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SYFLEX TECH TALK AT SIGGRAPH 2005
On Wednesday August 3, we held a demo event on the exhibition floor, at the time
and space called "Tech Talk". Six of our client companies gave excellent presentations.
For those of you who couldn't attend the event, and for our own documenting pleasure,
here are some bits from the event, some linked to extended content in the form of gallery
pages and/or tutorials:
First on stage were the founders of New York City design and production shop,
UVPHACTORY, who explained how they used SyFlex to brand the "In Black" cable
channel for the Starz network. The brief asked to create a tantalizing environment that represented the
interior of a star-like energy source. SyFlex was chosen as a tool for creating the abstract effect.
Scott Sindorf described the conceptual development of the project, and then Damijan Saccio
showed how they solved the challenge of having the simulated animation work as a loop,
which was a requirement from the client. What seemed at first like a challenge was eventually solved very easily with SyFlex within XSI.
Matt Hicks, CG Supervisor,
Moving Picture Company, London:
"SyFlex in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"
MPC used syFlex in about 80 shots for 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,'
dressing up digital doubles of principal characters and hero Oompa Loompas.
Some shots had over 100 CG characters wearing clothes bearing more than
90,000 polygons!
Matt used technical breakdowns to show how SyFlex was used in the film. He presented background footage from the 'Nut room' and the 'Inventing Room' and discussed the challenges of integrating and inter-cutting between
live action and CG characters/ Digital Doubles and the use of SyFlex when
reproducing the costumes of myriad Oompa Loompas.
Rob O'Neill, director of the
upcoming film "Blank" presented a number of proof-of-concept shots
demonstrating how SyFlex could be incorporated
into an independent film pipeline. The first shot presented was of
one of the main characters (Hawkshaw) walking in his signature
trench-coat, and the second was of the main character (Paradigm),
demonstrating how fast it would be to create a cape.
Rob also discussed a number of work-arounds which are under consideration for
the small production, and the range of
elements he is planning to use SyFlex for. More details on our
Blank page. (Hey, there is a lot of stuff on this page! : ).
There is also a tutorial about cape-making from Rob.
Clinton covered in detail a shot in which the camera flies through a
burning and rapidly expanding hole within a 100% SyFlex parachute.
Creating the parachute from the garment phase, using maps to drive
cloth attributes, generated ropes with SyFlex, simulating tearing, custom-made SyFlex plugin for 'pressure force',
MEL to assist in the tearing, and low-resolution proxy parachute setup for near realtime cloth feedback for
animation purposes mapping very closely the full blown 27,000 vertics high-resolution
version.
We especially liked his very last slide : ) A still image from the shot
can be seen on our Stealth page.
The Kia "Car Cover"
spot is a long time favorite with our users, judging by the amount of questions we constantly get about it.
Finally, there was an opportunity to meet the people who created
it! Gil and Laurent also presented a newer favorite,
"Better Than Water" spot, where they used SyFlex to create water people.
The owners of San Diego based Pendulum discussed their fast paced 3D
production pipeline, which had integrated SyFlex for a wide range of dynamics
solutions. The duo presented the use of SyFlex on their recently completed project;
15-minutes of high-end game cinematics ("cut-scenes") for Midway Games' flagship title,
"LA Rush". They also presented how SyFlex was used
to cloth some sinister skeleton pirates in a series of commercials for Kellogg's.
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