Post by Niemmy on May 10, 2007 1:06:39 GMT -5
After completing animation and visual effects for Farscape Series 2, 3 and 4, Animal Logic were again invited to work on 'Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars', a mini-series to appear over two nights.
Animal Logic spent eight months on the project which involved building 3D battleships, creating planetary and deep space atmospheres, building 3D characters such as Rygel and the living ship Moya, and designing and creating the complex galactic wars between the enemy Scarrans and the Peacekeeper forces.
Animal Logic worked with Director Brian Hensen, Producer Andrew Prowse and Visual Effects Supervisor Benita Carey from the earliest stages of filming, designing and ‘blocking’ shots so the Director could work more efficiently with their edits, knowing what the vision was for the visual effects elements.
‘Blocking’ is the process by which rough, greyscale 3D shapes will be built into the scene to represent where the fully rendered spaceships, asteroids or other elements in the scene will finally appear, allowing the live action crew to better visualize what the final shot might look while still in the early stages of filming.
Key Sequences
The opening sequence of the mini-series was one of the more complex sequences of the project. It involves a large space battle fought beside a planet surrounded by asteroid belts where Peacekeeper forces attack the Scarran forces and a spaces battle ensues.
One of the challenges was building a sense of perspective, because in space this is lost. Perspective was built with atmosphere and elements such as rocks and planets. Says Egerton: “This was a big sequence. We had to design this new CG planet environment with orbiting rings in line with the director’s vision for the shots. There was a lot of development time to get the balance right in terms of the scale and grading of all the elements. From an animation and blocking perspective it was a real challenge to create a convincing battle sequence combining and framing the actions of large, medium and small ships. It took a long time before we could start rendering real elements and effects.”
Yet for Jeremy Howdin, 3D Supervisor on the project, it was the finale of the show which involves a ‘wormhole’ that slowly absorbs all of the ships taking part in the space battle and then starts to absorb the planet by breaking it up.
3D Supervisor Jeremy Howdin was responsible for building and overseeing a team of animators that grew from four at the early stages of the project to a total of 30 by the productions wrap. Animators were recruited from around the country to work at Animal Logic’s facility at Fox Studios in Sydney as the demands of the production schedule intensified and more sequences were delivered.
“We built our team based on the need for a broad skill base. The skills required by the animators for this project ranged from visual effects to lighting and compositing. Farscape also lends a lot of creativity to the 3D artists. For example, for the wormhole sequence we really needed to develop the whole look of that and we went through numerous stages with the Director based on style frames we created for it as we moved into the 3D space. As a 3D artist, it’s very rewarding to know that you created the whole shot from scratch,” says Howdin.
The 3D animators were responsible for compositing their own 3D shots. Says Howdin: “With the 3D artists compositing their own 3D shots, it enabled us a lot more control because we knew what we could do in 3D and what we could do in compositing, so if we needed an extra matte or some more highlights on a spaceship, we knew which layers we needed. It gave us more control and we could also integrate effects more easily.”
This process was particularly helpful for long sequences with many animators working on one sequence as keeping the consistency and quality was vital. In order to facilitate this, Howdin produced a grading sheet that consisted of work-in-progress still frames that he would provide to the team every few days, complete with notes on what shots were approved, or what the Director liked, or wanted changed. In this way, the large team of animators were kept informed of what other people in the team were doing with other sequences.
Animal Logic also employed a smaller crew of 2D compositors to work on key sequences of the project that combined live action with 2D effects such as matte paintings. Their work can be seen in those where CG elements appear in live action plates and in the final sequence where lead character John Crichton sets off the wormhole and effects are added to the practical machine that he sits in.
Animal Logic 3D animators worked in 3D Studio Max and Maya, with Inferno, Digital Fusion and Combustion used for 3D compositing. 2D artists used Inferno, Flame, Henry, Shake and Combustion.