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Saturday, 12 November 2011 08:08 |
 "The Adventures Of Tintin" is a preposterously fun movie, first and foremost, regardless of what technology was used to make it. It is very old-fashioned in storytelling terms, but cutting-edge in the way it's told. It tells a rough-and-tumble adventure story that is more real-world than much of what Hollywood makes these days, but it's animated in a way that removes it from reality completely. It is a film that seems to hinge on a number of contradictions, and that friction is just one of the reasons I really loved the experience.
Much has been written about how long Steven Spielberg's been interested in making a film version of Herge's long-running comic series, and one of the biggest questions that I've heard repeatedly is "Why would he do it as a performance capture animated film?" I think the first answer to that question is obvious after you see the movie and you see Snowy, Tintin's canine sidekick, in action. Snowy is a major character in the film, and has an outsized personality. Trying to get the same performance out of a real dog in the middle of a film also involving stunts and special effects and international travel would be a nightmare, and as it is, Snowy is one of the main highlights of the movie now. Also, there is a sense of scale and abandon to the way the action is staged in the film that would be a nightmare to orchestrate in live-action, and I think working in animation has set Spielberg free in a way I'm not sure we've ever seen from him before.
Ultimately, though, the tools used wouldn't matter if the film was no fun.
And this film is nothing but fun.
From the very first frame of the film, there's a feeling that this is a labor of love. The opening title sequence takes us through the printed history of Tintin in a very real and tangible way, and then an early scene in the film introduces the character sitting for a portrait by an artist who looks suspiciously like Herge. He holds up his finished drawing next to the "real" Tintin, and that moment serves as a bridge from the pen and ink version to this new version. It's a very simple but clever move, and the screenplay by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish is loaded with little touches and tweaks that will delight long-time fans. They've adapted several of the books here, mixing and matching elements from a number of stories to create a rousing worldwide quest that is triggered when Tintin discovers a clue to a historical mystery inside a boat he buys at a street market.
There's a tactile quality to the world of the movie that I found impressive. Doing this as performance-capture instead of conventional animation gives the characters a physical heft that is very different than the squash-and-stretch feel that is essential when you're doing pure animation. I think the action sequences have an extra punch as a result, and it also means that when you see characters like Thomson and Thompson doing slapstick, it's the real interaction between Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and not just their voices with someone else defining their characters physically.
I've already heard a few people complaining that Tintin is the least defined character in the film, and it's a hard spot for Jamie Bell to be in. Traditionally, the Tintin in the books has been a sort of blank page for readers to use to imagine themselves in the adventures. He doesn't come loaded down with some detailed backstory or some dense character mythology, and while I certainly like characters who have that sort of thing in some films, I like that Tintin is just… Tintin. He's a young reporter, he's got a dog, he gets in adventures. It's not much more complicated than that, and as a result, the movie maintains this crazy breathless pace as it races from plot point to set piece to character to plot point to joke… it's ridiculous how fast it all moves, and yet, there's a clarity to the storytelling that never feels frantic at all.
Because Tintin is a bit of a blank, the characters around him are drawn even more richly, and that's appropriate. I love Daniel Craig as the mysterious Ivanovich Sakharine, also on the trail of the clues that lead Tintin into a search for the treasure that was onboard a long-lost ship. I think Pegg and Frost are a great match as Thompson and Thomson, and their interactions with Silk, a sticky-fingered thief played by Toby Jones, are consistently funny. But if you're looking for a big personality in the film, look no further than Captain Haddock, played by digital superstar Andy Serkis.
And, yes, it's true. Serkis is the Lon Chaney of our age, a guy who has embraced the use of certain tools to slip from one skin to another, invisible inside the roles he plays. His Captain Haddock is a marvel, a man tortured by the idea that he lost his family's legacy and has no idea how to restore it, a man who has decided that the only way to cope with his pain is with drink. He doesn't show up until what feels like about halfway into the film, and once he does, it kicks into a higher gear. He and Snowy provide terrific counterpoint as Tintin works to solve the mystery, and they are often used as comic relief, but Serkis is such a good performer that he gives Haddock all these fascinating rough edges that make him seem human. I am sure that more actors will start getting comfortable with this process, but right now, Serkis is the one who has embraced it most completely and most successfully. If any other actor had played both Caesar and Haddock in one year, we wouldn't even be debating it. That person would be in the hunt for an award at the end of the year, easily. At some point, actors and the Academy are going to have to embrace the idea that this is no different than the heavy old-age make-up worn by Leonardo DiCaprio. If anything, motion-capture technology allows a greater range of expression at this point, and can do more to transform an actor without burying them completely.
For me, the real star of the film is Steven Spielberg. When I think of great action filmmaking that I love, I think of the way scenes build or the way gags are set up and paid off or the energy or a giddy sense of invention, and all of those things are on display here, and in a way that should serve as a reminder that this is the same director who made "Raiders Of The Lost Ark," one of the single best action adventure movies of all time. This might be the closest we ever come to seeing a movie that is being projected directly from Spielberg's brain with no filter in-between, and that's really only because of the technology. He was able to try things here that he could never do in live-action, like a jaw-dropping chase scene that covers several miles and several minutes, all in one long uninterrupted shot. You can almost hear Spielberg cackling as things unfold. The amazing historical ship-to-ship battle that opens the film is a textbook lesson in how to choreograph chaos without ever confusing the audience. There's also a huge battle between giant cranes near the end of the film that may count as the single strangest swordfight of all time, and again, it feels like he's just having fun.
I don't think "The Adventures Of Tintin" is a particularly deep film, and I would argue that there's little subtext here to be sussed out. No matter. The movie's title makes you a promise, and beat for beat, scene for scene, sequence for sequence, there are few films you'll see this year that deliver adventure this grand or this beautifully constructed. It is a casually great movie, a film that aspires to do nothing but entertain, a noble goal that it more than accomplishes.
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Tuesday, 08 November 2011 07:57 |
Real Steel: A New Virtual Production Paradigm
Bill Desowitz finds out how Digital Domain and Giant Studios took virtual production to the next level.
Atom on the set and in the movie. All images courtesy of Digital Domain.
Real Steel, the new boxing robot movie, takes the Simulcam developed for Avatar and puts it into a real world setting for the next advancement in virtual production. Giant Studios, under the leadership of Matt Maden, the virtual production technical supervisor, came up with a new system for a new paradigm.
"It really worked beautifully for us with production and with Digital Domain," Madden suggests. "We spent the time upfront figuring out how the pieces would fit together and how we would communicate. It's a model we're going to be referring to time and time again moving forward."
Unlike previs, Giant knew they we were ultimately going to be delivering a form of the movie back to DD in a game-level quality in terms of rendering. But the action itself was going to be fairly close to final, with the exception of the additional animation layer and effects that they would be putting on top of it with the electronics and liquids and ripping metal.
Before
The virtual production pipeline allowed the CG robots to be handled closer to a live-action shoot.
One of the main principles of this virtual production pipeline is that Giant was in sync with the visual effects department and its department in terms of the look and structure of the assets that were created. So there's an approval process and Giant knew whether it was from the art department or VFX.
"Our responsibility is to get them ready for this interactive world of virtual production so we can play them live, we can record changes, we can add new versions of prop elements, if we need to change a lighting setup, we can do that, and all those things can be recorded and referenced in a data base so the visual effects department can access that information intuitively," Maden continues.
What was helpful with Real Steel, however, was that director Shawn Levy completely bought into this process. "The whole MO is to make it more like traditional filmmaking and make it interactive like live action," Maden emphasizes. "Only we come in with a real time display of the CG elements.
Before
Director Shawn Levy could direct his virtual boxers.
"He was able to direct his fighters, which were ultimately the robots, prior to location in Detroit. And then, once he reviewed the cut from our renders at the virtual production level, he could then request changes to speed or the blocking or the timing of a punch, and we made those changes and submitted updated renders back to him to lay into the cut. He and the editor [Dean Zimmerman] and the producers were happy with the general action and timing of the fight prior to going to location. And, consequently, we were able to get through those fight scenes in record time because we were armed with that prior to photography."
Everyone involved in the physical set up got to review the process as well, not just as boards, but as an actual cut. So they understood upcoming beats, they understood the coverage and they understood where the camera was and what was in the background. And what wasn't in the background. Maden says it helped across the board.
But Giant significantly took the Simulcam process of simultaneous CG display to the next level. It wasn't just cranes and dollies; there was quite an extensive use of steadicam. But it required Giant to have a system that was robust enough to record this fast-moving, dynamic camera action.
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Posted In | Site Categories: CG, Films, Visual Effects
Before
Unlike Avatar, the synthetic characters were able to be on-set.
According to Digital Domain's Erik Nash, the production VFX supervisor, previs was achieved completely through real time interactive means in which Levy was in the ring with the boxing performers, directing them as he would human boxers, and then was able to come up with his camera moves in a very hands-on way.
"So heading to Detroit we brought the motion capture technology with us, but, unlike Avatar, we were putting our synthetic characters into the real world," Nash explains. "We were able to make the boxing robots visible to the camera operator and to Sean on his monitor. We now have plates that are photographed as if the robots are there.
"So the efficiency is huge, but, to me, the reason for taking this technology and pushing it to the next level was to attain a grittier and more visceral experience.
Before
The mo-cap was only a foundation for the overall CG performances.
But the motion capture was only a foundation for the performance. Because of the two-foot scale difference between the real actors and the CG robots, all of the data prior to virtual camera and the Simulcam process in Detroit slowed down 10%. "We did that to help sell the weight, size and mass of the robots," Nash offers. And then once that data was turned over to the animators at DD, the process had several phases: to attain the robotic nature of the characters, they addressed the fidelity with which motion capture records all of the subtle nuances of human motion by developing tools to filter the MoCap data. Then there was a lot of keyframing to heighten the action and make some of the movement less fluid. There's always inaccuracy when you have two CG characters making contact with each other. Plus the MoCap actors didn't actually hit each other as hard as the CG robots needed to, so they sped up punches, hardened the punch impact and exaggerated the reactions.
"One of the biggest challenges was a result of the fact that three of the hero robots had practical onset animatronic versions built by Legacy," Nash explains. "That was great to have something physical for our robots to be intercut with."
Digital Domain used Vray at the renderer in conjunction with its lighting pipeline, creating more than a half-dozen prime robots. The toughest was the villain, Zeus, to fight the hero, Atom, because he was all-black and didn't have an animatronic counterpart.
"But our job wasn't done until you couldn't tell them apart," Nash concludes.
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Saturday, 15 October 2011 09:20 |
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Demystifying Motion Capture Technique
By Mike Seymour
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The VES recently held a Motion Capture event where a range of motion capture experts presented a snap shot of the state of the art in the industry, David Stripinis reports a personal perspective, from someone who works with it daily.
Motion capture is one of the more polarizing technologies used in the world of visual effects. Some people love it, some people fear it. Personally, as an artist working with motion capture for over ten years, I see it as just another tool. Perhaps out of ignorance, experience with unskilled artists, or impossible promises made to them in the past, many producers and directors have an inaccurate view of the technology. They either believe it a cure all that will let them get rid of all those pesky and expensive animators or see it as an evil shortcut that will leave them with a movie full of zombie eyed people.
Of course, neither is entirely accurate. To help educate producers, directors and the general visual effects community, the VES, in co-operation with the Motion Capture Society, hosted an event at Sony Pictures Imageworks in Culver City, California. Entitled “Demystifying Motion Capture Techniques”, it was a panel discussion with representatives from ten different companies, representing a good cross section of technologies, techniques and business models.
The two major themes of the night was an attempt to rebrand motion capture as performance capture. Though the two terms mean the same thing, performance capture has a less clinical sounding name, making it appeal to the more artistic filmmakers. The second overarching idea of the presentation was an emphasis on realtime production, either in the actual capture itself, or by being extremely low impact on the production, allowing filmmakers to more or less ignore the technology.
Each speaker was given approximately ten minutes, and a question and answer period followed.
Eyetronics
First up was Nick Tesi, from Eyetronics talking about their inertial based capture system. The unique benefits they touted of such a system were the unlimited volume, and since optics were not involved, occlusion was not an issue. They also showed off a facial capture system based on structured light projection that was used on “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”.
Motion Analysis
Next was industry veteran Dave Blackburn from Motion Analysis. Dave used his time to talk about using motion capture not only for the exact recreation of motion, but also for more artistic applications. To this end, he showed a feminine hygiene commercial from the UK market featuring a motion captured dancer, that left many in the audience nervously laughing.
Henson Studios
THe only female panelist followed, Kerry Shea from Henson Digital Puppetry Studios, part of the Jim Henson Company. Kerry discussed the decades long legacy of Jim Henson, and their dedication to the sanctity of the performance of the puppeteer. The video she brought showed the development of the Waldo and it’s evolution into the Henson Digital Puppet System. It was followed by the first public exhibition of their PBS show “Sid the Science Kid”. It showed capture performers in costumes providing the proportions of the characters, with giant screens showing the capture results in realtime. Each performer was paired with a puppeteer who both performed the facial animation with hand controls as well as the voice. By having all this in realtime, it lets them have dailies, much like a regular show.
Vicon / House of Move
Brian Rausch from Vicon / House of Moves followed. He showed a variety of work from film, television and video games. He used his time mainly to discuss Naughty Dog’s “Uncharted Territory”. He stressed that technology should never get in the way of performance. He got slightly off on a tangent talking about animation and motion capture working together and burned up the remainder of his time – to the point where panel moderator Demian Gordon kept flashing a light at him till he quieted down. It was all in good fun, as the two are good friends.
Sony Pictures Imageworks
John Meehan from Sony Pictures Imageworks spoke about his experiences on “I Am Legend” as motion capture supervisor. John is a good friend of mine, and both his humor and intelligence was on display. He spoke of the challenges of capturing 150 moves for their Massive motion tree in two days, and how those moves were enhanced by animation, either by adding moves that weren’t able to be captured or enhancing the ones that were. He stressed the partnership between animation and motion capture at Sony and on “I Am Legend” in particular.
Giant Studios
Kevin Cushing from Giant Studios filled in for an ill Ryan Champney, who had to go to the hospital an hour before the presentation began. Kevin honored all the hard work Ryan had put in on the presentation. Giant’s presentation stressed their ability to do complex capture, including retargeting, all in realtime. They showed footage of The Incredible Hulk, and Jon Favrau in a mocap suit for Iron Man. They also showed their ability to capture live on set, even during principle photography. The video they showed was actually filmed on our stages at Avatar, and I was in the background in some of the HD video shots. Ryan is fine now, by the way.
ILM
Mike Sanders from Industrial Light & Magic spoke about both their proprietary iMocap system and the motion capture stage at their Presidio facility. One of the most interesting things about ILM’s methodology was that they never use motion capture as a 100% solution, simply as a starting point for animation. Their iMocap system, which is rooted in matchmoving, is very low impact on-set, completely relying on a post solution. Mike also mention that they keep the motion capture stage at ILM live all the time, so if an animator wants motion capture reference for a shot, they go down, put on a suit and perform it. Because they rely on a completely automated tracking system, not needing the fidelity of hand trackers for a 100% solve, the captured motion is usually waiting for the animator by the time they are back at their desks.
ICT
Research legend Paul DeBevec wowed the crowd with his latest work on facial capture. Furthering the research that resulted in his Light Stage technology, he showed an amazing method for extracting complex deformations of the face based on image analysis of specular highlights as light is cast from multiple angles. There is a calibration pass that has to be performed first, but the results were quite impressive. In 10 minutes he obviously raced through the material, (see fxguidetv for more indepth on this).
Image Metrics
Wrapping up the evening was Patrick Davenport from Image Metrics. Image Metrics technology is dedicated to analysis of markerless facial performances, and generating data from it. They showed some impressive duplication of an actress brought in specifically for data acquisition. Even more impressive was an analysis and digital replacement of Marilyn Monroe, done in partnership with Double Negative. The results were seamless, producing an audible gasp from the audience.
Gordon opened the session to questions, starting it off with a simple “What has been your favorite project?” I’m proud to say Kevin Cushing named us on “Avatar” as his, garnering more than a few laughs from the producer and director heavy crowd when he mentioned the difficulty in pleasing the director. Very quickly, the discussion digressed to a conversation about the rights of actors and the data created from their performance. It’s an interesting philosophical and legal debate, and one that is ongoing. While the panelists did their best to answer the questions raised, there wasn’t enough time to fully cover the topic in the time allotted.
All in all it was an amazing evening gathering many of the best mocap artists in LA together and hopefully proved educational for the DGA and PGA members in attendance. Hopefully more discussions and presentations in the same vein will continue to educate those in the position to make decisions that motion capture is neither an instant solution to a problem, nor is it something evil to be afraid of.
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Monday, 10 October 2011 08:37 |
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Some day in the not-too-distant future, you may be on a service like Chatroulette, and suddenly find yourself matched up with a person who looks exactly like Angelina Jolie. Well, chances are it won't really be her. Instead, it will likely be someone using the descendant of a system put together by Arturo Castro. Using a combination of existing software, the Barcelona digital artist has demonstrated how a variety of famous faces can be mapped onto his own, moving with it in real time. While Castro's system isn't likely to fool anyone - in its present version - it's an unsettling indication of what could be possible with just a little more finessing.
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE
Castro's application was created using openFrameworks, an open source framework for creative coding. This was combined with FaceTracker, which produces a virtual mesh that matches a human subject's facial features. The colors of the famous faces were blended with those of Arturo's own using an image clone code developed by artist Kevin Atkinson. Finally, the FaceTracker meshes were wrapped around his face using the ofxFaceTracker add-on for openFrameworks.
The resulting video, which can be seen below, alternates between being funny and just plain creepy, with Castro taking on the identities of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson and Paris Hilton.
His collaborator Kyle McDonald, who developed ofxFaceTracker, utilized a different blending algorithm for more lifelike results.
It's not hard to imagine the shenanigans that could result, should more advanced forms of this technology be used for the wrong purposes - is that really your best friend on Skype, asking you for that money? Is that really Mick Jagger telling us how white our sheets can be?
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Thursday, 15 September 2011 03:56 |
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If you've played Guitar Hero, you've seen Adam Jennings work. He's the facial capture talent that does all the facial performances.
Recently Adam sat down to answer some questions about his craft and what it means to be a Motion Capture actor.
after working on every title of the video game franchise since Legends of Rock. He has also worked on such games as Guitar Hero: Metallica, Guitar Hero: World Tour, Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, Tony Hawk's Project 8 and Tony Hawk's American Wasteland.
Adam made his big screen film debut in motion capture acting in Mars Needs Moms (2011) in which he played the roles of multiple aliens. He has logged the most facial motion capture hours of any other actor in the entire world.
Adam answers the following questions:
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