university level.

DP: What’s the deal with the Flimmertalks?

Marc Reisner: We organise these guest lectures for the public in cooperation with the Cineplex Mannheim. Anyone who wants to can come. In terms of the film industry, Mannheim is not exactly the centre of the universe. Therefore, there are many interested people who are not necessarily interested in our course programme. As we are a non-profit organisation, I think it makes sense to say: “We have people who have something to tell. Come and listen. Regardless of whether you attend our workshops or not.” It’s important to us that you can simply experience what it means to work in the film industry and to be “on fire” for your job. Many people still think that you go there, shoot a bit of film and spend most of your time lying by the pool. Especially outside the professional world, a frightening number of people still equate mobile phone videos with cinema films. It’s kind of the same thing, they say, they just have more money in Hollywood. They never talk about performance, blood and tears. That’s why we had Uwe Boll on in the last Flimmertalk – we know all about his reputation as a director. But he is someone who makes films and doesn’t talk about projects that never come to fruition because nobody wants to pay for them. His talk made a lasting impression on many members of the audience, as it was suddenly no longer about the quality of his films, but about how to get big projects off the ground. As a producer, he currently has a film in the pipeline with Antonio Banderas and Gwyneth Paltrow, namely the film adaptation of Picasso’s life (directed by Carlos Saura). He really had a lot to tell.

DP: What are your contacts with studios like Pixar?

Marc Reisner: Pixar, Pixomondo and many others are just a phone call away. That’s our unofficial technical and content support, so to speak. For example, Tanja Krampfert from Pixar supported us in the development of our first course “Polygon Racing”. Some of the participants are currently undergoing vocational orientation – we have students who are still familiarising themselves with the buttons on the mouse. So you have to realistically question what they can learn from a full professional if they are still struggling with the basics.

DP: What is the role of the organisation’s advocates?

Marc Reisner: If you make the bold statement that film has something to do with culture, you will quickly realise that all areas of cultural education are occupied by the long-established institutions: Theatres, museums, music schools. That’s why it’s important first of all to bring people together to stand in front of us and say: film is important too. Film is also culture! The advocates are all people who are really committed to our cause. Some of them will also be giving workshops in the new seminar programme, such as the film director Stefan Hillebrand or Robert Bröllochs, as already mentioned.

DP: Why are there only a few people from the 3D industry listed in the programme?

Marc Reisner: Quite simply, it’s about anchoring the flicker people in the region. All the advocates come from the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region or have at least worked here before. The advocates are primarily there to show regional politicians that they support our concept of film education. An artistic director of the National Theatre is more effective than a 3D artist from England.

DP: Is the principle of “Polygon Racing” transferable to other subject areas and are you planning to expand the range of courses?

Marc Reisner: Definitely. As I said, we started out in the virtual world because it offered many structural advantages. We are now extending the findings from the course to other subject areas: For example, there have been numerous requests for us to do something like a “basic film course”. So not a course where you learn what a long shot or close-up is, but one that explains how film works in the first place. We forget far too quickly that we are used to watching films. But a Martian would ask: “What does that have to do with reality? The film has an edge, and you can’t touch the woman in the shower, and nothing is wet here. It’s actually just moving blobs of colour.”

The post Between HFF and VHS | Retro article first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

Rise | Visual Effects Studios(www.risefx.com) has been around since 2OO7 and now has four locations. With a location in Vienna, the team is even represented in German-speaking “foreign countries”. The Rise team explained to us how they managed to expand their VFX business without losing their overview.

Rise founder and VFX supervisor Florian Gellinger, who will also be on the animago jury again this year, manages the main Berlin location together with Sven Pannicke, Robert Pinnow and Markus Degen. The second studio in Cologne was initially an “on demand” location, which has since been converted into a permanent site. Its success was followed shortly afterwards by the opening of the Vienna branch. The Stuttgart location has recently been added and will be up and running by FMX(www.fmx.de) at the latest.

Rise | Visual Effects Studios is a regular guest at our animago AWARD & CONFERENCE(www.animago.com). So if you would like to meet the team in person, you should be there on 15 and 16 October. Entries for all nine categories can be submitted for the animago AWARD until 30 June.

You can find out more about Rise’s day-to-day work and pipeline in the studio portrait in DP issue 05/13.

DP: Hi Florian, why did you see the need to be represented at these locations with your studio and to expand in this way?

Florian Gellinger: We want to be as close as possible to young talent and artists. And in Germany, the industry is unfortunately spread out in all directions, in contrast to London or Vancouver, for example. Many domestic productions also make use of regional funding. The regions of Vienna, North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg in particular were quick to recognise the increasingly important role of digital visual effects. After all, up to 100 per cent of film images now come from computers – including the main actors.

DP: Is the first studio foundation the most difficult and all the others just routine work? Or did each studio challenge you anew?

Florian Gellinger: The first studio is always the hardest. You have to acquire orders while you build up the technical infrastructure. Cologne was our “trial balloon” for all other locations. We learned a lot from projects such as “Adlon – A Family Saga” and “Night Over Berlin” and used this knowledge to expand our decentralised production environment accordingly. In practice, we have found out how work at several locations can function best and that the efficient organisation of work processes is at least as important as the work on the effects themselves. Each new branch makes the organisation of distributed projects many times more complicated – but a larger artist pool also makes you faster and more flexible.

DP: Were there regional differences when setting up a studio?

Florian Gellinger: No, not really. But we were also lucky that our first people on site were previously long-standing Berlin employees who are well connected in the industry and know our work processes. We try to completely avoid competitive thinking between the locations by removing all barriers apart from the physical separation as far as possible. This means that employees in Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna should feel as if they are working in the same building as the Berliners and vice versa. All workstations are networked with each other via VoIP and chat and you can also simply transfer control of your own workstation to others, for example to get help.

DP: How did you manage to finance each new location?

Florian Gellinger: The new locations are created from orders placed and additional capacity required. We can also use the software developed in Berlin at all locations, which means that the development work is spread across more users, making it increasingly cost-efficient. The Berlin location is extremely important due to its proximity to Studio Babelsberg(www.studiobabelsberg.com). We can visit production offices on the studio premises at any time, giving our customers more flexibility. At the same time, the animago is ideal for finding new talent. In addition to the excellent universities, Cologne, Stuttgart and Vienna are ahead of the game when it comes to promoting post-production – although in Vienna in particular there is currently no-one else on site with a comparable programme.

DP: What criteria did you use to select the premises at the respective locations?

Florian Gellinger: We love open, large spaces. That’s why we’ve always tried to put together as many artists as possible who are working on a project as an interdisciplinary group. That way, everyone can see what is being created on the monitors of the others and be inspired for their own work. The spatial concept facilitates communication and the result looks more consistent in the end. We actually see the entire company as a virtual open-plan office, regardless of where people are working.

DP: How many permanent employees do you have in total? How many freelancers also provide regular support?

Florian Gellinger: Our network has a total of 19 permanent employees. We see our work like that of a physical film production, which grows and shrinks according to demand: a few leads work in planning, preparing the projects and setting everything up according to our guidelines. For the work on the individual shots, we book additional freelancers and after the end of the project, they either jump to the next one or we downsize again.

DP: How do the locations differ in terms of technical equipment?

Florian Gellinger: The offices are all equipped according to their employee capacities – Berlin has the largest server and the largest render farm. However, these capacities can also be made available to the other locations at peak times. Berlin also has a DI facility with 4K 3D stereo projection. Approvals for larger projects also take place here.

DP: How does the data transfer between the locations work? Do you also use online render services?

Florian Gellinger: All data transfer between the locations takes place fully automatically in the background and is highly encrypted. Each location can access all data of an assigned project at any time. Our network is otherwise completely isolated from the outside world. Even if we wanted to, we would not be allowed to use online render service providers, as the security guidelines of some of our customers prohibit us from doing so. This is another reason why automatic render farm load balancing between the locations is so important.

DP: Do you have one licence server for all studios or a separate one for each location?

Florian Gellinger: That depends on the software. In some cases, there are only nodelocked licences for special software. In some cases, however, we also have floating licences that can be loaned out from Berlin to other locations. Our licence portfolio is structured very differently – depending on the software, the type of licence available from the manufacturer and our requirements.

DP: Do you use your internal Risebase database at all locations? For what in detail?

Florian Gellinger: Risebase is still the heart of the company and its further development enables us to work across the various locations. Review notes and comments on individual shots in particular can be sent across locations. For example, if it is necessary to do a review session with a client in Berlin, but the shots are actually being worked on in Stuttgart, the notes can be entered in Risebase in Berlin and the Stuttgart artists receive the corresponding comments in real time.

DP: What exactly does your cooperation with Pointcloud9 look like?

Florian Gellinger: Pointcloud9 is a subcontractor of Rise. Customers who use our LIDAR services shouldn’t feel like they have to book the rest of Rise’s VFX apparatus just for the LIDAR service they want. However, they can expect to receive results that we ourselves would want as a VFX service provider as a basis for our work. This means that Pointcloud9’s experience in handling LIDAR raw data is also growing as a result of our own projects.

DP: Do you have any other locations planned in the near future?

Florian Gellinger: So far, we are already quite busy with the four locations. But who knows what will happen next.

The post More locations, more VFX! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Mirja Fürst.