Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

Editor’s Note: This is the beginning of rotating contributors to this column.

This is my first column for VFXWorld, and I’m pleased to be here. Some of you may know my columns in other magazines. If you do, you know that I sometimes take a unique view of things because, in addition to being an animator, I also spent more than a decade as a clinical psychologist, and that tinges my perception. I always try to tell it like I see it and damn the repercussions. Thus, I find myself in a bucket of hot tar about as often as not.

Today, I’m writing about those long laboring, unsung heroes, finally coming into the light: the previs wizards. The field, recognized by some as “Digital Film Design,” is becoming more clearly defined and growing in importance all the time. Here I’ll dig in and just look at 3D-animated previs.

Digital Directors
All kinds of directors are becoming savvy about 3D-animated previs because it’s like insurance and brings out their best stuff. Feature directors especially want their personal vision to be realized as accurately as possible. For most, it’s more than an ego thing; it’s about passion for their art. But often that artistic vision is a bit diaphanous. Much as a premise is not a screenplay, a director’s brilliant artistic vision is not a shooting plan.

You and I know that directors love previs because it brings their ideas to a tangible state where they can be evaluated and manipulated. Previs also brings the director into the vfx process so they can mess with us early on. Even older directors are seeing the light and damn if they aren’t using previs in lots of new ways. Previs software development is becoming a separate industry while old standbys like Character Studio are constantly updated to churn out quick and dirty procedurally animated characters sashaying through their marks. These tools help us bring storyboards to 3D life.

Most directors can be taught to play with camera moves, refining shooting plans long before live action begins. In fact, most up and coming directors are super digital savvy and they’re getting more hands-on all the time. I’m not sure how good that is because some directors can be a royal pain with the hands-on stuff. I say hire the best, give them your vision and trust them to come through.

Clearly, previs saves time and money and — in the right hands — might actually lead to improved storytelling. God knows we need that. So many great vfx films have gone down in flames because directors were so seduced by the vfx that they forgot story. “I want to make that fight scene longer; it’s so cool with all this digital enhancement crap.” It’s especially a problem for new directors who nail a B.O. hit out of the starting gate and then try to figure out why it was a hit. Too often they figure it must have been the awesome vfx; when, indeed, it was the combination of awesome vfx and great story. Never forget that story is king.

Just Imagine the Possibilities
As you know, previs is becoming more technically refined as I type. Some of you may know that I designed the first animated virtual human interface, Sylvie. She’s an intelligent, animated character that you can talk to and even interact with. Depending on what control channels she’s hooked up to (X10, IR etc), she can figure out what you want and make it happen. She’s also got a sense of humor about things.

Virtual Actors
My long time friend Steve Tice, co-inventor of full body and face MoCap for speech, approached me some six years ago with the idea of developing a really cool director’s previs tool. Steve was developing a previs platform aptly called Geppetto, in which he planned to eventually use libraries of MoCapped action that could be attached to various animated actor stand-ins, and used to block a director’s shot ideas. We wanted to make the characters so intelligent that the director could actually give them voice direction much as he or she would give a live actor. His idea was doable at the time, but too expensive to develop.

I recently found Steve at Quantumworks and he still has a passion for previs. “These days more than ever, directors need to eliminate, or at least reduce shot risk to a minimum; and previs is the way to do that,” he says. “The more control a director has, the happier they’re going to be. With the quality of realtime MoCap animation we have today — it’s ironic — but you can now use humans to previs animation shots in realtime, and then you can turn around and use the same technology in reverse, taking the MoCapped characters and use them to previs live-action sequences.”