Re: Walkin' with Dinos

["David Krentz" <David.Krentz@disney.com>]

Reply to:RE>>Walkin' with Dinos                              9:40 AM    
9/15/99

>The new system for Disney Dinosaurs is truly remarkable in the degree to 
which
all of these aspects can be controlled and rendered, but it was 
extraordinarily
expensive and takes a tremendous amount of time to render each frame. That, I
suspect, is the problem here with the BBC animation: budget and time.<

  WORD.  I must say, that the animators and modelers at BBC have done an 
exceptional job with the money and time they've been given.  The walk cycles 
are the best I've seen for a T.V series.  As Ray Harryhaussen  always says 
"we did the best we could with the money we had."  Thus is the reality of 
bringing creatures to life for film and TV.  On our movie there wasn't 
anything we couldn't do.  But we had to be realistic and say "this takes 
priority over this, and if we can go back and fix it, than we will."  
  Good job BBC!
David Krentz
--------------------------------------
Date: 9/15/99 9:09 AM
To: David Krentz
From: dinosaur@dinosaur.org


"Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." wrote:SNIPPED

P.S. As for the _T. rex_: it might look "sluggish", but it is definitely

> portrayed as active.  However, one item I encourage the animators to do:
> remember that this is a 5000 kg animal - it is got to look like there is a
> sense of mass to it as it moves.  (Part of the problem with older computer
> graphics is that there is no sense of gravity acting upon the objects).

Just to clarify the exact nature of this problem (less the poor animators or 
the
software gets blamed improperly)  the "dynamics" of computer animation has a
great deal to do with computing "power."  That is to say... in a given amount 
of
time with a given computer processor at a given budget, it may be physically
IMPOSSIBLE to render every aspect of the dinosaur.

For example...

A computerized animal is composed of (simply speaking) a skelton, muscle 
mass,
skin movement, skin texture, movement, "bounce," weight (and more). Each of
these aspects requires a certain amount of "power" and time to render.  On a
given budget, often some aspect has to be dropped. Often this is "texture" or
"weight" or "bounce."

My purpose here is to get the criticism focussed in the right place.  Perhaps
the problem was ignorance and bad management, but more likely it was a 
budgetary
consideration. Not everyone can afford ILM (not even Spielberg).


ES


>
>                 Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
>                 Vertebrate Paleontologist
> Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
> University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
>                 College Park, MD  20742
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
> http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
> Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
> Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796

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