welcome aboard mate
which college you're going to?
at the moment the industry is kind of slow in m'sia
maybe lack of exposure to the community
but we're doing something here to help out people all around to understand what's CG,concept art and etc that is relevant to this field


well,we pe-planned that this would be a community service
well to those who does not understand well bout this field
feel free to ask question
hopefully we might be able to help out to further understand this field

Here are some good concept works to start up with.

This guy Feng Zhu is a very reputable artist. He along with Ryan Church were among the other pre-production artists who worked at Lucasfilm's Skywalker Ranch for the Star Wars Ep III. His environmental works are phenomenal. He also worked on games as well. I can't link all the pics. But here is two of them that might perk ur interests to see more.



http://www.fengzhudesign.com/gallery.html

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Added on July 16, 2008, 10:25 pmRyan Church is another great artist. Worked in ILM as mentioned, currently freelancing. Here are some of his works related to Star Wars + his gallery links.






http://www.ryanchurch.com/04PRO.htm

This post has been edited by slumberus: Jul 16 2008, 10:26 PM

Technical Papers
At SIGGRAPH’s core are the peer-reviewed technical papers – the technology everyone will be using two years from now, maybe a bit more, and some studios will implement the algorithms right away. This year, researchers submitted 512 papers describing the latest, most innovative computer graphics techniques. Of those, the technical papers committee of approximately 65 senior reviewers selected 90. You can – and should – catch a preview of this amazing new technology during the often hilarious and always entertaining “Fast-Forward Papers” preview Monday at 6:00.

“One of the really interesting sets of papers are on what I characterize as gradient-based illustration techniques,” says Greg Turk, papers chair. “They offer very powerful techniques for image creation and editing. The applications are as compelling as painting. I expect these ideas to move from academia to the artist within a couple years.”

Two papers Turk expects will be controversial offer methods in one, for changing the features of faces to make them more attractive, and in another, for swapping facial features. “Who would have guessed that face manipulation would be a trend this year,” he says.

In another paper, researchers at Electronic Arts reveal how they bring user-created creatures to life in “Spore,” the irreverent, quirky, and highly anticipated game from Sims creator Will Wright, scheduled for release in September. And, researchers at Cornell University explain how they created the knitted scarf on the cover of the Conference Proceedings.

“We look for novelty, technical advancements, the highest quality results,” says Turk. “And, the wow factor. Some people do things you’d never think of like the bizarre self-animating image.” You’ll have to see it to believe it.

New (emerging) Tech
The New Tech committee selected and invited forty-four exhibits specifically to stretch your mind in interesting ways. You’ll find them in Hall H on the exhibition floor and in the South Lobby; they’re open to everyone with a Basic pass. So, immerse yourself in ancient Rome in the lobby and feel digital ants crawl up your sleeve in Hall H. Watch a robot arm move an egg without breaking it, move your hand through space and touch objects in virtual reality, and use the “Bug,” a peripheral-based controller unit to build own custom camera with GPS. There’s more, of course.

FJORG!
Sixteen three-person teams signed up for this iron-animator competition, which takes place over 32 non-stop hours beginning Monday morning and ending Tuesday. Each team gets the same character animation assignment and it’s a riot. During the 32 hours, interesting distractions show up – Buddhist monks, salsa dancers, mimes, dragon dancers, a DJ, and some of the most famous animators in the industry. They pack themselves into one big room with cots in the back, 515B at last report, so stop by and check out the action. And if you’re an animator, you can help mentor. On Wednesday, the judges analyze all the entries during an awards ceremony, pick the top five, and announce the winners.

Talks
Two kinds of talks this year – those as part of the Computer Animation Festival, which tend to focus on the artistry of visual effects and animation, and talks that are part of the core conference, which dig into technical details. A Full Access Pass gets you into all the talks, a CAF pass opens the doors to CAF talks within the festival.

“One that I’m excited about is a piece on digital cinematography,” says Darin Grant, conference production director, speaking of a full conference talk. “We have Pixar and Blue Sky giving their approaches to cinematography and setting up camera rigs for ‘Wall-E’ and ‘Horton,’ and some work from ILM on their digital environments in ‘Indiana Jones’. It’s an eye cracker on Monday morning at 8:30. But, I’ll be there. And Friday is character TD day.”

Grant also singles out the CAF sessions on ‘Iron Man’ and Cloverfield in ‘Monsters and Machines’ early Wednesday afternoon, ‘Speed Racer’ Thursday morning, and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ early Thursday afternoon, as well as a full conference talk on ‘Madagascar 2’s green grass early Tuesday afternoon. If you don’t have a full conference pass, you’ll find abstracts on the full conference DVD, which you can buy.

Stereo3D
Deep within the Computer Animation Festival is an exciting and new two-day conference on stereoscopic 3D. With nine sessions, two days of content on Monday and Tuesday, and a screening, this has to be the most concentrated look at stereo 3D on the planet. It starts with a tutorial and a history.

“Someone could come in cold, not knowing anything about stereo 3D, and come out with an appreciation for the history and technical challenges,” says Rob Engle, who organized the event. Speakers from Disney, DreamWorks, Imageworks and other studios share their expertise. Other sessions look at 3D in games, theme parks, science, animation and live action films. If you think the future of films is stereo 3D, this is the place for you to be, to meet people, see films, and wear funny glasses. The meeting room in Petree Hall C has a 21-foot screen and a RealD system. If you want to just see the films, show up at 5:45 on Monday.

SpeedLab
Lastly but not leastly, something else new, new new. “Here’s how this came about,” says Adam Finkelstein. “A fairly large group of us were having lunch during the jury meeting for the content of SIGGRAPH 08 and one person lamented that at the conference, we go, absorb information, sit passively and listen, and then leave. We’re not creating anything. ‘We’ in this case refers to the research community. So we talked about it.” And, did something about it. That something is SpeedLab. Here’s how it works. People will show up in a room to be determined on Monday at 3:45, they’ll form into teams, and during the week, they’ll work on an assigned problem. On Friday at 1:45, they’ll present their solution and the winning ideas will receive prizes.

“It’s totally freeform, but I imagine people will exchange information at the meeting, arrange to meet, and in the meantime, think about the problem,” Finkelstein says. “We’ll give them problems that are grand in nature. Not something you could solve by writing a paper.”

The first 50 people that show up will get to play the game. “We hope mixture of artists, students and researchers come,” Finkelstein says. “We’re hoping to make this intellectually stimulating as a creative process and just have fun with it. We think it will be fun, anyway. That’s why we’re doing it.”

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Added on July 19, 2008, 1:08 pmThe Primetime Emmy nominations for outstanding work in television have been announced.
Here are the VFX categories:



Outstanding Special Visual Effects For A Miniseries, Movie Or A Special
Comanche Moon • Part 1
CBS • The Firm / Sony Pictures Television / CBS Paramount
John Adams • Join Or Die
HBO • Playtone in association with HBO Films
Life After People
History Channel • Flight 33 Productions for History Television Network Productions, A&E Television Networks
The Company • Part 2
TNT • Scott Free/John Callery Productions in association with Sony Pictures Television
Tin Man • Part 1
Sci Fi Channel • RHI Entertainment


Special Visual Effects For A Series
Battlestar Galactica •
He That Believeth In Me
Sci Fi Channel • Universal Media Studios in association with R & D TV
Heroes • Four Months Ago
NBC • Universal Media Studios in association with Tail Wind Productions
Human Body: Pushing The Limits • Strength
Discovery Channel • Dangerous Films Ltd. in association with Discovery Channel
Jericho • Patriots And Tyrants
CBS • CBS Paramount Television
Stargate Atlantis • Adrift
Sci Fi Channel • Pegasus Productions IV Inc., Metro-
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles • Pilot
• FOX • C2 Pictures in association with Warner Bros. Television


Outstanding Nonfiction Special
The Pixar Story
Starz • Leslie Iwerks Productions
Leslie Iwerks, Producer


This post has been edited by cymon: Jul 19 2008, 01:08 PM

interview for guillermo del toro
for hellboy 2 the golden army

This post has been edited by yukikaze: Jul 22 2008, 01:50 AM

BlurBeta is back online after a long Hiatus, I think it's been 4 years!

Since Blur now uses both Max and XSI, Both Max and XSI tools are available for download. We're happy to be able to share our tools to the community, Enjoy!

To download go to www.blur.com and click on "blurBeta" in the bottom right.

There is a "Light" version for both XSI and Max which includes a limited selection of the main tools, as well as a "Full" version which includes all the tools (But there's lots so don't get lost!).

I know it's boring, but please read the ReadMe after installing, you may have to move a few files around! Also Python is required if you are using XSI tools.


Some Highlights of Blur's tools:
Max
Caching Tools
Transform Caching Plugin
Render Elements - Render Pass tools
Onion - Easy Layer management
Modeling Tools
Animation Tools
Camera Tools
Utilities (Naming etc)

XSI
blurXUI - EASIER creation of complex UIs, You can use OpenSource QT to design UIs
Animation Tools (Plotting Tools etc)
Camera Tools
Caching Tools
PointCache Operator
RigBuilder
Quick Widget Maker ( constrained nulls of all kinds! )
BlurStandard Layout, Macros and Keymap


These tools are provided without warranty or support, but if you like you can email us at beta@blur.com with steps for reproducing bugs, or edited versions with improved functionality, and the bug fixes or improvements may make it into a future update.

N. Evan Van Zelfden in Los Angeles warns, watch out World of Warcraft. In an interview at E3 this week, Electronic Arts chief executive John Riccitiello said that EA is working on the next version of Star Wars game Knights of the Old Republic, and it will most certainly have a massively multiplayer online component to it.

"We've got two of the most compelling MMOs in the industry in development," said Riccitiello. The first title, based on the Warhammer property, will launch soon. "And the one that people are dying for us to talk to them about -- in partnership with Lucas, coming out of BioWare, which is, I think, quite possibly the most anticipated game, full stop, for the industry at the point when we get closer to telling you about it."

Does Riccitiello mean the oft rumored Knights of the Old Republic Online? "Yes," he said.

Moving into MMOs is an essential component for any gaming company, and it's a big part of the reason Vivendi merged with Activision, for that company's World of Warcraft MMO.

Riccitiello told Portfolio.com that he was interested in owning World of Warcraft, and that he did discuss it, but it wasn't in the cards. "Because [Vivendi] couldn't afford control of EA, and I wasn't giving it up."

But EA is firmly on that path now, with a KOTOR MMO, which would sidestep the consoles owned by Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. "Increasingly, people are going to be talking about direct-to-customer in our business," said Riccitiello. "I think we'll be talking about it louder than most."

Today, two-thirds of the game industry is console systems and dedicated handhelds. "We expect in 2011 for it to be fifty-percent," Riccitiello said.

MMOs will also be useful as a way to expand into foreign territories.

"China's a growth market for us," he said. "We're launching some mid-session games on a micro-transaction model." In May of last year, the company announced an equity investment in a leading Chinese online game operator, The9, Ltd. "And there's a bunch more coming that we haven't announced. "

The company has stated that M&A is part of the strategy, and EA is looking for core game companies "only when they bring great [intellectual property] and great teams," he said. The company is also interested in businesses that "help us build our platform in the area of Asia, online, and direct-to-consumer."

"One is strategic and new, one is core and profitable -- and we're looking at both," explained Riccitiello.

Future games aside, Riccitiello is most proud of EA's revenues, its console-business growth, and what's currently on display to the army of reviewers and game journalists in Los Angeles this week.

"We added almost a billion dollars to the revenue last year," he notes. "This year, we've told the street that we're going to add a billion to a billion-three."

And console games are a market that's doing well. "It's grown 30 percent year-to-date," says Riccitiello. "All three of the consoles are way up. The PC business in terms of it's aggregate of subscriptions/micro-transactions is also way up. "

But at the end of the day, it's about the games themselves.

"I think, hands down, there's not a publisher or a platform that's got what we've got," he says. In his own life, he sees how EA's games are making an impact: "I've got twenty-two nephews and nieces. A couple years there, I couldn't buy everything I wanted for them at the holidays. I can do the entire holiday -- and capture my mother for the first time -- at the EA store. That's never been the case before."

DARK KNIGHT SPECIAL EFFECT CG HOUSE

Dneg: Bruce's penthouse scenes, armoured car chase, Batmobile/Batpod/chopper, big crowd scene, ferries, Gotham City views and extensions, Pruitt building sequence, batsignals, digital doubles

Framestore (I'm not entirely sure of their total workload, so if someone from there would like to add to this then please do): Two Face, Hong Kong sequence, Hospital sequence, digital doubles, sonar vision eyes.

Buf (again, if someone from Buf would like to add to this that would be great): sonar vision POV.

New Deal Studios (miniatures and models): Garbage Truck crash, Hong Kong pyro building elements.

Cinesite Europe: ground level Batsignal beams, some grapple gun wires, additional comps.

In all there are approximately 700 shots in the final film. I'd guess that around 200 of those are IMAX, the rest are anamorphic scope.

Around 30 mins of the finished film is in the native IMAX format which is mostly 5.6K with the odd shot at 8.1K. The rest of the film is anamorphic cinemascope with most of the work being done at 4K - the exceptions are shots that started life as IMAX but which eventually ended up as scope only, these shots were all worked on at 5.6K. All of the work, from all the vendors was done in this way. There are very slight differences between the IMAX and standard 35mm releases - the odd shot here and there that is in one version only.

The IMAX version of the movie is the definitive version of the film as everything, including the scope work, was done with that in mind. However, all the shots are composed to work in scope too.

For those who are interested, this is essentially an analogue movie - there's no digital intermediate, it's all graded on film. See it in IMAX if you can - I think it may be one of a kind as the shift to digital IMAX projection will effectively clamp the images to 4K resolution. It looks amazing!

just step in, have a look thumbs up!!

SIGGRAPH 2008 is evolving along with the computer graphics and interactive techniques community.
Join 30,000 creators of computer graphics and interactive techniques at SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles, 11-15 August, for world-class technical presentations, creative exploration, and the industry's largest marketplace of products and services: the SIGGRAPH Exhibition.

See, hear, and interact at SIGGRAPH 2008 with digital innovators, creative researchers, award-winning producers, provocative artists, energetic executives, and adventurous engineers.

The evolution of SIGGRAPH presents several new ground-breaking enhancements that aim to dissolve the borders between traditional SIGGRAPH programs to create a more fluid, interdisciplinary conference. Highlights include:

- SIGGRAPH's newly expanded Computer Animation Festival features five days of screenings, four days of talks, three days of all-star studio events and two days of 3D stereoscopic panels and screenings.


- Technical Papers - Hear the world's most advanced scientists and engineers in computer graphics present the full range of the world's most significant achievements in the field and illuminate new directions for future investigations.


- The return of FJORG! - the 32-hour international computer graphics "iron-animator" competition.


- Dynamic Featured Speaker presentations from Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios President, Ed Catmull; Irish artist and "U2 3D" film director Catherine Owens; and Takeo Kanade, Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, and Director of the Quality of Life Technology Engineering Research Center, Carnegie Mellon University.


- New Tech Demos - new and innovative technologies that you must experience to understand.


- Art & Design Galleries - Explore the latest digital art.


- Talks, Classes, Special Events and much more!

free trial class on august 25, 26, 27 ,9-1pm at jaya one (any one day) just give me a ring book your seats

stewart 0163381176

This post has been edited by onlineseller: Jul 24 2008, 06:08 PM

YOU SUCK AT PHOTOSHOP
admit it everybody does
now here's a dose of tutorial of "you suck at photoshop"
which comes quite handy when you got really bored and at the same time trying to hone your photoshop skills
enjoy guys


You Suck At Photoshop

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Added on July 31, 2008, 11:04 amActivision cans Ghostbusters game

Activision Blizzard has submitted its latest release schedule with no mention of forthcoming title from Terminal Reality, Ghostbusters, 50: Cent: Blood on the Sand from Swordfish or Double Fine's Brutal Legend.

Additionally the company plans to "realign" staff at High Moon Studios and Radical Entertainment, while Massive Entertainment and Swordfish Studios are both under consideration for sale or closure.

The future is similarly bleak for Vivendi Games Mobile and Sierra Online, both of which have been designated as "non-strategic business units", with Activision publishing CEO Mike Griffith extolling an efficiency drive.

This post has been edited by yukikaze: Jul 31 2008, 11:04 AM

Hellboy 2 :: Production Focus






Well Hellboy II: the
Golden Army, is a creatures feature, with a decided
emphasis on the plural. On display in the film is a huge assortment of some of the most freakishly bizarre characters to appear in a superhero movie. The singular creatures spring largely from the fertile imagination of director Guillermo del Toro, who also helmed the original ‘Hellboy,’ released in 2004 (as well as multi-award winning ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’).

Del Toro, who dotes on monster fables and supernatural fantasy worlds – as does co-screenwriter Mike Mignola who writes the popular ‘Hellboy’ comic books--significantly ups the visual ante in ‘Hellboy II’. He creates a vast menagerie of characters in a series of set pieces that seamlessly merge practical effects and costumed characters with animatronics and loads of CG animation.

The title character – a cigar-chomping, beer-guzzling, engagingly irrepressible, seven-foot red devil (played by Ron Pearlman) – who has been raised from a helltot by a secret agency of the government, reappears in this sequel to engage in a succession of bouts against a host of magical demons. Encoring Hellboy’s entourage are Abe, the amphibious empathic, and flammable girlfriend Liz. A new addition to the team is Johann Krauss. Described as a “protoplasmic mystic,” Johann has been reduced to a trail of smoke that inhabits a robot outfit.

Mike Wassel was the film’s VFX supervisor. London-based Double Negative was the primary CG vendor. ‘Hellboy II’ was the biggest digital animation project Double Negative has undertaken to date. In the past it has contributed significantly to notable effects films such as ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, ‘10,000 B.C.’ and, most recently, ‘Batman: the Dark Knight’.







This was the first time Wassel had worked with Double Negative. He was picked for the project by Universal, the studio behind ‘Hellboy II’, in large part because he had delivered as VFX supervisor on a number of Universal productions including the ‘Fast and the Furious’ series of films.

“I was shooting ‘Evan Almighty’ when the guys at Universal approached me about getting involved with ‘Hellboy II’,” he recalls. “I was the film’s overall VFX supervisor but I was also embedded into Double Negative as the lead visual effects supervisor,” he notes. “Since it was primarily a single vendor show, it made sense to have me based at the facility.”


Double Negative, headquartered in London’s Soho district, is known for its character animation capabilities. The VFX company was pro-active in seeking the ‘Hellboy II’ assignment. “The excitement and enthusiasm the company showed had a huge influence on del Toro choosing to go with them,” says Wassel. “Guillermo is a very demanding guy, but the people at Double Negative rose to the challenge. They did amazing work, which is a testament to the company.”

Working with Wassel was Lucy Killick, the VFX producer. The Double Negative team was led by senior visual effects producer Steve Garrad and digital effects supervisors Adrian De Wet, Andrew Chapman and Justin Martin. Eamonn Butler was the animation supervisor.

The director was very involved in talking directly to those doing the animation, so he was able to get the performances that he wanted from his characters that didn’t have a live counterpart. “Many of the creatures are from his drawings,” observes animation chief Butler. “He came to us with his well-known ‘book,’ the one he does for each of his films.“

“Guillermo is a huge fan of animation,” declares Butler, who earned his spurs in Hollywood working for a decade as a 2D animator at Disney. “Right from the get-go he told me he wanted ‘Hellboy II’ to appear like an animated picture, with the CG characters we worked on looking larger than life. He wanted to create a world that was very rich, very textural so you could come back more than once and still see more detail going on in the background.”








In total, Double Negative delivered 1,050 shots for ‘Hellboy II’. That includes about 300 contracted out to other facilities: Cube FX in Budapest and three London houses--Lipsync Post, The Senate and Baseblack. Overall, there were some 1,400 shots, Wassel estimates. These ranged from digital tweaks on practical characters to an entire animated sequence near the start of the film that was assigned to Ghost, based in Copenhagen, which is the largest digital effects house in Scandinavia. Ghost worked completely outside Double Negative’s digital pipeline.

Jepp Nygaard Christensen, a part owner of Ghost, was the VFX supervisor for the striking puppet segment early in the movie. It tells the backstory of the Golden Army a millennium ago, through hundreds of puppets that appear carved from wood but are in fact totally CG. “Guillermo emphasized he wanted the puppets to look like real puppets and we spent loads of hours animating them,” says Christensen.

For its part, Double Negative was faced with a lot of heavy lifting on ‘Hellboy II’. The reason was both the sheer quantity of CG animation as well as the diversity of the many creatures del Toro asked for. The requirements pushed the Double Negative team to come up with many innovative solutions.

“The overall scope of the project and managing all of it simultaneously was one of the most challenging aspects – and all that work was done on a fairly tight budget,” says the VFX supervisor. One of the biggest achievements was “creating what looks like a much larger and more costly production.”

Each of the many creature sequences is dramatically different. “You can’t compare them,” says Wassel. He adds: “The amount of hand animation in the Golden Army scene is one example of the diverse set of problems we were asked to solve throughout the project. In the Tooth Fairy sequence, we had to replicate thousands of the nine-inch creatures. For the Elemental, we had to create a 90-foot vined creature that is extraordinarily powerful and wreaks enormous damage in a New York street scene that was almost entirely animated except for ‘Hellboy’.”

THE MAKING OF THE DARK KNIGHT IMAX

The movie Kungfu Panda seems to be making it to court room too.
Zhao Bandi an artist from China filed a case recently against Dreamworks and
Paramount Pictures for the offensive grotesqueries depicted in the movie
and asks for an apology from the film’s producers.

"I think they painted the panda’s eyes green with ulterior motives. Green eyes are somewhat evil. I have studied drawing and painters will never use green eyes when depicting a kind person."

"The panda is not only a symbol for China but also for the people. Making a panda’s father a duck is nothing but an insult to Chinese people. I am afraid Chinese youth in several years will regard Donald Duck as their ancestors."


“Kung Fu Panda” opened in China on June 20 to strong box office demand. But Zhao has been calling for a boycott of the film, saying it “exploits China’s ‘national treasure’ and its martial arts.”

He also claimed the Hollywood comedy hurt Chinese people’s feelings because it came out shortly after a devastating earthquake hit southwestern China’s Sichuan Province, the primary habitat for giant pandas. The screening of “Kung Fu Panda” was postponed in Sichuan to “appease quake survivors,” Xinhua news agency reported last month.

In Universal Pictures' third installation of The Mummy franchise, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, we get to experience an especially creepy mummy up close and personal. Actor Jet Li is represented in a multi-layered computer-animated performance as a warrior trapped inside a terra-cotta shell. In moments of rage, his terra-cotta face cracks and falls away, revealing a grotesque "under-mummy" that also resembles the actor and delivers dialogue. This warrior’s curse is that he’s doomed to be encased forever in that shell, so terra cotta repeatedly re-grows over his face. The hot clay glows and smokes as it painfully re-seals.

“We basically had two hero characters,” says Nordin Rahhali, CG supervisor at Digital Domain (DD) in Venice, Calif. “The under-mummy resembles a dessicated, burnt Jet Li, and the terra-cotta outer shell resembles Jet Li in a more stylized way. The idea that director Rob Cohen had was that it would be like a Russian nested doll.”

Digital Domain’s effects crew began by amassing reference photography of a terra-cotta statue on set. “This gave us lighting cues and textures,” Compositing Supervisor Lou Pecora says. “We also shot a clean pass of the set and then a pass with Jet Li in it. You notice that when an actor is in a scene, the movement of the camera is more believable.” The actor’s image was then rotoscoped from the plate with the company's software Nuke (now marketed by The Foundry). Then DD’s proprietary tool Track was used to track the camera movement in the plate. “It’s better to rotoscope an environment rather than use greenscreen,” Rahhali says. “You can’t beat the real lighting cues that make a CG character sit in a scene.”

The digital version of Jet Li was modeled and animated in Autodesk Maya and rendered in Pixar RenderMan. “We made a model look like Jet first, and then we started dessicating it,” says Rahhali. To create multiple layers of the dessicated under-mummy, Digital Texture Lead Stan Seo created highly detailed textures on a Z-Brush model. “Displacement maps were then taken from Z-Brush and put onto a lower resolution cage to add back all that detail in Renderman,” Rahhali says. CG Lighting Supervisor Hanzhi Tang took Seo’s textures and created the shading model. “He added all the specular hits, the ambient occlusion, and beautiful subsurface scattering on the thinner pieces of skin,” Rahhali says.

The facial animation of the under-mummy drives the look of the crumbling terra-cotta shell, but a significant amount of simulation had to be added. “After we ran through the animation process, the shot would go through an effects process,” says Rahhali. “We have a pipeline that brings all the character geometry into [Side Effects] Houdini. Once it was in Houdini, our effects lead, Brian Gazdik, worked on all the cracking and shattering. A simulation was created on the surface of the character’s face. It was an interesting technique because based upon the deforming geometry, the animation was driving the surface simulation. The director wanted to have something that would crack and re-seal but still reveal the subtleties of the animation happening underneath. So our effects people would take this deforming geometry—the animation coming from Maya—and calculate stress maps to determine how much of an area of the face was moving during a particular length of time. Through that, they would run the simulation so that we’d have areas that were fully intact. Only when they hit a certain threshold of stress or flex would it crack along a seam. It was a physically based simulation that had artistic user input on where events would happen. It was a mix of articulate hand animation and some meticulous procedural work. Procedural work only goes so far—there was a lot of hand tweaking.”

While the crumbling terra cotta required significant particle simulation, the re-sealing of the character’s face with molten terra cotta was another challenge. “We wanted to come up with something that was physically based that you could believe was super-heated terracotta,” says Rahhali. “It had to be based on something you could relate to, like a hot piece of clay that’s glowing. These effects—including fine, wispy smoke and embers coming off the face—were pretty much all Houdini effects and all hand done.” DD rendered effects with Houdini’s Mantra renderer, though the company used its proprietary voxel renderer Storm (a Houdini plug-in) to render the smoke effects.

“In resealing the face,” says Pecora, “the director specifically wanted to see imperfections burning off, which happens when you’re firing clay. He wanted to see embers come flying off the face help the audience understand the physics of what was going on. When the face reseals and you see the expression on the under-mummy’s face, that has to translate to the outer terra-cotta shell.”

“There were so many layers required to give us what we needed in compositing,” says Pecora. “They got combined through a customized Nuke macro that we affectionately called ‘Pimp my Mummy.’ It was put together by one of our look development compositors, Chia-Chi Hu. It combined all the layers and allowed us access to color sliders and color controls. We had one input node that all had the layers in it—that got fed into Pimp My Mummy, which split all those layers and assigned controls to each of them so we could dial the subsurface scattering separately, without having to dig through the layers. We spent a lot of time in compositing addressing a lot of the lighting issues by adjusting the different passes—all within the interface that Chia-Chi put together for this show.”

This allowed Digital Domain to finesse the final look as efficiently as possible. “There were times when we had our supervisors or the director sit with an artist and dial in the controls interactively. That kind of time saving was invaluable," says Pecora. "You can’t do that by just iterating and iterating. You can cover seven or 10 iterations with one interactive session. What used to be just the toy of the cappuccino-steeped ‘Flame elite’ is now in the hands of us humble compositors!”
Credit Roll:

Director: Rob Cohen
Visual Effects Supervisors: Joel Hynek, Matthew Butler
Computer Graphics Supervisors: Nordin Rahhali, David Hodgins
CG Modeling Supervisor: Francisco Cortina
Animation Supervisor: Kelvin Lee
CG Lighting Supervisor: Hanzhi Tang
Compositing Supervisor: Lou Pecora
CG Modeling Artists: Raul Dominguez, Wayne Kennedy, Daniel Moy
Lead Character Rigger: Richard Grandy
Character Riggers: Marc Wilhite, George Saavedra
CG Animator: Slavik Anishchenko
Lead Compositor: Ted Andre
Compositors: Heather Hoyland, Chia-Chi Hu, Richard Thompson (Technical Developer)
Lead CG Effects Artist: Mårten Larsson
CG Effects Artist: Brian Gazdik
CG Lighting Artists: Diana Sear, Åsa Svedberg
Lead 3D Integration Artist: Geoffrey Baumann
3D Integration Artist: Justin van der Lek
Digital Texture Paint Lead: Stan Seo
Digital Texture Painters: Joseph Lacap, Ting Lo

Warner Bros. Digital Distribution and Warner Premiere announced today a new way for graphic novel fans to connect with their favorite characters and the stories they know and love through short-form digital content. “Warner Premiere’s Motion Comics” draw on a massive amount of source material to bring a visually engaging experience to life through the use of subtle movements, voice-overs, sweeping music scores and stunning comic book artwork. The highly anticipated debut episode of DC Comics “Watchmen” is now available exclusively as a free iTunes download for the next two weeks via Entertainment Weekly’s website (www.ew.com/watchmen). Beginning August 2, the debut “Watchmen” Motion Comic will be available on the iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) for purchase and download for $1.99. In addition, the Eisner Award-winning “Batman: Mad Love” starring Batman, The Joker and Harley Quinn can be downloaded to own from Xbox Live and available on Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Video service starting July 22. A full lineup of “Warner Premiere’s Motion Comics” and release dates will be announced shortly after Comic-Con.

Watchmen – Motion Comic
“Watchmen” takes viewers through the critically acclaimed DC Comics and Hugo award-winning graphic novel by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. Set in 1985 at the height of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union, costumed avengers have been banned with the exception of two – The Comedian and Rorschach. During this time the mysterious murder of a United States government official named Edward Blake occurs in New York, possibly by Soviet Communists. It is later confirmed that Blake is actually a costumed avenger – The Comedian. The news of the murder is discovered by his fellow costumed avenger, Rorschach who sets out to discover the murderer.

During his search viewers discover whether Rorschach is really insane or if he’s uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians. On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives. But what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet. Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story — the story of The Watchmen.

In the July 18 edition of Entertainment Weekly fans will find a special link through EW.com (www.ew.com/watchmen) that provides access to the episode via iTunes. Additional episodes for purchase will also be made available via iTunes and other distribution partners in the coming months leading to the theatrical release of Watchmen in 2009.

Batman: Mad Love
“Batman: Mad Love” is taken directly from the pages of the Eisner Award-winning single issue graphic novel by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm. The story revolves around The Joker’s sidekick Harley Quinn who is madly in love with him. She uses crime to demonstrate her love for her “Puddin’” and sets out to commit the ultimate act of love – killing Batman.

The “Batman: Mad Love” Motion Comic will be available to purchase from Xbox Live and viewing on mobile phones enabled for Verizon Wireless’ V CAST Video service starting July 22. “Batman: Mad Love” episodes will also be available from other distribution partners in the coming months.

waa lots of CG's

i wonder wat software the use

This post has been edited by rosihan: Aug 4 2008, 05:21 PM

can't believe you guys roll it out, finally people exposing CG art and getting attention to CG now!! I'm more on to digital art myself because I do admit I'm not good enough to draw everything my own! Well Doing Conceptual Digital Art just one of my hobby!

welcome my friend.
here we can exchange info, ideas and projects too.

i really want to bring out the professional issue, the concept art is still new and not much intro to our market.
i m happy to hear u are doing concept digital art as one of your hobby.
just keep up, friend.

mind to share some of your work?

welcome aboard mate
it's nice to see you actually come into this thread and post
very much appreciated
be sure to drop by often and share as much news ,knowledge and stuff as possible