NXN's asset management system was used on the CG production of Kaena. © 2003 Xilam.

Not that long ago, designers working on a large production -- say, a film that involved extensive sets and vfx, and had associated video and online games -- would each do their work in their own way. Design elements might be created over and over again by dozens of individuals working in different media, including industrial designers working in CAD, costume designers using pencils, vfx people using 3D animation tools and so on. Coordinating these different versions between design teams and keeping track of changes and approval cycles was fairly chaotic. At the end of the project, most of these designs were discarded; in case of a sequel, they were then regenerated.

Today's Trends
What was a difficult situation -- working across different communities of practice with different tools and understandings of design -- became a near-impossible one with a couple of strong recent trends. One is the drive for more co-production (due to financing and distribution partnerships) and outsourcing to different countries. Collaboration that was difficult in a single building now became chaotic when it was spread between many people over several continents.

Another trend is the sharply rising demand for more realism. "EA is actually approaching car manufacturers in order to license and create perfect digital replicas of their cars," notes Craig Tozzi, creative director of Twothousandstrong (www.2000strong.com). Joseph Kosinski at KDLab Inc. (www.kdlab.net), which is involved in both architectural design and game technology, agrees. "Film and game designers want ever higher resolution for their sets -- the level you might see in 3D architectural CAD models, for instance. The boundaries between architecture, film and gaming are getting increasingly blurred."

A short perusal through the popular Turbo Squid resource library (www.turbosquid.com) illustrates the point. Turbo squid offers thousands of 3D models, backgrounds and animation cycles that can be bought for use in games and films. What is striking is the level of resolution of many of these files, which include vehicles, buildings and furniture created not only in popular animation packages such as 3ds max (as you would expect), but also in AutoCAD, the high resolution toolset of architects and industrial designers.