'War for Planet of the Apes'
Weta Digital has designed and developed a set of tools embedded in Autodesk Maya, and has partnered with Autodesk in order to market them as a subscription cloud service called WetaM.
Weta Digital, one of the world’s top VFX studios, has already won 13 Academy Sci-tech Awards for its tools that artists use to produce some of the world’s best known film and TV series including ‘The Lord of the Rings’, ‘Avatar’, ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Planet of the Apes’. Weta intends to release WetaM as a private beta towards the end of 2021.
Weta’s proprietary VFX tools have been built on Maya’s open API, and will be commercialised through WetaM. Artists from around the world will have access to a complete cloud-based pipeline, running from stage to screen. WetaM is the first product launch under a new division within Weta Digital devoted to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This new arm of the business is integral to Weta’s expansion strategy to make professional and prosumer tools available to artists working in media & entertainment. The dedicated website will be located here.
As a leader in VFX and animation for the last three decades, Weta Digital is founded in technological innovation, artistic talent and exceptional visual style. “Weta Digital has brought together the most creative minds in the world and been a pioneer in the visual effects and entertainment industry for decades,” said Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Weta Digital. “WetaM is the first step toward making VFX and animation production accessible to every artist.” www.autodesk.com
Comparison of Weta Koru software with Autodesk Maya.
Weta Digital's ecosystem simulator Totara.
'Mortal Engines'
VFX company Pixomondo and Canada’s TV & film equipment rental business, William F. White International, a Sunbelt Rentals company, announced a collaboration to build LED volumes across Canada together with a combined initial capital commitment of more than $30 million.
Under the new arrangement, William F. White and Pixomondo will co-rent LED volume equipment, with two new stages already under joint construction in Vancouver and Toronto. Several other new sites across Canada will follow in 2022.
The high demand for virtual production shoots, coupled with strong bookings at Toronto’s first LED Volume in the city’s West End, prompted the decision to formalise the working arrangement over the long term, for the whole of Canada.
The second Toronto stage will be completed in July 2021 and is designed for shorter-term bookings and projects with quick turnaround times. It will be based at Studio City’s recently completed development at the east end of the city's downtown core, minutes away from Pixomondo’s Toronto office at Revival Studios and close to William F. White’s Toronto office and Pinewood Studios.
The new Vancouver stage, which will be the largest build of the three sites to date, is under construction at an undisclosed location and is scheduled for completion in September 2021.
As with the first Toronto stage, the two new volumes will be operated by on-set Pixomondo personnel for all productions, including those using the company’s 3D environment creation services. Pixomondo and William F. White have designed and will build the volumes in close collaboration with their technology partners Brompton Technology, Epic Games, Lenovo, NVIDIA and ROE Visual.
Jonny Slow, Pixomondo CEO, said, “We are delighted to be able to formalise our collaboration with William F. White and their excellent track record in film and TV equipment rental and studio property management. Combined with Pixomondo’s award winning VFX offering, and a game changing capital commitment from both parties, we are excited to confirm additional virtual production investment into Canada and into these state-of-the-art physical production techniques.”
“As leaders in our respective industries, our two companies are such a natural fit when it comes to providing a full-service client experience that is truly unmatched in the world of virtual production,” says Garin Josey, Executive Vice President/Chief Operating Officer, William F. White. “This next phase we’re embarking on together has the potential to radically change the production process. These LED volumes in Vancouver and Toronto are only a preview of what’s to come.”
“Over the past few months, we’ve been building a fantastic relationship with Jonny and the team at Pixomondo and we’re eagerly anticipating a bright future together,” said Rick Perotto, Vice President, Business Development, William F. White. “Our local offices in Vancouver and Toronto will provide virtual production clients with access to a world-class selection of production equipment to support their needs.” www.pixomondo.com www.whites.com
Visual effects and animation company DNEG has announced plans to expand its India footprint into Bangalore / Bengaluru. The ‘Silicon Valley’ of India, Bangalore, is a global hub and centre of excellence for technology and innovation and DNEG is in the process of onboarding a talented new team of artists and technicians to work alongside its established teams in Mumbai, Chennai and Chandigarh, and across the world. DNEG was recently recognised with both Oscar and BAFTA award wins for its visual effect (VFX) work on ‘TENET’.
The recent explosion in global demand for premium content, driven in large part by the incredible success of over the top (OTT) media / streaming companies, has resulted in increased demand from content creators for high-quality VFX and animation services. DNEG’s new Bangalore team will have the opportunity to contribute to a variety of high-profile international projects across feature film, OTT and feature animation.
Commenting on the expansion, Merzin Tavaria, President Global Production and Operations, DNEG said, “Two of the cornerstones of our success at DNEG are providing a platform and exciting opportunities for our industry’s brightest and best talent, and strategic expansion and integration of new sites and services at just the right time. We’re extending our footprint into Bangalore to provide both further capacity and support for our global teams, and to explore the potential of the incredible talent in the area while providing opportunities to work on the biggest international projects. Our new team in Bangalore will be working alongside the best in the business, and we look forward to welcoming them onboard.”
DNEG is currently in production on international blockbusters such as ‘The Matrix 4’, ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’ and ‘Uncharted’ and OTT shows like ‘The Wheel of Time’ and ‘Doctor Who’ Season 13, as well as feature animation shows such as ‘Under The Boardwalk’ for Paramount and three other yet to be announced projects. www.dneg.com
Luxion KeyShot 10.2 includes major improvements for caustics, a redesigned Materials Library, a Configurator UI style for touch screens and a new Mesh Simplification Tool.
Read more: KeyShot 10.2 Upgrades Caustics on NVIDIA RTX Ampere GPUs
View of Sydney Opera House from the Sirius Building.
Architects traditionally use highly detailed, accurate visualisations to bring their blueprints, sketches and concepts into the real world, and sell their designs to clients. Production company Binyan Studios specialises in creating such visualisations, applying their own distinctive approach to depicting how concepts and designs will look once they are built. Their work ranges from 3D renders, film and animation and broadcast-quality commercials to immersive VR tours.
Under the direction of CEO and Founder Andrei Dolnikov, Binyan’s teams work from facilities in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, London, New York and Los Angeles, and service clients including property developers and architects who need to sell, lease or promote new developments. Sir David Adjaye, Frank Gehry, B.I.G. and Zaha Hadid are among the architects they have worked with.
The studio has developed an Autodesk 3ds Max pipeline they use to transform concepts from into narrative visualisations. These visualisations are then used as imaginative marketing tools to tell stories and create experiences that take clients on a journey through their architectural designs, ultimately selling them on the concept.
Binyan recently completed renderings that transform the Brutalist-style Sirius Building in Sydney, originally built in 1980 to house working class residents, into a new development that features spectacular views of the Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge. Andrei said, “In Brisbane, we worked on a vertical garden that was designed for Aria Property by architect Koichi Takada. We’ve also recently worked on a photoreal animated film for the Rivière by Aria in Brisbane, as well as renderings for a resort-style development for the Howard Hughes Company in Honolulu.”
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Binyan has initiated trends that are seen everywhere in today’s design visualisation industry. For example, Andrei and his team focus on a more artistic approach when developing visualisations, using photography as inspiration to transform architectural sketches into full 3D renderings that evoke emotion and memories in people, and convey a narrative story behind the work.
“The images we create may be commercial art, but still need to follow the principles of composition, lighting hierarchy and narrative,” Andrei said. “I’m always looking outside our immediate industry for inspiration, viewing things like new product launches, art installations and the entertainment industry to bring new depth into our work to really capture clients’ attention.”
“Photography is all-important in our work, used as reference to achieve the photoreal look we need,” he said. “We look at great photographers' work for inspiration as well to develop a specific look for each project. Our projects are so diverse in terms of type, location and demographic that it’s vital we capture the essence of each venue we are trying to bring to life. A San Francisco sunset looks different from a Dubai or Melbourne sunset, and the harbour lighting in Sydney looks different from a Brooklyn morning sunrise.
“We capture the photography for backplates, plus foreground details, and use this material for photomontages. For preference, we’ll shoot our own images wherever possible or brief a photographer. Then we matte paint or composite the images in Photoshop to create still images, and for our animations and films, we use video compositing software.”
Riviere, Brisbane QLD
The typical design workflow begins when Binyan receives a client brief, detailing the project, brand guidelines, overall look and target demographics. Once the tone, artistic direction and project style are approved, Binyan begins the 3D modelling phase in 3ds Max – the studio’s main content creation tool – to model each of the distinct areas that will be illustrated in the final visualisation.
“We typically receive 3D DWG files or Revit files. The more precise they are the better, but even when we get a client model, we do a lot of our own modelling to be able to inject the extra level of detail our clients expect. We are geekily passionate about detail ourselves – it makes all the difference.
“3ds Max works especially well for us because of its complexity – it has tools we use to approach projects in a granular way, taking an up-close look at every minor detail. Everything is controllable, everything is possible. Just about whatever a client asks for, we are able to deliver,” said Andrei.
One 3ds Max feature that stands out for Binyan’s style of work is the ability to view iterations in real-time. The ActiveShade feature starts an interactive rendering session in a viewport that allows you to see your scene in near-final render quality as you work. Whenever you adjust vertices and apply transforms to geometry, or adjust lights, camera or materials, directly in the viewport, the results will be automatically updated to show the final render. The rendering quality and interactivity depends on the renderer you are using.
Sirius Building, Sydney
3ds Max also has robust retopology tools that automatically optimise the geometry of high-resolution models to create clean, quad-based meshes. For example, the tools remove artifacts and other mesh issues ahead of animation and rigging, or when applying textures and manipulating objects. When the model's vertices, edges and faces are well- organised, animations are more fluid and rendering needs less memory – holes, spikes and isolated elements take extra processing time.
Since retopology works best on objects with uniform, equally-distributed faces, modifiers are available to optimise the mesh first. The Subdivide modifier creates smaller, more even triangles, and Smooth applies smoothing groups to the mesh. Mesh Cleaner will check and fix errors in data imported from other applications.
During composition, the Binyan team explores the best time of day, lighting and angle to portray the architectural model, later managing colour production, texturing, lighting and landscaping.
Once the client has signed off on a near-final draft, the studio renders all files and completes post-production, using tools like Adobe Photoshop for stills, Houdini and Phoenix for animation, and Fusion for compositing, among others. For digital experiences or VR projects, the team takes over the installation of the physical hardware and custom software development to help the project come to life exactly as required.
Ward Village pool house, Honolulu
As storytelling hasn’t traditionally been associated with architectural visualisation, Binyan has worked out their own processes and made it a signature in their work. Andrei said that storytelling is in fact at the core of what they do and the foundation of every image, not to mention their films, animations and immersive experiences.
“Even for a humble bathroom CG still image, we ask ourselves – who is the audience, how do we want them to feel when they look at this image, and how will we achieve that through composition, lighting and detail?”
To answer those questions, the story remains front and centre. While it’s always a collaborative process, Binyan typically originates the key concept, based on a thorough brief from the client. “This brief includes the brand identity and graphic design elements for the overall campaign from the design agency and the architectural vision from the architects. Our in-house Directors take these ingredients and propose two to three ideas or treatments for the client group to review and from there, the chosen direction is fleshed out into a storyboard and animatic.
“Then we coordinate the production of each scene, which can range from purely CG/3D scenes and VFX scenes, to live action scenes involving talent, hair and make-up artists and a full cast-and-crew shoot on location. The shoots usually last two or three days and frequently include green screen shoots that our VFX supervisors lead.”
Ward Village pool at sunrise, Honolulu
Binyan’s use of motion and animation makes their projects varied and interesting, incorporating camera moves, FX and procedural effects, lights, motion graphics. Decisions about the approaches are all driven by the idea as much as the budget, beginning with concept development and becoming concrete at the storyboarding stage.
“As the budget is a known factor from the outset, we’ll pitch an idea based on this – the greater the scope, the more complex and memorable the FX scenes will be. Motion graphics are determined by the kind of production we are working on. If the objective is to explain a complex scheme and to 'introduce' the audience to a project, then we will propose more motion graphics components.
“On the other hand, more ‘product-based’ films – where the audience is already informed about the developer and architect and simply wants to fall in love with the architecture, views and so on – we will go for a more pure 3D approach like the Riviere animated film.”
Because projects often take years to develop, time is another work factor. Helping clients use visualisation to get started on major projects while they are still in an early design phase adds to the challenge. “For example, we are currently working on a large, complex project in California that will completely transform its precinct. Still in its early days, many elements are at a more advanced stage than others.
Burleigh Heads, Gold Coast, QLD
“The project will be developed over several years, but meanwhile they need us to create accurate visualisations of how the final product will look. This process is both exciting and challenging, and it takes all of our experience to bring it to life. In the end, though, it’s very gratifying.”
In the midst of a global pandemic, the company has witnessed increasing demand for visualisations, which can be easily accessed by remote clients and shared online. He describes the work environment as demanding and high-performance, calling on them to handle a diverse body of work – “everything from a small bathroom to a massive masterplan on top of a mountain in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
It’s a super exciting time for us as well. Animations and digital experiences like immersion rooms, sales gallery activations, media tables and so on, are becoming a component of many projects we work on. We are really investing in our talent, hardware and software to be able to grow in this space. Real time rendering is a big part of this too, and is finally becoming a realistic component of a photo-real workflow. We see very, very fun times ahead.” www.autodesk.com.au
