I am a special effects
and animation junkie. As a kid I often wondered how SFX were created
in movies. I started to read up on it in the mid-70s. (Yes, even
before Star Wars.) I found out how they made perfect time
lapse cloud photography in Close Encounters by injecting
white ink into a water tank filled with fresh and salt water. In
the `80s I started to see what an impact computer graphics would
have and joined in. In the `90s things really got rolling to the
point now that our imaginations can barely keep up. Disney automated
the tedious tasks of cel animation production by using the Pixar
written CAPS System. ILM used Alias, Softimage, Renderman, and a
ton of brilliant in-house code to make classics such as Jurassic
Park and Forrest Gump. The biggest transition though
was the new set of tools affordable to individuals like you and
me. Programs like Photoshop, Premiere and Lightwave gave people
tremendous power to manipulate reality digitally and create potent
stories. What still matters is craftsmanship, a keen eye and grounded
historical knowledge. All of this can be leveraged into using and
knowing what tools you need as well as when and how to use them.
Puffin Designs
This brings me to describe and review Commotion 2.1, as well
as give some tips on how it can be used by animators and special
effects artists. Puffin Designs was founded by Scott Squires when
he and Forest Key wanted to commercialize Flipbook, a program Squires
wrote for his own production driven needs will working at ILM. Similarly
the Knoll brothers wrote the image conversion software due to their
own ILM production needs that eventually was sold to Adobe and became
Photoshop. John Knoll and Scott Squires were recently visual effects
supervisors, along with Dennis Muren, for Star Wars Episode One:
The Phantom Menace, and Knoll supervised the Special Edition
two years ago. From that same fertile company, Scott Squires wrote
Commotion and now distributes this software and others through Puffin
Designs. The first editions were like Photoshop, only done with
frame-by-frame control. Scott Squires came up with the cloud tank
technique in the old analog days. Now at version 2.1 this is an
extremely robust software tool that all of Hollywood is using over
six figure systems such as Henry or Flame. I laud people who are
in production to write tools, as well as make them deep and affordable
for the masses. Commotion shows the depth of customer feedback and
obvious solid knowledge of production. They have over four thousand
happy customers and will definitely grow it with their focus on
relevant production tools.
Commotion
The most salient aspect of Commotion is that it is a tool for
digital rotoscoping, painting and manipulation of resolution independent
images. The first thing to learn about is the movie player. This
intelligently uses the resources of the Mac, or an NT box, to be
able to see video or film resolution sequences at the correct frame
rate. This has obvious benefits in terms of seeing pencil test timings
or reviewing plates. You can set it to any frame rate or see it
run as fast as possible. The frame rate can be set to Max, 24 fps,
25 fps or variable. It can be looped or set to rock back and forth.
The area where you want to see the motion, such as only where a
character is, can be selected and substantially improve the number
of frames that can be loaded into RAM. RAM is just like money. You
can never have too much and the more you have the easier your life
is. This ability to see exact frame rates may be reason enough to
purchase Commotion Player. The ability to work in an onion skin
mode is especially helpful to see the ghosted previous frames to
help out with timing issues.
For Animators the Painting tools are of keen
interest. A comparison to MetaCreations Painter is inevitable, but
I feel that Commotion is better suited to motion due to its underlying
foundation in speed for production. The library of FX brushes permit
rapid painting and the ability to record as the stroke is made in
order to replay it. It can also be set to wiggle, thereby cycling
between frames for that Dr. Katz look. Another great feature
for animators is a cartoon fill option with the capacity to feather
the edge. A paint bucket icon is invoked and suddenly you have an
alternative paint system. Klatco Animation used Commotion very effectively
to complete a project. It was the ability to paint multiple frames
at once that they said helped them deliver on a very tight deadline.
Autopainting allows automatic repetition of brush strokes over frames
to animate, cycle, or wiggle your strokes. Another handy tool is
the remove dirt filter for cleaning up scans. The wire removal tools
can use the previous frame for painting from and a seam mode that
welds the adjoining pixels.
Matte creation is another strong suit of this tool. There are various
ways that mattes can be made. The rotospline tool is very similar
in function to Illustrator paths, but here they can be animated
over time and a brush can run along its path as well. Multiple Splines
can be animated over another as well as being seen at interactive
speeds. Other methods include the keying off of a blue or green
screen. Something I find extremely unique for animators is the ability
to add motion blur correctly. This can really get a great look out
there. The speed at which you can trace for a hand rotoscope also
opens up possibilities for animation.
In fact, the possibilities are endless. A new enhancement tool is
the ability to use Adobe After Effects filters that can be keyframed.
Color correction, blurring and geometric image transformations can
also be done. Puffin Designs also publishes plug-ins such as Knoll
Lens Flare Pro, Image Lounge and Composite Wizard which seem to
offer phenomenal results.
In Other Words...
This is a very deep package with the ability to composite, paint
and preview moving images. I have always wondered when people would
say they used Photoshop at ILM for motion sequences; I have the
sneaking suspicion it was an early version of Commotion. I have
seen this package grow from version 1.0 to 2.1. This is a tool I
have dreamed about for both animation and visual effects. A lot
of the features are only seen this side of a six-figure system and
others are utterly unique. I have only scratched the surface of
what this software can do. If you look at Pleasantville,
and the work of Banned from The Ranch, Matte World, ILM and Klatco
Animation, you can see the results. This is a must-have software
product if you deal with any type of motion imagery.
Max Sims is the principal of Technolution, an Entertainment Design
firm in Menlo Park, California. He wrote "The
New Maya Sets Sail [4]" in the February 1998 issue of Animation
World. He has also written on Digital Studios and Content Management
for Price Waterhouse's EMC Tech forecast.
Links:
[1] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4074
[2] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4075
[3] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/4076
[4] http://www.awn.com/../../../issue2.11/2.11pages/2.11simsmaya.html
