Advanced 3D Animation in Contemporary Film Production PDF

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A research essay into the past, present and future of three-dimensional assets....

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Advanced 3D Animation in Contemporary Film Production A research essay into the past, present and future of threedimensional assets.

20075914 JORDAN MOYLAN

Contents What is 3D Animation? A brief explanation .......................................................................................... 2 A Short History of animation..................................................................................................................2 Thaumatrope ..................................................................................................................................2 Phenakistoscope............................................................................................................................2 kinestoscope ..................................................................................................................................2 ‘Disneys’ Multiplane Camera ........................................................................................................3 Early examples of 3D Animation ...........................................................................................................3 A computer animated hand ...........................................................................................................3 Toy Story .........................................................................................................................................3 Where are we now? ...............................................................................................................................4 Hyperion..........................................................................................................................................4 Presto ..............................................................................................................................................4 Motion capture ...............................................................................................................................4 New and emerging technology in the world of Animation ................................................................... 5 AI Facial Movements - Masquerade..............................................................................................5 Case Study: Pipeline used in the creation of Thanos’s Face .............................................................. 5 References ............................................................................................................................................. 6

What is 3D Animation? A brief explanation Three-Dimensional (3D) Animation is Method of manipulating and combining 2d elements, 3d Modelling and Physics inside 3D software to create picture sequences in 2D, giving an illusion of animation of movement in 3D. This can be put into many categories which is why its difficult to define in one singular definition. 3D animation can be used to: • • • • •

Animate characters (humans, animals, aliens, hybrids etc.) Destroy Cities, fluid and particle effects (water, fire, smoke etc.) Create entire films (Pixar/Disney) Create fluid and particle effects (fire, smoke, water etc.) And bringing inanimate objects to life

3D animation has now been perfected so much to the point of photo realism, AI’s can generate emotions and Entire Planets can be obliterated in a matter of seconds.

A Short History of animation Thaumatrope One of the earliest examples of animation was in the 19th century using a device created with rope and string called a Thaumatrope (invented by Paul Roget in 1828). This is a simple mechanical toy which creates an illusion of movement.

Phenakistoscope Other examples include the Phenakistoscope in 1832 invented by J.A. Figure 1 Thaumatrope and its usage Ferdinand Plateau, this was a rotating circle with multiple similar images around its face. The one on the right is created using 12 separate similar images and tricks the mind into seeing the birds and plants move when it is spun. This method was used to create the Zoetrope 1843 and Praxinoscope 1877.

kinestoscope The kinestoscope invented by Thomas Edison and Eadweard Muybridge in 1888 for film which could show short movies through Figure 2 Phenakistoscope a peephole in the top of the device. This introduced the method in which cinematic projectors used. The device held a number of short reels which were fed and looped through the top of the machine. A Kinestoscope parlour 1894 was opened in new york and allowed people to use these machines for twenty five cents for a few minutes.These were later called nickelodeons.

Figure 3 Kinestoscope

‘Disneys’ Multiplane Camera In 1923 Lotte Reininger along with her Walter Ruttmann created the first multiplane camera to be used with lights and shadows which used up to three different planes to emphasise the effect of linear perspective. It was used in the creation of her animation ‘The adventures of Prince Achmed’. Disney’s Ub Iwerks is credited with inventing the camera in 1933, but Walt Disney applied for the patent. This used a method of recording scenes using multiple planes placed on glass of different distances. This employed the usage of Field of view where objects far away move slower, while objects closer move quicker creating a natural parallax. An example of a Multiplane Camera in use can be viewed here. This camera was first used in a ‘Silly Symphony’ called ‘The Old Mill’ which used 7 layers of glass which were painted with oil. The camera was also used in Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, and Peter Pan. This is the last phase before two-dimensional computer-generated animation took over.

Early examples of 3D Animation A computer animated hand The earliest recorded use of 3D animation was in 1972 created by Pixar’s founder/ex-president Ed Catmull and Fred Parke. This animation featured a short animation created by using a model of his left hand. He drew polygons on the model and then digitalised the hand by using a sensor which he used to trace the polygons. The data was output as lines (x-ray) and then shaded using a halftone sequence and then shaded, smoothed, rigged and animated to bend. He then went on to animate an artificial heart valve and even faces. The video can be shown here. These animations were used in the sequel to Westworld from 1973 titled ‘Futureworld’ and became known as the first movie to use 3D animation.

Toy Story The earliest feature length 3D animated movie was in 2002 with the first movie. Although it may not seem like too long ago, toy story made a giant splash in the 3D Animation world and set a standard higher than ever bef The animation went into such detail as to add more than five separate lay Sid’s window ledge. One layer for the wood grain, A hand painted layer to base coat, another hand painted layer to show the chipping and scratches layers for paint and colour and the last layer is a layer of dirt and scratche the aged effect. Then consideration was taken into describing the surface shininess, reaction to light) and hundreds of lines of code to describe the under various lighting conditions.

Where are we now? Hyperion Currently both Disney and Pixar have their own 3D rendering systems. Disney’s new rendering system is called Hyperion. This is a physically-based path tracer, which adjusts light and rendering based on the 3D object’s attributes and surface appearance. The camera its self-emits rays and only renders where the camera’s rays hit and bounce. The closer the rays are together the quicker they render. This allows for more efficient rendering. Below you can see the difference between a photo of some object’s vs a 3D rendering of the same objects using Hyperion.

Presto Pixar is also using a new tool called Presto, although it is not available to the public like Renderman. This is a modelling software built in cooperation with Maya, and is used in scene layout, animation, rigging and in simulating physics and environments. This software was used on Brave and Monster’s University mostly to handle hair physics of Merida and Sully (who had 5.6 million pieces of hair in MU) and is now being used on every movie since. The software not only plays back the scenes, but they are completely adjustable and live while being rendered.

Motion capture Along with dots along a person face to track facial features, there are also entire suits for an actor to wear which captures movement, this movement is translated into the rigging and animation, and allows movement of objects rather than the actual actor. In the Movie ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ benedict Cumberbatch used a mo-cap suit and played the role of the dragon. His actions and movements were rigged to the creature’s body and face.

New and emerging technology in the world of Animation Since the release of the iPhone X with its TrueDepth camera, you can now record your face using a homemade mo-cap camera which maps in real time to a 3D Model. Using Xsens inertial motion capture technology and IKINEMA LiveAction you can product full body and facial performance at home. You can also use an app called CrazyTalk Animator which is about £84 and maps your face to a cartoon character, this technique can also be implemented and sent to Cinema 4D via CV-AR from Maxon, a free app released in June 2018.

AI Facial Movements - Masquerade At the moment Digital Domain, the VFX company are using an unreleased to the public custom machine learning software called Masquerade. This tracks 100/150 dots on an actor’s face, captured by two vertically oriented cameras. Instead of this being a high-resolution mesh, it feeds a lowquality rendering into a learning algorithm that uses a library of 20,000+ highresolution face scans to rig the expressions directly to the mesh. The AI figures out which expression to use, if the results are not perfect, it will be tweaked and gives better results next time. This was recently used on Josh Brolin in the Movie infinity war. On the far right is an image of Brolin wearing the Dots on his face, and on the 2 nd from the right is the Mask generated by the AI which moves the other 3D models. This was also used during the production of avatar.

Case Study: Pipeline used in the creation of Thanos’s Face Thanos’s body was modelled in Maya and sculpted using Z-Brush, but his face was mostly put together using the High-quality scans from earlier resulting in capture of his pores and wrinkles. The team used Chaos Groups’ V-Ray for all their work and had to make sure that Thanos’s stubble was visible. The team did not deploy a digital blood flow as it wouldn’t make much of a difference in regard to colouring his body. The eyes were focussed heavily on the eyes and eyelids as it is quite easy to look fake during close-up shots. As for Effects SIdeFX’s Houdini was used, for lighting a Maya plugin called Atomic was used. Josh Brolin wore a helmet camera rig (HMC) shooting 48 Frames per second, this recorded the 150 dots on his face. The data was fed into their new mp-cap program called Masquerade which captured his facial performance. The other step used in applying the facial tracking to the model was the use of Direct drive, this takes the data from Masquerade and applies it to the 3D model.

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