Image courtesy of Deron Yamada. © 2004 DYA367.

I often sit in my studio just trying to visualize vfx. My brain works in animated color, so I can often see really cool effects in my mind that I haven’t seen on the screen… yet. A lot of us are like that. The interesting thing is that I’ve been doing this kind of visualization for more than a decade-and-a-half, and the images just keep getting more sophisticated. At first it might seem my skill is maturing, but, in reality, I think it’s because external inspiration available to me gets more intense every year. What inspires me? It’s the technology. There are thousands of brilliant people synergistically combining ideas, algorithms and interfaces, into tools for creating animated images — images that arise from the synergy of creative mind and machine.

A steady flow of new versions of Houdini, 3ds max, Maya or LightWave, Animation Master and even the marvelously unorthodox ZBrush fuel the visions. The depth of each new version is daunting, but it opens new doors and new visual possibilities. Perhaps even more important is the fact that these tools have wisely started with or evolved toward plug-in architecture.

Plug-ins are good business. Sure they’re generally very expensive, but then they’re not mass-produced like the original application. No matter what they cost, if you need them, they’re going to save you a ton of time and money. The advent of plug-in architecture has sprouted an entire cottage industry of small companies working to build tools for new visions.

One of my favorite plug-in developers is Ivan DeWolf of Martian Labs and father of Hydrous Tools, a suite of cutting-edge liquid surface simulation tools for Houdini. He’s been able to live in the gorgeous Crested Butte Colorado for sometime. He told me: “This is a good gig, I get to live and work where I want to… well to a degree. I’m back in Hollywood for convenience sake, but I love the work. It’s intense and I make a living at it. I make my own hours and I get to be both creative and technical.” When I asked him to look into the future for me and prognosticate, he said: “A lot of people seem to think that digital visual fx have hit a saturation point and that they’re going to fade away. That’s not true. We’re in a phase of refining things that we know how to do right now. We’re just getting much better at it.” I asked Ivan to be more specific. “We’re in a trendy period right now. I think we’ll cycle through different vfx trends; for example, at the moment, hot trends seem to be fluid dynamics and crowd animation. You’ve seen some pretty amazing things in movies like Lord of the Rings and The Day After Tomorrow. I think trends will last a few years and then gradually give way to the next trend.” I agree with Ivan, I see new trends developing but don’t see the current trends fading away at all. I just see them becoming more transparent on screen.

To get a totally different perspective, I called Stefan Trojanski, head of Scanline Prods. in Munich, one of the world’s most remarkable small digital effects houses. In my opinion, they rival the very best that America can produce and they do it with fewer people and with much tighter budget constraints. I met Stefan last year at Stuttgart’s fmx conference. As an aside, you should check out fmx April 27-30. The world of vfx is much bigger than we often realize and amazing things are being done abroad. Anyway, I interviewed Stefan for an upcoming article on realtime’s impact on vfx, but some of what he had to say fits here as well: “We work very hard to stay on the cutting edge of digital film effects — mostly effects that you don’t see. They come as reality. Scanline has a strong in-house [R&D] department that is continuously developing all kinds of proprietary particle, fluid and hydrofluid dynamics software. Our crowd simulation software is extremely sophisticated with thousands of individually animated elements. I see these as important trends right now. Also, I think we will see more 100% rule-based simulations like Check-in to Disaster.” (It’s a big download but worth it.) I visited Scanline, and, in my opinion, their in-house software is astonishing. Despite their different perspectives, Trojanski and DeWolf gave me very similar outlooks for the immediate future. So integrating what many people have suggested and putting in my own two cents, here’s what I personally see as major trends over the next few years.

On the Face of It
Son of the Mask is here, but think back to the original Mask with Jim Carrey. You’ll recall that Jim used digital makeup tracked to his face. Remember that enormous tongue and those eyes? Then there were the talking animals from Rhythm & Hues in Babe. We see entirely too many poorly done talking dogs and cats hawking chow today. Every good idea in vfx gets beaten to death… remember the days of morphing?

OK, back on track… with Son of the Mask, we really see a serious blending of live actors and virtual human actors. I think we’re going to see more of this kind of thing. It’s a driving technology that stimulates Hollywood’s cyclically moribund/brilliant imagination pool. The ability to do things with vfx often leads to a story premise and then a screenwriter is brought in. “We can change real people into digital people, so we need a killer story based on that ability and we want it Tuesday next.” And, bam, we have a blockbuster.