What's 3d app. create Gollum>>>?

[SheepFactory]

they modelled gollum in mirai and animated in maya if I remember right.

[meloncully]

Weta still uses mirai??

is bay still working for them??

[ambient-whisper]

yah. ( not sure how many of em there are. but hes one of the creature department supervisors )

[Phearielord]

Did they really model Gollum in Mirai?
Is it's modelling tools that good?
I would have thought that they would use something else.
Because Pixar does all their modelling in Maya.
Was it a nurbs or SubD character, do ya know?

[Modulok]

Sheep Factory is right on the mark, they animated him in Maya (with a little mo-cap help), rendered him in PRenderman, composite in shake I believe...and modeling...I'm not sure, but I don't doubt ya sheep factory. Very awsome movie I must admit! :beer:

-Modulok-

[Kabab]

What about the hair was that a custom pluging for maya ???

[Miyazaki]

Originally posted by Phearielord

Because Pixar does all their modelling in Maya.

Are you sure? http://www.lightwave3d.com/product/projects_list.html
:shrug:

[Tolerate]

doesn't say what they modelled tho, whether it be characters or props or sets

i would doubt they use the same app to model everything

[Tolerate]

that list also shows that LW was used in Black Hawk Down without out any (modelling) or anything under it which suggests that it was the only 3d app to be used. However Black Hawk Down also features in the Maya demo reel on the AW site, so that list is pretty misleading

[Miyazaki]

What I wanna say is that pixar uses more than one app(no app-war please!). EVERY big houses like ILM, PDI Dreamworks, Weta etc. use different software for different task, not only one for all.

[leigh]

Originally posted by Tolerate
that list also shows that LW was used in Black Hawk Down without out any (modelling) or anything under it which suggests that it was the only 3d app to be used. However Black Hawk Down also features in the Maya demo reel on the AW site, so that list is pretty misleading

It doesn't claim that it was the only package used in the production of the film - if you read at the top, it just means that in the final cut of the film, there are some LW elements. Nowhere does it claim that it was used for everything ;)

[CIM]

In Monsters Inc, Lightwave was used for Mike and Sully, while Boo was modeled in an alias/wavefront product.

[Phearielord]

I agree that Pixar would use more than one app for things, but right at the end of the credits for Monsters Inc, it says:
Modelling: Alias|Wavefront Maya
Animation: Marionette
Rendering: Renderman

This might suggest that they do most of their modelling in Maya, but more than likely not all of it.

[Tolerate]

Leigh: What i mean by misleading is:-

If I was new to 3D and new absolutely nothing about any aspect of it and was looking into buying a 3D package, if I saw that list, I would think that it was the only 3D software used and that could seriously influence my desicion to part with a of couple thousand pounds.

So in that respect I see it as misleading

[CIM]

How is what's on the Lightwave project list misleading? Misleading is alias/wavefront putting pure Lightwave work on it's reel or saying Maya is the only thing used in film.

Anywho, if you're stupid enough to go by what a company says their product was used it, you deserve to be mislead. Now, go buy an ab machine and get a six pack in ONLY 5 minutes a day! :-)

[peanut]

Originally posted by Phearielord :

Did they really model Gollum in Mirai?
Is it's modelling tools that good?


Mirai is good and uses subD too

dont worry about what Tool people uses ... the main goal is to kick ass so if you use Tea-kwon-do instead of Karate or Kung-fu to battle its the End result that is important

[Ed Lee]

OK, a legitimate question.."which soft for Gollum".. Mirai and Maya for modeling and anim.. I agree that it's the end result and peep's preference. But, you know.....the higher end soft does look better, and if a great artist is hittin' the keyboard even all that much better. Just my two pesos.

Ed--

www.edleeart.com

[rock]

I think companies should reference a scene or fuller description when they say their software is used for what films. They should be more specific.

I remember reading 1 or 2 year ago that Cinema 4D 7 was used to model and animate in Inspector Gadget, I took it to heart until several months later I learned that it was used at the beginning credit scene where there's bunch of boxes and trains and titles running across the screen. I was not impressed at all. They could have easily include Microsoft Notepad was used in the film also.

Rock.

[Tolerate]

that is exactly what I'm trying to say

[Modulok]

Big corporations suck :p

-Modulok-

[Isrithe]

Did anyone forget to mention Marionette, pixars own 3d app. Oh wait, one person did. Nevermind. Im tired.

[Scott212]

according to Cinefex magazine, Gollum was done mostly in maya (not sure about the modeling), hair is maya's own fur, the siliva in his mouth was programmed by one the technical directors with code, and it was painted in layers with Maya Studio Paint by a renowned physical model painter. It was the artists first time picking up a stylus! Oh yeah, forgot to mention that Gollum was originally constructed with nurbs patches but due to ripping they Weta used a custom translation software to convert it to a Subdivision control cage.

[ambient-whisper]

yeh. gollum was originally sculpted in clay ( or whatever. ) then that was scanned and turned it into a live model..drew patches.

theres a few articles that state that weta is going full force on subdees for movie 3 tho. so I wonder if gollum will be remade for that.

heres a post i found by zaxxon on spiraloid ( i havent read that cinefex article. )

Bravo Bay and your Team!! The January edition of Cinefex goes into some depth on the creation of Gollum's facial animation (awesome- Gollum literally steals the show). From Cinefex: ..."John Feather, Sven Jensen, Bradford deCaussin and Raitt sculpted broad expression poses, then built on those, 'Gollum wasn't the kind of character where we could sculpt a pose, bend that and call it a performance,' commented Raitt, ' He needed to be able to cry, to have his whole face in compression, then be able to act from there.' 'Regular boning, enveloping and muscle systems would not suffice because the animators needed to animate and read expressions in real time.'" "Raitt and his team sculpted all of Gollum's expressions in IZware's Mirai, a real time gaming program Raitt had helped develop in San Francisco." "The Gollum facial model consisted of 675 sculpted expressions, with 9,000 sculpted muscle shapes." It seems kind of ironic that Mirai is given credit as the principal tool in the sculpting process even as IZware appears down for the count.
Once again- Kudos all around, this is one very impressive effort and I was in heaven for the entire 3 hours.

[Mikkel Jans]

and it was painted in layers with Maya Studio Paint by a renowned physical model painter

What is Maya Studio Paint?

[Scott212]

honestly - I have never seen it before, and can't find anything about it on the A|W site. My only guess is that it has something to do with Alias Studio.

[Deepray]

Yep... Scanned... Adam Valdez talked to us in a seminar last october in Barcelona's ArtFuturaShow, about CaveTroll and all the creatures... ;) like golum... and men... I NEED A WIREFRAME SCREENSHOT OF TREEBEARD!!!... i can`t belive that can be a 3d geometry... :eek:

[gmask]

It is my understanding that the 675 facial expressions where modelled in Mirai but where based on scanned and converted geometry.

His body was also modelled with clay, scanned and converted to patches and then to sub-d's.

On another note I know that at PIXAR that older modellors are still using PowerAnimator and then the patches are converted. It is not surprising that they are using more off the shlef software and a wider range of it. If you are skilled in your package of choice there is few reasons to not let you use it.

[Scott212]

Blue Sky uses Rhino as an interface for their scanners, and then pipes them to maya for mutilation.

[ambient-whisper]

the head supposedly was never sculpted tho. that was entirely cg. ( i could be wrong and talking out of my ass. but im sure i read that somehwhere. )

[gmask]

Originally posted by Deepray
I NEED A WIREFRAME SCREENSHOT OF TREEBEARD!!!... i can`t belive that can be a 3d geometry... :eek:

The actual beard was strips of cloth then rendered with a renderman shader .. the created a optimized "L-system"-esque(for lack of a better word) for the leaves.

[ambient-whisper]

didnt they also have an anamatronic version of him for some closeups too ?

[gmask]

Originally posted by ambient-whisper
didnt they also have an anamatronic version of him for some closeups too ?

err.. I don't think so.. I don't think there was no mention of it in the CineFex Article.

[gmask]

Originally posted by ambient-whisper
the head supposedly was never sculpted tho. that was entirely cg. ( i could be wrong and talking out of my ass. but im sure i read that somehwhere. )

Read the CineFex article.. they hand scuplted a few dozen busts of different expressions based on PJ's face. After it was converted to digital they used Mirai to create the numerous facial expressions.

[spiraloid]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gmask
It is my understanding that the 675 facial expressions where modelled in Mirai but where based on scanned and converted geometry. [/QUOTE

uh, not quite. The original approved design maquete was scanned, but I mainly used it for size and proportion reference.

I built his head from a cube, as a subdiv, mostly by eye.

We then made digital design changes to that bind expression, and then sculpted all the facial expressions in Mirai. once the shapes were right, we compiled the face into maya using our proprietary facial system and the animators began animating his face.

back on our side, once the face was working well, we posed it in a slack expression and then printed the digital model back out into the real world using a rapid prototyper and detailed the mesh in clay. We then scanned that back in and used the difference as the displacement map. serge and gino then sweetened it up in studio paint.

just trying to keep the facts straight.

-b

[Ti22]

I heard its a polygon, modelled in Maya, I am not sure.

[Mikkel Jans]

Bay, do you have any Wireframe pictures of Gollum we can see?

[Gforce]

whatever app he was done on who cares it was AWSOM and it was the man/woman pushing the verts and edges and what ever that deserves ALL the credit they are the gods not the app each app is as good as each other it's the people that use tham that makes them good


just my 2 cents worth

[Ckerr812]

Originally posted by spiraloid
[QUOTE]Originally posted by gmask
It is my understanding that the 675 facial expressions where modelled in Mirai but where based on scanned and converted geometry. [/QUOTE

uh, not quite. The original approved design maquete was scanned, but I mainly used it for size and proportion reference.

I built his head from a cube, as a subdiv, mostly by eye.

just trying to keep the facts straight.

-b

Hey awsome info there, just wondering, for people like me who make up there own deadlines for things, how long does it take you (or you give another person/team) to model something like that?

Usally takes me about a week and a bit.

I take awhile to model faces and so, and was just wondering if maybe I am slow, compared to the pros at weta? :)

[jschleifer]

It's a tough thing to say how long anything really takes to finish.. not that I'm a modeler, but you may model something and go "right, I'm done". And then the director looks at it and goes "hmm.. can you change this?" so you change it and then think "hmm.. now this should change.." so you change that. Then you start working on blendShapes and while you're doing that you go "you know.. I should really modify this network.. and to do that I need to change the flow of these points.. " so you make those changes.. then the director asks for other changes.. etc etc.

so it can take anywhere from 2 days to 1 year to model it. :)

-jason

[gmask]

Originally posted by spiraloid
[QUOTE]Originally posted by gmask
It is my understanding that the 675 facial expressions where modelled in Mirai but where based on scanned and converted geometry. [/QUOTE

uh, not quite. The original approved design maquete was scanned, but I mainly used it for size and proportion reference.

I built his head from a cube, as a subdiv, mostly by eye.



just trying to keep the facts straight.

-b

Okay.. I got my info from the CineFX article and it was a little vague in areas.. they mentioned that there were numerous facial busts modelled in clay and since other elements were obviously digitized it was unclear as to what the whole process was.

Jsut as an aside.. so where is Mirai at.. has development on it been stopped? If you weren't using that for modelling what would you use or is it just a personal preference because you have extgensive experience with it when it was supported?

Also do you see many reels from would be modellers that include clay sculpting? How valued is this.. obviously in with ot without it if the work is good on the reel it may not matter but is having sculpting experience a definate plus for film work?

[Ckerr812]

Too right Jason, Thanks for the reply, I know what you mean, but I was more wondering from the base scanned mesh, taken in for reference, how long it takes from a SubDiv box, to the first showing of the model to the director :)

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