Calling all Bucks graduates....Bionic Group are looking for 3D modelers

Bionic Group at Pinewood Studios

Calling all Bucks graduates....Bionic Group are looking for 3D modelers to work at Pinewood Studios. The Bionic Group are looking for a talented Animation and Visual Affects graduate to join their growing team. The job will involve creating "technical animations for a range of leading contractors within the construction Industry". The role will be suited to "a promising graduate with an interest in construction, architecture, civil or structural engineering."

Pinewood Studios

The role will include mainly 3D modeling with the possibility of animating and compositing. An excellent knowledge of 3ds Max, and additional skills in AutoCAD, Revit, Photoshop and After Effects will be advantageous.

BIM

There will be an opportunity to learn BIM (Building Information Modeling), adding to your existing skill sets. This is for an immediate start based in our Pinewood Studios offices, Iver Heath (SL0 0NH).

The Bionic Group are leading specialists in the provision of multimedia solutions to the construction industry.

To apply: Please send your CV & covering letters across to jacob@thebionicgroup.com and kelly@thebionicgroup.com.

Make sure to quote the reference: Bucks07

---Alex

Framestore's Diarmid Harrison-Murray on Skyfall, Daniel Craig and Adele

Diarmid Harrison Murray was the keynote speaker at last week's BlueGFX Expo at London's South Bank. He was there talking about the title sequence for Skyfall, which he directed, tackling the project with a small team at Framestore, one of London's leading visual effects houses.

Below is a rough (and hopefully accurate) transcript of his talk, in which he explained how he managed to pull off the animated titles for the latest installment in the world's most successful film franchise.

Diarmid explained that the client brief for the title sequence was "an homage to the past but with a modern twist". In other words, they needed to produce something in keeping with traditional Bond titles, but also modern and sophisticated. They settled on a look that was "dark and sinister, a single camera POV experience", reflecting the very personal nature of the Skyfall story. The client wanted it to feel "as if Bond's life was flashing before his eyes".

The budget for the title sequence was, as seems to be so often the case nowadays, not really enough to do the job properly. They had a small team, who had to do a ton of work between them. The core team was just six artists, and they only had three months - not much time to produce something that needed to be seriously impressive.

On top of that, it was effectively one long shot, hard to break down into sections. As every animator knows, long shots are the toughest, and the render times become incredibly unwieldy.

Adele - top secret. Photo: Wikipedia

In addition, the client's master edit kept changing. The song, sung by Adele, was a big secret, and the team were not even permitted to hear the music for first 2 months – it was completely shrouded in secrecy. So it was only in the final month that they could actually time the animation to fit to Adele's song.

So how did they get started?  They began with mood boards, sketches and visual ideas to "get the creative juices flowing". Once the client had signed off on the look, they did a story board animatic. Then they shot the live action scenes with Daniel Craig. These were all filmed at Pinewood Studios over three days. They filmed in the famous underwater tank and also filmed green screen footage.

Pinewood Studios

The CG animation was all based around the idea of a beating heart, pumping (through digital simulations) blood around the body.

One of the team's persistent problems was that the director was reluctant to commit to final approvals, leaving the overall look of the project in some doubt until near the deadline. The team did many early tests to get him "buy off" on the style - but approvals were slow in coming.

When the final deadline loomed, work became so frantic that some people on the team "did not go home for 3 days, they just slept in the offices". Or they simply got no sleep at all. Diarmid himself did an all-nighter at the very end, which he described as "Day – night – day – pub."

At the end of Diarmid's talk he was asked what was the biggest lesson he had learned on the project? He answered: "Working with clients, they routinely mess up your beautiful work. Being able to do this and not scream into a pillow is vital. And that goes for all client work".

Amen to that.

(Editor's Note: You can read more about our trip to Blue GFX at the South Bank here. Among the highlights, we heard an excellent talk by Blue Zoo, the Uk's leading TV animation production co.  You can also find out more about how Framestore helped us to develop our new animation and visual effects course here at Bucks.)

Bucks Students visit Pinewood Studios and Centroid - home of Europe's Largest Motion Capture Studio

Yesterday a group of students from Bucks went to visit the Motion Capture studio Centroid, based in Pinewood Studios. Motion Capture, sometimes called "Performance Capture", is an animation technique which captures real-time actor's performances and turns them into digital data which can be used to create animated characters - like the character "Gollum" played by Andy Serkis in The Lord of The Rings.

Bucks and Centroid are pioneering a partnership that will offer Centroid opportunities for research and development, and also give the students a chance to use a leading industry facility for their student films. It's just the kind of thing that universities should be doing - partnering with industry to create a mutually beneficial relationship.

Pinewood Studios - home of 007

As for me, I couldn't wait to visit Pinewood Studios, home to Centroid and one of Britain's largest and most historic movie studios. And, of course, the home of James Bond himself. I wasn't disappointed. Just like at Disney in Burbank where you get to stroll down Dopey Drive and Goofy Lane, so at Pinewood I was delighted to find that I had to walk along Goldfinger Avenue to get to work.

Bond villains live on at Pinewood

Centroid says it is the largest Motion Capture Studio in Europe. Which could easily be true. They have a large sound stage, hosting 150 separate cameras which create real time 3D visualisation of virtual characters, including full body and facial capture. Among the film projects they have worked on are Harry Potter, Prometheus and Watchmen, as well as countless TV commercials and games.

I was particularly delighted to learn that the room in which the motion performance would be captured was the very same sound stage in which Ripley, the character played by Sigourney Weaver, shot up the alien Queen in James Cameron's 1986 classic Aliens. I tried to imagine the room filled with giant plastic eggs and latex insects.

Ripley -v- Aliens. Shootout in the MoCap corral

We were warmly greeted at Centroid by Stuart, Phil and Cadell, who helped us to get started with what would end up being a full day's work. MoCap gets a much faster result than can be achieved with key frame animation but it still takes time to set up - even getting into the special suits, with all the markers properly placed, took the best part of an hour.

Two students, Fiona and Umar, were the first to get suited up for a martial arts performance - acting out scenes from Fiona's final year film project. But were we properly prepared? asked the guys from Centroid. Had we brought storyboards? Had we planned exactly what we wanted in advance? Had we brought some dirty old trainers like we were told to? The MoCap markers get attached to your shoes with gaffer tape - and this is not kind to expensive shoes. I got the feeling we were not the most organised clients they had ever had.

Fiona and Umar get suited

While the actors got into their suits, I wandered around Centroid to see what other goodies could be found. That's when I came across the Gun Room, where a whole range of weaponry was available from automatic rifles to shotguns and pistols. Useful for capturing shoot 'em-up games data. I started to envy the students in the suits. This could obviously be fun.

The Gun Room - a boy's paradise

Once the performers were suited up, Stuart led Fiona and Umar individually through a technical exercise designed to capture a range of different physical motions, all of which looked a bit like a warm-up for calisthenics. This exercise apparently helps the cameras and the computer system to recognize the markers for each individual MoCap performer, creating a unique digital map for each actor. That way, when the two performers acted together, the system would recognise each individual and not get confused.

The "T Pose" - Stuart and Umar calibrate the system

Once the system was calibrated, we were ready to shoot. Just like on a normal set, the director calls "action", and the cameras roll - all 150 of them. In this case it was Fiona, who is making a short martial arts training film in her final year, who directed Umar on set (it was a surprise to me that the director can actually be on the MoCap floor directing the action - the cameras will ignore him. They just look for the markers). At the beginning and end of each action Stuart shouted "T Pose please!"; the T Pose helps the cameras pick up the correct markers at the start and end of every shot.

The software used is called Cortex, and comes built into the Motion Analysis System. This then can be used to export an "HTR" (hierarchy Translation Rotation) to Motion Builder, which is what we will use to animate with.

Umar gets turned into Cortex data

The Cortex data gets captured in a live performance by Plastic Man, a CG character helpfully coloured blue for the boys and pink for the girls. These two virtual characters recorded in real time each and every movement made by the performers. Sort of like having your own real live avatar to mimic your actions.

Umar and Fiona get turned into Plastic Man and Plastic Girl

It quickly became clear that the accuracy of the cameras is of primary importance and needed constant tuning. The data is sometimes choppy, as it is all based on "line of sight" calculations. That is to say, the cameras get confused if they can't see the markers properly. For example, if a character crosses his arms, hiding some of the markers, the cameras have difficulty remembering which marker was where. At one point during the day Plastic Man's bottom got re-attached to his front, to great hilarity.

Atmospheric change matters too. It was a freezing cold day and, as the room warmed up, the cameras changed. Every now and again Stuart would jog around the room with what looked like a three-pointed magic wand, recalibrating the cameras to keep them in perfect alignment.

In the afternoon we recorded some dance moves. Laura and Naomi, two students from the Dance Department, performed a 2 minute performance piece that we will use as a teaching exercise, training animators to use MoCap data to create a performance. The raw MoCap data tends to be a bit soft and floaty and a good animator can do a lot to make it crisper, snappier and more compelling.

Laura and Naomi from the Dance Department

And, finally, the data has to be cleaned up. "Sculpting trajectories" (as Phil put it) is a time-consuming process - it's all about making sure that the camera has picked up the correct markers, and making adjustments where necessary. As a result the typical client gets just 60 seconds of cleaned-up data from the shoot. As Stuart explained, MoCap is best suited to creating complex material, there is no real need to bother with the simple stuff. Clients tend to be selective about what they shoot - they don't want a huge bill.

At the end of the day, I could see why directors love the process of shooting MoCap. If you can capture 60 seconds of action a day then you can shoot an entire movie in a few months - much, much faster than a traditionally keyframed animated film. Motion Capture is a process which is getting better all the time, and as animators we need to embrace it, and make it work for us.

All of this of course is today's technology. But what really gets Centroid excited is what tomorrow will bring - live motion capture. Think Jessica Rabbit, on the red carpet, as a live projection, performing in front of a live crowd. Now that would be worth seeing.

----Alex