American Cinematographer - June 2010 - 74

added simple effects like wire removals and things I could easily do with the Nucoda system. But there was this bigger challenge of how we could create, with a limited budget, about 20 minutes of snow and other weather effects. Ultimately, the plan we came up with deeply involved the DI process. The Nucoda system allows you to do respectable compositing, where you can take multiple layers or clips, composite them together, and then grade them in the context of a final composite. I figured that with my experience as a compositor, I could put together convincing snow elements and combine them with the original photography. If we’d done this same thing with CGI and a desktop-based visual-effects pipeline, it would have taken longer to get it right, because everyone would have been viewing it separately, on different monitors, apart from the main photography.” Hawes calls this a “converged workflow,” noting that other effects in the film did incorporate some CGI, and says the strategy “paid off once we got a rhythm” because, in the DI suite, it took “an average of about 20 minutes a shot to get it all done. We got all the weather stuff done in less than a week.” Hawes suggests that keeping the snow effects in the DI suite increased creative opportunities for the filmmakers, particularly for Barratt, who could be more involved than he might otherwise be in the visual-effects pipeline. “Artists prefer to move quickly, and if you’ve got 130 weather shots going out to separate facilities and then coming back to you, you’ve got to remember what you were thinking some time ago,” says Hawes. “On Frozen, we all sat down together and built the effect we wanted. Integrating so many of the effects into the DI was great for Will, because it gave him back some of the control the cinematographer often loses with CGI.” In the end, Hawes believes this workflow saved the production weeks of time and offered “about 75-percent cost savings compared to a traditional approach.” He presumes, like most industry professionals, that CGI will always require a separate pipeline, separate tools and separate artists. However, for 2-D effects involving certain kinds of compositing work, Frozen was, perhaps, ahead of a rising curve.
74 June 2010

Autodesk Unveils 2011 Lineup Autodesk has introduced the 2011 versions of its Digital Entertainment Creation Software for 3-D modeling, animation, effects, rendering, compositing, digital sculpting and 3-D painting, as well as the 2011 releases of its creative finishing products for visual effects, editorial finishing and color grading. The complete line offers users improved interoperability, new creative tools and accelerated workflows, while the creative finishing products introduce an end-to-end stereoscopic finishing workflow for film and television productions. Of the Digital Entertainment Creation Software releases — comprising Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, Mudbox, MotionBuilder, FBX asset-exchange technology, HumanIK 4.5 middleware and Kynapse 7 middleware — Maya 2011 is a particular standout. Marc Petit, Autodesk’s senior vice president of Media & Entertainment, notes, “Autodesk Maya 2011 takes Digital Entertainment Creation workflows to new heights with a new customizable user interface, new high-performance viewports and a new 3-D editorial interface.” Now available for Snow Leopard, Maya 2011 also boasts enhanced tools for character animation, including non-destructive live targeting; integrated color management; asset structures for pipeline connectivity; and improved rotoscoping. Augmenting Maya’s stereo computer graphics capabilities, the 2011 releases of Flame, Flare, Smoke and Lustre offer stereoscopic capabilities designed to

help implement 3-D finishing with minimal disruption to existing creative workflows. “3-D is core to what we do at Autodesk, so being a leader in end-to-end stereo workflow capabilities is a natural extension for us,” says Stig Gruman, Autodesk’s vice president of digital entertainment. Key new stereoscopic features include cross-product support for the FBX 2011 software; a stereoscopic camera rig and object support in Action, Flame and Smoke’s 3-D compositing environment; concurrent stereoscopic visual effects, editorial finishing and grading workflow; and stereoscopic monitoring and preview modes. Launched in December 2009, Smoke for Mac OS X has rapidly gained ground in Mac-based creative workflows by offering an all-in-one editorial finishing solution. Also available as a turnkey solution for the Linux operating system, Smoke 2011 boasts new tools for editing, viewing and compositing stereoscopic content; drag-and-drop conform of AAF or XML files from Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer; and native in-application support for Red RAW and H.264 QuickTime media. The 2011 releases of Flame and Flare help further integrate advanced 3-D capabilities with the addition of new creative tools such as a GPU-based pixel-shader rendering pipeline, which improves the quality of rendered results and enables support for new texture mapping and lighting effects; a new Substance procedural texture library with over 100 near-photorealistic textures that can be applied to 3-D objects, 3-D text or surfaces; native in-appli-

American Cinematographer
American Cinematographer - June 2010

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of American Cinematographer - June 2010
