Okay, so now I’m wondering. What about DreamWorks? They have some computer animation system they’re using, but what is it? They’re definitely much more elusive and less publicized than is the case with Pixar, Industrial Light and Magic, Sony Pictures, and Disney. Okay, so let’s turn to Wikipedia. What does Wikipedia have to say?
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamWorks
Oh, remember, DreamWorks Animation, DWA. By the way, the “SKG” does not refer to any software graphics engines, it refers to Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, or SKG for short. In fact, much of the software used for the computer animations came from Pacific Data Images. They were an early entrant into 3D computer graphics, and they basically developed all of their own software in-house. Their main early business was making animated graphics to decorate TV channels like NBC. Some peculiarities that set Pacific Data Images apart from many of the other companies was that they did NOT lease supercomputers nor did they incur any debt. Their growth came entirely through profit. They instead relied on technology advances in low-cost computers to increase their capacities. Also, Pacific Data Images is one of the longest-lasting computer graphics companies, unlike many of the others, and their entire operation went smooth until their purchase by DreamWorks Animation, after which they were affected by the turmoil of the larger company.
And about their software? There was only one occasion upon which they licensed it to an outside company. Other than that, the software is entirely developed in-house, it was never licensed or sold to outside companies (except for their open-source contributions to OpenEXR). So there you go. That’s the lowdown on their software system, and yes, that’s the reason why their software seems so much more “obscure” than that of Pixar or Industrial Light and Magic, because it is. Those other companies, of course, do participate in selling their software such as RenderMan to third parties.
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So, in a sense, even before the advent of libre software computer graphics, the availability of a commercial product for sale on the open market for anyone who can pay the offer price was a considerable “advance” over the other alternative where the software is not even offered for sale, just the service.
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And, when I think about it, this has considerable implications to the availability, participation, and interoperability of standards in computer graphics. The CAM companies aren’t really participating because those realms of software development can often times be seen as their “secret competitive strategy,” plus they also want to get vendor lock-in on their platform. And for the animation and movie industry, well unfortunately we have something rather similar going on. Rather than trying to share at a module level, the “traditional” practice is to phone in a company as a “service bureau” that does an animation job and produces a video sequence. No sharing of 3D assets, they’re all custom-created by artists in-house.
Yeah, so that’s why 3D data exchange, though slightly better among artistic 3D computer graphics and animation software than CAM software, is still hampered and problematic. The problem is that these industries traditionally just never really had a need to communicate their 3D data, at least from the way they were traditionally operated.
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DreamWorks_Animation
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mireille_Soria
- Side note: It seems from the DreamWorks Animation article that Mireille Soria is someone important. However, the Wikipedia article on Mireille Soria doesn’t have very much information.
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Data_Images
What about Big Idea? Oh, they definitely buy their animation software from other people. A very small joint they are. Well, no dice on the Wikipedia article making mention of the software they use.
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Idea_Entertainment
20161229/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/doc/422096575.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Sep%2023,%202006&author=Lorenza%20Munoz&pub=Los%20Angeles%20Times&edition=&startpage=&desc=NBC%20Issues%20New%20Explanation%20for%20%60VeggieTales%27%20Cuts
Now I’m wondering. Family Home Entertainment? Now that it was brought up, let’s see what Wikipedia has in store.
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Home_Entertainment
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions_Gate_Entertainment
20161229/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Between_the_Lions
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Is Between the Lions releated to Lions Gate Entertainment at all? Nope, not the least bit. Between the Lions came from WGBH, Shadow Projects, and Sirius Thinking Ltd. Oh, and it is no longer in production anymore. No, it didn’t use computer graphics, it was actually all puppetry, I’m told. Even for that stone lion and that computer mouse, Click.
- Click can drag and drop objects out of books and websites? Really? Come on! I thought for sure at least some special effects in the show were done using computer graphics. Okay, maybe some, maybe the Wikipedia article wasn’t fully detailed on that point, but there you go. Limitations with Wikipedia.
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Wait, could this be it? Maybe it is. Unfortunately, the Wikipedia article is not detailed enough.
20161230/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterisk_animation
20161230/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace_%26Son
20161230/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythm_and_Hues_Studios
20161230/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Pi%28film%29#Controversies
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Interesting. Rhythm and Hues Studios had a frictional encounter with one of its clients such that Rhythm and Hues didn’t get paid as much as they were expecting and had to file for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. The articles above contain more information on the subject. This was particularly due to the making of the Life of Pi film.
Oh yeah, and I’d be interested in looking in that documentary on YouTube, but seriously, I’m in the middle of a data deluge right now, and I’ve got to do wrapup on taking notes on what I’ve been previously reading.
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You know, on DreamWorks Animation. First, they started as Pacific Data Images, making computer-animated flying logos for television network stations. Then, later on, they worked their way up to making feature-length animated films. And then, even later on, when part of DreamWorks Animation, they had an effort to move diversity their revenue source beyond the high-risk movie business and into television series and other things like that. Wow, how they swung up to the difficult rung of the ladder, then had to lower themselves a bit, after a hiatus of becoming almost dependent on feature-length animations for a revenue source.
Also, it’s interesting to see how much DreamWorks Animation split off from DreamWorks Pictures (DreamWorks SKG). Oh yeah, and DreamWorks Animation owns the DreamWorks trademarks. Oh yeah, and the more formal name for DreamWorks Animation is DreamWorks Animation SKG.
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Yeah, one last thing. I was wondering about NBCUniversal, so here is the Wikipedia article on them. Wow, they sure do have a lot of subsidiaries, as is shown at the bottom of the article.
20170107/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBCUniversal
Yeah, seriously, this makes me wonder. Is our sole remedy nowadays for media to buy out the owners and own the rights to the media exclusively? It is no longer possible for public domain to be a useful means of media acquisition and distribution? This really makes me wonder.
Yeah, because if that is really true, that would mean that my public domain 3D modeling and animation efforts would be in direct competition to these big media company’s interests, and they would want nothing to do with it. Yeah, that would indeed be unfortunate, but it could just as well be a reality.
So I guess NBCUniversal may be the new Disney, and eventually, we’ll have as much controversy writings against them as we do against Disney. Then we’ll have to start all over again. Well, look, here’s my point. It’s okay to have a past history of controversy, so long as they address the concerns and get better. It’s just that, well, that really hasn’t been the case with how Disney is being run.
Indeed, DreamWorks Animation got bought out (but they got spun off once, then bought out), and so did Pacific Data Images. And same with Big Idea. (Big Idea was bought by Classic Media, then Classic Media was bought by DreamWorks Animation, then DreamWorks Animation was bought by NBCUniversal. Yeah, and we know that NBCUniversal is a division of Comcast nowadays.) But Rhythm and Hues Studios filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, Family Home Entertainment, F.H.E., subsidiary of Artisan Entertainment, got bought out by Lions. Indeed, I’d be to tempted to say that the turbulence of the animation industry and even the broader movie industry is rather comparable to that of the video game industry. And this turbulence also shares its similarities with the music industry. Hmm, I’m noticing a pattern, aren’t I? I’d be tempted to say that all of these entertainment businesses face an eminent risk to going out of business, totally disproportional to that of other business sectors. Then again, the computer and software technology professions face similar turmoils too, even though they are selling important tools and technologies to reliable business sectors.
I think it’s important to study the history of the companies in the entertainment industry and how tumultuous things are. Yeah, that really helps provide a lot of context, you know. So that people don’t get the wrong idea. Then again, despite that being a “good idea,” sure, I think we know which one is more entertaining. Oh really? Come on, I think I can easily make the study of business history entertaining! So, there you go. It is entirely possible to present this story, and in an entertaining way too.
So, I click through the link on Phil Vischer’s blog about what happened to Big Idea.
20161229/https://philvischer.com/news/what-happened-to-big-idea-part-1/
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Oh, that’s really insightful. Lyrick lost a few million dollars on Wishbone. Well, I wasn’t told of that on the Wikipedia article on Wishbone, just that the show was brought out of production. Well, now I know better. If I am wondering why something was discontinued in the media, sometimes it’s not because the progenitors lost interest, it’s because the progenitors lost too much money to continue any further.
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Oh, and commentary on “owned intellectual property” fictional characters. Big Idea has found out that when working with Lyrick, they are treated as the “unloved stepchild.” From a one-hour conference marketing calls to Target, they would for example spend 40 minutes talking about Barney and only 20 minutes talking about Vegie Tales.
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I didn’t know they spent any money on the video marketing, I thought it was all word of mouth. But the Jonah movie, yeah, I think I might have seen one commercial on television or something.
Jamie wrote:
sigh I hate that this whole sordid ordeal came of such a wonderful company! As I read, I pictured my family’s life and where we were at each stage…watching the videos, Jonah, and Veggies Live….no idea of the behind-the-scenes struggles. We’ve been Veggie Tales fans since my son was a toddler (and we watched some episodes over and over and over). I have very fond memories of my two children, quiite young, playing and “going to the Promised Land.” My family has been blessed by your ministry and we will now pray for you all, as we continue to buy each new video as it comes out!
Ha! So we do have a comment from one of the artists who worked for Phil. They’re not all mad. Well, at least I’m hoping the heartfelt apology made it across.
davemjordan wrote:
OK – so I’m a little late to the party here. I’ve worked for Phil (on Jonah as a lighter). I’ve worked for Steve Oedekerk (on Barnyard). I’ve worked for Blue Sky Studios and for Mr. JK at Dreamworks. PHIL is by FAR the best boss ever!!!! After 8 feature films, the only one you’ll find framed and on the wall in my house is my Jonah poster, signed by Phil and all the wonderful people who worked on that film. It’s a long story Phil – maybe I’ll email it to ya – but just two days ago a friend of mine who I’ve witnessed to for many years at Dreamworks, asked “Dave, what was that Christian company you spoke so fondly of? I’d like to go work for them.” This came from a guy whose worked on 15 feature films – God has gotten ahold of him, and he wants to work on good Christian films now.
Phil – BIP was a great experience for me – and is something God is still using to this very day – 2/24/13 – to impact others. I praise the Lord for you and Mike and the crew – (and my good buddy Tom Danen). What am I up to now? After getting my dream job at Dreamworks, I left it all and headed to seminary at tms.edu. God is so very good.
May we praise the good and wonderful name of the Lord. May we thank God for all the sweat and tears Phil, Mike and their families poured into so many!
In fact, this artist was a lighter who worked on Jonah! Yeah, one of the people who had to come in living in temporary housing, worked in near-complete darkness for the sake of color fidelity, and started to look like moles, according to Phil Vischer.
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What? tms.edu? Is that even Catholic? Christian? Well, Christian. Evangelical.
20170106/https://www.tms.edu/
20170106/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Master%27s_SeminaryAh, typographical errors. Common in the historic practice. “Why?” you ask. Oh you know the answer to that. Because the incumbent established publishers could produce prettier books. Even though there existed technological means to produce more accurate books, they tended not to look as pretty, so they never did gain traction among society.
In response, Ed Udell, Sr. wrote:
Hey Dave!
I really enjoyed your positive comment to Phil! Sometimes “stuff” happens that will cause some to get better, and others to get bitter. From your comment, it appears that you are one who got better from the experience!
I didn’t try to read all the comments. Oh, come on, are you saying you’re not even going to fully read this article? Hey! Come on, you know, those Wikipedians are definitely right when they say Cyberspace is an infinite accordion, and unfortunately if you try to traverse the infinite accordion in full, that can have serious negative effects on your productivity. Yes, that is in fact truly the way the real world is, and I am greatful for the fact that our modern-day computers are now capable of storing enough information to provide a pervasive and immersive, large and complex experience similar to that one experiences from the real world.
Now, that being said, we have to end up admitting to the contrary too when working with computers, that because computers are now capable of providing such a realistic presentation of information, we should not try to traverse it fully, just as we don’t attempt to do everything in the real world. Yeah, I know, it’s hard, especially because it really straddles the boundary between the two, but that’s the way things have to be.
Okay, but anyways, now for my own comment. Not posted to the website, of course. Heck, I never know where to sort information. Were this being done on the Internet, a ping-back from my blog would make sense, I guess.
I didn’t read all the comments previously posted on this article, so my own comment might be a little bit repetitive, but here’s what I wanted to say. I’m glad you gave the heartfelt apology. I sure hope the message got out to the artists who were mad at you. One thing that was particularly striking to me when reading the pages was the decision point for taking the loan out of the bank. The natural response that was striking me when reading it was “No, no! Turn it down! It’s asking for too much,” but understandably, there were a lot of other things you were taking into consideration too such as the current employment at the company and the future of the company. Other commenters have questioned whether you actually needed to apologize, but I think the apology was well deserved, as there was a lack of fulfillment of the original goals. (Although, yes, an apology could be well-deserved from the other management too.)
Indeed, we did get at least one comment from one of the artists who worked for you (davemjordan). Another thing I have to comment, as most have commented here, is the perspective from those who were enjoying Vegie Tales. Actually, to be honest, I was in some sense suspicious of the move to the Jonah movie. “Wow, that’s really stretching it, how did they get ready to release a movie so quickly?” is what I first thought when I saw mentions of the forthcoming Jonah movie from the Vegie Tales VHS tapes. But, I had to make a guess, if they’re saying they can do it, they must be ready. Also, we happened to get the Jonah movie on DVD, and I did in fact notice the shiny labeling they used on the DVD cover, and I thought “Is that really necessary? I certainly would not have been able to print that out using my conventional inkjet printer.” But again, if they did it, it must have been easily doable for them. I was so surprised to find that my “suspicions” were actually extremely relevant details that were pertinent to issues keeping Big Idea running. And wow, I didn’t even know that there was marketing for the Vegie Tales non-movie videos! I thought it was all word of mouth. That’s how we found out about Vegie Tales. Indeed, I have to say, “packaged goods’ marketing is definitely not a good way to try to market media.
Also, watching the later Vegie Tales videos, indeed they were noticeably different, but at the same time, as many others have commented here, I was not readily aware that Big Idea was bought out at that point.
No, really, I’m wondering, what about DreamWorks Animation technology?
20161229/DuckDuckGo dreamworks animation technology inside
untested/http://www.dreamworksanimation.com/insidedwa/
20161229/https://www.magzter.com/article/Technology/PC-Pro/The-Tech-Of-Shrek-Inside-DreamWorks-Animation
untested/http://www.dreamworksanimation.com/technology/
20161229/http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/25/dragon-making-main/
Oh, here we have it. So, for the article above, the old modeling/animation software used by the animators was Emo, from the 1980s, but the new “reinvented” software that they are currently using is Premo. Apollo is the name of the their computer server and render farm software.
- Yes, and this being in-house company software, well, it’s not like it is something that the animators can bring with them when moving between different companies. Something to think about. Well, maybe nowadays, the software’s sale is much more open. I’d have to look more to find pout, but that is as much research on DreamWorks Animation as I can do for now. I’ll have to do more later.
Oh, and I like the infographic that they have in the article. Just saying, in case it may be a good idea to design a “good looking” infographic.
20161229/http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/25/dragon-making-gallery/
Oh yeah, and their animators use Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There you go, so they actually are high technology developers.
DreamWorks Animation has a research website? Cool!
untested/http://research.dreamworks.com/technologyNews.html
untested/http://research.dreamworks.com/index.html
More interesting links:
20161230/http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/inside-dreamworks-how-animated-movies-are-rendered-1127122
That previous article particularly highlighted the technological advancements that have improved the development of 3D animations.
untested/https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa-08/inside-dreamworks-animation-studios-look-past-present-and-future-challenges
And for posterity, because this is a graphics company, we better include videos.
untested/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzMzFom9eX0
untested/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=919v_KW86mo
Oh, this is interesting. A look inside the DreamWorks offices, posted anonymously by employees.
untested/https://www.glassdoor.com/Photos/DreamWorks-Animation-Office-Photos-E36343.htm
20161230/https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/rethinking-the-pipeline-dreamworks-animation-advances-the-art/
Ha! So this one is interesting. The problem of induced demand is at work when it comes to making computer animated feature films. Inside DreamWorks Animation, Chief Technology Officer Ed Leonard quips this as “Shrek’s Law,” due to the observation that with every later generation of Shrek film, the total amount of computing power devoted to rendering doubles.
- Yeah, unfortunate as it is, this is the driving factor in graphics even on the consumer desktop. It is one of the reasons why consumer computing equipment, at least in the earlier heyday of computers, kept becoming rapidly obsolete.
Also, it’s interesting that until recently, DreamWorks Animation’s rendering software ran mostly on the CPU, due to their warping computations being on the CPU, being intensively needed for most animated frames, and due to bandwidth limitations to the GPU. Similar statements were made about the physics system too.
20161230/http://www.creativeplanetnetwork.com/news/news-articles/inside-dreamworks-animation/382988
That particular article seems to detail more of the side of the old DreamWorks 2D animation studio. Oh, here, on this end, the artists were using commodity commercial tools. There was lots of interesting discussion on the various techniques they used for combining 2D and 3D graphics and creating special effects.
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It seems there was a point in time after the merger where DreamWorks Animation had to spend some time in a decision-making process. Should they go forward, continuing to use their in-house system, or should they just switch to the industry standard tools? They decided to continue their in-house development.
I think one thing that makes DreamWorks Animation special is that they started out somewhat late compared to some of the other incumbants, but they ended up developing entirely their own graphics software system. So, in other words, it’s like they had to get up on their feet running to catch up with the more established players in the industry. And, to this end, after reading these articles, I think they still are running. If they keep up that momentum, it’s conceivable to believe that DreamWorks Animation’s own internal systems could far surpass those of the rest of the industry by a considerable margin. Right now, if I had to make an estimate, I would say that DreamWorks Animation’s system is comparable to that of the broader industry, but with a few niche advantages. So, I guess I’m saying that one day, DreamWorks Animation might one day get up to the rank of “winner take all” advantages.
20161230/http://www.roadtovr.com/5-insights-new-vr-developers-dreamworks-animation-head-technology-product-development/
Oh, interesting article on VR.
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So wait, now I have to phrase up my own comments. What are the advantages of 3D on the Internet? Most particular is the case of buying specialized electronics and electronics adapters. Often times, when working with electronics, you need to buy a part that is too highly specialized to expect to find at a local store, but at the same time, the problem with online shopping is that the 2D pictures, especially if they are provided by resellers, hardly provide any coverage of the object’s surface, much less is the scale unambiguously indicated. 360 degree coverage is easy with 3D scanning, with some limitations of course.
But what about scale? Well, the most obvious way to make scale obvious is by comparison with an object of a known size, often times your own hands, sometimes a ruler. Regardless, I think it should be obvious that at this point, augmented reality from a VR headset provides the most obvious intuition of object scale.
But for now, given the continuing low industry adoption, we’re just going to have to concede with the poor quality experience of online shopping, while also admitting that often online shopping is your only option for buying specialized parts. Yeah, sure, there are in-physical options, it’s just that they’re much harder to come by in comparison to accessing an online store.
Okay, wait! I could have used the side bar to continue the discussion on DreamWorks Animation’s technology.
20161230/http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/25/dragon-making-premo/
Wait. This time, the software was made by Intel for DreamWorks Animation, not by in-house hired software developers.
Oh hey, there are videos. Better go note that for posterity, for the fact that I didn’t TODO watch them yet.
20161230/http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/25/dragon-making-visualization/
Oh wait, they actually do use Windows computers at some parts during the process.
Some of my favorite quotes:
In the past, computing power for animation was so expensive and time-consuming that there was no way to see what something looked like ahead of time. An artist would create a scene and send it off for rendering. After a day or so, it would come back, and the artist could see it. If the director wanted changes, the work loop would start all over again. The process was like taking a picture with Kodak film. You could take a roll of film, send it off to the store, and then find out if the pictures were good. If they weren’t, you’d have to do it again.
“We are harnessing the power of the hardware and software to put filmmaking back into our artists’ hands,” Swanborg said.
With DreamWorks Animation’s Apollo system, the visualization and animation are now integrated.
The storytellers still do a lot of their work ahead of time using animated storyboards, which are like frames from a comic book. For Dragon, that work took up about two of the five years it took to make the film. But the visualization tool saved a lot of time. “Five years ago, the process seemed nuts,” Swanborg said. “We sit on top of a computational infrastructure here that can access a tremendous amount of compute power if we want to. Why can’t we use that to make our filmmaking much more like our consumer lives of taking pictures with our cell phones? We are using this to turn cinematography on its ear.”
20161230/http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/25/dragon-making-director/
Wow, great quote. DreamWorks Animation is entirely aware of the issue of the “uncanny valley” throughout their entire course of animated production, and they take conscious steps to avoid the issue, such as styling the characters to be slightly more cartoonish. Yes, very interesting.
VB: For the art style, there are a lot of cartoon faces on the humans. Do you ever want to try out more realistic human faces for any of your work, besides maybe this one? Or do you think it’s not possible?
DeBlois: It gets better all the time, but there seems to be a limitation with photorealism that creates an unnerving sense of lifelessness, strangely. Until we learn to capture the exact nuances of eye darts and every little flex and relax and detail of human expression, it’s always going to feel strange.
Until then, aesthetically, if we take Dragon as an example, it’s a deliberate choice to caricature our characters and a certain amount of the world. It speaks to the story, our character feeling like a small and rather insignificant force in this world he lives in.
That’s not to say we don’t bring naturalism into the acting. It does have this interesting effect, where you know you’re watching a certain amount of a caricatured human being acting in a very believable way. It allows the animators to amplify and exaggerate human expression, so that it becomes that much more effective in portraying the emotion.
We’re very conscious of avoiding what’s dubbed the “uncanny valley,” for that very reason. We make specific choices to remove a certain amount of detail, so we don’t end up with that hyperrealistic look.
The interesting thing about Dragon is that it has an effect where you you begin to forget you’re watching a cartoon. The textures themselves are so believable – the fabric, the fur, the hair, the environments – and also the performance leads you to almost forget that sense of caricature. I’ve heard a lot of people say they forgot they were watching an animated film. Which is a compliment, in a weird way.
The “no movie is ever finished” quote was also interesting. Okay, that about wraps it up for the key quotes that I’ve extracted from that article that were most interesting to me. If you want the full details, read the full article, of course.
20161230/http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/25/dragon-making-cto/
Now, there were quite a lot more interesting quotes in this article compared to the last.
Pete Baker: I’m a vice president in the software and services group. I was thinking while I came down on the plane from Portland, hearkening back about six years ago. On paper this is a really curious marriage. We had a collection of silicon chip folks and artists and storytellers. How do we come together in a shared opportunity and get something out of it?
In reality, Intel has a host of software engineers. We have thousands of software engineers. There’s the traditional folks who write BIOS drivers and firmware, but the group I work in also has the privilege of dealing with third parties to make their software better. That could be defined as faster, or as taking advantage of new capabilities, utilizing our tools to do so. We have some of the world’s foremost algorithmic and optimization experts. That makes sense. We know the silicon intimately. That knowledge allows us to convey insights into software, be it our own or others’, that is unique in the industry.
We fast-forward about six years. As I’m reflecting back, I said, “This was a little more than curious. It was fascinating.” We thought we went into a partnership with a collection of artists and animators and storytellers. They’re actually quite a technology company as well. They’re so enthusiastic about the technology and how to use it to convey those stories, those emotional things that people can see, that jump off the screen. We have that shared enthusiasm for technology and bringing stories to life.
The realities are that we could bring to bear, of course, the benefits of the performance and capabilities of our silicon roadmap. That’s table stakes. Beyond that, we also have a host of software tuning, optimization, and creation tools that we’ve been able to bring to bear against the problem, as well as these software and tuning experts. We’ve been working hand in hand now for five-plus years – designing the software, optimizing the software, making sure that the work flows are clean and useful and work best on our silicon. It’s so gratifying to see the fruits of that labor on the screen.
Oh, but this quote has ought to be one of my favorites. Taking artists and “forcing” them to work like CAD engineers.
Wallen: They used to be in an analog world, where they drew on paper. That wasn’t so long ago. Then we dumped them into the digital world and made them act like CAD engineers. Now we’ve managed to put them back in a purely creative experience, an analog experience, where they can see a curve and draw it. They can achieve it in the same way. Their graphic skills, their visual skills, are now immediately reflected by the behavior of the digital medium. That all comes from sheer power.
Oh, again, the question was asked about how much the artists do on paper or whether they have entirely transitioned to the digital medium, and it was interesting to hear how the the transition was described as a bit of a challenge. Yeah, seriously, like you don’t have to use a mouse and keyboard anymore, and you no longer have to act like you are tweaking a spreadsheet.
VB: Does everyone use the electronic stylus now? Or does anybody still use paper?
Wallen: Our storyboard artists sometimes do, but generally they start drawing on a Cintiq, so it’s digitized and easily manipulated. Certainly it’s the case that some of the animators have become so used to a mouse and keyboard that it takes them a while to say, “I don’t have to do that anymore.” It’s been an interesting transition. But all animators have these setups now, with adjustable Cintiqs to get the right ergonomic position.
Baker: It’s been very freeing for them. A few people have to make the transition from working with–They know where everything is on the keyboard. They’ve been trained to translate their creative impulses into these numeric entries. But now, once they’ve spent a couple of weeks to learn how to use Premo, for example, they don’t want to go back. There were a couple of instances where animators had to go backward. They did that animated Christmas card, and a couple of animators had to go back into it. They said, “Oh my God!” They’re completely invested in this way of working. It feels so natural now that to go backward felt like a real slog.
But, I really like this part, how the engineers worked in close collaboration with the artists. (Very much in a way… I’ll leave the rest to the real quote.)
Wallen: One of the things that has allowed us to move so fast with such a radical change is working so closely with the animators. My engineering team’s daily working in with the animators, refining the work flows, as well as working on the underlying architecture. The whole software delivery process was pretty much like a movie, with directors at the helm. People like Fred and Jason and Rex. Their vision was realized on the screen once more. But this time from a work flow point of view.
Yeah, I guess you can very much say that is the whole point of software development. To be able to take this vision on how you want to see people work, and then translate that into a reality, through the use of computer software. Afterward, it very much is like a movie, but one that repeats billions of times over a course of many decades, rather than one that becomes a “blockbuster hit” for a short moment and then is forgotten into the history of society.
- Oh yeah, a side comment. Looking at some of the rendered frames displayed in the article. The textures and lighting have certainly gotten more realistic in computer animation in recent years. That’s all due to much more powerful computers.
Yeah, and also the comment on their use of GPUs. Again, they have already discussed this in the earlier articles, but the GPUs are mainly confined to interactive rendering being done on the artists’ workstations. For the cinema-quality renders, CPUs do most of the computational burden, and again, this is due to data bandwidth requirements for things like morphing, but also, in addition, it is due to the advanced features of the x86 architecture such as virtual memory that cause distributed rendering to be much easier to implement. Oh yeah, now that’s a really cool idea. So it’s like you implement one big huge virtual filesystem that whenever there is a page fault, rather than grabbing a page of memory from disk, you grab it from a cloud computing resource.
Oh, but this is the big one! DreamWorks Animation uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Yep, not Windows! Okay, yeah, fine, they have some software that only works on Windows, so that have Windows computers setup just to run that software, but the main drag is GNU/Linux. Okay, so why is this? What is there explanation for doing this?
VB: How long has Dreamworks been on Linux?
Wallen: Our operating system is Red Hat Linux, that’s right. Part of the cloud platform involves the Red Hat MRG large-scale scheduling solution, which we were pioneers with them in refining and getting into this sort of enterprise. Essentially, in the wave of aerospace moving off of proprietary systems and on to commercial off-the-shelf, that was the end of Silicon Graphics and IRIX. The visual effects, advertising, and animation industries were all on SGI machines, all on IRIX. The question was, what are we going to move to? Dreamworks partnered with HP at that time in saying, “The right operating system is Linux.” We worked with HP to qualify and produce the first Linux workstations that then became standard and have been ever since, standard in the visual design and production industries. We’ve been on Linux since then, since IRIX.
Oh, so that’s what happened. Yeah, they were all on Silicon Graphics and IRIX workstations just like everyone else in the early computer graphics industry, but then when the aerospace industry pulled out to move to commercial-off-the-shelf, that was “basically the end” of Silicon Graphics, so they had to look elsewhere. Naturally, they would choose some sort of Unix environment, and it was HP who particularly recommended GNU/Linux. A “new technological development,” I must say. In some ways yes, in other ways no.
More commentary on the art style.
VB: For the art style, there are a lot of cartoon faces on the humans. Do you ever want to try out more realistic human faces for any of your work, besides maybe this one? Or do you think it’s not possible?
Wallen: The issue isn’t actually the image. It’s the behavior. It’s the ability to direct performance down to that granularity. One hope I have is that with the sort of immediate craftability of the software, with Premo in particular, we’re able to approach that point from a different perspective. Certainly on the rendering side, we’re able to scan flesh. We’re able to reproduce that as a rendered process. But the behavior is the key.
Oh, okay, so that’s very interesting. What we are being told, okay, what I am being affirmed on that I kind of already knew earlier, that it is not the issue of being able to make still renders that look photorealistic, it is the issue of being able to get realistic animation curves. For that, we can’t quite do a good enough job to create believable realism in our virtual animated characters.
One more thing. In the end of their article, they talk about how well their unified enterprise development system is and how that is one of their strengths. Elsewhere, even within the company, they are heavily segmented across different technologies. Actually, it took a little while for DreamWorks Animation to get from where they started to where they are now, but now that they are there, they don’t want to go back.
Honestly, I must say, this is the fundamental goal of open-source software. Libre software, I want to say. The goal is to get everyone, even across company boundaries, to be able to standardize on using the software as if it were their own homegrown software, but also contribute back fixes to upstream and pull in fixes that upstream merges. Yeah, so although DreamWorks Animation may have a pretty impressive system for “inside the company,” I would like to see something even more impressive, something that carries those same qualities and features outside the company, and even across companies.
Of course, that is easier said than done.
- Oh, the ending. That’s it? Well, the last text on this last article seemed a little bit choppy. Unfortunately, it doesn’t bring a good feeling of conclusion when you get to the end. This is a problem on the side of VentureBeat when reporting the article, nothing to do with how those being interviewed responded. Well, maybe it’s not just me, but they ended up making the same mistakes that my English teachers pointed out in my own writings. Not to say that this is the correct way to do writing in tech. Oh, no, far from that.
So, again, to reiterate this. As is said in this part of the article.
Yeah, wow, so that’s actually a lot of information on DreamWorks Animation. I think I’ve seen enough, I don’t need to go traverse the “untested” links that I have noted above, my “appetite” for information on DreamWorks Animation has been filled. I think I seem to really understand them as a company now.
Well, this is what you were saying about DreamWorks Animation going into this research effort. Yeah, we hear a lot about Disney, Pixar, and Industrial Light & Magic in the computer graphics literature, but we don’t hear much about DreamWorks Animation, do we? Yet, at the same time, I think about the kinds of movies that I’ve watched and who made them, and it turns out that quite a bit of the movies that I’ve either watched myself or have heard of have been coming out of DreamWorks Animation. So what gives? Is it just me, or is it actually the case that although those other companies involved in computer graphics get more press coverage, DreamWorks Animation may actually be grossing more revenue than them. Well, after all of my reading and such on DreamWorks Animation, I can attest that one of the main reasons why they do not get as much press coverage in the field of computer graphics technology is because traditionally, their animation software system was completely a trade-secret, in-house developed software product, only once historically being sold someone outside the company. So that explains the reason why you don’t hear much about them when studying computer graphics software.
On the other hand, DreamWorks Animation is indeed an innovator when it comes to animation software, and they have published some research papers on some of their in-house innovations, one of which, feature-based morphing, is now found in widespread computer graphics software. So, despite the fact that using an in-house software system creates a weakness in terms of publicity in the computer graphics software community, on the other hand, as has been pointed out on the series of articles on How to Train your Dragon 2, this is an advantage in as far as it shows that by continuing to do so, the company really has an impetus to not want to “sit on their laurels” and keep making money with little effort. Rather, they have a desire to constantly improve their system so as to be able to provision their animation artists with cutting-edge equipment.
“So you want to work at DreamWorks Animation?” Well, note that in order to reach this end, DreamWorks Animation actually enlists partnerships with outside tech companies such as HP and Intel. So, effectively, if you want to work on the related technology, you might want to instead be working at one of those companies. Note that some of the work being done for DreamWorks Animation is actually also more general beyond graphics software, being reusable in many different cloud computing applications. So that’s another thing to consider.