CEO Bruce Robet Dell says “Unlimited Detail is basically a 3 dimensional search algorithm.” And the search query is your render resolution. Makes sense. Its a good thing when something reminds you how young and potentially unripe our current processes are, and how important the use of metaphor is in conveying this. Dell compares the poly race with the colors race, where an initial 2 colors were replaced by 4, then 16,  256 then finally 16bit and 32bit color - with the exception that the human vision system can’t perceive many colors beyond 32bit whereas it is much more finely tuned to registering contour and surface details. So whether this technology will grow to be the solution or not, Dell makes a very convincing case for this alternative approach.
Edit: here’s another point cloud approach, apparently an optimized voxel developed by atomontage:

Thoughts?

There are some great posts about issues of creature animation vs paleoanimation to be found at the moment… in part due to an upcoming book about Ray Harryhausen. How much liberty does a concept artist / animator have in designing creatures that once existed?
Over at Pterosaur.net, Mark Witton quotes Harryhausen:

…we tried to find a compromise between strict scientific accuracy and the need to achieve certain cinematic effects, and I believe we did the right thing. It gave them a fantasy element and after all we weren’t making pictures for palaeontologists, although today filmmakers make all their creatures so real – too real for my tastes.

Fred Tepper paraphrases from another Harryhausen encounter:

His effects were the type of thing where you were aware that it wasn’t real but it was somehow magical, whereas “modern” effects are so realistic (or trying to be) that they lose that magic and wonder.

It’s an interesting discussion about balancing credibility with suspension of disbelief, and defining the boundaries of entertainment and visualization. The above image shows similar scenes designed respectively by Willis O’Brien and Harryhausen - head over to Mark Witton’s post for a detailed comparison.

CGsociety reports about Upthink Lab’s reconstruction and visualization of Ardi for the discovery channel.

Following up on the last post about stereoscopic flatness, I’ve encountered a few papers and processes documenting attempts in production. Click the Gorgoyles for a very interesting tease paper by Disney Animation which allows at least a glimpse of their stereoscopic version of the hand-drawn classic “Beauty and the Beast”. Specifically, “a Patent Pending system was developed to allow artists to locate 2D planar elements – characters, props, effects, backgrounds – at a simulated virtual 3D depth and to give each element the impression of volume. In addition, the artists could animate the elements, align elements relative to each other and isolate and segment areas of an element. The process was envisioned as a “stereo composing” session where an artist composes stereo 3D and verifies the results on a secondary desk-side 3D monitor much like a commercial artist edits and composites a commercial on a high-end computer system and confirms the results in real-time or near real-time on a desk-side professional broadcast or HD monitor.”

They also include a rated overview of screening technologies. I’m sure they also analyzed the perception of drawn elements in stereoscopic… but don’t let any of that shine through here. How to marry an inherently flat perception of pigment on a substrate with bifocal depth cues? Is this at all desirable?

Peter Krun Frary encountered this storefront window performer and took some photos. (Encountered here after a tip-off from a friend.) Painted reality often looks convincingly flat because surface texture gives the clues as to contour and depth. Imagine this without the camera’s flash. It makes me wonder - can an NPR solution believably expand into stereoscopic space? We’ve been planning on doing so, at least as an option… but I wonder if the effect might cancel itself out. NPR often strives for a convincing flatness. Thoughts?

Thanks to Aves3D I no longer have to argue the advantages of 3D for viewing skeletal and life reconstructions. I just have to show this site. All it needs are zoom outs to the fully configured skeletons, musculature and life reconstruction - all animated in various walk and run cycles, thank you very much.
Above is the very cool Dodo skull, other favorites include the common kiwi andthe extinct Palaeospiza bella.

Patrick Tresset and Frederic Fol Leymarie of Goldsmiths  in London are taking NPR to a new dimension… ours. Instead of remaining within the confines of a computer / monitor configuration, they literally bring the computer to the table  by means of a mechanic arm. This is not only clever - traditional artist-model roles are upheld - but also meaningful. The portrait situation hits the nerve of perception and vision studies and I hope that future work will explore this more directly.

portraiture as dynamic process
The current portraits take a snapshot of the model, process this visually and transfer the results to commands which are carried out by the robotic arm. Note: this is my guess from the demonstration videos. This sidesteps two of the most interesting aspects of artistic process. Namely, the portrait is a dynamic process. The dynamic quality of sampling information over a period of time instead of a captured instance is an integral difference between photography and artistic perception. The model tries to hold relatively still and the artist tries to piece together numerous glimpses into a figuratively recognizable likeness. The discrepancy is a great source of artistic interpretation. I see this in the videos. The models pose, get photographed and then fall into the role of detached observer. They immediately recognize that they are no longer being artistically scrutinized. The tension dissipates. I would love to see this very interesting project expanded by a dynamic element, having the ‘eye’ continuously update its sampling, piecing elements together. The resulting errors would of course lessen the exactness, but heighten the tension - and thus come much closer to replicating portraiture.

one eye or two?

Another keen element of the vision process is that the artist (or at least most artists) have two eyes. While processing visual input the mind decides between the two, often reflecting human bias. This results in a tendency to ‘unfold’ the face, so that more of the far eye is seen behind the nose than would be possible from a sole vantage point. I often mimic this with mesh deformation or manually controllable rigs that allow a similar deconstruction of a character’s face. It would be fantastic to discover more about the artistic processes behind this bias. Can it be replicated by fragmenting the face into zones and processing scrambled viewpoints to reconstruct the whole? It would also be interesting to see what effect this would have visually.

Head over to the AikonII project site and check out some very interesting research. Its great to see NPR projects that get up from behind the computer and explore the artistic elements beyond algorithms. From their nodal structures and the sensibility shown in their work, I suspect Patrick and Frederick are well on their way.

What are you waiting for? Click the dragon! At yahoo (not my favorite trailer viewing site) there is an option at the bottom to view in high resolution, so if you have the bandwidth, search for it. This is another film I’m very much looking forward to.

Todd Alcott is a must-read reviewer for anyone involved in making film. His crit of Inglorious Basterds (here, here, here and here - oh, and here) will easily cement this opinion as fact. So its particularly rewarding to see him adress the animated classic Bambi.And of course, the crit (which will be continued) is a must for animators, even his first, fairly brief installment.

None of this should work.  And yet, Bambi remains one of the most charming, most beguiling, most arresting movies ever made.

And what the heck, a quote from the Basterds review:

Movies are lies that tell the truth.  There is nothing real about them, and there is even less real about Inglourious Basterds than there is about most movies.

I learned that the eye is not like a camera, but more like an extension of the brain itself. I learned that moonlight is not blue, it only appears blue because of a trick that our eyes are playing on us.

The eye isn’t a camera, says Gurney, it’s an extension of the brain. And our brains are deceptive little things. We are quite perceptive to reds and yellows - likely due to the perception of ripeness in fruit. What many don’t know - our traditional color wheel reflects this bias.Wonderfully succinct communicator that he is, James Gurney arranges the hours on a clock with similar bias. As you can see, noon is about 3:30. (Mental not to self: make a biased clock representing the production process with final rendering landing at about 6:45)

James Gurney is not just incredibly talented - the type of talent that reeks of endless hours of having repeatedly and thoughtfully executed every idea - he is very generous with the fruits of his exploration. Click on the clock to go to the fourth post in his overview of the color wheel. (Second mental note to self: BUY HIS BOOK!)

Sachform - makers of hi-quality HDR libraries - has now released their HDR viewer for free. Its a great app for perusing your hdrs and now at an unbeatable price.

In the aftermath of the professional debates concerning Avatar’s qualities as a film, whether its animated or not and how it could have been better, it’s humbling to witness how many people were authentically moved by it. This protest in West Jordanian might be easily written off as a curiosity, which would be a shame. There are true feelings of exploitation in the world and the film has hit a chord. What an achievement!

I’m really looking forward to seeing this film. Here he is, Sylvain Chomet - translated from French to German for the Berlinale, where it premiered. Stylistically, its amazing to see how much tact is used in integrating hand-drawn and 3D animation. The 3D isn’t hidden. Its integrated by finely pushing the frame behaviors and colors to settle into the drawn environment. Need to see this in larger resolution! It leaves me with a slight aftertaste that he’s pushed the flow of line almost too far towards polished sophistication. For me, this becomes evident in the behind-the-curtains scene where the singer struts towards center stage. That movement - as lovely as it was on its own - sticks out. Not to worry - no geek criticism will get in the way of pure enjoyment of what I hope will prove to be a masterpiece! Just…. when do I get to see it?!

Keith Lango has a fantastic eye for NPR, and for stories and characters that work well in stylized looks. Here he shows how he gets his 3D to generate nice boiling lines. As usual, he does so with a wonderfully informative presentation of the motives for each step in the process. Just… must npr be so painful unintuitive? Go visit his site and give the guy a hug. He deserves it!

Here’s another sculpting application, following in the innovative footsteps of the game-changer zBrush, competitor mudbox and the indy 3Dcoat. (sculpt by onim) What is very impressive is the haptic feel of the interface - this feels much less technical than artistic. Of course - its an early test version, but already very impressive. Kudos to Tomas Pettersson, from Sweden. I suspect we owe a lot to the long, dark winters up north. Check out his other, equally impressive projects and let him know you appreciate his openness!

By the way, I praised the aritistic feel that this interfacce conveys, but there’s no lack of impressive technical implementation in there. Check out the real-time mesh tesselation going on here, and the brush’s topology awareness:

Andrea Cau has a hand for precisely written scientific analysis that stands up to even the duress of google translation. He also has a hand for fantasticly haptic life reconstructions. He just posted a list of common errors that artists make when drawing theropods - all of those bipedal, meat-eating (and not) dinosaurs we so adore - errors that have a tendency to take on a life of there own as they are replicated by further artists with even less scientific foundation in their reconstructions. Akin to science journalism, this is a big issue - how to correct misconceptions without snubbing the public’s authentic interest? Head over for a dose of paleoartistic vaccination.

Many of my students are fixated on the film and fx houses. The explosion of animation technologies and creativities has only just begun. Case in point: generative animation techniques and corporate identity. I can’t emphasize enough how much impact this will have. Check out this fantastic corporate logo from okdeluxe. It combines (to varying degrees) experiential marketing, user-generated interactive content, efficient corporate design and provocative, meaningful print visuals with moving imagery perfectly minimized to communicate the brand’s function and intent.

Now think back to those flying logos that broke new grounds back in the late 80s and 90s. How far we have come! And how meaningful this new, flying identity will become.

The Japanese artist Minako Abe, creates provocative landscapes tottering on the edge between abstraction and photography - well actually, I’d love for that to be the case. Areas in the images tend to push them too solidly into the realm of the representative. But nonetheless, a beautiful case study of the effect of photo-realistic palettes and abstracted details combined.

This is from 1979, by the electronic visualization lab. Looking back at the works of pioneers in the field is worthwhile not just for historic interest, but because next to respect for the pioneering efforts involved it reveals the interests of those pioneers. There is no attempt to represent anything in the above animation… just pure exploration of the pixel. In and of itself, a refreshing animation in times when the word computer graphic has become synonymous with remarkably life-like synthespians.

Stéphane Grabli and Emmanuel Turquin are integrating the stroke renderer Freestyle into Blender - a fantastic project. And thanks to their blog, we get valuable insight into the issues they’re encountering. Also offers a glimpse into the difficulties of software development.