DreamWorks Animation SKG Develops
a Stereoscopic Pipeline with Maya for
Monster vs. Aliens.
DreamWorks Animation SKG is devoted to producing
high-quality family entertainment with the use of
computer-generated (CG) animation. Overseen by CEO
Jeffrey atzenberg, the studio’s vision is to
create immersive experiences for audiences and
tell the best stories possible through technical
and artistic innovation. DreamWorks Animation
became the first animation studio to produce and
distribute two CG animated features in a single
year (2004), including Shrek 2, the fourth highest
domestic grossing movie of all time. Considering that
it takes on average four years to make an animated
feature film—and that DreamWorks Animation
has committed to producing all of their projects in
stereoscopic 3D starting in 2009—the studio has
been evaluating the best methods and products
required to add a new dimension to their animation.
The Setup
Mr. Katzenberg has been an early advocate of
stereoscopy and the potential it represents for
animation. Monsters vs. Aliens, DreamWorks
Animation’s first feature film produced entirely in
3D, is slated for a domestic release date of March
27, 2009. In order to fully exploit the creative
potential of the stereoscopic palette, however, the
company’s artistic and technical teams needed
to determine the range of stereoscopic 3D tools
required to author films in 3D. Consequently, DWA
has developed a whole new pipeline around
stereoscopic films, with Autodesk® Maya® software
playing a prominent role. The studio collaborated
with Autodesk to develop a camera module for
Maya that will be used on Monsters vs. Aliens.
“Having come over from Disney, I arrived at
DreamWorks Animation roughly fourteen months
ago and right away I was presented with the idea
of authoring in 3D—which is entirely different
than doing 3D as a post process after a film has
been created,” says Phil McNally, Global Stereo
Supervisor for Kung Fu Panda. “Understanding what
3D authoring means to storytelling is a priority
with Jeffrey [Katzenberg], so he wanted us to take
the most challenging sequence we could find from
Kung Fu Panda and re-author it in stereo. We chose
to utilize the Tai Lung escape sequence as that test.
In its original form, it tested all of the conventional
wisdom around stereoscopic 3D. Since the film was
already in production using in-house software, we
had to brute-force it a bit to get the job done, which
we wouldn’t have had to do with our current Maya
setup. We literally had to go back to the drawing
board and re-invent how it would have turned out,
with our current knowledge, had it been authored
in 3D. Then we made comparisons between the two
versions to determine what tools we were going to
need for future projects like Monsters vs. Aliens.”
3D is one of the most powerful effects in cinema,
but, until recently, its storytelling benefits have been
tangibly minimized by film makers who have relegated
the technology to visual gimmicks. McNally looks
forward to the day when he can work on a 3D film and
the poster created to market it doesn’t include “In 3D!”
“With the arrival of digital cinema, we’ve been able to
overcome the technical hurdles that have historically
been problematic with 3D, confining its use to gags,”
he elaborates. “Going forward, the strongest use of
3D will be the engagement between the audience and
the character(s), as well as the world they’re in. 3D will
support and enhance the story rather than override it,
so the viewer will emerge from the theater feeling that
they were more in that world, which can’t be achieved
with any other media. Ultimately, stereoscopy will
become so familiar to audiences that 2D films will seem
to them how black and white films seem to us now—in
essence, a crucial element, or dimension, is lacking.”
The Challenge: Seeing the Whole Picture
“With stereo, size matters,” McNally explains. “When
you judge stereo on a standard monitor, you’re going
to get a reduced effect. Then, when you go to a 40-foot
screen, let alone IMAX® screens, the stereo effect
expands and literally scales up to the screen size. Keep
in mind the human eye can only process so much so
quickly. So artists must develop an understanding of
how their work translates to a big screen, and learn how
achieve the desired balance. Maya saves us a lot of time
in this regard. We can develop more tools within the
Maya interface, allowing us to accurately measure the
three-dimensional changes we’re making. Something
that is vital to 3D authoring is being able to see what
you’re doing—being able to see in 3D while the artist
is setting up the camera shot is essential—and we can
only do that in Maya.”
He continues, “We’ve developed tools in Maya that
allow us to measure distances in a scene and translate
them into pixel separation, which is how the stereo
effect is created in the theater. Once the animation
has been created, it’s like having actors re-perform the
shot exactly, over and over again, as we experiment
with the camera and stereo settings. We can re-shoot
scenes in a way you could never manage with live
action, and we can control the cameras because,
at the end of the day, they’re purely mathematical
coordinates. Once we’re satisfied with the camera
movements, we can use the environment of our shot
to determine data on distances—what I call ‘stereo
volume’—and relay them to the artist.”
“Stereo is not a separate thing from ‘camera’ so 3D film
making is camera work,” McNally emphasizes. “When
looking at a shot, you have to decide how to balance
the lens you’re using with camera movement(s) and set
the appropriate stereo parameters…in other words, the
stereo ‘rig’ or the combination of two cameras. In Maya
we’re able to create a stereo rig that has parameters
set specifically for the character, and a different one for
the background or other objects in the scene to ensure
a comfortable setting. This helps us accommodate
a director who really wants a long-lens (50 or 70 mm)
composition without compromising the volume, or
the juxtaposition of roundness and flatness, of the
character. Maya enables us to keep track of all the
pertinent variables like the nearest object, the farthest
object, relative distances, and helps us determine
whether they are within the stereo parameters we’ve
decided are comfortable for the audience. All of this
data can then be fed back to the artist so they know
what to change to get the desired shot.”
The Result
With such vision and determination with regard to 3D
authoring, one can’t help but anticipate DreamWorks
Animation’s future applications of stereoscopic
content created with Maya. Says McNally, “We need
to transition from conceiving, creating, and projecting
in 2D to being accustomed to doing them all in 3D. We
need to develop ideas in a three-dimensional context
with our stereo camera, and the fastest place we’ve
found to do this is in Maya. Also, authoring in S3D is
something you need to keep in mind throughout the
production pipeline, through compositing, editorial,
and grading. You cannot solve all issues in one place.
Autodesk has taken a holistic approach with tools for
all these purposes, and I am glad we are collaborating
further to enhance the stereoscopic toolset”.
“For example, by using Maya at an early stage we can
conceive multiple approaches to a shot, try different
camera angles and pans, build virtual (and less
expensive) sets, determine the best spatial composition,
see ideas develop in front of us, render out shots to our
pipeline, run a full 3D sequence on our big screen, do
motion capture of camera data, move a virtual camera
around a virtual world in 3D—all on the fly. Apart from
that, Maya is rubbish!” he jokes, with a wink and what
could only be described as an animated laugh.
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