Canada’s Authentic Illusion (AIVFX Inc), China’s Guangxi Lan Hai Centry Media Ltd and Beijing Da He Jin Bang International Media Ltd collaborate to create The Birthday Gift using Autodesk software.

Image courtesy of AIVFX INC.

Summary

It is a tale of thoughtful generosity in the midst of tremendous want; a simple story of the strength of family ties in the face of formidable challenges; and it is the first fully computer-animated film from the People’s Republic of China.

The filmmakers situate their story after the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, a national program instituted by Chairman Mao Tse-Tung from 1966 to 1976. Designed to curb the influence of capitalism, the Cultural Revolution brought tectonic change to an ancient culture and great economic hardship to the vast Chinese populace.

Image courtesy of AIVFX INC.

In a time when China is prospering, The Birthday Gift, a mesmerizing 3D animated short film co-created by China’s Guangxi Lan Hai Centry Media Ltd and Beijing Da He Jin Bang International Media Ltd, revisits that nation’s tumultuous past as personified in a young boy, his grandmother, and a simple shopkeeper. Through innovative use of Autodesk® Maya® software, Autodesk® Mudbox™ software, and Autodesk® 3ds Max® software, AIVFX tells a poignant story of history, heritage, and the human heart.

The Challenge

The production of “The Birthday Gift” begins, like the film itself, in China. After hearing the Director and writer, Pan Li’s rendition of the story, Production Supervisor and Director Di He believed it was one for the ages and yearned to create an animated film.

“I knew the story had all the right elements for a beautiful film,” he says. “Within a couple of months, we had developed a 2D storyboard. 3D animation, however, remains a relatively new discipline in China. That was when we got involved with the talented people in Toronto.”

One of those talents was AIVFX’s Jean Cabrera, who would serve as animation lead on the project. It quickly became apparent to Cabrera that achieving an appropriate look and feel for the film would require a careful combination of artistic emotion and technological precision.

“Using the 2D storyboard, we had everything translated into English and worked closely with Di and the Chinese team to ensure we understood the story properly,” says Cabrera. “Once we understood the depth of generosity in the boy and the shopkeeper, and the unerring kindness in the grandmother, we were about really putting ourselves into those characters. We gave each character a uniquely stylized motion to convey the correct emotion.”

As the team worked to translate the 2D cel animation into a fully realized 3D film, however, it became clear that certain elements would be significant challenges to re-create.

The Solution

“What we created in 2D often didn’t work in 3D space, particularly when it came to capturing the visual depth of a scene,” says Brock Lafond, modeling supervisor at AIVFX. “We needed to animate our characters to act and respond to a lifelike and evocative 3D environment. The powerful particle system in Autodesk 3ds Max helped us generate terrifically realistic snow, fog, and smoke effects that set the tone for the film. Everything was modeled in 3ds Max. We used the power of Reactor dynamics in 3ds Max to help give each environment a more realistic, yet highly stylized feel. The dynamic environment in 3ds Max enabled me to experiment with and capture elements, then bring them back into the viewport in their preserved states. That was an extremely valuable tool.”

From modeling in 3ds Max, scenes were transferred to Mudbox, where displacement maps and more precise detailing were applied to environments and characters, before being transferred again to Maya, where the team made great use of the mental ray® rendering engine, the Maya Trax nonlinear animation editor, and Maya nCloth.

“Using the Maya Trax nonlinear animation editor helped us create believable blending animations quickly,” says Scott Glynn, animation director on the project. “That saved us a great deal of time, which we could then apply to creating more and more complex animations for the film. Using Maya nCloth was a great experience, and we were able to create fabrics that appeared to be made of very thick, yet flexible, denim. Maya nCloth gave us the flexibility to create believable, dynamic movement in all our characters.”

“All three of the Autodesk software packages were hugely beneficial on this project, not least because they are so easy to learn,” says Cabrera. “All of the systems work seamlessly together, and I was able to teach even relative newcomers to Maya how to use the system in less than a day. They could pick it up that easily.”

The Results

Released in September 2009, The Birthday Party has met with positive reaction, both for its moving message, evocative environments, and technological mastery.

“This is definitely not a commercial film,” says Di He emphatically. “More important to us is conveying a sense of Chinese tradition and culture, and putting a more human face on my country. Today’s China is growing more prosperous every day, but some people seem to be forgetting about our history and traditions. And those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Using the most modern technology, The Birthday Gift offers everyone the true gift of past experience.

For more information about Autodesk Media & Entertainment software, visit www.autodesk.com/me.

Image courtesy of AIVFX INC.

Autodesk, Maya, Mudbox, and 3ds Max are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries. mental ray is a registered trademark of mental images GmbH licensed for use by Autodesk, Inc. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product and services offerings, and specifications and pricing at any time without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document. © 2010 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.

Contact Information

Autodesk

www.autodesk.com

The story of 3ds Max software starts in 1988 when Autodesk teamed up with the Yost Group to create 3D Studio, a new kind of 3D animation software. Yost and his team had a vision of making 3D animation accessible to everyone, taking it out of the rarefied environment of ultra-expensive Sun and SGI systems and bringing it to the PC. When we published the first version of what would become 3ds Max, we had no idea just how far that program would come, nor the amazing voyage it would take us on. But here we are today celebrating the software’s 20th Anniversary. It is clear that the contributions 3ds Max has made to the computer graphics industry are immense. Here is the story of how 3ds Max revolutionized the entertainment industry:

It all began with The Yost Group, pioneered by Gary Yost, who had begun a project in 1998 called THUD, named after the project’s sole developer, Tom Hudson. THUD was not a complete animation program, as it only covered modeling and rendering; however, it evolved into a fully functioning 3D animation application once Dan Silva joined the team and introduced keyframing. THUD then became known as 3D Studio, the first fully 3D animation system for the PC platform.

Tomb Raider. Image courtesy of Exmachina Core Design Ltd.

After two years of long days and sleepless nights, Autodesk, in collaboration with the Yost Group, was ready to release 3D Studio. On Halloween of 1990, the first ever affordable and integrated 3D modeling, rendering and animation system was released. 3D Studio could perform right out of the box the way other more expensive and more complicated animation systems could, but it sold for only $3,495 while all other alternatives cost upwards of $10,000. The price point completely revolutionized the industry as it gave more people the opportunity and ability to learn and create in 3D. 3ds Max had changed the game and the course of entertainment history.

Battlefield Earth. Image courtesy of Computer Cafe.

The software was quickly industry approved and in its early years many Hollywood films including “Johnny Mnemonic” and “The Craft” used 3D Studio for their special effects. The software was also used to create legendary games, including “Tomb Raider” and “World of Warcraft”. During these years many landmark features were introduced, and with each release 3D Studio became more and more capable and competitive in the industry.

Empire of Ants. Image courtesy of Microids Canada.

In 1994, Autodesk announced 3D Studio version R4, nicknamed the “Plug-In Release,” as almost all new features were offered as Plug-ins. There were still only three developers working on the project, but part-time the team was also involved in a top-secret project that would push the 3D Studio revolution to the industry forefront. This project, code named “Jaguar,” was what would become 3D Studio Max — the first 3D animation program to work on a Windows 32-bit platform and feature real-time animation in the viewport. It was another game-changer.

3D Studio MAX was announced in 1995 at SIGGRAPH — the annual computer graphics and technology conference in LA, where 3ds Max will be celebrating its 20th Anniversary over 15 years later. 3D Studio MAX was then the highlight of the conference, with ground-breaking features such as Undo (a new concept at the time) and significantly increased speed and flexibility for animators.

Image courtesy of Swiss Interactive.

The first major film to use 3D Studio MAX for visual effects was “Lost in Space”, a movie that broke the digital effects record for total number of animated shots, all made possible with the new speed and efficiency in 3D Studio MAX.

In the years leading up to 2000 when 3D Studio MAX would become 3ds max, many new features were added. These included Character Studio, the program responsible for the Dancing Baby featured on Ally McBeal, as well as advanced modeling capabilities and network rendering, which increased rendering speeds immensely.

Visualization of a proposed restaurant design. Image courtesy of Neoscape Inc.

In 2001, “Fifty Percent Gray” was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Animated Short category. This was the first film created with 3ds max that was nominated for an Oscar, but it certainly wouldn’t be the end of the software’s Oscar career. Since then, 3ds Max has made itself a regular at the annual ceremonies, helping create a number of Academy Awardnominated and winning movies, including “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Hurt Locker” and “Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty.”

In addition to Academy Award-winning films, 3ds Max has also been used to craft record-breaking games. “The Sims”, released in 2000, was created using a blend of 3ds Max and Maya software and became the world’s best-selling PC game of all time. “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell”, released in 2002, leveraged 3ds Max to achieve critically acclaimed lighting and animation quality. Blizzards’ “World of Warcraft”, another game created with 3ds Max, became the Guinness Book of World Records’ title holder for most popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game in 2004. “Halo 1” and “Halo 2”, released in 2001 and 2005 respectively, also broke records for game sales. 3ds Max is a leading toolset for the games industry and its appeal is obvious.

Though I have focused mainly on Entertainment in this article, a look back on the last 20 years of 3ds Max wouldn’t be complete without highlighting some of the amazing design visualization work that has been done with the software. 3ds Max has empowered numerous architects, engineers and designers to make more informed decisions, tell their design story and win more work.

For example, Steelman Partners landed the Las Vegas Sands Macau project just two minutes into a five-minute visualization the company had created with 3ds Max to showcase how its design for the casino/hotel would look when it was built. A few years later, Parsons Brinckerhoff used the software to visualize the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle as a means to pull together different design elements and to find potential problems with the design before the project was launched. More recently, an immensely talented 3ds Max artist, Alex Roman, created “The Third & The Seventh” a stunning, fully CG animated piece that illustrates architecture art from a photographic point of view. The imagery looks so real, you won’t believe it’s CG!

This is what the 3ds Max 20th Anniversary is all about, celebrating the achievement of our customers and the technological advancements that helped make those film, game, television, architectural or engineering marvels possible.

Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Image courtesy of Ubisoft.

Over the next few months Autodesk invites everyone to join in the celebration. The festivities will kick off with the launch of a celebratory microsite on the AREA — Autodesk’s digital entertainment and visualization community — that will feature a historical timeline and the work of 3ds Max customers from around the world. Then at SIGGRAPH LA, where 3ds Max was first launched, free 3ds Max Anniversary t-shirts will be given away to attendees wearing old 3ds Max apparel. Autodesk will also be sponsoring the annual Blur party in honor of two decades of 3ds Max. There will be much more to come after SIGGRAPH, as we enter the 21st year of 3ds Max and approach 3December, where the festivities will come to an end.

After all, the 3ds Max 20th Anniversary is also about the future. As we celebrate the last two decades of 3ds Max, we are honoring the huge advancements we have made as an industry. And as we look back in amazement of how far we’ve come, we can’t help but look toward the future as well, to imagine how far we’ll go from here.

Happy Birthday 3ds Max!

With close to 20 years experience in management and technology, Marc Petit leads Autodesk Media & Entertainment as Senior Vice President. In this role, Petit manages the Media & Entertainment division and guides the development and marketing of Autodesk’s leading 2D systems and 3D software solutions, including Autodesk Inferno, Flame, Smoke, Lustre, Toxik, 3ds Max, Maya, MotionBuilder and Mudbox.

The latest scoop from Autodesk Media & Entertainment

Welcome to this issue of Autodesk® Games Insight, our monthly column on what’s new with Autodesk in the games industry. In this issue, I’ll cover Digital Entertainment Creation, the launch of our suites, and the new 2010 versions of our software.

Digital Entertainment Creation
This recession is putting the spotlight on the rising costs of entertainment production. At Autodesk, we believe that the key to improved efficiency and effectiveness in production is to empower artists with better and faster tools that communicate well together. That’s our vision for Digital Entertainment Creation.

The way games are created – from complex environments to believable characters – is improved by using new real-time, immersive, interactive technologies. We are focusing our tools on creative exploration and collaboration. Our products now feature higher-quality interactive rendering in viewports to make better creative judgments on assets. Our real-time animation tools can be integrated more tightly with games engines, for a better understanding of how animation impacts game play.

Our solutions bring together game design, art creation and game programming. With faster turnarounds and more iterations, Digital Entertainment Creation helps you improve both quality and efficiency.

New Autodesk Entertainment Creation and Real-Time Animation Suites with 2010 software
Implementing this vision involves multiple Autodesk products, and we want to offer you more value. We’re introducing two new Suites – offering more than 35%* savings. The Autodesk® Entertainment Creation Suite combines the choice of Autodesk® Maya® or Autodesk® 3ds Max® software, plus Autodesk® Mudbox™ and Autodesk® MotionBuilder® software, in one package. The Autodesk® Real-Time Animation
Suite includes Maya or 3ds Max, plus MotionBuilder. These suites include the new 2010 software versions, and are available for commercial and educational facilities.

New 2010 Versions and One Maya
We’ve just announced new versions of our software, including Maya 2010, Autodesk® Softimage® 2010 software, Mudbox 2010 and MotionBuilder 2010. I invite you to check out all the exciting new features on our website.

I’d like to highlight what we’ve done with Maya. In Maya 2010, we have combined Maya Unlimited and Maya Complete into one single product. We have also integrated compositing and match moving functionality, making Maya 2010 an ideal solution for the creation of games assets, and also for end-to-end movie-quality cinematic production.

*International savings may vary.

What’s New from Autodesk M&E:

• Autodesk Entertainment Creation Suite
• Autodesk Real-Time Animation Suite
• Autodesk Maya 2010
• Autodesk Softimage 2010
• Autodesk Mudbox 2010
• Autodesk MotionBuilder 2010
• Autodesk 3ds Max 2010 Connection Extension

To learn more, visit: www.autodesk.com/games or area.autodesk.com.

Area v3
We love to hear from you and see your work. Over a quarter million artists have joined the AREA, our Digital Entertainment and Visualization Community, and it keeps on growing. We’ve just revamped the site and new content is posted regularly. Join us online for dialogue, downloads, learning and fun.

Marc Petit
Senior Vice President
Autodesk
Media & Entertainment
marc.petit@autodesk.com

“Time was our biggest challenge with Gears of War 2. 3ds Max, Maya, and MotionBuilder allowed us to iterate quickly and create content in record time. It also enabled us to go beyond anything we’ve done before. Without Autodesk’s software, combined with our own proprietary Unreal® Engine 3 toolset, we would have been hardpressed to finish the game in such a short development cycle.”
— Chris Perna, Art Director
Epic Games

Contact Information

Autodesk

www.autodesk.com

The latest scoop from Autodesk Media & Entertainment

“The huge world of Warhammer meant we needed a very robust pathfinding solution. Autodesk Kynapse gave us an algorithmic exploration solution that enabled our AI driven actors to path with the same constraints and freedom as players.“
— Matt Shaw
Chief Technology Officer
Mythic Entertainment, an EA Studio

Hello and welcome to Autodesk® Games Insight, our monthly column on Autodesk in the games industry. In this issue, I’d like to introduce the new Autodesk Games group and highlight our middleware solutions Autodesk® Kynapse® and Autodesk® HumanIK® middleware.

Autodesk Games – Focused on games
Autodesk helps serve the needs of customers worldwide and recently realigned the company with dedicated teams for each industry. With this, the new Autodesk Games group was born. Autodesk Games is a team focused entirely on serving the needs of the games industry through cutting edge middleware technology and powerful game art tools.

Developers trust Autodesk for its 3D packages: Autodesk® Maya®, Autodesk® 3ds Max® and Autodesk® Softimage® software. We expanded on our games offering with middleware, bringing reliable technology to programming teams. Kynapse, a leading artificial intelligence middleware solution, became part of the Autodesk family with the acquisition of Kynogon. This past GDC, we also released a new version of HumanIK, a middleware solution for creating more believable run-time character animation.

Character-Centric Middleware
Game teams are pushing the boundaries of putting compelling characters in open worlds to tell stories and create new experiences. This presents numerous problems. Art production requirements such as modeling, sculpting, texturing, shading and animation have increased but this is only one part of the problem. Game teams need run-time technology that is able to bring characters to life in the game through realistic animation performances and decision making capabilities. Autodesk wants to bridge the gap between art and science, and make it much easier for people to create amazing, interactive character performances without technology getting in the way. Our vision is for a unified workflow where your art tools work harmoniously with run-time technology, so that getting to the game is not only quick and painless, but a creatively rewarding process.

Kynapse – Put the brain in your game
Autodesk® Kynapse® is an artificial intelligence (AI) middleware solution used in over 80 highend gaming titles. Kynapse handles dynamic 3D pathfinding, 3D spatial awareness and team coordination. What differentiates Kynapse from other AI middleware is that it helps give characters a highly cognitive understanding of surrounding environments and the ability to interact with it in a dynamic way. Its tool chain is also unique in that it is highly automated and flexible for iterative changes, which means that production teams can work more efficiently.

HumanIK – Realistic character animation performances
While Kynapse helps give in-game characters artificial intelligence, Autodesk® HumanIK® helps characters move in a realistic way and interact with the environment. Realistic animation performances that would have
been extremely difficult through traditional keyframe animation, baking and blending techniques are now easier to achieve with HumanIK. With its procedural motion adaptation technology, characters adapt their motion at run-time responding to the user or the environment. Not only does HumanIK enhance your team’s animation in real-time, it also helps solve the problem of animation data complexity. Production teams can focus on key performances with HumanIK working procedurally at run-time, reducing the number of animations necessary for believable results. Animators can now focus on their characters rather than mundane technical work, building compelling stories for the game.

Conclusion
We are excited about the new Autodesk Games group, supporting developers with 3D software and robust middleware that you can trust. If you have any questions or would like to arrange for an evaluation of our middleware technology, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact us at middleware@autodesk.com or visit www.autodesk.com/games.

Marc Stevens
Vice-President
Autodesk Games,
Media & Entertainment
marc.stevens@autodesk.com
PS: As we were finishing this column, we were awarded Best Tools Provider at the Develop Awards!

Contact Information

Autodesk

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resolution Ready for Anything with Autodesk Flame, Autodesk Maya, and CAD files.

resolution
(www.resolutionla.com)
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Project: Badge, Running Late,
Elements, 3 Spots for Nissan Altima
Autodesk® Flame® software
Autodesk® Maya® software

“Flame is truly the best of all worlds. We have the ability to work in context, to deal with client changes quickly, perform 3D tracking and compositing in the box,
enjoy great rotoscoping and color correction tools, and much more. We have the speed, the power, the tools, and our clients get to truly interact and get creative with what they’re paying for.”
—Todd Iorio
President and
Senior Visual Effect Supervisor
resolution LA / resolution NY

Summary
Backed by the classic strains of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy,” “Badge” – one of a trio of ambitious spots created by resolution, a bicoastal creative company — opens with the pristine grill of an attractive Nissan Altima, just as the car performs an impeccably controlled sideways drift across a desert tarmac. The other spots, “Running Late” and “Elements,” both open at the “Nissan Test Facility”, where the Altima is put through dozens of punishing environmental and mechanical tests before being lovingly pampered by their subsequent owners. In each case, the cars appear pristine and perfect, thanks mainly to the top tier talent at resolution.

An increasingly popular destination for the best in image and audio finishing, resolution (a division of Union Editorial) uses Autodesk® Flame® and Autodesk® Maya® software to provide visual effects, design, and mix for commercials, music videos, and film. Preparing to do some clean-up on a recent trio of spots highlighting the durability and good looks of the Nissan Altima automobile, resolution President; Todd Iorio and his team experienced a welcome surprise when the ad agency provided CAD files of the car in question. Iorio spoke with Autodesk about how this way of working benefited resolution’s clients, as well as the company’s artists.

The Challenge
Initially bid as a fairly straightforward clean-up job, Iorio and his team were surprised when they received CAD files together with the film footage to be used in the Nissan advertisements. While CAD data files are typically requested on jobs with a high computer graphics (CG) component, these advertisements were never billed as such during the bidding process.

“We basically bid this job as if it were a typical automotive clean-up and color correction project,” says Iorio. “During the bidding process, there was no mention of CG work, but the agency producer showed up on the first day with CAD models of the Altima. It was a surprise, but not a particularly unpleasant one. It was really like we’d reached a point where handing over CAD models is suddenly the norm for every spot. This isn’t an ad where the car does flips or turns into a robot, but we knew these elements could still help immensely. It also showed a great deal of confidence both in our abilities and our toolset.”

In fact, what might have seemed like a communication disconnect soon proved to be a creative boon, as the unexpected CAD models enabled new approaches to particularly tough shots. Of the three spots, perhaps the biggest challenge was presented on “Badge,” a spot that opens with an immaculate close-up of the Nissan logo on the Altima front grill. The stunning establishing shot is made all the more impressive by the fact that it was originally obscured by a large camera rig.

“That rig was a big challenge, because it effectively covered up the whole road in front of the car, as well as being prominent in reflections on a lot of the sheetmetal,” Iorio explains. “Some problematic camera angles meant there was little tracking information for us to pull from, and we ended up creating a lot of elements from scratch using Autodesk Maya. It became a manual process for much of that spot.”

We can build jobs interactively and collaboratively like never before, and we can perform tasks exceptionally quickly, even with HD footage. The job was taken care of, on time and on budget. There were a few late nights, of course, but not a whole lot of them.

As if the challenges posed by “Badge” weren’t enough, both “Running Late” and “Elements” provided the resolution team with some intense challenges, particularly when it came to reflection and lighting:
“The hero of the campaign is the car, and our job is to make the cars look as beautiful as possible, while keeping scenes realistic,” says Iorio. “All three spots involved a great deal of light moving across sheetmetal and reflections of the surrounding environment in the paint of the car. Creating believable reflections required lots of imagination and technological expertise.”

In each case, the ability of both Flame and Maya to easily integrate CAD files and models made for better spots, according to Iorio,
“With the easy interaction between Flame and Maya and the pipeline they provide for using these CAD models, we had incredible flexibility in our creative process. What was more, our clients could really get involved with how we were responding to their requests.”

The Solutions
“Being able to use CAD data isn’t just for car spots with heavy effects anymore” says Iorio. “Being able to easily port CAD models of the Nissan Altima directly into Flame and Maya gave us the chance to really maximize the time we had, giving us more time to be creative. We were able to bring the models into Flame for camera tracking and combine that with renders from Maya to give us more time for creative exploration with the clients. We were able to do all the stuff we normally do, but in a far more efficient way.”

According to Iorio, integrating the CAD data enabled the team to concentrate less on dealing with frameby-frame problems and more on the creative tasks associated with making entire shots look really beautiful.

“We treated things more like a 3D composite than live action footage,” says Iorio. “We brought the 3D model into Maya and rendered it out, so we could have some initial mattes and surfaces. We also brought that model into Flame and performed some basic projections to get the textures on areas of the car we wanted to polish. We spent less time looking at tedious and time-consuming repainting, and more time making the reflections and lighting better, and being generally more creative with the overall look. The results were much better, because we were able to be more creative and more accurate with the look of the car while spending less time. We also enjoyed far more freedom with the client when it came to revisions.”

The Results
The sheer beauty of the Nissan spots has already paid dividends in the form of other, similar jobs, but it is the new way of working that has Iorio and resolution most pleased:
“Flame has really changed the way we work,” says Iorio. “Flame has long been a great tool for individual shots, but it wasn’t always the best tool for a commercial shop like ours. Spots like these are not dealing with new worlds full of spaceships and aliens. This is advertising for the real world, and Flame is now a big timesaver. Having more time means we can be more creative, feel the spot as a whole, and deal with shots in proper context. We can build jobs interactively and collaboratively like never before, and we can perform tasks exceptionally quickly, even with HD footage. For the Nissan spots, the producers were very impressed that we were able to step in and handle more work than was was initially envisioned for the job. Everything was taken care of on time and on budget. There were a few late nights, of course, but not a whole lot of them. You can’t ask for much more than that.”

“Being able to easily port CAD models of the Nissan Altima directly into Flame and Maya gave us the chance to really maximize the time we had, giving us more time to be creative. We were able to bring the models into Flame for camera tracking and combine that with renders from Maya to give us more time for creative exploration with the clients.”
—Todd Iorio,
President and
Sr, Visual Effects Supervisor,
resolution LA / resolution NY

Contact Information

Autodesk

www.autodesk.com

When asking a photographer about his or her experience with 3D-technology one often still meets negative bias, misinformation and maybe even risks offending someone’s professional honor. The photographic community often sites an artificial feel to 3D-programs and applications that they are uninspiring and don’t foster creativity. 10 or 15 years ago that was probably true, but after a period of great and rapid developments, today’s technology has progressed to a point where even the trained eye has difficulties to distinguish between an actual photograph and a 3D-rendering.

During a traditional photo shoot the photographer has to capture the totality of the image, its mood, convergence of the perfect lighting etc.; it’s a sometimes unforgiving process with limited touch-up possibilities, and therefore increasingly practiced only by purists and meticulous perfectionists. Current 3D-programs imitate the work of the photographer and alleviate the pressures of having to accomplish just about everything during a narrow window of time, conducive weather etc. The photographer now has the liberty to experiment, to test which background works best with the main object (e.g. a 3D-model of a car). Every material-choice, color, surface texture can be chose for optimal effect. Likewise, lighting and placement of shadows permits a perfecting final touch with the click of a mouse. While this sounds rather simple we don’t claim these new techniques to be easy. It takes experience and a thoroughly professional approach in order to cope with a significant learning curve. Members of this new profession aren’t called “CG-artists” for nothing. It’s just that they make extensive use of computers & software and they take a lot of pride in the effects they create, making their audience go “Wow”. CG-users bring objects to life, instilling their own style.

The name Dosch Design has been closely tied in with this development for some 15 years. Hundreds of products in the area of 3D, HDRI, VIZ-Images, Textures or Movie Clips and thousands of effects support creators of CG-content by saving time & money. The latest product releases specifically for the depiction of cars, motorcycles and the like, are Dosch HDRI: Street Backplates Volume 1 and Dosch HDRI: Street Backplates Volume 2. They each provide the user with 13 backplate sets (115 individual backplates). Also contained are the respective HDRIs for lighting and reflections. Through the combination of the background image and the realistic HDRI for the exact location of the visualized object, very realistic depictions are possible. The Backplates series will be expanded over the next few months, providing additional themes like country road and highway.

About Dosch Design
DOSCH DESIGN develops demand-inspired computer graphics products for professional use in the areas of 3D-design, visualization, animation, movies/TV and desktop publishing. In this endeavor Dosch Design has been translating its high design and quality aspirations into cutting-edge CG-productivity tools at a fair price. Dosch Design products are license-free and commercial use is covered with their purchase.

To get more information about Dosch Design please visit www.doschdesign.com

Contact Information

Dosch Design GmbH

Kirchgasse 1
D-97828 Marktheidenfeld
Germany

tele: +49 - (0) 93 91 - 50 70 90 0
fax: +49 - (0) 93 91 - 50 70 90 0
info@doschdesign.com
www.doschdesign.com

GenArts Sapphire provide an extensive package of over 200 different resolution-independent visual effects which allow the user to expand their creative potential in 2D Autodesk Media & Entertainment products. The plug-ins include a wide range of lighting tools, stylistic effects, distortions, transitions and many other effects that work with Autodesk Systems products: Flint, Flame, Inferno, Smoke and Fire as well as Combustion. In late 2008 the plug-ins will also be available via the OFX interface for Autodesk Toxik. For more information, and to download a fully functional 3 week trial, please visit GenArts’ web site at www.genarts.com.

One of the most popular plug-ins in the Sapphire package is RackDefocus, which accurately simulates a camera defocus by maintaining the shapes and bright spots of a clip while blurring it. As opposed to a Gaussian blur which smears the highlights at large values, Sapphire RackDefocus will actually preserve the circle of confusion that a real camera lens maintains.

Fig. 1: Original Image

Fig. 2: With RackDefocus applied

Sapphire RackDefocus has an impressive amount of fine and detailed control, as the actual shape of the lens iris can be adjusted and altered with separate parameter controls for the lens Shape, Roundness, Rotation and Lens Noise, among many others.

Additionally, the brightness of the highlights can be adjusted with the Boost Highlights parameter which blows out the highlights without affecting the darks and midtones of the source clip.

For those of you who want even greater control over your lens shape, the Convolve plug-in allows you use your own custom shape, called a Kernel, to act as the camera iris for the defocus.

Fig. 3: With a 3 sided lens shape selected

Fig. 4: With Boost Highlights

Fig. 5: Custom lens created by using Convolve & lens Kernel in the upper right

Additionally, for even more control, there are ZDefocus and ZConvolve plug-ins. These function in a similar manner while also taking a zbuffer input to allow for a depth-of-field when defocusing an image.

There are many other parameters in both RackDefocus and Convolve which give even more detailed control over the final look. The best way to see what you can do with them is to try them for yourself, along with the 200+ other effects in the Sapphire package, by downloading the 3-week trial from www.genarts.com.

Contact Information

GenArts, Inc.

955 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA, 02139
USA

tele: 1-617-492-2888
fax: 1-617-492-2852
info@genarts.com

Integrate your Autodesk system directly with broadcast servers and automation systems

FlipFactory
Powerful Workflow Automation Applications

FlipFactory® software applications provide significant workflow advantages for broadcasters and post-production facilities by enabling out-of-the-box integration between Autodesk Media & Entertainment products and leading broadcast servers, SANs, automation systems and more.

FlipFactory enables media and metadata exchange between incompatible systems and transcodes media between a wide range of professional SD and HD digital formats.

FlipFactory seamlessly integrates with Autodesk® systems to improve their efficiency and extend their reach. FlipFactory simplifies repurposing and delivery of non-native inbound media directly to Autodesk systems, and accepts outbound media from Autodesk systems for transcoding and delivery to broadcast, production and streaming servers, newsroom and other professional systems.

Features:

• Supports Autodesk Stone file system; Autodesk Smoke editing/finishing system; Autodesk Inferno, Autodesk Flame and Autodesk Flint visual effects and composting systems
• Acts as an Autodesk client with same privileges and rights as Autodesk workstations
• Built on Autodesk’s Wiretap API to provide seamless integration between systems
• Automates your workflow – monitors, ingests, transcodes, delivers, notifies
• Provides access to more than 120 formats and devices for broadcast, cable, VOD, web, mobile, IPTV

For more information: www.telestream.net

Contact Information

Telestream, Inc.

848 Gold Flat Road
Suite 1
Nevada City, CA, 95959
USA

tele: 530.470.1300
fax: 530.470.1301
sales@telestream.net
www.telestream.net

Integrate Your Autodesk System Directly with Broadcast Servers and Automation Systems

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FlipFactory Powerful Workflow Automation Applications

FlipFactory® software applications provide significant workflow advantages for broadcasters and post-production facilities by enabling out-of-the-box integration between Autodesk Media & Entertainment products and leading broadcast servers, SANs, automation systems and more.

FlipFactory enables media and metadata exchange between incompatible systems and transcodes media between a wide range of professional SD and HD digital formats.

FlipFactory seamlessly integrates with Autodesk® systems to improve their efficiency and extend their reach. FlipFactory simplifies repurposing and delivery of non-native inbound media directly to Autodesk systems, and accepts outbound media from Autodesk systems for transcoding and delivery to broadcast, production and streaming servers, newsroom and other professional systems.

Features:

• Supports Autodesk Stone file system; Discreet Smoke editing/finishing system; Discreet Inferno, Discreet Flame and Discreet Flint visual effects and compositing systems
• Acts as an Autodesk client with same privileges and rights as Autodesk workstations
• Built on Autodesk’s Wiretap API to provide seamless integration between systems
• Automates your workflow – monitors, ingests, transcodes, delivers, notifies
• Provides access to more than 120 formats and devices for broadcast, cable, VOD, web, mobile, IPTV

For more information: www.telestream.net

After extensive competitive evaluation, the award-winning entertainment studio W!LDBRAIN chose Qube! as their render management platform. Qube! will manage the company’s increased pipeline complexity for the company’s animated television, film and commercials projects. Founded in 1994, W!LDBRAIN develops and produces unique and compelling content across the media spectrum. Powered by its distinctive pool of talented animators and directors and renowned for blending traditional animation methods with state-of-the-art computer graphics, the studio and its artists have consistently won top industry awards.

The company has produced an exceptional slate of original work in television, including the top-rated animated series Higglytown Heroes airing daily on Disney Channel and the highly-anticipated new Nick Jr. series Yo Gabba Gabba!. In film, the studio has garnered numerous awards including an Annie for its computer graphics short (CG) Hubert’s Brain and currently has a number of film projects in development. W!LDBRAIN also is one of the nation’s foremost producers of animated commercials – reinvigorating classic brands and developing cutting-edge spots for such leading companies as The Coca-Cola Company, Honda, Kraft and Nike. In addition, the company creates and distributes collectible merchandise through its subsidiary Kidrobot, a premier retailer of limited-edition art toys, apparel and accessories.

As W!LDBRAIN’s Chief Technology Officer, Steve Maggioncalda ensures that the studio is scaleable in all directions – including network throughput, data storage and render farm management. According to Maggioncalda, Qube! is a high-end CG application with many benefits and fits in perfectly with the company’s needs. One benefit is the flexible license model, where Qube! workers are able to run on every computer in the studio and are dynamically licensed as needed – a very flexible, cost effective topology. As a result, W!LDBRAIN artists are able to avoid licensing complications. The Qube! Supervisor also makes it easy to keep track of render licenses through Global Resource Management, allowing jobs to be queued and processed more proactively. With other queuing solutions, it’s not an easy task getting FlexLM, spm and other software licensing managers integrated with the render management queue without encountering race conditions.

The total cost of ownership is also lower with Qube! because it quickly establishes a solid core and with open APIs, the studio has all of the inroads to build on top of it. As Qube! is MySQL™- based, the open APIs in Perl, Python and C++ gives artists the tools to address all of the functionality they need. The completely customizable Qube! GUI, written in Phython, allows the artists to tweak it to their specific needs and Qube!’s consistency across all platforms is yet another bonus.

“Qube! delivered the extra granularity and flexibility that W!LDBRAIN was looking for in a render management system,” said Maggioncalda. “The way Qube! breaks down jobs into subjobs and provides hooks to grab other information makes custom development at all levels very attainable – including customized priorities and queuing algorithms. W!LDBRAIN’s everchanging production pipeline requires this type of functionality.”

The artists at W!LDBRAIN also appreciate that PipelineFX develops interfaces inside the applications they use and not just around them. Additionally, PipelineFX supports the same OS platforms that Autodesk® supports. Another important factor in making Qube! W!LDBRAIN’s render farm management choice is the quality technical support provided by PipelineFX’s technical experts, who also have first-hand knowledge of CG applications.

Qube! is by design a platform for render farm management. PipelineFX ships inapplication submission interfaces for all the major digital media programs and an easy-to-use artist GUI so it can be used right out of the box. Qube! also comes with crossplatform support, advanced capabilities, an event-driven queuing model, and database functionality so that studios can quickly roll out their production pipeline and continue to scale into the future.

For more information on Qube! andPipelineFX, visit www.pipelinefx.com

Contact Information

W!LDBRAIN

660 Alabama Street
San Francisco, CA,
USA

tele: 415.553.8000
fax: 415.553.8009
www.wildbrain.com