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®
W O R L DComputer
T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N
$4.95 USA $6.50 Canada
King Kong’s larger-than-life effects
The Power of XThe Xbox 360 defines a new era in gaming
Dragon QuestAdding digital magic to Harry’s latest adventure
Starting a StudioIf you build it, will they come?
Gorilla Tactics
January 2006 www.cgw.com®
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COMPUTERCOMPUTER
GRAPHICS WORLDGRAPHICS WORLD
to a friend!to a friend!
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ILLUSTRATIONARCHITECTUREPHOTOGRAPHYCOMPUTER ARTS
NEW MEDIA GRAPHIC DESIGN
INTERIORARCHITECTURE
& DESIGN
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© Copyright 2005 Alias Systems Corp. All rights reserved. Alias, the swirl logo, Maya and MotionBuilder are registered trademarks and the Maya logo is a trademark of Alias Systems Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
Maya® 7, the latest release of the award-winning 3D software, is packed with innovative new features allowing you to realize your creative vision faster and more easily than ever before.
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To find out how the new and innovative features of Maya are changing the face of 3D, visit www.alias.com/maya7.
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T H E M A G A Z I N E F O R D I G I T A L C O N T E N T C R E A T I O N A N D P R O D U C T I O N
W O R L DComputerAlso see www.cgw.com for computer graphics news, special surveys and reports, and the online gallery.
w w w . c g w . c o m JANUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 3
Departments
Editor’s Note 4
Kong is King, Again
CG continues to proliferate at the box offi ce, thanks in no small part to the cutting-edge effects in King Kong and Harry Potter. As a result, opportunities abound for artists and animators, some of whom may be tempted to open their own shop.
Spotlight 6
Products
D2’s Nuke 4.5
Avid’s Liquid product line
ATI’s Radeon X1800 XT
Iridas’s SpeedGrade Onset
Services
Nice Shoes’s Nice Spots Web-based media exchange for project review and collaboration
Tech Viewpoint 8The Bleeding Edge
Workstation vendors push technological boundaries in order to get an extra step ahead of their competitors.
Portfolio 32Human Modeling
Review 34Luxology’s Modo 201
New+Improved 36
Backdrop 40Out of Water
Features
Cover storyLong Live the King 16FILM | Director Peter Jackson challenged Weta Digital to think big while creating the effects in King Kong. The studio answered with a breathtaking jungle setting, an authentic 1930s New York City, and Kong himself.
By Barbara Robertson
Let the Games Begin 22GAMING | By taking advantage of the industry’s latest breakthroughs, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console is changing the look and feel of game graphics.
By Karen Moltenbrey
A Draconian Test 26DIGITAL EFFECTS | ILM uses its digital magic to conjure up a fi ery dragon in the latest Harry Potter adventure.
By Barbara Robertson
Starting a Small Studio 28BUSINESS TRENDS | Want to be your own boss? Owning your own VFX studio can be rewarding...and challenging.
By William “Proton” Vaughan
On the cover:Pushing the technological envelope,
Weta Digital crafts the great ape
Kong in this epic remake. See pg. 16.
16
January 2006 • Volume 29 • Number 1
See www.cgw.com for a more
in-depth version of this article.
[email protected] story exclusives:
The Cutting EdgeProfessional media creators continue to embrace the Mac platform as acost-effective way to easily create highly stylized video.
Self-Promotion: Part 3This series for digital artists continues with getting noticed by way of users groups.
Trial By FireIndustrial Light & Magic creates the fi re for Harry Potter’s digital dragon, using a novel simulation engine that evolved from the studio’s collaboration with Stanford University.
Workstations with ‘The Look’Want more than just blazing-fast processing? We found workstations that offer cool components coupled with a stylized look that any CG artist will appreciate.
22
26
Image courtesy Weta Digital / Universal Studios.
28
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KELLY DOVE : Editor-in-Chief
KAREN MOLTENBREY: Executive Editor
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS:
Jenny Donelan, Audrey Doyle,
Evan Marc Hirsch, George Maestri,
Martin McEachern, Stephen Porter,
Barbara Robertson
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michelleb@pennwell
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Computers & Electronics Group
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4 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
editor
’sno
teKelly DoveEditor-in-Chief
Kong is King, AgainAs I sit down to write this, it’s not quite 2006. In fact, it is exactly one day, 17
hours, 24 minutes, and 52 seconds before the premiere of King Kong. As you
might expect, I can hardly wait to get in line.
Academy Award-winner Peter Jackson’s highly anticipated remake of
the 1933 cult classic King Kong is set to take us, once again, into the mind
of a visionary fi lmmaker whose penchant for great storytelling and eye for outstand-
ing CG and visual effects brings back the Kong-mania moviegoers must have expe-
rienced more than 70 years ago.
The merchandising for Kong is defi nitely feeding the frenzy. Now, not only can
you carry Kong in your pocket in the form of a credit card, you also can download
Jackson’s offi cial behind-the-scenes postproduction diaries or buy them on DVD, and
purchase stop-motion armature prop replicas, in case you want to make your own
Kong-based creation someday. Game publisher Ubisoft is fueling the gorilla madness,
encouraging gamers on every platform imaginable to “Play as Man. Play as Kong,” in
Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Offi cial Game of the Movie.
This month, CGW does its share to spotlight Kong, as contributing editor Barbara
Robertson details the making and grooming of this magnifi cent CG creature in “Long
Live the King” on pg. 16.
Kong is but one of the many CG effects-laden fi lms debuting this holiday season.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which is being heralded in the media as the best movie
yet in the popular J.K. Rowling series is also featured on pg. 26 with a technology Q&A
with Tim Alexander, visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, discussing
the creation of water and cloth simulation for the movie (pg. 40).
As CG continues to proliferate at the box offi ce, the desire for artists and animators
to break into the business of delivering visual effects for fi lm, games, and entertainment
continues to grow. Some may even be considering launching a small studio. Undoubtedly,
business ownership can be extremely rewarding, or heartbreaking-
ly defeating. This month, in the fi rst of a two-part series, William
“Proton” Vaughan offers advice to those interested in making the
leap. See “Starting a Small Studio,” pg. 28.
As we move through 2006, Computer Graphics World will
continue to deliver the award-winning behind-the-scenes cov-
erage of Hollywood CG that we’re famous for. We will feature
stories designed to help you get ahead in the business, technol-
ogy articles and product reviews, so you can make informed hardware and software
choices, and hands-on tutorials and how-to articles designed to inspire and guide
you through the creative process. And, if you haven’t been to CGW.com lately, you
really should visit. Each month, you’ll fi nd Web exclusive stories that you won’t fi nd
anywhere else, along with daily news and reviews that will help keep you current
on the latest CG happenings. CGW.com also features the Animation Mentors, where
top animators who paid their dues at high-profi le visual effects studios answer your
questions about making it in the CG business.
Drop in and visit us online, quiz the Animation Mentors, send us your artwork, or
just get in touch with us. In fact, you can reach me directly at [email protected].
And don’t forget to let me know what you think about Kong.
Outstanding
CG and visual
effects help fuel
Kong-mania.
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6 | Computer Graphics World MONTH 2005 w w w . c g w . c o m
spotlightC O M P O S I T I N G A D V A N C E M E N T S
P O S T P R O D U C T I O N
Your resource for products, user applications, news, and market research
PR
OD
UC
TS
SE
RV
IC
ES
Nice Shoes, a full-service postproduction and new media
facility specializing in commercial work, has launched
Nice Spots, a pay-as-you-go hosted Web-based application
for media exchange. Nice Spots allows users to exchange
media for review and collaboration on rough cuts and
fi nal edits regardless of a person’s geographic location.
Nice Spots can be used for every phase of the audio
and video creative process, including archiving and
retrieval, viewing and commenting on casting tapes,
location scouting, and dailies. When postproduction is
complete, Nice Spots archives the fi nished master, result-
ing in a stored fi le that can be used for dubbing or broad-
cast. QuickTime and Windows Media fi les are provided
for viewing and download. The service allows agencies to
avoid the costs and hassles of sending electronic data via
commercial delivery services or in a backpack strapped
to a bike messenger.
Nice Shoes, Nice Spots
D2 Software, a division of Digital Domain, has enhanced its
Nuke compositing system once again. Nuke V. 4.5, which
is now shipping, supports Linux, Irix, Windows, and Mac
platforms, and includes a lengthy list of upgrades such as
an image-based keyer, a new UI mode, support for Mac
OS X and OpenFX, and more. The new image-based keyer
gives users more fl exibility when pulling high-quality keys,
allowing artists to work on each color channel individually.
The keyer includes specialized tools to improve matte edges
and reduce the halo effect, which is common in bluescreen
and greenscreen footage. Nuke V. 4.5 also introduces a new
user interface work fl ow, the ability to save layouts, and a
new control-panel bin to manage window and property dia-
log boxes. Support for OS X and the OpenFX plug-in archi-
tecture allows artists to use plug-ins from companies such
as The Foundry and Primatte. Nuke is priced at $4495; addi-
tional render nodes cost $745 per seat.
New Ways to Get Nuked
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w w w . c g w . c o m MONTH 2005 Computer Graphics World | 7
B E N C H M A R K I N G C O L O R G R A D I N G
N O N - L I N E A R E D I T I N G
PR
OD
UC
TS
PR
OD
UC
TS
PR
OD
UC
TS
Avid Technology’s new Avid Liquid
product line is a suite nonlinear edit-
ing software and hardware offerings for
event videographers, government and
corporate video producers, and high-
end enthusiasts.
Drawn from editing products
formerly developed by recent-
ly acquired Pinnacle Systems,
the Avid Liquid family includes
new versions (V. 7.0) of the Avid
Liquid and Avid Liquid Pro sys-
tems. Both systems offer new fea-
tures for users who want a single
application for the creation and
delivery of either tape, DVD, and
streaming media.
Avid Liquid builds on previous
Liquid features, including native HDV
editing, GPU-accelerated effects, back-
ground rendering, Dolby Digital 5.1 sur-
round audio with AC-3 encoding, DVD
creation directly on the video-editing
timeline, and I/O hardware. New fea-
tures include custom music creation
capabilities directly inside the applica-
tion; native editing of popular codecs,
including WM9, DivX, and MPEG-4 for
repurposing and output of content to
the Internet; effects such as Timewarp,
Stabilize, Dream Glow, and over
50 plug-ins from the Commotion
effects suite; native HD and SD edit-
ing on the same timeline without
transcoding; and Preview HDV in
SD with Avid Liquid Pro.
The Avid Liquid family runs
on Windows XP, and pricing for its
various incarnations range from
$499 to $11,995, with discounted
upgrade paths for users of Pinnacle
Liquid products.
Avid Flows Forward with Liquid
ATI’s Radeon Gets OverclockedIn October, a group of overclockers in Pori, Finland, made
history by pushing a graphics processor engine to clock
levels over 1 GHz on the recently-announced Radeon X1800
XT graphics processor from ATI Technologies. The total
speed of the processor reached a clock speed 1.003 GHz
and a dual data-rate memory speed of 1.881 GHz, all with
system stability and no visual artifacts. The team kept the
rig cool using a custom-built liquid nitrogen system that
chilled the graphics
system to minus 80
degrees Celsius.
ATI expects users
to see the potential of
the company’s new
memory controller
design that comple-
ments the GPU’s shader engines with additional memo-
ry-clock scalability when faster GDDR-4 memory arrives
The Radeon X1800 XT’s clock-scaling capabilities are made
possible by the use of a 90-nanometer semiconductor pro-
cess technology, a new ultra-threaded Shader Model 3.0
architecture, and a 512-bit ring-bus memory controller.
SpeedGrade OnSet Goes ProIridas, a company delivering non-destructive color-grad-
ing technologies for the fi lm industry, is offering a new
edition of SpeedGrade OnSet. Along with a number of
interface enhancements, SpeedGrade OnSet Professional
Edition includes mask tools, split-screen modes for A/B
comparisons, image scrubbing, and scene-based shot
organization, among other new features. The Professional
Edition also introduces support for calibration LUTs and
will be offered with the new CineSpace OnSet application
from Rising Sun Research. The idea behind the product
is to allow cinematographers to develop creative looks in
a fully calibrated environment.
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Kathleen Maher is a senior analyst at Jon Peddie Research, a Tiburon, CA-based consultancy specializing in graphics and multimedia, and editor in chief of JPR’s “TechWatch.” She can be reached at [email protected].
8 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
Tech
view
poin
t
By Kathleen Maher
off-the-shelf components, add workstation-specifi c features such as custom cooling,
massive amounts of RAID and ECC memory, and advanced graphics boards for sell-
ing products branded as workstations for considerably less money than RISC- and
Unix-based alternatives.
Windows-based workstations are the most common on the market today, which
is where a majority of the innovation is taking place. According to Jon Peddie
Research’s Workstation Report, Windows-based workstations account for 92.6 per-
cent of the workstation market. But there is a lot of room for differentiation with-
in the classifi cation of a Windows-based workstation. The brief dominance of x86
processors is giving way to the X86-64 processors, and single processors are losing
ground to dual-core alternatives. In fact, AMD is planning to introduce quad-core
processors in 2007.
The 4-bit Itanium is hanging in there, and for some people, Itanium workstations
defi ne bleeding edge. The Itanium has a place in server systems and high-perfor-
mance computing, but as the successor for RISC/Unix workstations, it has failed to
fi t the niche it was once designed for. It seems customers and developers alike real-
ly took to the idea of X86-64. The 64-bit platform lets customers transition to 64-bit
applications as their applications are ported; and developers will port applications as
soon as there are enough customers using the X86-64 platform.
AMD has the biggest advantage at the moment. Not only did the company get
a head start with its X86-64 processors, but the company’s DirectConnect architec-
ture puts the memory controller on the processor, while its HyperTransport technol-
ogy lets the processors share and access memory between controllers. Data gets to
and from memory faster—and for many applications, especially graphics—that’s
extremely enticing. To counter AMD, Intel has relied on HyperThreading. The com-
pany announced plans for a processor architecture similar to AMD’s, but those plans
have been delayed, giving AMD some breathing room. Intel in fact, had to rush its
Is there any term more accu-
rate than “bleeding edge” when
talking about workstations? It
seems there is bleeding going
on everywhere in the industry.
Vendors, locked in fi erce com-
petition, are pushing technology just to
get a few benchmark points ahead. And
certainly, graphics professionals battling
deadlines and escalating pixel resolu-
tions are bleeding all over the place.
The workstation has
undergone a profound
evolution in the last
decade. Once the unas-
sailable domain of Unix/
RISC systems, the work-
station classifi cation now
includes machines based
on processors from Intel,
AMD, IBM/Apple, Sun,
Hewlett-Packard, SGI-
MIPS, and even Alpha,
the fi rst 64-bit processor,
is still being put to work.
The list of operating
systems includes Unix,
Linux, Irix, Windows,
Mac OS, and Solaris.
In the past, vendors
such as SGI, Sun, HP,
IBM, and Fujitsu built
highly-tuned and opti-
mized workstations
with proprietary compo-
nents including proces-
sors, chipsets, graph-
ics subsystems, and
operating systems. Alas,
those days have ended
with the rise of com-
modity strategies that
allow companies to buy
Workstation
vendors are
locked in
fierce battle
to get a few
benchmark
points ahead.
The Bleeding Edge
SGI’s fl agship Prism visualization machine redefi nes workstation technology with scalable
modular bricks for high-performance processing and graphics.
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10 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
Paxville dual-core Xeon processor to mar-
ket in order to counter AMD’s Opteron. In
November 2004, the fi rst dual-core Xeons,
the Xeon 7000 line, started shipping
for servers. Intel plans to introduce the
Glidewell platform for workstations based
on the Dempsey processor this year, and
the word is that Intel is working furiously
to get them out the door.
About the Graphics
The three primary graphics suppliers
are ATI, Nvidia and 3dlabs. The intro-
duction of PCI Express (PCI-e) technol-
ogy enables motherboards to accommo-
date two graphics boards. ATI’s Crossfi re
and Nvidia’s SLI technologies are avail-
able, allowing two GPUs to work together
on an application. Meanwhile, 3dlabs’s
Wildcat Realizm 800 is a single PCI
Express card with multiple GPUs, com-
bining a graphics processor with a Vertex
Scalability Unit (VSU) to act as the traffi c
cop for data being sent by multiple graph-
ics processors to and from the memory.
Programmable shaders have actu-
ally leveled the playing fi eld for graphics
providers. The development of OpenGL
2.0 and Microsoft’s DirectX 9 defi nes
APIs through which the hardware can
accelerate software functions. Software
developers no longer have to depend
on hard-wired graphics functions and,
instead, can create their own effects.
Graphics processors now differentiate
themselves based on performance and
capabilities such as anti-aliasing, aniso-
tropic fi ltering, and image and video
scaling and fi ltering. In general, 3Dlabs
is defi ned in the ultra-high end, while
Nvidia and ATI battle for market share in
every other area of workstation graphics.
The Windows Boxes
Workstation manufacturers are locked
in a competitive race to increase system
performance, provide fl exible confi gu-
rations, and reduce the costs of owning
a professional graphics workstation, all
the while literally upping the coolness
factor of system designs and customiz-
able system alternatives.
Some of the many high-performance workstations currently available from
companies such as Alienware, Boxx Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, and Monarch
Computer include multi-core processing options and customized cooling solutions
that qualify their systems as bleeding edge.
Alienware
Alienware, well known for its lineup of
extreme gaming machines, has a series of
high-performance workstations that incor-
porate inventive noise reduction and cooling
technology, including its new liquid-cooling
solution. Its easy to recognize an Alienware
system by the distinctive creature face adorn-
ing the front. Its deskside workstations have
two fans: an intake fan that pulls in fresh air
to help cool the internal components and a
rear exhaust to eliminate the hot air. The liq-
uid-cooling alternative eliminates the need
for a secondary fan with a small, strategically
placed low-noise fan that cools the components
surrounding the processor, reducing decibels
and providing temperature reductions of up to 30 percent more than conventional air-
cooling methods. The addition of liquid cooling adds $202 to the base price.
Boxx Technologies
Boxx specializes in high-performance workstations for digital content creation and
video and audio editing, with custom-designed machines having single-, dual-, and
now quad-processor confi gurations.
Boxx’s new Apexx4 workstation, which is scheduled to be released this month, is
targeting VFX and animation professionals creating large scenes and complex spe-
cial effects with a need for accelerated work fl ow. The workstation incorporates four
dual-core AMD Opteron 875 series processors, making it a true quad workstation,
with eight CPUs and up to 128GB of memory. With a $25,000 price tag, the Apexx4
sits comfortably between a high-end server and an uberCG workstation. Boxx has
designed a special chassis that allows for maximum airfl ow, to accommodate the
special cooling requirements of the high-CPU confi guration, keeping the noise level
low enough to sit on a desktop. The system is scalable, offers Nvidia FX4500 GPUs,
includes two PCI Express graphics boards, and supports up to 10 data drives at 500GB
each for up to 10TB of local storage. SLI confi gurations are also available, and Boxx
plans to offer Apexx4 workstations with ATI graphics cards.
Hewlett-Packard
The top-of-the-line workstations for HP are the xw9300 series, based on single- or dual-
core AMD Opteron 200 series processors. HP systems offer a great deal of expandabil-
ity with fi ve internal and three external drive bays. And, probably where HP soars
above the crowd is in the work it has done to certify systems with ISVs. HP is target-
ing the fi lm industry and continues to develop certifi ed systems for 3D modeling and
animation, special effects, and rendering. HP also offers optimized systems for science
and visualization, CAD, and earth applications such as oil and gas exploration.
HP machines feature a chassis with noise dampening, a tool less upgrade, and a
Performance Tuning Framework to increase performance for commercially available
applications by up to 25 percent. The Performance Tuning Framework analyzes the
Alienware’s Liquid Cooling
reduces noise levels and lowers
temperatures.
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New York University is an affi rmative action/equal opportunity institution. ©2006 New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies
NYU’s Programs in Design, Digital Arts, and FilmA new world of art and technology has given visual artists a palette without limit. NYU’s Programs in Design, Digital Arts, and Film are “hands on” – from working on state-of-the-art equipment, to forming professional-level teams with instructors and fellow students. Our unique courses and programs in animation, television, and fi lm; digital design; graphic design; and much more combine your creativity with real-world experience. Discover why so many of our students and graduates fi nd places at top studios and are on the leading-edge of new opportunities in the fi eld. Visit our website to view a gallery of student work.
Graduate Programs:
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Graphic Communications Management
and Technology
Professional Certifi cates include:
Animation, Modeling
Directing, Cinematography
Motion Graphics and Broadcast Design
Video Game Design
Noncredit Courses include:
3-D Modeling and Animation
Web Design
Digital Video Production
Flash: Advanced Intensive
Digital Medical Illustration
Video Game Design
1-800-FIND NYU, ext.94 www.scps.nyu.edu/x94
“THAT’S WHY I GO TO NYU.”
CUTTINGEDGE
ART AND BUSINESS
MEET HERE.
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12 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
system and its applications and checks
an online database for the most current
drivers. HP’s utility supports Inventor, I-
deas, Pro/Engineer, Catia, Unigraphics,
SolidWorks, and 3ds Max, all running
under Windows 2000 Professional or
Windows XP Professional.
Monarch Computer
Monarch, famous for its Hornet gam-
ing boxes, applies the do-it-yourself
model to workstations, offering systems
with every confi guration conceivable.
Among its top-of-the-line systems are the
Monarch Accela workstations built with
Intel Xeon processors with an 800MHz
front-side bus or Empro systems with
AMD’s Opteron processors. The base sys-
tem ships with two AMD Opteron 275
Dual-Core 2.2GHz processors. The Empro
cases are serious looking but they incor-
porate the see-through panel inspired
by gamer machines and have built-in
heat-reduction features. Monarch also
ups the power supply, adds ECC mem-
ory support for up to four hard drives
with RAID options, and offers a lineup
of graphics options. The base system,
which is priced at $4564, ships with
ATI’s FireGL V7100 with 256MB DDR3,
and Dual-DVI. Monarch also offers a
ULB, Ultimate Linux Box (ULB), a highly
customizable system based on Opteron
processors from the 1.4GHz Opteron 240
to the 2.4GHz dual-core 280. Graphics
options run the gamut and include
3dlabs, ATI, and Nvidia boards. The
ULB pricing starts at less than $2300.
The Portables
The idea of a workstation compressed
into a notebook confi guration is a dream
for overworked artists. While the sys-
tems don’t accommodate multiple graph-
ics boards (at least for now), and add-
ing monitor displays tends to defeat the
whole purpose of being mobile. But the
power of today’s processors and mobile
graphics makes a notebook computer a
logical option when working out of the
studio or in the fi eld. Practically every
workstation manufacturer offers note-
book workstations and, as you might
expect, their features line up fairly
similarly. The truth is notebooks
are built by a handful of companies
based in Taiwan.
Nvidia helped launch the mobile
workstation category with its Quadro
FXgo series of graphics boards.
Eurocom has so far pushed the
category the furthest with its
D900K F-Bomb notebook. Available
with a menu of options including
AMD dual-core and FX or Intel Pentium 4 Prescott processors (performing at speeds
of up to 3.6GHz), and a choice of ATI or Nvidia graphics subsystems. The workstation
can be confi gured to include RAID, an optical drive, internal TV tuners, DVI-I for
dual-monitor support and an internal PC camera for video conferencing. The systems
are available with 17-inch wide displays with resolutions of 1680x1050 or 1920x1200.
F-Bomb system pricing starts at approximately $3000.
Edgy Alternatives
Apple G5
Artistic professionals are drawn to Apple’s sense of design, ease of use, long list of
installed media software, and fabulous accessories like the Cinema display.
Even as Apple has announced plans to move to the Intel platform for future
products, the company has introduced a new PowerPC-based G5 built on dual-core
PowerPC processors in dual and quad confi gurations, with one and two dual-core
processors, respectively. Moreover, Apple has stepped up to true 64-bit processing
and now supports 16GB of addressable memory.
The new Power Mac G5 workstation with
dual-core 2.5GHz PowerPC processors could
be considered just another dual-core worksta-
tion until it’s paired with an Apple Cinema
HD Display. These workstations are the fi rst
Apple machines to take advantage of Nvidia’s
Quadro graphics, and they’ve gone all the way
with the Quadro FX 4500. Apple has added
support for PCI Express, allowing users to add
up to four graphics cards driving eight Apple
Cinema HD Displays.
Apple has also added to its PowerBook
line up. These machines are based on G4
PowerPC processors, but Apple has cut the
prices on the new systems, increased the bat-
tery life to about 5.5 hours, and added its Superdrive DVD burners to the entire line.
The top-of-the-line, 17-inch notebook is available with ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
graphics with 128MB of DDR for $2499.
Silicon Graphics, Inc.
SGI doesn’t even call the Prism, its fl agship visualization machine, a workstation.
Built to be immensely scalable with modular bricks for processing and graphics,
the Prism is built around Intel Itanium 2 processors and is available in four confi g-
urations: deskside, power, team, and extreme. Starting at $8500, the base system
Eurocom’s D900K F-Bomb offers dual-core
Opteron processors.
Apple G5 Quad taps into PCIe
architecture for the fi rst time.
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a very affordable price.Designers throughout the world use Dimension Printers to significantly lower production
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TWO DIMENSION 3D PRINTERS TO CHOOSE FROM.
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14 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
includes two Itanium 2 CPUs, one or two
ATI FireGL CPUs and up to 24GB of mem-
ory, scaling up to 256 Itanium 2 proces-
sors, 16 ATI FireGL graphics accelerators,
and 3TB of memory.
The Prism is designed for hefty
graphics challenges. For instance, it
was recently demonstrated with Pixel
Farm’s PFPlay system and Sony’s proto-
type SXRD 4K projector for digital inter-
mediates, digital cinema, and people
working in 2K (2048x1556) and even 4K
(4096 x 3112) space.
Up and Coming
Even as most of the market moves
toward standardized parts, there is new
work being done that may change the
workstations of the future. Just out on
the horizon, Mercury Computer has
announced plans to build systems for
compute-intensive tasks in medical
imaging, military applications, oil and
gas exploration, etc. using Cell BE processors, the same technology developed by
IBM, Sony, and Toshiba for the next generation Sony Playstation console. The compa-
ny has introduced a two-processor blade server based on the Cell, and most recently
Mercury demonstrated the Cell processor going to work on CT (computed tomogra-
phy) image reconstruction. The company claims that the Cell is capable of orders-of-
magnitude faster processing for high-performance applications in medical imaging.
At one time, Sony’s Ken Kutaragi, the father of the PlayStation, opined that Cell pro-
cessors would be used to build workstations for game development. That hasn’t hap-
pened, but experimentation continues on several fronts. The combination of 64-bit
technology and the ability to build processors with multiple cores has inspired new
designs—two of which, were showcased recently at the Fall Processor Forum spon-
sored by In-Stat. Fujitsu showed off a new Sparc processor the dual-core Sparc64 VI,
and a new company on the scene, PA Semi, is using the IBM Power architecture to
build new multi-core processors that deliver high performance at low wattages.
In the future, unless humankind drastically changes for some unforeseen reason,
graphics professionals still will be pushing the edges of what is possible, and dead-
lines will still threaten their sanity. But, if it’s any consolation, workstation designers
are working just as hard to produce systems that rise to unreasonable challenges.
CGW OnlineVisit www.cgw.com this month as Kathleen Maher identifi es workstations that take
customization to an extreme in “Workstations with ‘The Look.’”
@
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Dual platform compatibility.
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DeckLink HD Pro Features: HDTVand standard de nition support in 4:2:2 or Dual Link 4:4:4 • All HDTV formats including 1080/24psf, 23.98psf, 50i, 59.94i, 60i, 720/59.94p, 50p, 60p • Standard de nition SDI format support for NTSC and PAL • Precision 14 bit analog component monitoring output • Switches between HD or SD • True 10 bit RGB 4:4:4 or YUV 4:2:2 HDTV capture • Instantly switch between HD-SDI and NTSC/PAL • Dual HD-SDI inputs and out-puts for Dual Link 4:4:4 • AES-S/PDIF output, AES-S/PDIF input and AES word-clock out-put • Sony™ compatible RS-422 serial deck control port included • Black burst & HD Tri-Sync compatible genlock input • HD to SD hardware downconversion.
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. . . . Film
16 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
By Barbara Robertson
People walked out of the world premiere of
King Kong in 1933, horrifi ed by a spectac-
ular effects scene: The star, a monstrous
gorilla, shook a group of sailors off a log
and into a pit, where they were devoured by
giant spiders. As a result, director Merian C.
Cooper cut the shocking scene. But, direc-
tor Peter Jackson reprised that sequence for
his remake, Universal Pictures’ King Kong,
and, with the tastes of 21st century audi-
ences in mind, he not only fi lled the pit
with giant CG spiders, he attacked digital
sailors with huge grasshopper-like insects
and had gigantic slimy slugs swallow them
whole. It’s one of many sequences during
the three-hour epic in which Jackson pays
homage to the original 90-minute fi lm by
adding a blend of spectacle and emotion
that he mastered so successfully for The
Lord of the Rings.
To tell Kong’s story, Jackson relied on
state-of-the-art visual effects, as he did for
LOTR, and as did Cooper in 1933 for Kong.
Weta Digital, the three-time visual effects
Oscar-winning studio (for the LOTR tril-
ogy), worked on more than 3000 shots for
Kong that were whittled down to approxi-
mately 2500 in the fi nal cut.
“We created more creatures for Kong
than for the entire trilogy,” says Joe Letteri,
senior visual effects supervisor for Kong
who has garnered two Oscars (The Lord of
the Rings: The Return of the King and The
Two Towers) and one Oscar nomination (I,
Robot) while at Weta. More than 40 types
of digital creatures act in the fi lm, from
the creepy pit denizens to Kong himself:
The giant gorilla is always digital.
Letteri singles out four areas in which
he believes Weta pushed the state of the art
for King Kong: Kong himself, Skull Island’s
digital forest (created with miniatures and
3D plants), the ocean simulation, and a
reproduction of 1933 New York City. Kong
fi ghts for survival in the fabricated jungles
of Skull Island, wades through CG water
with blood and mud sticking to his fur,
and crashes through the streets of a vir-
tual New York. Unlike LOTR, which was
shot on location in New Zealand, Kong’s
world is largely digital. To push the state of
the art, Weta developed new software and
plug-ins for Alias’s Maya, Apple’s Shake,
and Pixar’s RenderMan, the three major
tools used for the fi lm.
A Star is Born
Animation director Christian Rivers
began working on Kong by supervising
a small, tight group of animators who
“fl eshed out a lot of the gorilla’s charac-
ter,” as he puts it. Using Maya, the group
started with the fi lm’s famous climax in
which the beleaguered gorilla clings to
the Empire State Building as he’s attacked
by biplanes. Next, they worked on Kong’s
fi ght with three T. rex dinosaurs, and
then moved on to other key sequences.
“[Jackson’s] way of working was to
discuss ideas in a story meeting and
send the animators off to create little
vignettes,” Rivers says. Eventually, the
animators created Maya animatics for
the shots Jackson deemed best so that he
could use digital cameras to design cam-
era moves in the 3D environment.
For his part, Rivers moved on to
supervise and direct Kong’s performance
and, working alongside animation super-
visor Atsushi Sato, that of the creatures
interacting with Kong. A team of approx-
imately 50 animators and actor Andy
Serkis, who had been motion-captured
for LOTR’s Gollum, created the star’s per-
formance—a blend of motion-captured
data and keyframe animation. “We cap-
tured Andy for many Kong sequences,
excluding the crazy stunts,” says Rivers.
“We used his ideas for the dramatic emo-
tional scenes. But to create the weight
and physics of a 25-foot gorilla, we also
had to keyframe him. And sometimes the
director wanted performances that were
more practical to keyframe.”
On set, Serkis wore arm extensions and
a Lycra suit padded into a gorilla’s physiol-
ogy. To act with Naomi Watts, who plays
Ann Darrow—the Fay Wray role in the
original fi lm—he was lifted 15 feet off the
ground in a cherry picker. When he roared,
a mike dropped the frequency of his voice.
When Serkis duplicated his perfor-
mance on a motion-capture stage, his
fa cial expressions and body movements
were acquired simultaneously. Rivers notes
that data from the areas around his eyes
and brows was most useful. Rule-based
“facial action coding” software developed
at Weta turned the data from Serkis’s
emotional facial expressions into gorilla
expressions. “We could take [Serkis]
straight in, body and face, or we could
animate Kong, or use some combination
of the two,” says Letteri.
Hair Today
Kong’s appearance was as crucial as his
performance. The fi lmmakers imagined
him as the last of his species, living alone
long
Actress Naomi Watts’s greenscreen image (left)
was composited with the digital gorilla in front of
a digital New York City for this sequence.
Pho
to cou
rtesy Pierre Vin
et / Un
iversal Stud
ios.
All im
ages co
urtesy W
eta Dig
ital / Un
iversal Stud
ios.
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w w w . c g w . c o m JANUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 17
Film. . . .
l ive the KING
Peter Jackson’s retelling
of the cinematic
legend King Kong pushes
Weta Digital to supreme
heights . . . and depths
In the fi lm, the craggy, bloody,
battle-scarred gorilla with mud
in his fur is always digital.
His performance was
created with a blend of
keyframe animation and
motion-captured data.
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18 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
. . . . Film
in the jungles of Skull Island. “No one was around to groom
him, so he was a matted, dirty creature,” says Martin Hill, 3D
sequence lead. “The fi rst maquette was made of yak hair.”
To create Kong’s digital fur, Weta developed a proprietary,
deformer-based system that allowed various departments
to work with different elements—guide hairs, expressions,
and so forth. Each hair was a RenderMan curve. Groomers
started by painting texture maps in areas where they wanted
the fur to grow. The maps, vertex data, or expressions speci-
fi ed hair density, length (number of CVs), and thickness. “At
this stage, we had a porcupine-looking monkey,” says Martin
Preston, fur software developer. Texture maps also defi ned
the fur’s color.
To style the hair, groomers specifi ed the frizziness with
deformers that controlled where particular hairs would bend. A
pelting system, also controlled with deformers, grouped the hair
into clumps. “We had 30,000 to 40,000 clumps on Kong’s head
alone,” says Preston. “It isn’t a solid mass of hair.”
The stylists positioned the clumps by placing points on the
model’s surface, by painting maps, and by having software ran-
domly distribute a number of clumps. “We have a whole collec-
tion of plug-in deformers to control layers of clumping, groom-
ing curves, and so on,” says Preston. “On his arm, there are 10
levels of deformers.”
To wedge blood, mud, and tree trunks (the gorilla is huge, after
all) into Kong’s thick hair, the fur team used instanced geometry.
“We had 2000 leaves and 2000 bits of mud and dried blood in
Kong’s hair,” says Preston. Because these elements were gener-
ated at the same time as the hair using the same methods, they
traveled along with the moving hair. Maya dynamics animated
the hair; the simulation crew used a separate set of deformers and
scripts to push the fur around when Kong moved.
“What they were all building is a program that executes in
RenderMan,” says Preston. “It has all the instructions for grow-
ing the fur.” The program, a dynamic shared object (DSO) they
named Bonobo, took charge once the lighting TDs had set the
lights and applied the shader. “It happens at the end, so at any
point in memory there is a limited amount of fur,” says Preston.
“It grows, on average, four million hairs to cover Kong.”
Because Kong appears in lighting conditions ranging from
the hot, tropical sun to nighttime New York City, the shading
team wrote one overall hair shader that incorporated shader
algorithms for any type of hair, including that for Naomi
Watts’s digital double.
“We started by implementing, in its entirety, a 2002
SIGGRAPH paper written by Stephen R. Marschner and oth-
ers called ‘Lightscattering from Human Hair Fibers’,” Hill says.
Previously, CG shading models dealt with primary highlights
on hair, Hill explains, but the Marschner paper added two ele-
ments: light that refracts into the hair and comes out the other
side, and light that goes into hair, refl ects, and comes out the
same side it went in. “It more accurately models the math for
what happens to a light ray entering a hair strand rather than a
cylinder, refracting and refl ecting inside it,” he explains.
This math produced what Hill calls “shampoo commercial”
hair, perfect for Watts. For Kong’s coarse, matted hair, the crew
added displacements and noise. Also, deep shadows, ambient
occlusion, and refl ection baked on a per-groom level helped give
the hair depth and volume. “Each groom has a 3D occlusion map,”
says Hill. For specular lighting, math representing an isosurface
around the hair clumps provided a layer used to render highlights.
“Fur is very dependent on the groom that defi nes the surface,”
notes Letteri. “You can’t separate the shader from the fur. That’s
what was hard—fi guring out whether [a problem] was due to
the shader or the groom.”
Kong’s fur had to react to the environment around him, so
the team tweaked the shader depending on his surroundings.
For example, they gave Kong’s matted, dirty hair a watery sheen
at the end of the capture sequence. Also, for shots of Kong on
the refl ective Empire State Building, the shading crew added
a refl ection component to the hair and used a different refl ec-
tion occlusion version for the fur. “We couldn’t use the same
methods as we did for the building,” Hill says. “Because you
see through his fur strands, we needed more volumetric refl ec-
tion occlusion.”
To test the shaders, the team shrunk the digital gorilla into
a realistic size, rendered that Kong, and put him into nature
fi lms to see how well he fi t into natural environments—particu-
larly dappled light fi ltering through trees, as it would on Skull
Island, and early-morning light to emulate Kong’s big scene on
the Empire State Building, which takes place at dawn.
A Jungle Out There
Jackson’s Weta Workshop, which created models, miniatures,
props, and so forth for the fi lm, designed Skull Island to imi-
tate matte paintings from the 1933 fi lm, not as a real jungle.
Nearly half the shots, including a Brontosaurus stampede, a
fi ght between Kong and three T. rex dinosaurs, the spider pit,
Kong has around four million hairs on his body that Weta Digital
rendered using a new shading model that executes in RenderMan.
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UltimateDream Machine.
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MJ-12® 7550a Workstation
Starting at $1,779
(254-3692)www.alienware.com/creative 1.800.ALIENWARE
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20 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o m
.. . . . Film
and Kong’s capture, take place on this island. “Nearly every
Skull Island shot is a combination of elements fi lmed on a min-
iature set with digital enhancements,” says Eric Saindon, digital
effects supervisor.
To create Kong-sized digital trees, the crew used the same
hair system as it did for the gorilla’s hair. “We started with a sin-
gle hair for the trunk, grew hairs off that for branches, and con-
tinued until we had enough to create a canopy,” says Saindon,
“and then we did the same thing with leaves.” For interac-
tion between characters and jungle elements, the team often
used Maya Paint Effects to create the environment, rendering
it with custom software that fed the output mesh straight into
RenderMan. Maya’s hair solver handled the dynamics.
“When Kong and the T. rexes come down through the vines
and land in a swamp, we have a montage that’s similar to
the 1933 movie in which Kong cracks the T. rex’s jaw open,”
says Saindon. “We didn’t have any plates. We built the walls,
ground, plants…everything in 3D, and used Paint Effects for
most of that sequence.”
Weta’s custom Maya plug-in named Putty helped with surface-
to-surface collisions, particularly at the end of the Brontosaurus
stampede in which dinosaurs and sailors all land in a pile on top
of one another. “We also used it for things like footprints and
trees,” says Saindon. “It doesn’t do the collisions; it just tells the
system when to look for collisions.” For example, rather than hav-
ing a tree branch constantly checking to see if it is colliding with
a creature, the plug-in told the system when a creature was near.
For shots on Skull Island that didn’t require much camera
movement or creature interaction, compositors created the jun-
gle using fi lmed elements of miniature trees. “[Jackson] wanted
to give Skull Island a sense of life,” says Erik Winquist, digital
compositing supervisor. “So, all the elements were shot with
wind. Hopefully, it looks like a living place.”
Using a custom 3D interface that Weta created for Shake, com-
positors built virtual dioramas: They imported rough geometry
for the scene and the camera used by the TDs, and then placed
cards with the fi lmed tree elements into the 3D scene. “We had a
100-square-foot set,” says Winquist. “Everything beyond that had
to be created by somebody.”
Oceans of Fun
Similarly, shots of the boat on which the protagonists travel to
Skull Island and later return with the captured Kong were cre-
ated from a mixture of elements—plates fi lmed on stage using a
full-scale model, water created from color-corrected fi lmed ele-
ments that were warped by compositors, and with a blend of 3D
and 2D digital water simulations.
“We mainly used a Tessendorf-style of water simulation as a
starting point to get calm water simulations,” says Ben Snow,
visual effects supervisor, referring to Jerry Tessendorf’s SIGGRAPH
2001/2004 papers titled ‘Simulating Ocean Water.’ “Then, we devel-
oped water-simulator deformers in Maya that we implemented as
RenderMan shaders and Shake plug-ins so we could put the same
values into all three and get the same patterns.”
For rougher seas, the crew further developed the tools. “In
previous fi lms we used a single wind-speed characteristic, but
as we refi ned the tools, we added off-axis wind direction, which
gave us a great deal of complexity,” says Christopher Horvath, 3D
CG supervisor. Using data gathered from buoys in the northern
Atlantic, the simulation team added turbulence to surface waves
in the ocean, pushing smaller waves differently than big ones
and having waves moving parallel to the wind
as well as perpendicularly.
For the most diffi cult water scene, however,
in which Kong is captured while splashing in
waist-deep water, the crew composited fi lmed
elements. “Even with ridiculously full-blown
sims, the photos looked better,” Horvath says.
“So we concentrated on giving compositors tools
to place fi lmed elements where the splashes
would be, and added CG splashes behind to
beef up and tie the elements together.”
Rather than creating tools that plug
together in Maya, Horvath’s team created a
development suite with tools that use Maya
controls. “We built new tools on the fl y from
various components and would recode and Weta extended the small Skull Island jungle set with fi lmed elements of miniature trees on 2D
cards, matte paintings, and 3D plants. The dinosaur is one of 42 digital creatures in Kong.
New water-simulation tools that allowed wind to blow from more
than one direction and emulate cresting foam helped create a CG
ocean as well as the interaction of the water around the boat.
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w w w . c g w . c o m JANUARY 2006 Computer Graphics World | 21
Film. . . .
recompile on a shot-by-shot basis,” Horvath says. “We have
libraries of fl uid tools written in C++ that we can reassemble
into new tools quickly.”
One such tool was written by 3D digital water TD Chris
Young, who had not written code before this project. His tool
creates cresting foam—the sharp bits at the top of waves that
gradually decay and move with the waves. “It’s the most evolu-
tionary in terms of pushing CG water technology forward,” says
Horvath. “It has 100 controls, and the resulting foam is magnif-
icent. In the past, we used particles or hand painted the foam.
This has a real feel to it because it’s based in science.”
New York, New York
When Kong is captured, he is taken to New York, where he’s
exhibited on stage. He escapes, tears through Times
Square, crashes through the city all night looking for
Ann, and then, at daybreak, climbs the Empire State
Building. Although Watts was fi lmed running in an
interior set piece, and other parts of the city were built
for the actors, most of the city was constructed of 3D
models with a 360-degree matte painting in the far
background. “In 40 percent of the shots, there is some
piece of a set—storefront windows, for example,” says
Dan Lemmon, digital effects supervisor. “But, we did
digital set extensions above that level. For the rest, we
created everything from scratch.”
To build 1933 New York, the crew started with a
low-resolution polygonal map of modern-day New
York that gave them the skyline for the entire city.
Using a dataset of modern New York that had infor-
mation about the year each building was constructed,
they culled all the structures built after 1933. Then, referenc-
ing a set of photographs from an aerial survey in the ’30s, they
added the buildings that had been torn down. “We created all
of Manhattan, the shoreline of New Jersey, and the shoreline of
Brooklyn in 3D,” says Lemmon. “We built historically accurate,
low-res building models in a format that would be sympathetic
to a script that 3D CG supervisor Chris White was writing to add
architectural elements.”
Although modelers constructed such signature buildings
as the Empire State Building by hand, most of the buildings
were constructed using White’s script, called CityBot-Urban
Development Software (or, ’bot for short), and a library of his-
torically accurate architectural elements.
“I wrote rules based on the reference photos from the ’30s that
told the ’bot what to put where,” says White. The ’bot added appro-
priate architectural details such as windows, ledges, and door-
ways, and, thereby, created the mass of the city. The city planners
then populated New York with 3D vehicles and people. Massive
Software’s crowd-simulation software managed the vehicular and
pedestrian traffi c unless the shots required hero animation.
When the camera was at street level, the crew dressed the side-
walks and alleys with mailboxes, fi re hydrants, trash cans, bits
of paper, and so forth. For street-level set extensions, they used
White’s CityBot with additional rules for such elements as stair-
wells and fi re escapes.
To texture the buildings, 3D lighting TD Michael Baltazar
wrote software that made rough guesses for material types
based on luminance values in black-and-white photos. To
render the resulting 90,000 buildings, 3D sequence lead Jean
Matthews created a system to bake buildings into textures.
“The ’bot would build a building, and all the details would be
rendered into textures for displacement maps and so forth, so
the building was rendered with textures rather than 3D geom-
etry,” explains White. “We probably have 400,000 textures.” A
procedural weathering system added rain and snow.
Gigantic Potential
Film critic Roger Ebert writes that the sophisticated effects created
by Willis O’Brien and others for the 1933 Kong “pointed the way
toward the current era of special effects, science fi ction, cataclys-
mic destruction, and nonstop shocks…movies and countless other
stories in which heroes are terrifi ed by skillful special effects.”
Letteri believes the work Weta did for Kong could also lead
to new types of fi lms. “Creating a title character like Kong, who
has such a complex performance without dialog, means we can
make creatures that people have not been able to think of before,”
he says. “And, if you can build a city like New York, you can
build any city—past, present, future—on any planet. [For Kong]
we turned the camera down a street, told the software what kind
of neighborhood or architecture to build, and it constructed the
city for us. We didn’t have to texture every building by hand.”
Letteri adds, “Having these come together opens up inter esting
possibilities for what we might be able to do in the future.”
Barbara Robertson is an award-winning journalist and a contrib-
uting editor for Computer Graphics World. She can be reached at
Weta extended the New York City set and built a digital replica of 1933 Manhattan
with a rules-based system that handled architectural details and textures.
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X22 | Computer Graphics World JANUARY 2006 w w w . c g w . c o mOn November 22, 2005, the look of comput-erized gaming in North America changed radically. That’s when Microsoft released its Xbox 360, the fi rst in a trio of expected new consoles to hit the market within the next several months. (Because Microsoft came late to the console game, the 360 marks the company’s second hardware release, while competitors Sony and Nintendo are prepar-ing their third systems.)Far more than a game console, the Xbox 360 is a video game and digital entertainment system that, in addition to fueling high-def gaming, lets users port music to the hard drive, watch pro-gressive-scan DVD movies “right out of the box,” and instantly stream and store digital video and other media, including digital photos. Unveiled on MTV in May 2005, the Xbox 360 is touted as placing the user at the center of the experience, anytime, any-where. The machine is always connected (through its Xbox Live feature that allows a person to play with others in any loca-tion), always personalized (with a cus-tomizable interface), and always plays in high def (at 720p or 1080i resolution). The machine—by taking advantage of the industry’s latest breakthroughs—represents a dramatic leap forward in high-def gaming and entertainment (see the table on pg. 24). As a result, gaming experiences are more expansive, dra-matic, and lifelike than ever before: Epic worlds spring to life with unprecedented detail, while extremely intelligent char-acters display a depth of emotion never before associated with gaming. Realism emerges not only in the advanced tex-turing and lighting effects of the graph-ics, but also in the way the settings them-selves respond to characters’ movements. For instance, if an enemy hiding in brush makes a sudden move, the player will hear and see leaves rustle, alerting them to the character’s presence.Powering UpAccording to Chris Satchell, general man-ager of the Xbox Game Developers Group, the 360 provides a true generational leap in every aspect of the system’s hard-ware, software, and services for advanc-ing gameplay graphics. For example, the cutting-edge custom GPU offers innova-tions such as 48 parallel-processing ALUs, Shader Model 3.0+, and real-time auto-matic scheduling of system resources, allowing every game to run at either 720p or 1080i resolution. Microsoft has paired the GPU with a custom CPU running at 3.2 GHz and fea-turing three symmetric cores. The CPU offers huge processing power for large-scale, complex worlds. To provide stor-One of the most popular gifts this past holiday season was Microsoft’s Xbox 360. For those lucky enough to have unwrapped one, there is little question as to why this relatively small gift box was on so many wish lists. The fi rst of the new gaming consoles to be released by the big-three vendors, the machine was met with great fanfare as hopefu