NEW
ORLEANS, SIGGRAPH, July 25 -- SGI and Lucas Digital Ltd. LLC, whose
divisions include Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Skywalker Sound,
today announced the third generation and continuation of the Joint Environment
for Digital Imaging (JEDI) alliance -- JEDI III.
Since
its inception in 1994, the JEDI and subsequent JEDI II and JEDI III
agreements have brought together resources from each company: SGI high-performance
computer and imaging technology and ILM effects and animation production
expertise.
These agreements resulted in a model production environment for state-of-the-art,
cost-effective digital imagery development for ILM projects, including
the recently released The Perfect Storm, as well as past visually-rich
films, Star Wars Episode I: "The Phantom Menace" and The Lost
World: Jurassic Park.
Utilizing
the latest SGI computer systems, the environment is being used at ILM's
San Rafael facility to host a broad spectrum of motion picture and commercial
production special effects activities from character animation to post-production
processes.
With the original JEDI agreement of 1994, ILM became one of SGI's largest
entertainment customers. This first JEDI production environment was
used both as a think tank and a model for how visual effects, animation
and other motion picture technologies might be accomplished.
The JEDI II and JEDI III environments leverage the result of earlier
research efforts. With the continuation of JEDI, SGI visual workstations
and servers continue to be ILM's UNIX platform for visual effects creation
and distribution.
"SGI has been our long-term partner in providing the most advanced
digital tools that allow us to consistently innovate and take visual
effects to the next level -- shaping the way digital filmmaking is done,"
said Jim Morris, president of Lucas Digital Ltd.
"As the result of our JEDI agreements over the past six years, ILM
continues to influence and challenge us early in the design cycle of
our products," said Greg Estes, vice president and general
manager, Telecommunications and Media Group, SGI. "ILM has been a
great partner in pushing us to make the impossible possible."
Visual effects created at ILM during the previous JEDI agreements have
already won industry recognition for technology leadership. Most recently,
ILM's contributions to the film, Star Wars: Episode I: "The Phantom
Menace" were recognized with an Oscar nomination for the best achievement
in visual effects category by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences. By harnessing Silicon Graphics O2 visual workstations to powerful
SGI Origin 2000 servers, ILM was able to create an astounding 2,000
visual effects shots combining 3D characters and environments, with
miniatures and live-action photography -- enough for 10 average-size
films -- in two years, on time and on budget.
According to ILM's Andy Hendrickson, director of Systems and
R&D, "Our complete production environment -- from desktop visual
computing to fileserving and rendering is currently built around the
SGI platform. We run large-scale SGI Origin systems and RAID arrays
under our file server backbone, allowing our character animators, compositors,
and everyone else to have access to every shot, every sequence, every
frame. The fileserving environment also serves our render farm, which
consists of upwards of 1,500 SGI processors. What's significant is that
during the creation of Star Wars: Episode I: 'The Phantom Menace,'
we were accessing the same SGI pipeline for several other projects,
including Wild Wild West and The Mummy."
"We are pleased to play such a pivotal role in ILM's success over
the years and are inspired by their creative vision," said Bob
Bishop, president and CEO of SGI. "The 140-foot waves shown in
The Perfect Storm were an incredible blend of science and entertainment
and raise the bar within the special effects industry."
This year, ILM will use SGI technology to deliver special effects in
many releases, including The Mummy Returns, Steven Spielberg's
A.I., Jurassic Park III and Pearl Harbor, that will
exhibit advanced digital imagery and digital production techniques resulting
from the JEDI III agreement.
The visual effects in this summer's blockbusters The Perfect Storm,
Space Cowboys and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
were created by ILM teams working with SGI workstations and servers.
The
Perfect Storm
The tides turned over the July 4 weekend, when ILM unleashed a
wet and wild digital Armageddon on the high seas in director Wolfgang
Petersen's The Perfect Storm, based on the real-life saga of
the fishing boat "Andrea Gail," which was caught in a deadly storm in
1991.
Petersen's visual effects supervisor was Stefen Fangmeier, who
was nominated for an Oscar for creating Twister's killer tornadoes.
But ILM's weatherman was reluctant to tackle The Perfect Storm,
and even less willing to reveal how the film's nemesis was created.
All Fangmeier would venture about creating those massive walls of water
was that ILM used SGI Origin 2000 servers to create something called
fluid dynamics, a sophisticated computer simulation of real-life phenomena.
But he's not reticent about discussing how complicated replicating Mother
Nature can be.
"Aside from the big rolling waves, we had to create the little 2-foot
and 3-foot waves that actually build on top of those 80-foot waves.
Then over that, all the white spray had to be simulated. We couldn't
just take static textures and slap them on our waves. Everything had
to move with the ocean, which made it very difficult."
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle
For The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, ILM used 3D
computer animation and Silicon Graphics Onyx2 systems to bring the beloved
Jay Ward moose and squirrel characters into the real world.
That distinction created some equal but opposite challenges for ILM
animators, headed by visual effects supervisor Roger Guyette
(Saving Private Ryan) and animation supervisor Dave Andrews
(Mars Attacks!), as they took the digital revolution into the
heart of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? territory for the first time.
But director Des MacAnuff had some very firm ideas of his own.
"Des was very keen on having ink lines around the characters, like
you'd see in traditional cel animation," Guyette recalls. "He
was also very enthusiastic about giving the characters more dimension
than a traditional animation cartoon would have, because Rocky and Bullwinkle
are reacting to the real world, but less than traditional CG characters."
Guyette and his ILM team eventually decided to take a 21/2D approach
to creating The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, which presented
some challenges since they were working with 3D CG models. They finally
realized that the key was all in the shading of their 3D models. Ultimately,
a complex series of custom-built shaders enabled ILM's animators to
create the 21/2D look they were after.
"We had to cue into things that made people feel like Rocky and Bullwinkle
were simple, shaded cartoons," Guyette says. "So, we had a huge
group of people just smoothing things out on our characters. It's an
interesting problem, but much more complicated than I ever imagined
it would be."
About ILM
Located in San Rafael, Calif., ILM is a division of Lucas Digital
Ltd. LLC, which also includes Skywalker Sound. Formed in 1993, Lucas
Digital Ltd. is dedicated to serving the digital needs of the entertainment
industry for visual effects, commercial production and audio post-production.
About SGI
SGI provides a broad range of high-performance computing and advanced
graphics solutions. SGI's entertainment, media and broadband Internet
solutions enable customers to expand their business in Media Commerce
-- transacting content over a vast range of networks. Headquartered
in Mountain View, Calif., with offices worldwide, the company is located
on the Web at http://www.sgi.com.
