Meanwhile, in his Inception presentation, Franklin described how each sequence had its own unique technical challenge: the zero gravity required monumental rig and wire removal, plus rebuilt environments and floating CG objects at the end, and necessitated roto because there was no greenscreen work. The strange Limbo City featured all sorts of conceptual challenges and they arrived at a procedural method for combining the structure of a glacier with 20th century architecture. For the Bond-inspired ski chase, they needed very convincing environment work and practical miniatures from New Deal and then blowing it all up. And for the folding city-- which has become the film's iconic image -- they had a large logistical challenge in recording and reproducing the architecture of Paris so that it held up to the scrutiny that it demanded.

 

For Clint Eastwood's unconventional Hereafter, Michael Owens revealed the importance of Scanline's improvements in fluid sim with Flowline for the creation of a naturalistic tsumani in keeping with the tone of the film about coping with near-death experiences. Aside from water interaction, digital doubles figured extensively in this sequence. They had a motion capture shoot, to build a library of moves for digi-doubles (including Massive doubles). Not surprisingly, motions included running and stumbling actions, along with various reactions to the wave, accomplished with more conventional falls into crash pads. But to simulate characters in water, they also used a traveling wire rig, in order to capture characters in water -- from getting pummeled by strong currents, to treading water and trying to surface and stay afloat and floating dead underwater. Ultimately, much of this motion capture was combined with keyframe, traditional animation, as animators worked to incorporate characters into digital water flows, both above and below water.

 

Ken Ralston joked about how much fun it was working with Tim Burton for the first time on Alice in Wonderland and figuring out how to communicate with him. He then described the synthesis of techniques at Sony Pictures Imageworks that went into the making of the fantastical film, showcasing an abundance of CG characters and virtual environments. They decided early on to acquire the live-action performance in a greenscreen environment, and many of the characters were a hybrid of live action and animation. Numerous motion capture tools were tested mainly as reference for what was ultimately handled as animation. The challenge was to find the balance where CG and hybrid animated characters blended together with the live actors to look like they were part of the same world. Alice falling down the rabbit hole, for instance, is a combination of a live-action Alice on wire rigs on a greenscreen shoot; and the whole environment is CG. The Red Queen, shot digitally, was accomplished by, enlarging her head and giving her an hourglass waist to blend more naturally. The Tweedles were a hybrid with Matt Lucas' eyes, nose and mouth along with keyframe animation, again, using MoCap as reference.