Highly Anticipated Movies

Mr.Poppers Penguins

Rhythm & Hues have animated these lovely penguins lets see how

It's been a while since the first wave of CG penguins, but this year we have two more offerings: Mr. Popper's Penguins and Happy Feet 2 (Warner Bros, Nov. 18). But for Popper's Gentoo penguins, Rhythm & Hues was tasked with creating photoreal birds to interact with star Jim Carrey.

"Mark Waters, the director, was very sensitive that the penguins should only be anthropomorphized under the constraints of what they physically could do," explains Richard Hollander, R&H's visual effects supervisor, who collaborated with Keith Roberts, the company's animation director. "Meaning, we could only do what a penguin could do with its body. Whatever animation we chose to do, it kept the reality of the penguins alive, and in the beginning we were keeping them almost completely real."

And yet the penguins were put in all kinds of wacky situations, including playing soccer, flying down water slides, mimicking Chaplin and chasing a nanny out of the apartment. "No penguin would hold open the door, obviously, but Mark wanted to get as much real penguin as he could get," Hollander continues. "There's a very fast wide shot of Carrey first finding the penguins in his apartment: On top of the feng shui water fountain is Captain; his feet are only four inches long, so he wonders how he got on top. The penguin responds with an 'I don't know' shrug of his wings. That shrug became a running gag."

They used 18 cameras to shoot the live Gentoo penguins (recognizable by the wide white stripe extending across the head) in a circle. "We used those pictures for our 3D reference for the shape and form and deformations that occur on the penguins. That was the basis. We made walking and running cycles from the reference. We Aaso shot reference footage to understand the feather structure and how light bounces off the head. There were six penguins to distinguish and that became the biggest [design] challenge. But those markings were easy to do once we established what they were going to be. We also had to put them onto the live-action penguins as well. It's a 3D roto game that's not easy because of the way the feathers have sheen and reflection."

In fact, the biggest technical challenge involved handling differently lit areas within a shot. "We've done it before, but not to this extent," Hollander says. "You want to be in an environment that is not only accurate from a lighting ray standpoint but also from a geometry standpoint. We're effectively building geometry that mimics the apartment and the lighting conditions of a given moment. Those techniques of back projecting onto geometry were very helpful, and we're continuing to develop them."

As for rigging, it was pretty basic; deformations were provided from the photographs of the 18-camera rig. "There's a great curve in the neck area that's embedded mostly in the cavity of the chest," Hollander explains. "They can actually extend their head away from their body. So the movement came very natural to them and each feather is overlaid with the next."

In other words, there's no need for squash-and-stretch with this natural ability.

Pooh is back

It turns out that there was less pressure on Winnie the Pooh (opening today) than The Princess and the Frog to make or break the hand-drawn tradition at Disney. That's because it's a proven brand and doesn't carry the same kind of baggage. Still, even though it wasn't as artistically daunting as Princess (a tag-team approach because of a tight 10-month production schedule), there was the challenge of reinvigorating a franchise that had been watered down for cable and DVD.

The result is a Winnie the Pooh that channels the past yet bears an unmistakably contemporary stamp, with more slapstick and artistic plussing that comes from the latest and greatest digital enhancements. The honey, for instance, may look like CG, but it's actually hand-drawn with some creative Photoshop filtering.

Mattinson says early on they realized that the gang from the Hundred-Acre Wood was looney like Cuckoo's Nest, and that loosened up their creative spirit. "Let's have more fun with them," he suggests.

Of all the characters, though, Owl gets more attention. "At first, I went by the old model sheets to make it look just like the traditional Owl that everyone is used to seeing," Baer recalls. "But for some reason, when I looked at the test with Craig Ferguson's dialogue, I realized that he added a lot more. Same kind of personality and ego, but bigger than before."

"What's great about Winnie the Pooh is that these characters are so innocent that they can go off on tangents," says Hall. "If they have a particular goal that day, they'll leave the house and pursue it, but then something else is going to happen, and before you know it, something else happens and they've gone on circuitous paths. So we wanted to make sure that it was organically unfolding. We weren't imposing a story structure on the characters, but at the same time, it couldn't seem random. The challenge in story development was: 'How much do we structure this like a traditional movie, and how much do we pull back and let the characters inform the course of the film?'"

And considering how self-reflexive the narrative is, with the interplay between narrator and characters and sentences flying off the page at will like another character, it's clear that Winnie the Pooh is not just for kids.

Transformers Dark of the Moon

Michael Bay took James Cameron's advice to heart about shooting Transformers: Dark of the Moon in stereo, and the result is a dynamic 3-D experience that that's arguably the best poster child since Avatar. In fact, it helps put to rest the notion that conversion is necessarily bad. They had to split it up because there weren't enough stereo cameras and Industrial Light & Magic could only do so much, even with 300 + people working on the film (Digital Domain was a major contributor as well).

"There was a lot more compositing and double the work of the paint and roto artists," admits Scott Farrar, ILM's visual effects supervisor, who has been on the franchise for nearly six years. "And we were doing 3D shots that originated on a stereo rig, shot with two cameras, so at ILM we put all the renders in for two eyes and fit it all in to what was shot with two cameras. Every aerial plate was single camera; we have crash cameras that were single camera; and anamorphic lenses that were used; spherical lenses that were used; all the varieties of different distortions that all have to be completed in 2-D and shipped out to conversion houses and completely broken down in layers so they can do the conversion.

To get the final shots rendered in stereo, ILM had to lock out parts of the render farm for days at a time. On the last scheduled weekend of production, for instance, Dark of the Moon took over the entire render farm, giving ILM more than 200,000 hours of rendering power a day. Or 22.8 years every 24 hours.

Three blasts rock Mumbai

I just don't understand what is going on with Mumbai now a days how many of these blasts are going to happen. This thing has become so common that i people just move on with there lives form the next day itself its like it never happened. I don't know what to make of it but i just wished that this would stop.......What if i was caught in the middle of a blast one day..... 

Give me MAX!!

Hey guys as you know i am still studding in an institute for animation and  they have started with 3D MAX and i get activation key or the serial!!!!!! its been a frustrating 3 weeks. I am just scared if i lag behind..... but anyway till i get that sorted out i will work o some animation.

I haven't practiced that in a long time so i better get in touch or well you know i will get rusty.  

Age Of Empires 3 Rocks!!!

Age of Empires 3 rocks man it is just one of the amazing war i love to date i suggest everyone to download and try it, its so fun killing other cities the improved graphics just amazing. Including landscapes!!!! Its a real amazing site to watch and be immersed in.