Welcome to my production related Q & A page.

Have you ever wondered what its like to work on an all computer generated TV show?  Have you ever asked yourself, "How'd they do that?"  Or,  why they did something in a certain way?  Well then, you've come to the right place!

Below, is a collection of letters and other inquiries I've received about the type of stuff one runs into during production of a TV series.  If these spark some questions you might have, please send them in to me, using the e-mail icon at the bottom of this page.  I'll be happy to try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. 

Remember: I reserve the right to edit any correspondence, for clarity, conciseness, or grammatical reasons.

From: "Scott P. Nigel"
To: [email protected]

I just watched the "Episode 1: Freefall; Shot Number Unavailable" mpeg and loved
the splash(explosion) of light on the ground and how it brought the colors of
the ground surface out more.  Also the different hues (lavender the orange) of
the fireball itself.  Is the explosion a pi or clip?  Anyway good job!

Scott

A:

Thanks!

Foundation uses a variety of ways to make explosions.  The techniques used
depend on the needs of the specific shot. But generally, most trooper
explosions are 2D elements mapped onto polys.  The "Pyro" and "Artbeats"
collections are prevalently used.  Sometimes, AE or other 2D image
generation / manipulation programs are used.  When a shot can't be done
using a 2D cheat (say the camera moves in such a way that you can't hide
the fact that its not a volumetric effect), everything from particle
systems, displacement maps, and hypervoxels are used.

As to lighting: Pluto in general, was very under lit, as per Sony's
request that it have an "Aliens" feel to it.  Episodes of Roughnecks
that occurred in exotic places such as Tophet, where the Troopers meet
General T'phai, are very bright indeed.  The flair was left on the
ground as a fast and easy way to fake having some residue left from the
Tanker bug spit.  The generally mono-chromatic Pluto landscape (I think
IFW was used to surface most of Pluto) picked up the warm colors of the
explosion light, and helped tie the 2D pyro element into the shot.

From: lance 
To: Rowsby <[email protected]>

<After seeing stills of the polar bear model>

Wow...-very- cool!  How would you manage to move the individual hairs?  For
instance, as the bear moves and you have the dynamic of both the stretching of
the skin and the actual flexing of individual follicles, how do you control
this?  Hair/fur is such a subtle thing--would you just leave it a passive
movement, as when the skin flexes?  And if so, would the hair be moving in
essentially two dimensions (surface direction, as in when a character smiles
and you have the fur around the mouth follow the dimple) or three (such as at
the point of the elbow, when the arm flexes)?

Keen stuff!  And I apologize in advance if my questions make no sense...

Lance

A:

Hey Lex,

The fur software I use naturally deforms with bone movements or morph targets.

Take a look at an example:  PolarBear.mov .  This was done using facial targets I
modeled.  As you can see, the fur follows the changing surface of the underlying mesh
quite well.

Much of this motion is not directly controlled, and the problem with these methods is that
the software will not currently create secondary motion (unless its object based).  With
short fur, there isn't really much noticeable movement with it, but the lack of it on long hair is
much more pronounced. One can, however, fake it with wind effectors.  Long hair dynamics
are still best left to plugins such as Motion Designer, to do proper dynamic simulation.

In the near future, expect to see an updated version of Sasquatch that can do its own
dynamics using bones as a basis for secondary fur/ hair motion.

From: Robert McCord
To: [email protected]

Dear Rowsby,
Let me be the first to send you a feedback email....although maybe I'm
not the first, its just that you haven't put any up yet.  Anyhoo, what
I'm wondering is this: do you ever deal with the actors who do the
voices of Max Steel, etc?  Do you have to work with them to sync up
the lip movements and dialog?  Just how does this work?

--Curiously, Robert

A:

Howdy Robert.

It may be a shock, but you're not actually the first to send me a Q for my
Q&A section. But, you are certainly one of the early ones to do so.   ;)

The only way we "deal" with any of the voice talent, is on videotape from Sony.
All the stuff is canned by the time we get it, and it's then digitized
into a rough cut, with the story boards onscreen as a guide.  We use this
"animatic" for timing purposes, camera framing, ect.  It's also where I
get the audio to do lip sync for the characters in my shots.

Lip movements are basically a series of morph targets that can be blended
into more complex facial expressions.  Using this basic library of targets
for each character and their audio track from the animatic, the animator
can either make a dope sheet, or use a proprietary video system to capture
themselves lip-reading the lines they need to animate.  I myself, prefer
to use the traditional dope sheet, since I know exactly where each sound
or syllable starts and stops one each frame.  This information is then manually 
entered into the computer, for each shot.

And in case you were wondering, we animate everything for shows like Troopers or
Steel, at 24 fps, as it gives a more film-like feel to the show, and also cuts down
on rendering overhead (6 less frames for each second of animation).

I hope that answers your questions.