Russ Andersson on the state of the CG Industry
What interesting developments do you see coming up in the future for CG in general (including camera tracking and related fields)?
Yes, you can expect to see more information extracted from images, and done so more intelligently over time. Many things are possible as toy research projects; it’s always a case of whether or not you can make a reliable and controllable artist-driven tool.
A sign of the times: James Cameron’s Avatar is one of the films that best embodies new trends in digital filmmaking, with use of stereoscopic imaging and virtual cameras. VFX shots by Prime Focus.
How has the rise of the Net in the 90s changed software development?
Certainly there’s more availability of quality open-source utility packages for tasks such as reading and writing JPEGs etc, which allow developers to concentrate on more significant work. Unfortunately we have not seen similar efforts for state-of-the-art video formats, and as a result the existing formats are less useful and reliable than they could be.
Your attitude towards software development helps support independent filmmaking. Have you ever made/participated/been tempted to make a complete film that includes matchmoving and VFX?
I am a small business, and I do like to see my work allow small independent shops take on bigger and more sophisticated projects than they could otherwise, whether they are the filmmakers directly or small one-man effects houses. It seems like every time a local car dealership owner goes to the movie and sees a sophisticated new effect, they go back home and ask their local guy to do the same, but for a couple hundred dollars, not the couple hundred million of the original.
I’ve learned to leave the film-making to the experts. I have a bunch of my own equipment for shooting demo/tutorial material, but I do that on a very focused basis. In any case, it’s backwards to specifically try to make a movie to show some particular match-moving —- the match-moving and effects need to be a result of the story, not a cause, or it will be too contrived.
Anything you’d like to mention to readers that we haven’t asked you about?
One thing I am asked frequently by people who are new to match-moving is "Tell me which buttons to push" to do their entire shot — typically one I haven’t even seen. It’s like "Tell me which buttons to push to make Toy Story!" You can’t hide behind technology — SynthEyes is an artist-driven tool, not a magic wand.
The first thing that people need to develop, as with any artistic endeavor, is the ART OF LOOKING at a shot carefully, training their eyes and brains to understand what they are looking at. Whether you’re sketching, or doing global illumination, or setting up a sophisticated skin shader, the art of looking carefully must come first and drive the process. In match-moving, people send "moving camera" shots that are nodal pans or have small zooms all the time. Maybe it was shot on a dolly, but at the end they ran out of track and used a zoom for the last few seconds. It’s important for the tracking artist to have the skill and film-making experience to be able to look at a shot and understand how it was filmed and what that might mean for the tracking. Effects technicians must remember that they are part of the artistic process too!
We would like to thank Russ Andersson for sharing with us his views on the evolution of the CG industry. We would also like to thank Brandon Davis, Adam Watkins, Borislav Petrov, Ben Grossman and Arvid Niklasson, as well as Prime Focus, The Syndicate, Mainframe studios and Raz PR for their help in the preparation of this article.
Related Links:
Andersson Technologies’ website – home of Syntheyes Matchmoving resources Matchmoving at Wikipedia History of camera tracking at FXGuide History of computer vision at Graz University of Technology History of CG at Wikipedia A Critical History of CG and Animation at Ohio State University
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“Shutter Island” images are (c) 2010 Paramount Pictures, provided courtesy of The Syndicate. “Pony Tale” image is (c) 2008 Actionhorse Films, provided courtesy of Arvid Niklasson. “Avatar” images are (c) 2009 Twentieth Century Fox, provided courtesy of Prime Focus. All images are the property of their respective owners, no content in this article may be used without the express written permission of its owners. Text, editing and layout by Pablo Hadis.
(c) 2010 MaxUnderground.
