VISUAL FX TEAM MEMBER: A ONE ANIMATOR ARMY

by Eric Morata
(contributing writer)

Year 2000 was upon us and I was in charge of a new animation for the AUDI logotype. Our new studio head charged into the office and yelled, "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT LETTER?!" He was overseeing the creative process of electronic billboard animations for some of the biggest advertisers in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Suddenly, he was unplugging the main server. I looked around, asking "what's going on?" A co-worker informed me that a petition to remove him from his job was signed by everybody in the office and forwarded to the division’s branch leader. Unfortunately, the guy couldn't be removed because he was a close friend of the boss and while everybody was instantly afraid of loosing their jobs in this moment, I spoke up and said "Finally, an excuse to get the hell out of here!"

I’d been animating billboards there for four years and wanted to develop video games and had already developed some prototypes. The office politics suddenly made me realize I needed to leave the company and start my own business. I filed my resignation letter and was going to use the money due for my services to make my entry into the videogame market. Yes, I was finally on the road to personal fortunes – or at least that was the plan. I would pretty much still be a CG animator but now for my own clients.

2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004... The years passed and problems piled up. I frequently would lose data, equipment and software quickly became obsolete, new technologies and problems of all kinds plagued the road I saw paved with gold. I found myself drifting into 2D art and CG animation studies. I didn't even have internet access until three years ago, when things finally started to speed up. I gave up numerous times, but always re-involved myself with drama schools, cinema-college, and a decadent magazine publisher – none of those enterprises bore the fruits I was looking for. I was also becoming regretful for straying so far from the path I’d set for completing gaming prototypes that could have been worthy at the time. As a Otaku, which is a Japanese animation fan, I desperately wanted to develop a system for game creation that would be as simple and flexible as writing a book, just like the ones the Japanese had (or SUPPOSEDLY had, as I've been told) – if there are so many independent filmmakers, comic artists and writers, then why not independent game developers? That was my reasoning and that is what inspired my goals.

I tested tools over tools over more tools – Multimedia Fusion, Torque Game Engine, 3D Gamestudio, Unreal Engine, Reality Engine... even toy solutions like RPG Maker, and all just so I could absorb first hand all of the possibilities. Only 3D Gamestudio sort of sustained what I was aiming for. It turned out that the toy engine was actually a very flexible ruby language compiler that could be expanded to support large 2D animations of characters, battlers, monsters, effects, scenarios, and even full-screen animations, with some tweaks, of course. But even so, a toy is a toy, and even if I placed a nice story with animated graphics and a retro-feel of the 'Game Boy Advanced' type to the game, I couldn't hope to sell the stuff if I wanted to be taken seriously in the industry. That was my dilemma.

So how did I get involved with THE VILLIKON CHRONICLES and why? Somehow, I wasn't so sure that 2D gaming could be a failure. Most people who were badmouthing it didn't play the classic RPGS, the NES Secret of Mana, or Treasure Hunter from Square and so forth. I was in the thralls of finishing the 2D project and while developing the animations for the prototype, a friend of mine introduced me to the THE VILLIKON CHRONICLES project, a sci-fi movie in need of alien monsters, vampire zombies, spaceships, armored soldiers, Horned Giants and Dragon Snakes.

When I first looked over the project I thought, "this is going to be VERY time consuming, if anything!"- I knew that my games would be on severe hold if I accepted the challenge of making hi-resolution, reality-complex sci-fi CG monsters for the production. But the most complex model I worked on before Villikon was the first monster race of the aforementioned 2D game, "The Ratman," which took quite a bit of time and effort to create. Since most of my models had always been cute anime 3D girls and the like, nothing with the complexity required of a film production had challenged my skills. I reasoned somehow that making CG effects for an American state-of-the-art production would give me confidence and a more robust portfolio. The movie had everything a CG artist could wish for – monsters, spaceships, etc., and if the potential of the film lived up to a real paying franchise job on a CG high-end production afterwards, even better! Remember, my ultimate goal is still having the financial resources to boost my gaming project efforts. Needless to say, I placed my game projects on hold and decided to fully commit to Villikon, starting with the Dirt Whale model as a way to contribute and show my skills.

The Villikon Challenge!

Defining myself as more of an organic CG modeler, Bryan asked me for my concept of Itasca's most common creature dweller: the Dirt Whale. At first, all I had to work from were a few small resolution images from the internet site, which made me resort to guessing what the creature looked like in its unseen parts. As always, I started with a draft concept of the model. After some work, the beast was ready and sent for approval. Bryan then sent me a brief description of the creature's habits and characteristics for a more accurate fine-tuning of its look. I simply began modeling from my drafted character designs in surface techniques until I perfected a base shape, then I looked all over the internet for a skin that could match what I was seeing in the picture. I decided to go after the stretched skin of an elephant's nose, which I didn't find – instead, I found various image sources, including a totally rolled up nose, which I had to stretch by hand in Photoshop to create the texture. Finally, the skin was ready to use.

The tedious touch-ups in the image would have to be added inside the 3D application since the monster was going to be animated, and you can't image-process 583 frames of animation to correct mesh mistakes. The creature had to be fully fine-tuned. Later, I was asked to make a more spiked and saber-toothed version, just like the creatures in the graphic novels. My work on the Dirt Whale solidified my involvement. I was in and modeling for the big sci-fi project from Bryan Kinnaird.

My initial contact with the team was made via E-mail. I never even saw Bryan, Roy Young or Dayan Paul until I received the link for the E-Zines, which contained pictures. It was when I typed "Villikon Chronicles" in WIKIPEDIA that I found out about Cara Fawn and all other details involving Villikon's behind-the-scenes stories – I knew that the project was professional and had real actors, but no bigger insight than that. Finding out about Vivid's ex-porn star being one of the project's main characters made me wary at first, but I thought: "Actually... any sci-fi movie with a good story and cool CG effects could be starring CICCIOLINA and people wouldn't mind..." Well, Traci Lords did appear in the first BLADE movie, and also in the Wing Commander video game. I realized my responsibility: If I produced cheap CG, the quality of this movie would be seriously compromised along with the portfolios of everybody else. My career, at the very least, was at stake.

The second model to be created was the Sentinel Soldier – plate by plate. The biggest challenge was to create a model that looked like an actor dressed in the suit and didn't look like a CG doll. Bryan and Roy sent me several pictures and videos of the actors dressing themselves as Sentinels, but nothing I could use as I wanted (for DIRECT TEXTURE EXTRACTION), which really complicated things. The biggest problem posed was the Sentinel skirt: the costume piece was fabric covered with static plating linked into each other, a true nightmare to be simulated by ANY software. Fire, smoke, lightning, giant walking whales... those are no problems, but simple stuff that needs to look real, like chained links over deforming surfaces, usually don't go too well. The problem was solved by turning off the cloth simulation and piling up deformers to make it look more like cloth garmenting with chained plates, while in other scenes I simply deleted the skirt chains and left the cloth deformer alone.

Another hair-pulling assignment was making MORE than one soldier in the scene – normally, people just make separate animations with only one soldier and compose everything later, but not only was I using ALL models in the same rendered scene (including several Dirt Whales) for realistic shadows and reflective caustic compositions, I was also making the proof renders in final resolution of 1920x1080 (HDTV) for the producers. Just so you understand, renders with 640x480 are considered BIG and HEAVY for most machines, taking up to several hours to process a single animation – and that is for simple scenes with only a few characters, not the several characters with creatures simultaneously like I was doing. We later agreed that first proof renders could be done in lower resolution after spending one month of render times for a four second scene. But that wasn't all of the complexities involved. As that was a composed matte scene with actors, the footage needed to be composed matching the movie size and deep (that what's the markers in a green screen set are for), but there were severe errors in the original footage, like a metallic fan with somebody controlling it INSIDE the screen (and in the back of nothing less than the flowing hair of the actress.) It was a nightmare to matte out.

Technical Aspects of a bunch of technical aspects!

During the months thereafter, I needed to help my family with some problems. Progress with the Villikon production was compromised but even in the face of my own personal challenges I managed to create one of the most complex scenes I’ve ever animated in my entire life. The Porphyrian invasion from Scenes 02-16 to 02-18. Imagine if you will forty Porphyrian vampires summoned by a Queen and having to run downhill of a ‘glassified’ dune towards a Dirt Whale mounted by armored Sentinel Soldiers. A stunning sequence to say the least.

After several attempts, I figured out it was possible to limit the number of models supported in the scene during render time (composition was unavoidable), because one extra vertex and machine would crash and reset. I needed to make three layers: One with the Dirt Whale and two with the different waves of Porphyrians. Each Porphyrian had its own wavy, long rag and cloak acting as a cape in the wind and their faces hidden in shadows. Bryan presented me a copy of THE VILLIKON CHRONICLES graphic novels so I could reference for both models and story to understand exactly what I was dealing with, and I clearly saw the need for an army of no less than forty Porphyrians on-screen - far more than the five or six that would show-up in the first designs presented. Bryan also decided the attack should be ordered by DIDO from the dunes with her face hidden -Eric Morata by a cloak and glowing red eyes – surprising enough, it was the red glow in DIDO’s eyes that gave me the most trouble to tweak. As for forty heavy models with complex deforming capes and red-glowing eyes running realistically downhill - two groups were created and rendered separately from even the background. The first version had at least five Porphyrians leaping past and over a Dirt Whale, which was very cool, but Bryan eventually decided to remove the leaping and simply place them running around the Dirt Whale. After that, another shot pop up: one with the Porphyrians being followed by the camera downhill with Sentinels, Dirt Whales, and the Amphiox extraction vessel clearly visible in the background. In all scenes, the Porphyrian’s raggedy garments had to be re-calculated for accuracy and every single one of them one at a time. Synchronization of the several elements separated in each composition was achieved through dummy objects, which were the first to be animated. New angles of animation were required for the Dirt Whales in this scene and overall, the entire sequence took four months of work. The biggest time consuming process of all was the render. A single frame would take from fifteen minutes and up to one hour to be processed, which made my machine clog and remain busy for weeks at a time. Finally, after solving the Porphyrian attack sequence, another contestant climbed into the boxing ring of challengers competing to be the most complex to create for this film - the Hill Giant.     

Scene 02-12 required large, muscular, furry, horned monsters with humanoid features that would normally require a VERY high-end machine to create. Concepts given, I was tasked to create this humongous model for a brief two second apparition, but started to plan an 'early' scene where they were to be dragging a corpse or something, so I decided to create a full body complete with facial expressions. Using a new approach, I combined exporting the model for other composing and detailing software to be used in the standard one, which resulted in a very detailed and heavy model. Trying a more realistic approach, I tried and later discarded muscle plug-ins and other tools for the models refining - its original concept made his arms and biceps overlap his humongous pecs because of the size, which forced me to spend two weeks studying tools and deformers in order to solve the groin and armpit problems. A real time angle morph-controlled tool was the solution. The texture was hand painted in specialty software using the skin from the head of a high resolution picture of an elderly person. Nails and other details were later applied in the main software itself. I was particularly worried about the monster’s cloth apparel, as an Itascan creature/nomad wouldn't be wearing a suit or a wolf pelt, as was depicted in some designs – Bryan told me then that the Hill Giants would be using the fur of a red-black striped saber-tooth tiger-like creature, which was stripped from earlier scene developments due to time limitations. We agreed on a body of patchy fur for the giant, as there were several Hill Giant prides existing on the planet and no one particularly specific look to shoot for. With the final design decided, the only prop left for the giant was a giant bone for a club. Fur and hair were applied in invisible pieces over skin parts that were shadowed, and their movements were limited to simply following the Amphiox space vessel flying over the desert. The final resolution render was two hours of processing per frame -with the sequence coming in at 48 frames. The biggest problem in the production is one that Bryan himself pointed out when I asked how we would deal with adding a Sentinel Soldier to cover a camera shadow in a scene or composing some extra sand in a sequence to match CG generated composition types from earlier scenes:

Eric, I hope you're able to perform some sort of magic. I wish this scene would have been shot greenscreen but we were ill advised on location that they (effects people who never made it into post production with us) could fix it and add whales in post. Well, we were hoping to dress the film up and so far you've done a wonderful job. I know you're still working the Hill Giants as well and I appreciate your involved time very much. I don't want to put to much pressure on you but in future shots taking place on the bridge (greenscreen, Thank God) I'd like to ask for a robed figure to represent a Divine Proctor. Much the same way as you created Dido, Sentinels, and Dirt Whales...

As production progresses, it becomes clear the value of post production in a movie like this. People will argue about using the greenscreen process versus practicality on the set. Nowadays, many more films are opting to be entirely made with greenscreen technology (Sky Captain, 300, Sin City, Star Wars), and the freedom of creativity that CG and greenscreen give to post productions usually add to the movie quality in terms of grandness to give an edge over productions having larger budgets from the beginning. But why spend $50 million on building a fully mechanized army of Dirt Whales and Sentinel Riders when the CG versions will do the job at a fraction of the cost, and will even dance to the animated rhythms of your own making?

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