Pixar's Renderman Among Winners of Academy's 73rd Scientific and Technical Awards

March 5, 2001, Beverly Hills, CA -- Pixar's Renderman was among the winners announced Saturday night as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the technical Oscars.

According to the Academy, Scientific and Technical Awards are given for devices, methods, formulas, discoveries or inventions of special and outstanding value to the arts and sciences of motion pictures and that also have a proven history of use in the motion picture industry. Awards may be granted in any of three classifications: Academy Award of Merit (Oscar statuette), for basic achievements that have a definite influence upon the advancement of the industry; Scientific and Engineering Award (Academy plaque), for those achievements that exhibit a high level of engineering and are important to the progress of the industry; and Technical Achievement Award (Academy certificate), for those accomplishments that contribute to the progress of the industry.

A complete list of Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical achievement for the year 2000 follows:

Academy Award of Merit (Oscar Statuette):

Rob Cook, Loren Carpenter and Ed Catmull for their significant advancements to the field of motion picture rendering as exemplified in Pixar's "Renderman." Their broad professional influence in the industry has inspired and continues to inspire and contribute to the advancement of computer-generated imagery for motion pictures.

Scientific and Engineering Awards (Academy Plaques):

To Alvah J. Miller and Paul Johnson of Lynx Robotics for the electronic and software design of the Lynx C-50 Camera Motor System. This camera motor, operated with programmable microprocessors, achieves an unprecedented range of precisely controlled speeds in stand-alone cameras or when sychronized to motion-control systems.

Al Mayer, Sr. and Al Mayer, Jr., for the mechanical design, Iain Neil for the optical design and Brian Dang for the electronic design of the Panavision Millennium XL Camera System. This camera brings the full uncompromised performance of larger heavy-duty cameras to the lightest weight category with ruggedness and advanced features previously expected only in specialized or effects cameras.

AKAI Digital for the design and development of the DD8plus digital audio dubber specifically designed for the motion picture industry.

Fairlight for the design and development of the DaD digital audio dubber specifically designed for the motion picture industry.

Advanced Digital Systems Group (ADSG) for the design and development of the Sony DADR 5000 digital audio dubber specifically designed for the motion picture industry.

Timeline, Incorporated for the design and development of the MMR 8 digital audio dubber specifically designed for the motion picture industry.

The Academy says the above four digital audio dubbers have afforded the post-production community a faster, more cost-effective means of playing back hundreds of digital audio tracks for pre-mixing or final mixing in creating motion picture sound tracks. They also offer individual track slipping in multiple track configurations, random access recall, and both destructive and non-destructive editing capabilities, eliminating the requirement for razor blade conforming.

Joe Wary, Gerald Painter and Colin F. Mossman for the design and development of the Deluxe Laboratories Multi Roller Film Transport System. This release print system at Deluxe Laboratories utilizes a revolutionary design allowing for higher print volumes, reduced space requirements for loop racks and elevators, and safer operation.

Technical Achievement Awards (Academy Certificates):

Vic Armstrong for the refinement and application to the film industry of the Fan Descender for accurately and safely arresting the descent of stunt persons in high freefalls. Considered a standard of the industry, the Fan Descender provides a means for significantly increasing the safety of very high stunt falls. The system permits falls to be made under controlled deceleration and with a highly predictable stopping point without limitation of camera angles.

Bill Tondreau of Kuper Systems, Alvah J. Miller and Paul Johnson of Lynx Robotics, and David Stump of Visual Effects Rental Services for the conception, design and development of data capture systems that enable superior accuracy, efficiency and economy in the creation of composite imagery. These systems digitally record live action camera and axis data with practically no impact on the live action production process, allowing compositing for visual effects to become faster and more cost-effective.

Leonard Pincus, Ashot Nalbandyan, George Johnson, Thomas Kong and David Pringle for the design and development of the Softsun low pressure xenon long-arc light sources, their power supplies and fixtures. With the ability to dim these very high-powered lights at essentially constant Kelvin temperature and without flicker, these units produce a bright and even light source for general set lighting. The availability of very high wattage units allows production to extend the hours of work past the time when the crew would otherwise have "lost the light."

Glenn M. Berggren for the concept, Horst Linge for research and development, and Wolfgang Reinecke for the optical design of the ISCO Ultra-Star Plus lenses for motion picture projection. The unique optical design of the Ultra-Star Plus projection lenses achieves unprecedented edge-to-edge uniformity of illumination, combined with a significant increase in screen brightness, thus providing a substantial improvement in the cinema viewing experience.

Udo Schauss, Hildegard Ebbesmeier and Karl Lenhardt for the optical design, and Ralf Linn and Norbert Brinker for the mechanical design of the Schneider Super Cinelux lenses for motion picture projection. These projection lenses provide a significant improvement in the quality of the cinema viewing experience.

Philip Greenstreet of Rosco Laboratories for the concept and development of the Roscolight Day/Night Backdrop. This unique photographic scenic backing allows a smooth transition from day to night views with a single backing. The Roscolight backings provide an important new creative tool to filmmakers, saving time, money and stage space.

Venkat Krishnamurthy for the creation of the Paraform Software for 3D Digital Form Development. This system streamlines the creation of 3D computer graphics models by allowing artists to convert the data from automatically scanned physical models into a user-specified configuration of patches well suited for use in computer applications.

George Borshukov, Kim Libreri and Dan Piponi for the development of a system for image-based rendering allowing choreographed camera movements through computer graphic reconstructed sets. This component of the Manex Visual Effects Virtual Cinematography System provides theatrical-quality virtual settings.

John P. Pytlak for the development of the Laboratory Aim Density (LAD) system. The LAD system has become the standard method used by film laboratories and digital film recording facilities for the efficient and uniform control of color and exposure in camera negatives, interpositives and duplicate negatives.

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SIGGRAPH 2001 Registration Opens

Los Angeles, CA -- Online registration for attendance and housing is now open for August's SIGGRAPH 2001, the animation and visual effects industry convention that takes place this year in Los Angeles.

To make reservations and to find out about programs and events at the show, go to www.siggraph.org/s2001. A record number of 54 courses is offered for SIGGRAPH 2001, including for the first time some that begin at 10 a.m. on Sunday (August 12).

SIGGRAPH 2001 is also providing wireless ethernet links in limited areas of the Los Angeles Convention Center. If you want to use the wireless links, bring your wireless PC card (802.11b) and register your interest at www.siggraph.org/s2001/techsurvey.

To contact show management, call or write: SIGGRAPH 2001 Conference Management 401 North Michigan Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60611 USA. Phone: +1.312.321.6830, Fax: +1.312.321.6876.

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Animated Short Series "Figures of Speech" Ready for PBS

Animators Bob Sabiston and Tommy Pallotta have completed "Figures of Speech," a series of digitally animated interviews that focus on how human gesture, facial expression and body movements combine to communicate personality.

Created for public television, "Figures of Speech," will be broadcast as individual shorts and as a 30-minute compilation program. Also, a new web site launched by the Independent Television Service (ITVS) at www.itvs.org/figuresofspeech offers QuickTime previews of several of the spots.

Bringing together animation as a visual art with verité style documentary, these playful spots capture the spirit of everyday people across America. The dynamic animation captures the spirit of those people who were randomly interviewed by emphasizing their unique facial impressions and vocal intonations. The animation process used software invented by Sabiston which allows artists to paint over the digital footage using a technique called interpolated rotoscoping. Individual brushstrokes are stretched smoothly across a range of frames, giving the animation a unique look.

Sabiston and Pallotta recently collaborated on Richard Linklater's A Waking Life, which garnered critical acclaim at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival.

The animation team included painters, illustrators, comic artists, muralists, musicians, designers, 3D modelers and traditionally trained animators. Their style consists of various re-imagined scenes drawn into cartoon style, a technique that is unlike that of other animation.

"Traditional animation is locked into a particular 'character design' forcing the artist to conform to a predetermined style," Sabiston explains.

About the Producers Originally from Houston, Texas, Tommy Pallotta moved to Austin and graduated with a degree in Philosophy. Since his first feature film, The High Road, Pallotta has worked exclusively in video and digital formats, producing the award-winning shorts Roadhead and Snack and Drink. He collaborated with Sabiston and director Richard Linklater on the acclaimed feature film Waking Life, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. Pallotta is co-founder with Linklater of the Conduit Digital Festival. Bob Sabiston studied at MIT Media Laboratory, receiving a bachelor of science and a masters degree in computer graphics research. Both visual arts and computer programming figure prominently in his short films including God's Little Monkey, Roadhead and Snack and Drink. His films have appeared in numerous festivals and have received several awards, including Austria's 1996 Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for God's Little Monkey. Sabiston collaborated with Pallotta and director Richard Linklater on the acclaimed feature film Waking Life, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. A media arts curator and television producer since 1978, Executive Producer Neil Sieling has kept a constant focus on building crucial links between artists from many disciplines and larger audiences through cinemas, museums and television. He has most recently been the Executive Producer of Alive-TV (formerly Alive From Off Center), the experimental arts/television showcase on PBS. He is currently working as a consultant for several organizations in the areas of designing larger media delivery systems and creating new production prototypes. Sieling recently helped launch WorldLink TV, a new public channel in the United States on the DBS platform with an accompanying Web-based supersite.

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Tuesday, March 6, 2001

Cinesite Produces 134 Shots for Drew Carey Show
Los Angeles, CA, March 6, 2001 -- Cinesite, Inc., recently brought cutting-edge visual effects technology to an unusual arena: television situation comedy. The effects house worked on 134 shots for two important February sweeps episodes of the popular ABC comedy series The Drew Carey Show.

Visual Effects Supervisor Jeff Okun and Cinesite Producer Mike Sullo oversaw the project for the comedy series creators' Drew Carey and Bruce Helford. The shots were composites of a variety of elements including 35 mm film and videotape.

"We had very little time to pull off some sophisticated tricks," says Okun, "but I knew they could impart a sense of wonder to the material. Anybody can knock out shots, but you need that sense of wonder to make it work."

The first episode that incorporated Cinesite visual effects aired Wednesday, February 7, and featured Drew Carey in a coma. In the opening of the show, he dreams he's flying over the city of Cleveland. Later, in his own imaginary version of heaven, he steps through a door into a famous football game and breaks up a John Elway pass that sends his beloved Cleveland Browns to the Super Bowl. Back in his heavenly living room, a giant needle begins chasing him around the set. It is reflecting what is happening in reality, where a doctor is injecting him to rouse him from the coma. Carey's imaginary heaven is "peeled" off the screen in chunks and he finds himself in a star field with comedian Ben Stein. There he must decide whether to live, or die and go to heaven.

These sequences required green screen work on the set at Warner Bros., and a trip to Cleveland for background plates. When the elements arrived at Cinesite, they were in a variety of formats. The film material was scanned into digital files using the Philips Spirit DataCine. When necessary, video elements were converted to 24 frames per second for digital compositing.

"The Spirit was crucial because we needed depth and resolution in order to manipulate colors and contrast for matching the elements," says Sullo. "For the shots of Drew that were composited with the football footage, we had to take the resolution down a little to match the archival video footage."

The "reality tearing away" sequence required some design work to determine a visual approach that worked within the scene. Ken Sjogren and Renee Chamblin were the digital artists rendering images with Flame software on this and other sequences. Tim Zils was the composite supervisor.

The February 14 episode of The Drew Carey Show also included Cinesite's state-of-the-art effects. In this episode, Carey and other heaven-bound humans rise up in recliner-like clouds, while a stream of new babies head down towards earth in the other half of the frame. These shots feature as many as 10 layers and the backgrounds required a good deal of tweaking to get the right depth and motion. At 24 frames per second, the sequences ended up being about 6,000 frames. All the sequences were converted back to 30 frames per second in digital video format for editing and eventual broadcast.

"We were working at much lower resolution than usual," says Sullo, "and that allowed us to render images much faster, which was important because we were working on a very tight television schedule."

"There is a level of chaos in the television realm," says Okun, who is noted for feature film effects. "They're editing right up to the last minute with 60 or 70 shots per episode and these shows must have set some kind of record for effects shots in a half-hour sitcom. But, we were able to maintain fluidity and roll with the changes and that was crucial to the success of this project."

Produced by Mohawk Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television, The Drew Carey Show airs Wednesday' from 9-9:30pm PT/ET and is executive produced by Bruce Helford, Drew Carey, Robert Borden (episodes 1-13), Holly Hester (episodes 14-26) and Deborah Oppenheimer, and created by Drew Carey and Bruce Helford.

Cinesite is a Kodak subsidiary and part of the company's Entertainment Imaging division. With facilities in Hollywood and London, Cinesite provides a wide range of visual and physical effects, digital film mastering, digital film restoration and preservation services. The Cinesite website is www.cinesite.com.

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Wednesday, March 7, 2001

Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony Execs at E3 Panel
Los Angeles, CA, March 7, 2001 -- If it's happening in video games, it's a pretty fair bet it's going to be discussed during a keynote panel that includes the top executives of Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony Computer Entertainment at the E3Expo in May.

Panelists Robert J. Bach, senior vice president, games division and chief Xbox officer (CXO), Microsoft Corp., Peter T. Main, executive vice president, sales and marketing, Nintendo of America Inc., and Kazuo Hirai, president and chief operating officer, Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., will discuss the current state and future of video games.

Their keynote panel is scheduled for 9 a.m. Thursday, May 17 in West Hall room 515 of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Access is available to registered show attendees and media on a first-come, first-served basis. Open only to industry professionals, E3Expo 2001 exhibits will run May 17-19, with conferences and workshops scheduled for May 16-18.

General registration for E3Expo 2001 is available online at www.e3expo.com or by calling (877) 216-6263.

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Thursday, March 8, 2001

"Disney's Teamo Supremo" to Premiere This Fall on ABC

Burbank, CA, March 8, 2001 -- A new series from Walt Disney Television Animation, "Disney's Teamo Supremo," premieres this Fall as part of "Disney's One Saturday Morning" lineup on the ABC Television Network.

The announcement was made today by Barry Blumberg, executive vice president, Walt Disney Television Animation, and Jonathan Barzilay, senior vice president and general manager, ABC Children's Programming.

"Teamo Supremo" follows the adventures of a quirky triumvirate of superheroes: Captain Crandall, Rope Girl and Skate Lad, a group sworn to protect their state from the forces of evil ... and still finish all of their homework. "With its unique visual look and non-stop action, adventure and comedy, 'Teamo Supremo' is a must-see for kids and animation fans alike," said Blumberg.

Executive Producer Phil Walsh was most recently co-producer and story editor on the popular "Disney's Recess." Walsh broke into comedy writing by penning "letters to the editor" for National Lampoon magazine before finding his niche in television as a writer for Fox's "The Late Show," "The Arsenio Hall Show" and ABC's "Into the Night." A graduate of Williams College, Walsh made his foray into children's programming as a writer on the initial 65 episodes of the award-winning "Beakman's World."

Walsh and "Teamo" Director Joe Horne have based their "retro-futuristic" series on the bright, colorful themes of the mid-1960s, the comic book style of the live-action "Batman and Green Hornet" television series and the architectural concepts popularized at the 1964 World's Fair.

An honors graduate of the School of Visual Arts (New York) and the Walt Disney Animation Internship Program, Horne has created, directed and/or produced a vast array of animated properties, including MTV's first-ever animated serial, "The Adventures of Stevie & Zoya"; MTV's "The Specialists" (for "Liquid Television"); "Famile Esperanto" for MTV Europe; the Spanish Language cartoon series, "El Hombre" for "PeeWee's Playhouse"; Walt Disney Television Animation's "Jungle Cubs" and "Timon and Pumbaa"; and Universal/Harvey's "Baby Huey." He has also collaborated on music videos for various artists including Peter Gabriel and The Beastie Boys. He has a long legacy of expertise in both character design and storyboarding for numerous animation studios.

Spencer Breslin ("Disney's The Kid") voices the featured role of "Teamo Supremo" leader "Crandall"/"Captain Crandall," an enthusiastic blend of ultra-intelligence, cunning instincts and unbound heart. Alana Ubach provides the voices of the remaining two-thirds of the gang: "Hector"/"Skate Lad," a Han Solo-esque rogue with X-treme skateboard talents; and "Brenda"/"Rope Girl," a uniquely balanced kid with unparalleled jump rope-wielding capabilities.

The main cast includes the "Fernwood Tonight" team of Martin Mull and Fred Willard as the supportive "Governor Kevin" and the gadget-inventing "Paulsen," respectively, as well as Julia Sweeney, Brian Doyle Murray, Rachel Crane, Sydney Walsh and Jeff Glen Bennett. To date, celebrity guest voices have filled the vast majority of villainous roles, including Mark Hamill, Tim Curry, Ed Asner, Jim Belushi, Wendie Malick, Michael McKean, Michael J. Pollard and Joe Flaherty. Several episodes remain to be cast of the initial 13-episode order.

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3D Scanning Produces Game Characters with Real Faces in SCE's "The Getaway"

London, U.K., March 8, 2001 -- Computer games have become the vehicle for bringing realistic 3D graphics to the masses. This Christmas, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) plans to show just how far this technology has come with The Getaway, a new PlayStation2 action game.

Taking advantage of the graphics power of the PlayStation2 combined with live actors, motion-capture technology, and a unique 3D scanning system by Eyetronics Inc. (Leuven, Belgium), Sony developers have created perhaps the most realistic game to date.

"We wanted to create a world so real that players will feel like they're in a movie, from the constantly changing scenery to the emotions the characters will bring," says Gavin Moore, SCEE senior animator. "With a movie, for instance, you like some characters and you hate others. We wanted to get that kind of emotion from the player. And in order to do that, everything must be as realistic as is imaginably possible."

According to Moore, the production resembles that of Guy Ritchie's popular cult film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. Developers have created "a living, breathing London" in which players interactively wander around the underbelly of the city. Developers recreated more than 31 square miles of London by taking digital photographs of every building, then modeling them and creating the textures for the game.

Within this scenery, players have the option to be a former professional bank-robber who is pulled back into a life of crime to save his son from a mob boss, or an embittered police detective who has an old score to settle. Players will be able to interactively explore the city on foot or by car, entering and exiting buildings. The player can steal a car and get into a high-speed chase with police through the city. If anything is damaged during the chase, the game's evolving environmental structure will show that area cordoned off for repair the next time the player passes by.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the realism is the characters themselves, whether in the starring role or just a bystander on the street. The character list is complete with pedestrians, drivers and work crews minding their own business as the main characters battle each other. The characters' faces and actions appear as in real life, complete with blinking, breathing and emotional expressions.

"You have to have the proper realism to fully project emotions," says Moore. "I want the player to be able to see the expression on that character's face and to empathize with him. You can't do this by hand. You could never be that accurate."

SCEE developers achieved that accuracy by digitally recreating real actors and their clothing. The Eyetronics ShapeSnatcher Suite 3.0 system allowed SCEE to digitally recreate the actors' faces, and real-time motion capture put the finishing touches on the characters' movements.

The first step in the character development process was to scan the live actors' faces and costumes using the Eyetronics system. ShapeSnatcher uses a specially etched slide containing a grid that is projected on an actor's face with a standard high-resolution slide projector. The grid lines are used to calculate the 3D structure of the head. A standard digital camera is used to photograph different angles of the actor's head.

SCEE developers then look at the images in relation to the calibration to ensure that there are no holes or distortions. Images are then stitched together in Eyetronics' ShapeMatcher program to complete the realistic 3D model of the actor's face.

"With a normal scanner the file comes out as a huge polygonal model that is basically useless for game rendering," Moore says. "Eyetronics' mapping tools allow the creation of a cylindrical texture map that reduces the polygon count without losing any of the integrity of the file.''

Once the 3D images are completed in the Eyetronics system, they are imported into SCEE's in-house animation program, which contains a model of a generic human head.

"We morph that base head into the shape of the Eyetronics scanned head, so that at the end of the day it gives us the actor's authentic face with the correct polygon count," says Moore. "All of our characters use the same animation system called Talking Heads, but they all look different because of the Eyetronics scans of the actors and their costumes."

Character files are then transferred to Alias|Wavefront's Maya 3D animation software for final rendering. Actors' motions are captured with an Ascension motion tracker and brought into Kaydara Filmbox, a software program that integrates the motion data with the 3D characters for real-time display.

SCEE developers were able to use the Eyetronics system to scan three or four people and all of their clothing in one day. Characters were completed in Maya and ready to be integrated into the motion-capture process and dropped into the game.

"The perfect thing for us is that we can set this [the Eyetronics system] up anywhere for anyone we like," says Moore. "We don't have to buy an expensive scanning system that creates files that are too big and have too many holes. This system creates the texture map and applies it to the file automatically. It eliminates a lot of the hassle that used to come with character development in the past."