Siggraph’s technical papers are at the core of what makes SIGGRAPH such a great conference. Sure there are the parties, the cool tech etc., but it is the technical papers that continue to deliver the core of CG development. We asked a few leading industry experts (Weta, SPI, Pixar etc) to tell us what they are personally looking forward to seeing.
number of view: 355by: Dominic von Riedemann
After years of uncertainty, AMPAS has decided that motion capture films are ineligible for the Best Animated Feature Film Award.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences laid a 4-year old controversy to rest when they announced that motion-capture films are no longer considered eligible for the Best Animated Feature Film category.
“I just adored it. It made me more like a painter than ever before. I got a chance to do so many jobs that I don’t often do as a director. You get to paint with this device that puts you into a virtual world, and allows you to make your shots and block all the actors with a small hand-held device only three times as large as an XBOX game controller. When Captain Haddock runs across the volume [the name for the motion capture stage], the cameras capture all the information of his physical and emotional moves. So as Andy Serkis runs across the stage, there’s Captain Haddock on the monitor, in full anime, running along the streets of Belgium. Not only are the actors represented in real time, they enter into a three-dimensional world.”
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James Cameron and Peter Jackson are the kings of the CGI world. Cameron, of course, directed Titanic, the highest-grossing movie of all time—which he says he’d make with no ship if he were filming today. Jackson was the guy behind bringing Middle-earth to the big screen in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now they are back with Avatar and The Lovely Bones, two of the most-hyped films of the holiday season. Newsweek asked them about their new films and how technology is changing Hollywood. An excerpt of the transcript is printed below:
Director James Cameron had many reasons to be happy the morning that this year’s Oscar nominations were announced: His blockbuster movie “Avatar” tied for the most with nine, including best picture and best director. But he was dismayed that his cast, including stars Zoe Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, was shut out.
number of view: 4761By: Barbara Robertson
When we think about the first films to convince directors that visual effects created with computer graphics could open their imaginations, two films immediately come to mind: James Cameron’s The Abyss, in which a transparent CG character communicated with an actor, and Cameron’s Terminator 2, which starred a digital, liquid terminator and is lauded as the first movie to show the power of a digital pipeline. Both films won visual effects Oscars, as did Cameron’s Alien before, and Titanic after. Titanic, released in 1997, still holds the record for the largest box-office revenue: $1.8 billion. It was the last feature film Cameron had made. Until now.
number of view: 1998Astonishing powers leaves nine teens in a bewildering saga of action and sci-fi thrill in I Am Number Four
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Three-time Academy Award-winning director James Cameron is a pioneer in the field of motion capture. In the mid-’90s he used the nascent technology to create the massive crowd scenes and stunts in his blockbuster Titanic. These days he’s still at the cutting edge of the technology, but he prefers to call motion capture “performance capture” because, as he points out, “actors don’t do motion, they do emotion.”
Bill Desowitz speaks with Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri about staying on the cutting edge of digital acting and 3D environments at Weta Digital.
After winning an Oscar for vfx on King Kong, Joe Letteri has remained at Weta Digital to supervise work on The Water Horse (Sony/Revolution, Dec. 7, 2007), including the CG sea creature, and Avatar, James Cameron’s long-awaited, first feature since Titanic. Letteri also discusses early work on the CG Silver Surfer from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Fox, June 16, 2007). Under the vfx supervision of Kevin Rafferty, Weta has reportedly enhanced its CG animation process that employs performance capture techniques to add further dimensionality to the liquid-metal hero performed by Doug Jones.
number of view: 943Eighteen months ago, Guillermo del Toro had a 10-year-plan. His life was mapped out, and it had nothing to do with JRR Tolkien’s lovingly rendered cartography of Middle-earth. 
“I was calmly laying out the next decade of my life when The Hobbit appeared,” he laughs. “I was preparing all these things and all of a sudden The Hobbit shows up and takes over my life.”
Make no mistake: The Hobbit is his precious. Del Toro knows more than anyone that this diptych could – should – define his career.
number of view: 11611In this initial feature for the launch of SIGGRAPH Quarterly’s online magazine, Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Rob Engle and Rob Bredow discuss the subject of stereoscopic 3D film production and presentation, and offer their ideas as to where this increasingly important technology may be heading in the future.
| Article author: Eden Ashley Umble
All images courtesy of Sony Pictures Imagesworks unless otherwise stated |
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 Combined left & right eye final shot – IMAX |
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 Left eye camera render |
 Combined left & right eye camera render |
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Andy Serkis is the reigning master of performance for motion-capture — the recording of an actor’s every move and facial nuance for use by animators to enliven CG characters. In his acclaimed star turns as the ring-addicted Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the noble mega-ape in King Kong, 43-year-old Serkis invested his digital roles with the power of old-school stagecraft at its best. The London-based actor has also recently ported his skills to the gaming world, appearing in the new PlayStation 3 title Heavenly Sword, which he co-produced. Now that even Angelina Jolie is getting in on the sensors-and-greenscreen action — for Robert Zemeckis’ upcoming take on Beowulf — Wired spoke to Serkis about digital acting, the future of mo-cap, and why Gollum didn’t score an Oscar.
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In this article, I’m getting right at the meat of what technologies are, getting us closer to that goal, and what this really means for the future of not only motion capture filmmaking, which Steve Perlman of Mova (www.mova.com), refers to as volumetric cinematography, but also the impact it will have on live-action films and mixed media films, like James Cameron’s upcoming Avatar. Mocap is finally coming of age, but the future will be even more exciting.
In the simplest terms, the future of mocap will be a seamlessly integrated motion capture experience where the limitations imposed by current technologies are overcome and the mocap process blends into the background. This will allow us to capture full body and facial motion data, as well as capture the movement and texture of real clothing, skin, props, and environments, while permitting realtime compositing or superimposing with live-action elements.
number of view: 792Heath Firestone
Motion capture, or mocap as it is often referred to, is one of the great new frontiers in the world of movie making, and although it has had its resistance in the film community, it is becoming a crucial tool in complex digital effects. And, as it develops, it has become a completely different medium in which to capture entire feature films.
Robert Zemeckis has produced three films entirely using mocap: Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. Peter Jackson, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have also used the technology in their productions.
Several years ago, I got to spend some quality time alone with Ray Harryhausen. It was only about half an hour, but I count it as a career highlight. Although I don’t recall his exact words, Harryhausen told me that he always had a deep commitment to the animated performance, believing that a great one was as engaging and emotionally telling as life itself… or at least a great human performance. The thing that convinced me was his work on Mighty Joe Young. I know that he’s right – it’s not just movement; it’s performance.
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When undertaking back-to-back sequels to Disney’s surprise blockbuster, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Industrial Light & Magic quickly realized that it neWith the help of the Imocap system, Bill Nighy’s creepy Davy Jones is the next great CG performance after Gollum and King Kong. All images © 2006 Disney Enterprises Inc and Jerry Bruckheimer, Inc. Photo credit: ILM.
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