As featured in Screen Africa – September 2006.

Many animation houses in South Africa share the same frustration; namely they seldom get the opportunity to utilize, develop or expand on the exciting new technologies that are available to them.

Generally there are two main reasons that result in these frustrations coming to the fore, the first being budgets, i.e. the availability of funds available for the creation of television commercials and films, and secondly, few directors, post-production facilities and advertising agencies are educated in, and/ or have confidence in the capabilities of South African animation to be able to sell the advantages of medium to high-budget 3D effects to their clients.

Historically, the ensuing trend has been perpetual circles were animators are never stimulated to push the boundaries or even utilize new technologies, resulting in very few agencies or production houses having these effects on their reels to give confidence to their use of these tools within the industry.

It was for this reason that Sphere Animation Studio set out to create more than just a ‘tech demo’, but a piece that showcases some of these new and thrilling technologies and stimulate and renew interest in the possibilities available to the creative decision makers of television and film.

At the pre-production and planning phase, Sphere decided to focus on and showcase three specific techniques for this production. These are realistic creature effects (or digital doubling), realistic lighting and compositing and high-level dynamic simulators.

In point of fact, realistic creature effects or digital doubling is a term that incorporates most of the processes surrounding 3D animation; being modeling, rigging, surface texturing, animation and lighting for compositing.

The choice of making the central character of the piece a Wildebeest (or Gnu) stemmed from the animal’s unique characteristics and the challenges that the creature presented in taking it into a digital realm.

For Sphere’s animators the initial and hugely important part of the process in creating digital doubles is observation, so the crew started with finding as much reference material on Wildebeest as possible.

Once a wide data-bank of every conceivable reference had been collected, the next step was modeling the Wildebeest’s basic shape and proportions using Softimage XSI.

After the basic shape of the animal was established the animators turned back to their reference material, this time for anatomical studies of horses, cows and even dogs to gain a better understanding of how the muscles and fat structures under the skin operate and react to movements. These muscle ‘elements’ were then painstakingly recreated in a simplified form to bend, flex and jiggle so that the character would perform as realistically as possible.

The real challenge was not in creating the muscle system for the digital creature but in the manipulation of the skin to take the underlying muscle mechanics into consideration while the character is animated

The solution was ultimately to be a combination of soft body dynamic effects integrated into animatable influence zones or weight-maps, all working together to drive a few normal based deformers. In layman’s terms this translates into; “using gravity and density of flesh to selectively make the skin slide over the muscles”.

After the skin was operating correctly the team started to work on the surface textures in constant consideration of what type of photo-real environment the creature inhabits.

To create the fur of the wildebeest, Softimage XSI Hair Shaders were utilized to their fullest.

Texturing and lighting are two processes that Sphere’s animators consider inseparable as they are intrinsically entwined and rendering separate passes for compositing was also paramount in this project in order to give the control needed to create the final effect. One of the important technologies Sphere decided to incorporate into this project on the lighting side was HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images) technology. HDRI is a process of probing the environment photographically at various ranges of exposure to obtain all of the lighting and reflections in the scene. This raw data is then compiled through Photoshop into a usable file that is then used to create an image based lighting model.

This is currently the most affordable and accurate way of making sure the lighting of a 3D character matches the lighting of a live-action background.

HDRI is not a new technology and although it produces exceptional results, its use requires longer render times at the end of jobs, which unfortunately impacts on the budgets and the deadlines. – It is the opinion of Sphere Animation that this could easily be overcome by education of the benefits of HDRI and by including it into the initial quoting, planning and scheduling procedures of production and post-production. Consequently there would be ‘no compromise’ on the standards and quality of South African 3D / CGI production.

Ultimately, the most important part of digital character work is always the actual animation of the character. This is where the animator breathes ‘life’ into the hard work completed by ‘the creature effects’ team. The success of any animation project hinges on the standard of the animation applied to the character, it is at this stage that a project either becomes ‘alive and believable’ or ‘un-believable and redundant’.

Observation is once again the key during this juncture and so it’s back to the reference material that the animator must turn. At Sphere every animator is given the chance to comment on the animation until it is felt that the animation is satisfactory and does its part to sell the effect.

Another aspect of animation is the various Dynamic Simulators and these too are featured in the Wildebeest piece. These range from soft body dynamic and cloth simulations all done in XSI to 3rd party liquid dynamics used in the final sequence of G’nuhwein.

In conclusion, the biggest challenge remaining is to educate and convince the local markets that, with the right planning and research, the technologies used in G’nuhwein are highly accessible and that the talent and skills exist in the local South African animation industry to execute this type of high-end animation.

Director’s needn’t be afraid to let there imaginations run wild as there are genuinely absolutely no limits to what can be created to turn their visions into reality!

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