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M. Ramesh

UNLIKE a 2D animated movie, where artists have to draw 24 pictures for each character for each second of the movie, the 3D is a software-intensive affair. In 2D each movement (animation) is incrementally drawn; in 3D, an image is captured digitally and animated using software tools. 3D is less laborious, but more challenging.

Any animated movie goes through pre-production, production and post-production stages. In pre-production, the artist defines how each character looks, straight and in profile. Indeed, each feature (hair, eyes, lips etc) is defined. This process is called `character modelling'.

Then, each background (`BG') is drawn (employment for hundreds of artists!). For Pentamedia Graphics' movie Buddha as many as 1,200 BGs had to be drawn. Then the `production stage' begins.

In a 2D movie, you simply scan the BGs. In 3D, you use softwares to copy the artists' drawings on the screen. This process is not so much art-oriented as towards the use of software tools. The most used software is Maya (developed by Silicon Graphics), but there are other products such as SoftImage and 3D StudioMax. Very simplistically, you can draw two lines and, at the click of a button, make them into a box, or draw a curve and convert it into a pipe. Using these tools, one can create on the screen just about anything — a castle on a mountain, a ship on a sea.

Then the technicians give texture to their images. For example, to texturise a mountain, you take digital photographs of, say, Kodaikanal, and `cut and paste' it on the image on the screen. Then you can play around with it — change the colour, introduce a tree, create a crack...

Images such as buildings, objects are easier to animate. Just as in CAD/CAM, the computer creates a wiremesh image and the object can be turned around as necessary. But to animate characters (Buddha, Gulliver, Shrek), where different parts of the body move differently, you'd need other techniques.

One is `motion capturing'. Let's suppose you want to make a character bowl. In the motion capturing studio, you choose an actor and attach little reflectors to various parts of his body, particularly at all the joints. Then you ask him to do a bowling action. Cameras located in different parts of the studio capture the light reflection from the actors' body. In the computer, the man's body is dropped and what appears on the screen is a plethora of dots. You line the dots and lengthen or shorten the lines to adjust for the variations between the actor and the character to be animated. Then the whole `motion is captured' and imparted to the character. In the movie, the character bowls.

This way, you build a movie BG by BG, action by action — a very painstaking process indeed. But then, the rewards could be great. Last year, Finding Nemo got Pixar $865 million in worldwide revenues. Shrek 2 has already grossed over $600 million and is still going strong.

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