Hasta La Motion!

The film might have a notorious place in the history of comic book adaptations, but Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, released in 1997, is notable for some innovative visual effects work. In particular, the ‘frozen in time’ moments arising from Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger) blasting his ray gun on unsuspecting victims capitalized on photogrammetry, stereo imaging and still-new CG techniques.

This was the work of Warner Digital, led by senior visual effects supervisor Michael Fink and visual effects supervisor Wendy Rogers. Lead CG artist Joel Merritt brought to Warner Digital a technique he had already developed to help accomplish the ‘frozen moment’ shots – something that now might be called image-based modelling. With the film now 20 years old, vfxblog went retro with Merritt to find out more.

vfxblog: Prior to Batman & Robin, what you had been working on that led to you coming to Warner Digital?

Joel Merritt: Sometime back in the late 1980’s, I had an Amiga 1000 and that was, of course, for its time rather advanced as far as graphics is concerned, and I realised for example, one morning in early 1988 that if you painted something that today we would call a Z-buffer, for each pixel you could put a colour associated with it and you can have like a three dimensional object that you could rotate about and so forth. I began to do more investigation into that sort of thing, of mapping – I didn’t even know it was called a Z-buffer back then. I just realised that you could essentially have a pixel at a given depth and then you could rotate a virtual camera and you could see perspective and so forth from that.

I had done something where I took an aerial photograph and then combined that with elevation data and then you could render it from a view, just starting with the furthest away line and keep drawing, keep drawing, keep drawing as you went towards the camera. Essentially a paint algorithm. And then you could fill in the details, you could sort of fill in what the elevation would look like from a virtual perspective. I don’t remember exactly how I came up with the idea of using the multiple textures, but it was sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s. I was home working on the Amiga, and building essentially these multiple views, which you could do then.

You had multiple cameras, you had multiple images on the screen, you’ve figured out where the cameras are, you’ve figured what the field of view is. When you click on the given pixel really what you’re doing is you’re shooting a ray out of that camera through that pixel out into the environment. When you shoot two or more rays, maybe they don’t perfectly intercept but what you can do is a least squares problem, where you basically say, ‘What point is best fit where those rays are shooting, where they come closer to intercepting?’

What you can do then for these pixel rays that are coming out is you can figure out a three dimensional point in space and if you connect enough of these three dimensional points in space, like maybe, not a huge amount by today’s standards, but maybe a hundred, then you can start building an outline of where the various objects are. Then what you can do is, each one of these photographs is essentially a texture that can be glued on. The next thing you can do is go into a mode where you connect three of these dots, these three dimensional things, points so that you can make triangles.

You build the triangles up and then you have a crude object, a low resolution version of the surface of the object. I had done some facial tests, I originally had done these in 1990 on my Amiga. And then I did some additional stuff where I built a low resolution version when I was working at Discreet Logic and then rotated it about, basically put the two textures on and rotated.

vfxblog: Around that time, there was a growing sense of the use of photogrammetry or stereo imagery to acquire imagery – and Paul Debevec for example had done his thesis on this area – and there was some other frozen moment work being done, too, in commercials and other projects. Was any of that under your consideration in coming up with the technique?

Joel Merritt: I certainly had some understanding of photogrammetry and stereo imagery techniques, but I didn’t have a deep understanding of either at the time. When I started this I had very little formal computer graphics training. I started graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago in fall 1988. Intense learning of computer graphics followed, but at the time, photogrammetry or stereo imagery were not yet widely integrated into computer graphics. I was doing research on volumetric data from MRI images.

The general terms for this sort of thing in CG are now called image-based modelling and image-based rendering. As I recall, the steps I took to develop the technique were:

1988: mapping images to specific depths using a z-buffer.

Circa 1989: My memory is fuzzy on this, given that it was almost 30 years ago. Take several photographs of a person. The person rotates as the photographs are taken. When you are done you have front, right, left, and back views, as well as 3/4 views. Now the idea is to build 6 z-buffers, representing orthogonal views of the person. You could think of these as defining an object made up of little cubes about the size of a pixel, kind of like Minecraft. Instead of a volumetric data set where the object was made of little cubes (voxels) filling in the entire object, this object only had little opaque cubes on the surface. I called them saxels, for surface area elements. Then the image pixels were mapped to the saxels and blended based on the virtual camera position.

Late 1990: I got rid of the saxels and used points and triangles instead. You could find the points by triangulation, and three points make a triangle, as long as they’re not all on the same line. This made building the model much easier. Images were still blended based on the camera position.

1994: same technique with full color on an SGI machine at Discreet Logic.

Another thing to be aware of is that on the Amiga in 1988 you could render a virtual camera from a rotated perspective, but it wasn’t real time rotation like it is now. It took over a minute to render a single frame.

vfxblog: And how did you then come on board for Batman & Robin?

Joel Merritt: What happened was, Wendy Rogers was the visual effects supervisor on Batman & Robin, for Warner Digital’s component. Warner’s contribution was the Mr. Freeze on people effects, not to be confused with the Mr. Freeze on Gotham City effects.

I was working on another movie called, My Fellow Americans, and I was doing some texture mapping tricks there. It was supposed to be set at the White House, so obviously, we had to do some matte paintings and so forth to make it look like it’s the White House, and there were some tricks I was doing with texture mapping and perspective. I think that may have caught the eye of Wendy Rogers and I started basically explaining the existing software I had, the existing technique I had. I may have brought in a demo of the technique with the face and showed it to her, and shortly thereafter I was on the team doing this stuff – putting the software together as well as working with the people who were making the tracking software at Warner, and actually going on stage with a Total Station to record various 3D points so we could derive where the camera was.

vfxblog: What was the specific solution for Batman & Robin you and the team came up with?

Joel Merritt: The software basically generated the actual elements of the people frozen with the virtual camera. The scene was shot with three cameras that were filming the person being frozen. These were actually 35mm film cameras that were synchronised together, so they were in phase, not just in sync but actually in phase so all the shutters were open at the same time.

That way what they could do in editorial is they could go through and they could say, ‘Yeah, we want to freeze it right here on this frame.’ That way you would have the frame that would be picked by the editor, I presume in consultation with the director and then that was our frame, and then the three frames at that time point were the ones that we would build the model from.

What we would do then is, as a result, we would have a low dimensional OBJ file – it was some sort of a model of the object of the person frozen. Then we had this virtual camera and we got three texture maps basically generated from the virtual camera and there was a blending solution that would allow you to blend between camera A, camera B, et cetera.

That was essentially how it was done and then that was handed off downstream to the people who were working on the other things. There was, for example, another lead TD who was working on the ice, which of course, was refractive and so forth, so that was real CG. Then there was a person who was working on the freeze ray, then there was a person who was working on the mist, and then there was a person who put it all together.

Disney-Pixar’s Cars 3 brought in enough to take the top spot at the weekend box office followed by Wonder Woman in second place and Lionsgate’s All Eyez On Me in third.

Cars 3 finished the weekend with a domestic collection of $53.5 million, a lower opening than Cars ($60.1 million) and Cars 2 ($66.1 million), but still enough to win the weekend. Cars 3 is the 16th Pixar film out of 18 to debut at #1. The film received an “A” CinemaScore. The only Pixar film to not score either an “A” or “A+” CinemaScore is Cars 2, which scored an “A-“. Internationally, Cars 3 brought in an estimated $21.3 million from a handful of markets including Mexico ($5.9m) and Russia ($4.8m).

In India, Despicable Me 3, with its first weekend gross collection of Rs. 6.5 crore ($1 million approx), beat Cars 3 which brought in Rs. 5.6 crore ($869,680).

Wonder Woman even after dropping to second place still stood strong with a domestic collection of $40.7 million. This is the second largest third weekend ever for Warner Bros., just behind the $42.6 million for The Dark Knight and ahead of the $35.7 million for The Dark Knight Rises.

Internationally, Wonder Woman delivered an estimated $39.5 million from 62 markets, bringing its international total to $297.2 million, pushing the film’s worldwide total to $571.8 million. This puts its international total ahead of films such as The Wolverine ($282.2m), Thor ($268.2m) and Iron Man ($266.7m). Openings this weekend included an estimated $3.2 million debut in Germany, a $982,000 in the Netherlands and a $810,000 release in Norway.

Lionsgate’s release of the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez On Me debuted in third with $27 million, while The Mummy fell to fourth on $13.9 million. The Mummy’s domestic total now stands at $56.5 million. The film however remained the #1 title at the international market bringing in an estimated $53 million from 68 territories as its international total now stands at $239.1 million for a worldwide total just shy of $300 million. This week’s third new arrival, shark thriller 47 Meters Down, was fifth with $11.5 million.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales sank to sixth, making $8.5 million as its domestic total now tops $150 million. Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie was eighth, taking in $7.3 million while Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 took home $4.9 million at ninth. The domestic total of Guardians is now just shy of $375 million.

The post ‘Cars 3’ tops domestic weekend charts with $53.5 m, ‘Wonder Woman’ strong at second with $40.7 m appeared first on AnimationXpress.

The event replete with anticipation and surprises just came to an end. This year’s E3 gave out a lot of content to the gaming enthusiasts. From Spider-Man to Anthem and Super Mario Odyssey, the developers did not hold back in showing their upcoming titles at the mega convention.

Here are five trailers from upcoming gaming titles at E3 that we loved!

1> Anthem: This definitely comes first in my mind when I recall E3, 2017. The game seems like Bioware’s take on Destiny whose second edition will be rolled out on PC through Blizzard’s dedicated platform.
Not much is known about the game, but a glimpse at the trailer gives an idea of how the game would be. An RPG with mech-pilot suits, intense firing and incredibly sculpted landscape seems reason enough for this game to be a winner when it comes out.

2> Star Wars Battlefront II: This game’s E3 trailer garnered the highest number of views among its contemporaries. According to Gamespot, the trailer received over 7.9 million views during this week itself. Let’s see how this game does when it is out!

3> Super Mario Odyssey: What looks to be one of the most promising Nintendo Switch titles, Super Mario Odyssey will feature few parts in the game which will be of 2D genre and will provide players with a link to the classic. The game also has a co-op

mode.

4> Spider-Man: Spider-Man: Homecoming is due to release in cinemas next month. The new trailer showcases our very own web crawler darting through the city evading obstacles, unfortunately however, the game seems in no way related to the upcoming movie. But still it does pack a punch!

5> God of War: After an idle period of few years, Kratos is back with this brand new title. The game is not coming in 2017, but the gameplay looks really impressive.

The post 5 spectacular games revealed at E3 this year appeared first on AnimationXpress.

This is what the world would look like if you could see invisible air currents, temperature gradients, and differences in pressure or composition of the air.
Support Veritasium on Patreon: http://ve42.co/patreon

Special thanks to Patreon Supporters:
Tony Fadell, Donal Botkin, Jeff Straathof, Zach Mueller, Ron Neal, Nathan Hansen

I first saw a Schlieren imaging setup around ten years ago in Melbourne. I was immediately fascinated by the way I could see the warm air coming off my hand. I hadn’t expected the currents to be moving that fast or to be so visible. This was a tricky setup to get right because alignment is very important and here I’m just working with what I had lying around the house mostly (plus the mirror). For the best Schlieren photography, making sure the mirror is stable is essential. I want to improve my setup so the mirror doesn’t wobble back and forth too much creating the pulsing light and dark sections of this video.

The relationship between index of refraction of air and temperature, pressure, humidity and wavelength is complicated. This website will calculate it for you: http://emtoolbox.nist.gov/Wavelength/Ciddor.asp

Slow motion by Hollywood Special Ops: http://www.hollywoodspecialops.com

Sound Effects by A Shell in the Pit: http://www.ashellinthepit.com

Filmed by Raquel Nuno
Special thanks to Blake Nichols for assistance

Is Your Cat Talking To You?

Watch this Simon’s Cat Logic episode to find out how cats communicate using body language.

Simon’s Cat Logic is a fun new series where we speak to a Cat Behaviour Expert at Cats Protection (http://www.cats.org.uk) about why cats do the silly things they do, and how we can help our cats lead happy and healthy lives.

SUBTITLES AVAILABLE IN: English, German, Italian, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian, French.

‘SIMON’S CAT LOGIC’ CREDITS:
Directed by: Chris Gavin
Producer: Emma Burch
Cat Expert: Nicky Trevorrow
Animation & Graphics: Simon Tofield
Assistant Art Director: Liza Nechaeva
Production Manager: Rebecca Warner-Perry
Associate Producer: Edwin Eckford
Music: Russell Pay
Translations: http://www.Tomedes.com

Cat Man Do Credits:
Directed by: Simon Tofield
Sound: Shrooty

Have you visited the official Simon’s Cat website?
Official Website: http://www.simonscat.com

Stay connected with Simon’s Cat on your favourite websites:
Facebook: http://facebook.com/simonscat
Google+: http://plus.google.com/+SimonsCat
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonsCat
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simonscatof…
Tumblr: http://simonscat.tumblr.com/
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/simonscat

Want to see more of our Black & White films? 
Check out our play list here: http://www.goo.gl/FkqgHw

Want to know more about the history of Simon’s Cat?
Watch the Simon’s Cat Story here – http://goo.gl/Vfx2JS 

FAQs:

Q. Why isn’t ‘Off to the Vet’ available in full on YouTube?
A. ‘Off to the Vet’ film production and crowdfunding campaign was a huge undertaking for the Simon’s Cat Team. Our hope is to produce more long form, full colour content for our fans but without having to turn to them through crowdfunding again. The film was completed in 2015 and submitted it to a selection of international film festivals over the following months. During this time it was exclusively available to all funders that contributed via our private production blog. The feedback we have received from our funders has been overwhelming positive and we hope they are extremely proud of making the film a possibility. If you are a funder and have any questions regarding the campaign please contact us at igg@simonscat.com

Q. What software do you use?
A. Simon’s Cat is made using Adobe Flash / TV Paint animation software.

Q. Why does it take so long to make each Simon’s Cat film?
A. Even though the films are made on computer software, they are still hand-animated in a traditional manner, frame to frame. It usually takes between 12 and 25 drawings to create 1 second of a Simon’s Cat film.

Q. Where can I buy Simon’s Cat merchandise?
A. You can purchase Simon’s Cat products from the official web shop: http://www.simonscat.com/Shop