I also saw it in Imax 3D, I agree a 100% with Tim, it was great to be a kid again! And it was fun to see a few familiar names in the credits, great job!
-- *Ben Davis* www.moondog-animation.com +1 (423) 313 9304 On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Tim Crowson <[email protected] > wrote: > Alan, I saw Pacific Rim in Imax 3D and was absolutely blown away! In my > opinion, it's the film that is best suited for Imax 3D projection. Other > films may be fun to watch like that, but Pacific Rim really steps it up. > Major ass was kicked in the making of this film. > > Congrats to you Alan, and everyone else at Rodeo! Impressive stuff, and > glad to know Soft was used! > > I don't really understand the naysayers complaining of thin plots. Who > would possibly be naive enough to go see this film for any other reason > than to satisfy the 10-yr old kid in you? It's all over the previews! Don't > fool yourself... you know why you're there! :-D > > -Tim > > > > On 7/15/2013 2:41 PM, David Gallagher wrote: > > Congratulations! > > On 7/15/2013 3:07 PM, Alan Fregtman wrote: > > Hey guys, > > A lot of people say Softimage doesn't get used much in movies, so I > personally love to hear stories when it does happen. Therefore, I wanted to > share some details with you. :) > > I'm the lead rigger at *Rodeo FX* http://rodeofx.com and we did all of > the interiors of the control pods (the cockpits, that is), including the > visors, foot actuators & mechanical stilts, some digidoubles, etc. > (except the holograms/UI graphics that were done by the folks at Hybride.) > We also had the chance of doing our first organic creature, the brain in > the lab (which involved a lot of "gross" ICE deformations), as well as many > beautiful matte paintings and a couple of helicopters. > > Overall, we did over a hundred shots. CG was done in Softimage and as > far as I know it was all rendered in our favourite renderer, Arnold! We'd > still be rendering today if Mentalray had been used. :p We threw countless > ~8k textures with displacement and stupid amounts of topology, and good ol' > Arnie performed like a champ. > > The stilts (the leg controls in the cockpit) had anything from 1500 to > 2500 separate meshes and on average about 150 segments (solid groups of > parts that moved as one.) Once we identified the "segments" by the end we > had a rig of Arnold stand-ins with each segment saved as one ass file, and > low-res geo representing that segment constrained to some part of the rig. > It then became relatively "light" to have the standins rigged instead of > the full raw geo, and it made it quite easy to replace parts or textures > later in the pipeline during or after animation. (Also caching was a piece > of cake in this scenario, as we only needed to plot the segment nulls > instead of thousands of meshes or pointcaching anything.) > > On the brain there was procedural pulsing animation driven by ICE > deformers. Globules would "breathe", a heart-like organ would pump its > ventricles intermittently and an intestine-like organ flowed with bulges > travelling along its tract. It was gross and (in my opinion) kind of > awesome. lol Speaking of ICE, there was a kind of lettuce behind the brain > that was also moving a bit. The modeling was done with strips that were > procedurally curled and then if I remember correctly the whole thing was > driven via Syflex as the brain gently floated. This lettuce thing was > handled by another guy on this mailing list, my coworker and friend > Jonathan Laborde. Maybe if he's reading this he can give more details of > how he used ICE in a few other shots. > > It was crazy fun project to work on. Fingers crossed that Pacific Rim 2 > becomes a reality. :) Anyway, did you guys go see it? What'd you think? > > Oh and speaking of other movies, we did a ton of work in "Now You See > Me" as well, including hundreds of stadium dudes with our propietary ICE > static crowd system, falling/flying money, cg bubbles, an art-directed > liquid, lockpicking, flying cards, many vehicles, the projected > motiongraphics near the end and a few invisible fx. (I feel like I probably > missed something, but anyway, we did a lot.) We were the main vfx vendor on > that film, delivering just over 20 minutes worth of vfx "magic" (pun > intended.) Again, Soft & Arnold and lots of effects in ICE all throughout. > > Cheers, > > -- Alan > > > > -- > > >
