Karen Raugust reports on the growing convergence in design visualization in various industries, as they share digital assets and information to solve mutual production problems.
Manufacturers and other non-entertainment companies that rely on 3D animation and vfx for design and marketing purposes face many of the same challenges as those working in entertainment. The two groups assisted by the software companies that serve them are starting to share information and assets to solve these mutual production problems. The convergence is happening mainly in areas such as manufacturing, architecture and medicine, where engineering or scientific data can be used to create everything from 3D product visualizations to marketing and training materials, and even further for interactive games, television or films.
At a high level, there are initiatives to enable that sort of sharing to be effective, says Daniel Wexler, senior software developer in NVIDIAs digital film group, who is currently working on the Gelato film-quality renderer and whose past experience includes creating scientific visualizations. Companies like NVIDIA, as well as the software companies, are very supportive of these new file formats, and are actively involved in developing, as well as advocating them. But there are still stumbling blocks on a practical level.
3D file interchange formats include COLLADA, developed by Sony Computer Ent., which is supported by companies such as Softimage, and FBX, developed by Alias before it was purchased by Autodesk.
3D asset standards are not as evolved as 2D, advises Gareth Morgan, senior product manager at Softimage. All the content creation tools are in competition, he notes, so there has been little incentive to collaborate on standards. But that should change, as customers many of whom not only use multiple software packages but also need to incorporate existing 3D data files of various types demand more interoperability.
While all users of 3D animation face similar challenges, they often have different objectives, terminology and methods of communication, all of which can be barriers to sharing assets and information. This is one area in which Autodesk has been focusing its consulting efforts, including its Creative Bridge program, launched by Alias prior to the Autodesk merger to help clients marketing and design/manufacturing departments collaborate better.
Both design and marketing need to find ways to bring down the costs, says Ashim Bose, Autodesks director of consulting for design and transportation. One way to do that is to streamline the process so that a lot of the engineering and design data that exists can be used in marketing and entertainment. Were bridging the gap between design and marketing, not only in terms of data but in terms of language and goals. The merger between Autodesk and Alias allowed the two companies to combine their relative strengths in manufacturing and media/entertainment, offer products with improved interoperability and data management capability, and allow their respective consulting teams to share best practices.
CAD Challenges
One of the primary areas in which digital asset-sharing is on the rise is in product and building design where computer-aided design (CAD) and engineering data is starting to be used for visualization, marketing and training.
Although it is helpful to have engineering specs, 3D animators report that CAD files contain far more information than is required for marketing or visualization purposes. Sometimes they include every screw, says Alexander Ware, company director of Archimation, a seven-person firm that creates architectural visualizations.
Its extremely heavy data, agrees Bose, who notes that there is no need to have the engine, battery or nuts and bolts included in a model of a car used for marketing or entertainment purposes. Most of the clean-up, along with the transfer to a poly-based model for high-end renderings, can be automated with off-the-shelf packages, such as a combination of Maya and Studio Tools, but some customization is often called for.
Another challenge is that CAD models often come in incomplete, especially in the auto industry. Components such as seats, doors or fenders, which are often outsourced, are sometimes missing, for example. As a result, 3D artists have to spend a lot of time tracking down the data from multiple departments or companies. It can be hard to get, politically, says Dave Peyton, director of vfx for GTN Inc., a full-service post-production firm that creates digital models of vehicles using both CAD data and digital scanning.
Todd Iorio, senior vfx artist at Union Editorial, a creative edit house that recently worked on a car commercial that incorporated engineering data, says there can be a lack of communication between the automakers various departments. The marketing people or ad agency might specify a particular color, for example, only to find out later from the manufacturing side that the model being portrayed does not come in that color.
Often the car companies work with a single vendor who takes their CAD data and strips it down to the basic 3D information before sending it on to the vfx house, according to Iorio. This is because much of the CAD information is proprietary. While the lighter files basically a suspensionless shell with a low-detail interior are easy to work with, they can limit creative flexibility, such as by preventing certain angles from being shown. At one point, Union suggested doing some cutaway, technology-based spots for its automaker client, but it could not secure the necessary data. While guarding proprietary secrets is important, these legal and logistical issues can hamper the quest to create strong marketing materials. It would be beneficial to us if they could decide on how to support their advertising better, Iorio says.
Data Management and Collaboration
The transfer of data along the pipeline isnt always completely smooth, in part because each user has its own goals and processes. For example, Archimations work contains specific kinds of lighting, materials and textures. When its 3D data is forwarded to another company usually one that is creating a marketing film about the building shown in the visualization that company tends to use just the pure 3D information, just as Archimation typically does with the CAD data it receives from architects. Theyre doing a film and were doing pure architecture, Ware says. Its usually easier for them to build it themselves.
There can also be problems in terms of integration. Archimation works in SOFTIMAGE|XSI, but neither the architects nor the filmmakers with whom it shares assets do. Ware notes that, going forward, youll need seamless integration. People wont be willing to pay money to rebuild 3D data.
In addition to asset-sharing challenges, all users of 3D animation face the dilemma of how to improve quality while reducing costs, all while managing huge quantities of data and having multiple teams collaborating on a single project. Sharing information will move all parties toward new solutions.
There is some sharing of model data, but whats more exciting is the sharing of technologies, says Wexler. He notes that the high-quality illumination models used in creating films came from the principles developed for scientific simulations of thermodynamic properties, with the same algorithms applied to light instead of heat. Conversely, theres a fair amount of knowledge in the film lighting world that could be applied to medical visualization to make the data easier to read, he adds.
Maurice Patel, senior product marketing manager, Autodesk Media and Ent., notes that the increasing digitization of the production process, from digital distribution to digital intermediate and acquisition, means there are more digital assets that need to be stored and managed. Theres so much data, and you have to find a way to process it efficiently, manage it efficiently, and collaborate efficiently, he says. Process management and production management will be increasingly important.
On the entertainment side, interactive gaming is on the leading edge of developing tools for collaboration and management. Next-generation games are so complex that the engineering team for a single title could be larger than Autodesks entire internal engineering team. But Patel notes that smaller post-production and vfx boutiques face the same issues on a smaller scale.
Transportation and Product Design
The automotive industry is on the leading edge when it comes to the confluence of manufacturing and marketing. Visualization is big in product design, Patel continues, noting that engineering information can be used to create 3D visualizations using software packages such as Autodesk Viz, Maya or 3ds Max, as well as to create commercials, website content and print applications ranging from billboards to showroom posters.
Because of the challenges of using CAD data for marketing purposes, however, some companies offer digital alternatives. GTN has created a niche where it digitizes vehicles for the car companies, creating a library of product-accurate 3D renditions of car models intended specifically for print, web and video applications, but not for manufacturing.
To create the models digitally, GTN uses retrofitted engineering equipment. A 3D mouse sits on a tripod and makes highly accurate measurements as it moves along the contours of the vehicle supplemented by measurements from a portable scanner for intricate areas and plots out those lines in the 3D space. Then GTN uses proprietary software to convert and optimize the data for Maya.
Peyton notes that GTN, which has worked with several manufacturers to create asset libraries, can use CAD data to create 3D models, but usually opts for the digital scanning method. The only time we really use the CAD is when we cant get our hands on the car, he suggests.
Iorio reports that there are some differences when using scanned data which, in his experience, is typically used when the automaker wants to show a comparison between its vehicles and those of its competitor, for which it doesnt have manufacturing data vs. CAD information. For example, the laser data doesnt include interior areas that can be seen through the windows, which have to be modeled from scratch.
While the auto industry is probably the most active in sharing digital assets for manufacturing and marketing purposes, the same process applies to any industry with the need to create physical products and market them, says Bose, citing watches, stereo systems, MP3 players and bikes as just a few examples. The whole concept of creative design is becoming really important. Companies spend a lot on design and prototyping, and rely heavily on visualization. The same digital information can be used not only for marketing but also for training purposes, where sales and service people need to know the intricate details of how the product works and how to maintain and repair it.
Architecture, Medicine and Civil Engineering
Digital asset-sharing is starting to take hold in architecture as well. Archimation, whose projects have included visualizations for Liebeskinds winning Ground Zero urban design scheme and the Time Warner Center, does about a third of its projects for marketing purposes (to pitch a building to investors, for example) and about two-thirds for architectural competitions. Most often, the final product consists of still images, but about 10% to 20% of projects include animation.
Ware says the company starts with at least a digital blueprint and, about three-quarters of the time, receives 3D information from the architect as well. This typically takes the form of CAD files, but can be a 3D model created using an architectural software package. In both cases, Archimation must convert the information for Softimage, a process thats not always so clean, but the challenges are getting less, Ware adds.
IOMEDIA, a 32-person communications and marketing firm, has 15 animators and does everything from storyboarding to design visualization to interactive projects, primarily for the building and medical industries. It uses XSI, 3ds Max, the Adobe suite, Final Cut and some Avid, as well as Macromedia products for interactive work and a few proprietary packages. President and founder Peter Korian says IOMEDIA sometimes receives CAD plans or digital schematics from architects but that they are used primarily for reference. We need information to start the process, but basically we create everything from scratch, he emphasizes.
IOMEDIA reuses assets from its digital library where possible. For example, a particular sink design by Kohler is likely to appear in multiple buildings, while assets outside the design itself might recur as well. A crane is a crane is a crane, Korian notes.
On the medical side of IOMEDIAs business, most information is created from scratch as well, although there are medical and scientific databases that offer downloadable 3D models of protein structures and other assets. These can be integrated into a visualization, but usually are not too useful. Most visualizations are more about interpreting the data than showing it in a photoreal way, although they still must be sound medically. Theyre as scientifically accurate as the science behind them, Korian says.
Sometimes the science is so new and so groundbreaking that weve never seen it before, explains Todd Lawrimore, senior animator at Atlanta-based Shaw Science Partners, which creates videos and interactive projects featured at medical conventions and has helped launched products such as Viagra, Procrit, Flonase and Celebrex. We extrapolate from the results to show what it might look like. The company uses XSI, the Adobe suite including Photoshop and After Effects, Zbrush and Avid Composer.
Like IOMEDIA, Shaw might start with a downloaded 3D model or other digital medical data. We use these assets, but only as a building block, Lawrimore reports, noting that many existing digital models are complicated portrayals of blobs interacting, and need to be simplified to get the message across quickly. The blobs have to have meaning. The data has to be interpreted or cleaned up for our use.
The clients needs dictate the amount of realism. Sometimes its a science story and sometimes its a marketing story. Theres quite a lot of variation in the clients requirements, says Charles Goetz, Shaws creative director. We can start with [a digital asset], but we usually have to boil it down to something simpler.
Another area where entertainment and non-entertainment use of 3D technology collides is in the use of gaming engines for simulation, such as military training software based on gaming principles but with real-world scale and super-realism. Softimages Morgan notes that gaming engines can be licensed for many training and simulation applications, from teaching deaf children or police officers to recognize and interpret the significance of facial expressions, to creating large-scale simulations of crowd behavior or the effect of an explosion.
Morgan reports that there has been interest from the civil engineering world in one of Softimages products, Behavior, which is a development-centric tool to give large crowds intelligence so each individual acts realistically. The National Transportation Safety Board, for example, uses Behavior for projects such as forecasting evacuation patterns.
Entertainment Applications
The gaming, film and television industries are starting to look at the possibility of using CAD or other digital data as a starting point for vfx and product placement. For example, CAD is sometimes being used to design and build movie sets; the same information can then be used as a starting point to build the virtual set for vfx. Similarly, architectural CAD data could be used to recreate a cityscape, with designers getting a head start by acquiring the files used for the design and construction of the buildings being portrayed.
Meanwhile, some gaming companies are starting to ask for CAD data to help them replicate the cars featured in racing games, which aim for a high degree of accuracy. Peyton says gaming companies have come to GTN to request digital models of various car types. In many cases, GTNs assets are customized and proprietary, but Peyton believes such sharing will occur more in the future, and that the practice will benefit both the car manufacturers and the game companies.
Other digital assets, outside of CAD files, can enhance efficiencies for film and game makers, too. Theres a strong demand [in film] to create more real characters more easily, not just to bring costs down but to raise the quality bar, says Morgan. To get hold of medical biometric information is very useful indeed. While the data helps animators enhance realism in difficult areas, such as where the tendon meets the bone, it, like CAD information, has to be stripped down to its essence. We dont need to create the inner workings of a human being, Morgan adds. It just has to be functionally accurate.
The sharing of digital assets, and of information and best practices, between entertainment and non-entertainment users of 3D animation is still in its infancy. But the collaboration will grow as both try to solve mutual problems, from managing huge quantities of data efficiently to enhancing collaboration and maximizing interoperability.
Karen Raugust is a Minneapolis-based freelance business writer specializing in animation, publishing, licensing and art. She is the author of The Licensing Business Handbook (EPM Communications).
