AEAF 2018

 

The work completed on last years projects for Ypres and Passchendaele are entries into this years Animation Effects Awards Festival 2018.  really proud of the har work done by such a small and talented team and hope it all pays off.

 

Real-Time animation

 

More recently announced is the The Mills' real-time animation system (RTAS) which utilises real-time rendering technology and a custom-built, CGI virtual production pipeline to create any character.
The catch line is Ever wanted to direct, perform and animate CG characters in real-time?
The quality looks amazingly impressive, as always from this Studio, but anymore information is a little thin on the ground.  Would be interesting to see what aspects are real-time and where in the pipeline does it expose immediate feedback resulting changes for the client?
From the Monster.com 'Opportunity Roars' commercial TVC breakdown, the character has muscles system, fur etc.  This is a fantastic achievement in processing and development if this is all real-time.  Lots of grunt behind the system if it is.

 

Real-time rendering

 

An oldy but still impressive.  Project spotlight relied on a proxy vehicle covered in tracking markers called the Blackbird, which was developed by visual effects studio The Mill.
An early example of unreal engine pushing the boundaries into VFX production.  The benefits being to film a car commercial without the actual final car in the frame, ‘The Human Race’ was also imagined as an augmented reality experience where users could change vehicle characteristics themselves (such as the make or colour).
This was a high profile convergence of skills and industries (game engines and VFX) which will only benefit the production pipeline and immediacy of feedback and response.
There will be many more to come until real-time and it's relative newness and acceptance in the VFX industry will just be the norm.

 

Siron - real-time character performance

 

Epic games collaborating with 3Laterial, Cubic Motion, Tencent and Vicon to have live capturing of human performance driving a digital avatar.

Final results are below which are pretty impressive.  Some nuances in the face and particularly around the mouth which give a hint of uncanny valley but generally this is a massive leap forward in real-time driven performance.

 

Unreal real-time ray tracing

 

First public demo of real time ray tracing using unreal.  Announced at GDC 2018 and showing a massive jump in quality for real time rendering.  A fantastic step forward in the convergence of games and films and all the skill sets required.  Great to see and looking pretty amazing!!

Next-generation rendering features shown in today’s demo include:

  • Textured area lights
  • Ray-traced area light shadows
  • Ray-traced reflections
  • Ray-traced ambient occlusion
  • Cinematic depth of field (DOF)
  • NVIDIA GameWorks ray tracing denoising
 

UE4 Rendering - Morgan lives in a rocket house

 

Really nice example of how UE4 enables sole animators to realise an entire production.  Great to see the versatility of the style of the engine and how it can also offer opportunities into interactive areas.
In this case Unreal Engine was sued as a replacement for the shading, lighting, effects, rendering, and compositing stages of a usual animation pipeline.

 

UE4 Rendering - Animated series Zafari

 

This looks like a really great use of the unreal engine to produce animation content.  Zafari is an upcoming TV series which is using UE4 as part of the animation pipeline.  I hope this is really the start of many more projects that take advantages of the quality you can get from these amazing third party engines.

 

Book of the Dead - Unity Interactive Demo

 

I want to start using the blog to talk about my increasing interest in real time engines used in rendering along with the more established games projects.  Real-time engines have made massive inroads into more established film based outputs which is worlds away from when I first started in games over 20 years ago.
So as a taster, here's a great example achieved with #unity3d from Unity's Demo team behind Adam and The Blacksmith.

 

Lascars

 

French trailer of an animated movie called Lascars which was released in 2009.  Another great example of the integration of 2D and 3D styles into something which I consider to be uniquely french style.  I think it's the integration along with a very sophisticated colour palette which can be seen across many French productions.