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Pipeline Development Engineer / Artist Will Anielewicz talks about Pepsiman, Phantom Menace, Iron Man, and art in CGI Fridays Episode 8.
SEASON 2 COMING SOON!
Industrial Light and Magic alum and CGI educator Ed Kramer (Star Wars, Stargate, The Mummy, Galaxy Quest) catches up with pioneers and innovators to learn about the coolest VFX in our favorite films and how they got started in the industry. Hilarious, informative, and surprising, CGI Fridays is a must for anyone starting a career in visual effects or computer animation, as well as fans of behind-the-scenes stories from some of the biggest science fiction films of all time.
Will Anielewicz: I'm willing to
live it and I stuck a fork in
the parts I or at least help get
that fork in that part. It's i
That was my shot. Pirates of the
Caribbean
my official name is Virginia on
your leverage. When I came to
Canada as a youngster, I had a
choice of keeping my Polish name
or making it some other name.
And I had a choice of Wolfgang
or William and I went with
William because my last name is
difficult enough to pronounce I
just chose will on your leverage
on your leverage is difficult
enough for most North Americans
to pronounce I was called
Alphabet Soup constant as it is
right. So anyway, that's my
name. I was born in Poland came
to Canada when I was seven years
old. I didn't speak to anyone
until I was fluent in English. I
just didn't speak a word to
anyone until I can actually
speak English. And that was as a
kid and I started relating to
other kids and growing up in
Toronto, Canada. That's really
where I spent most of my life is
in Toronto, Canada. For sure. I
think of myself as a Canadian,
even though was born in Poland,
I decided to take computers. I
have no idea why actually, I do
have an idea why. When I was in
high school, my high school was
the first high school in Canada
to have a computer. Wow. Yeah,
the math teacher there who
interestingly enough is spaz
Williams, dad. No, you're
kidding.
Ed Kramer: I've studied from
spouse's dad, not from
Will Anielewicz: him. He had
enough wherewithal with the
boards of education in Canada
that he arranged IBM to instal a
computer in our high school, the
only high school in Canada had a
computer, I saw this computer
and I said, That's it. I'm gonna
live in this room. And something
just clicked for me. And I was
instantly attracted to it. And I
just spent the rest of my day,
every day in there doing
whatever I could learn that
really is why I went to computer
science. But I've always thought
of myself as an artist. But I
learned how to be engineer who
education and otherwise I sort
of ran the computer. Nobody else
knew how to run this thing. So I
just ran it. Anybody needed
anything I would make that
computer do it. It was gigantic
computer for those days. It was
in the mid 60s
Ed Kramer: Was this a punch card
Will Anielewicz: stack of punch
card and weird little boards
that you would put little jumper
cables into to code. So yeah,
there was punch cards and reel
to reel tape thing going on and
it mesmerised me. And there was
nothing else I wanted to do. For
whatever reason, the art part
really became my passion.
Although I went to university
and started learning coding, my
professor suggested I go into an
insurance company or I coded for
business practices, etc. And I
sit down I don't want to do
that. I want to make art with
these computers. And I tried to
build weird little what I called
a graphics, piano, just making
shapes. And then I started
making art plotter art, which I
could share with you. I've got a
little website that I put as
many of my old renderings every
month, I would generate an image
for the university publication
that they did every month, York
University, they had a
significant science department
and computer science again,
mentorship from one of the vice
presidents at York University.
You know, he said to me, if you
need anything in this
university, I can get it for
you. You want it I'll get it to
you any computer there anything
at all. And he just made it
available to me and I just made
a little pieces of art. His name
is Sheldon Levy. He was one of
the vice presidents he was very
influential. He got a lot of
funding, he became the president
of Sheridan College, which is
actually a very reputable
animation College. He was very
supportive. He actually arranged
for me to be an adjunct
professor, I was making plotter
art. The first one I think I
made was in 1977. I tried to
have gallery showings. One thing
I'm very proud of is SIGGRAPH
was initially very engineer
orientated scientific papers,
stebic documents. And then this
one year they decided to have an
art exhibition with people like
David in the original computer
graphics artists. That was the
very first art exhibit of
SIGGRAPH. Yes, I work feature
films. But to me, that was my
proudest moment. They got as
many people's art that they
could, and they created an
exhibition of it. Mine was in a
hallway in a gallery in Toronto.
The rest of the show was in a
gallery at the SIGGRAPH
conference and I got my name on
a list. There were probably 20
or 30 artists that were the very
first participant in SIGGRAPH
computer art exhibit. That was
my original goal is being an
artist and boom, there I am in
some SIGGRAPH conference art
show
Ed Kramer: if you were doing
plotter art was it just black
ink? on white paper, it was five
Will Anielewicz: pen plotter
that they had at York
University, the operator of the
plotter became a friend and
allowed me to run out of the ink
all the time, like my plots
would take a few hours to
generate. Usually it was a
minute or two for other people's
work because they would just
make pie charts and this and
that, but this is one example.
Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, yes,
so I digitise to something in
this shape. And I've got other
ones too. They're a little bit
more graphic. Like I had a
playboy nude bunny, bunny girl
as part of another one,
Ed Kramer: I would never have
thought that was done on a
plotter. Right. This was in
Will Anielewicz: 1977 is when I
was working on all this stuff.
For our listeners
Ed Kramer: who want to know what
I'm looking at here is a
beautiful symmetrical butterfly
with all kinds of gradation of
oranges and yellows, and the
body is black. But there's a
translucency to everything, you
can see how things are pushing
outward from a central origin
point. And this is just lovely.
Will Anielewicz: Well, the blue
background pissed the plotter
operator a lot, because those
are tiny little circles in blue.
What code
Ed Kramer: were you using? Did
you just write all your own
software to make this happen.
But what
Will Anielewicz: this plotter
did is it allowed you to create
a series of points on a 2d graph
paper Cartesian coordinates and
just draw lines. That's what
this plotter was intended to do
is drawing lines. This is a poem
I wrote, This is what the
plotter was mostly used for is
writing lettering, doing bar
charts in C and then PL one, I
wrote code that would use
library calls to make this plot
or do stuff, the plotter would
be happily doing that, and then
one of mine would come on this
thing. And the plotter would
nearly jump off the floor
because it would just be moving
around and just jam and all
these things. The operator would
be looking at what's being made,
and he would like go, why is
that? Why would you use this
equipment to do that? This is
yet a different piece.
Ed Kramer: Is this sort of
abstract with rectangles? Yes,
seemed to be the golden mean
Exactly.
Will Anielewicz: Specifically
the golden mean, but one
vertical horizontal and just
experiments that I did. Changing
pen colours, again, me trying to
be an artist who I can't paint
with my hands. But I could paint
with this plotter. So this is a
little poem that I wrote. A lot
of this is math driven curves
that I could generate through
trigonometric functions. It was
my communist era. And I just
decided to make pieces like
this. In some ways. This isn't
great art, but I was the only
one doing this with a computer
at the time. You and Chuck Suri
me and Chuck Suri. Suri
published that render from
Cranston Suri and made it open
source and so anybody could copy
it and do whatever they wanted
to that was the origins of
Houdini. That was how Houdini
started.
Ed Kramer: You've got a lot of
expertise in Houdini, right. Oh,
yeah, it's my favourite. Really,
we'll get into that.
Lawrence Kao: I hope you're
enjoying CGI Fridays with visual
effects pioneer Ed Kramer, who
worked for George Lucas at
Industrial Light and Magic. If
you want to read more Star Wars
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companion dot a PP. Now, back to
the show.
Ed Kramer: So how did you make
the transition from doing the
art which is beautiful. What was
the path that took you from this
to omnibus,
Will Anielewicz: this very savvy
producer manager who owned a
company called omnibus video,
which was California company
originally moved into Toronto
and wanted to start a commercial
division for making computer
generated commercials and John
Pinna Yeah, so he posted an
advertisement saying they're
looking for a computer animator,
this was in 1979. There weren't
any computer animators in 1979.
So I spotted this ad in the
paper, I thought, What the heck,
why is somebody looking for a
computer animator? There aren't
any. So I answered the ad. I had
been doing this kind of art for
quite a while I had a lot of
coding experience. And I
convinced them that I could be
your animator. I gave them this
portfolio that I had since they
had no other candidates at the
time because there just weren't
any in Canada. So they accepted
me to take on the job and that
was the beginning of my artists
demise. It was a full time job
significant pay. John had talked
New York Institute of Technology
to sell them the first computer
animation system for sale that
was from NYT. They had decided
they were going to sell that
system commercially. John
convinced them to sell it to
them and that's how I'm the best
got started is using the NYT
system and solid modelling
system. The modeller for NYT was
VI.
Ed Kramer: I remember using vi
as my text editor
Will Anielewicz: VI was the
modeller for that system. I had
to use vi to compute normals, or
at least type them in. But the
interface got fancier and
fancier. And we could end up
doing some animated geometry,
but really, it was very few
people can actually do it.
Ed Kramer: For our listeners,
the difference between solid
modelling and the kind of
modelling that you think about
that's done with traditional
polygons is that a solid
modelling system describe
mathematically things like a
sphere with a radius and an
origin point. And with those two
pieces of information and origin
and a radius, it could generate
the entire sphere as opposed to
having to compose it out of a
bunch of different polygons. If
you put one sphere into another
sphere, you could cut one sphere
out of another sphere, it's a
Boolean,
Will Anielewicz: in essence,
Boolean, yes, yes, intersection
union subtraction, that was a
way to model and mighty, but
again, incredibly cumbersome.
Anyone who is a modern day
computer artists that is an
animator or a modeller would
just go insane trying to
generate things with that
original system. It was so coder
century, you had to be an
engineer, in essence, to
generate almost anything with it
mean yeah, you could make a
sphere and just say radius
sphere, and say I want 10 of
these and create a text file
that describe that they came up
with ways of rendering such
things. And there was a tablet
and a pen system and animation
system that they called it but
it was nothing like modern day
Maya, or Houdini or soft maj or
have used the word blender to
I'm into Blender lately,
Ed Kramer: I saw the hands that
you did in Blender doing the
alphabet and the heart. That was
Will Anielewicz: lovely. Yeah, I
feel a bit clumsy. I wish I had
taken the time to be a character
animator, in all the years that
I spent in computer graphics,
like playing an instrument, you
need to do it often exercise a
lot and try doing things until
you become adept at it and
actually be able to do
performance, you know, emotional
action. And I just never had a
chance to spend a lot of time
with that. But I did quite a bit
of procedural type of animation,
as long as I could get an
algorithm of some sort to
execute motion was fairly
successful. If I had been more
of a character animator, it
would have been a bit more
satisfying for me. And so that
example that you just pointed
out my the hands doing the
alphabet. I'm currently working
on another little piece of song,
I'm a little teapot. I'm trying
to learn sign language to be
able to sing that song as CG
characters. For whatever reason,
I don't know why sign language
has become a focus for me, but
I'm not a character animator. So
it's really difficult for me to
make natural motion. I'm so
envious of people that do that
moving dinosaurs being able to
finesse that motion octopuses,
horses, or lions and people that
can make those creatures move
that takes years and years until
you get good at it. That's my
current little adventure is in
sign language. Getting a family
husband and wife and their child
are CG characters that are
singing I'm a little teapot.
Ed Kramer: I'm a little teapot.
I don't know why SIGGRAPH hasn't
adopted that as our official
theme song because the teapot is
small. Yeah,
Will Anielewicz: the Utah
Teapot, an icon of computer
graphics. That teapot is
everywhere. I mean, it's a
primitive in Houdini. It's a
primitive in Blender and 3ds
Max. That's one of the reasons
why I picked this song, the
bouncing ball that's in karaoke
songs, the ball bounces on the
word that's a teapot and my
little piece, and it's got the
word Utah on it. Anybody who's
done anything in computer
graphics immediately recognises
that teapot,
Ed Kramer: especially if they've
gotten one from one of the Pixar
teapots that they've been
creating for the last 20 years
or more, at least,
Will Anielewicz: at least that's
the great thing for me right
now. Because I'm retired, I can
work on whatever I feel like, if
I'm lazy that day, I won't do a
thing. Every time I get a bit of
juice gone. I can just work on
whatever I want.
Ed Kramer: What were some of the
projects that you worked on at
omnibus during that period of
time. I'm friends with Dave
sigue. So you know, you've all
worked with him.
Will Anielewicz: I have I have
he was one of the head engineers
and omnibus we did Hockey night
in Canada, the producer for
Hockey night in Canada kept
saying thicker, I want the
letters thicker, and we extrude
it until it was like 20 feet. Is
that enough? Is that 3d Enough?
For God's sake, it had to be
silver and gold and very shiny
was the kind of work that we did
at omnibus commercials and very
few film things. I worked at
omnibus for a number of years.
Then I worked at a company
called alias research, which
started what's now called Maya
when Autodesk bought them. The
name got changed to Maya.
Ed Kramer: I was an old
wavefront guy, so we can't let
that one go without wavefront
Will Anielewicz: of course yeah,
SGI is the one that bought both
of them. One of my pioneering
points in computer graphics. I
was the first employee of alias
they needed somebody to help
create the
Behind the Scenes situation
going on on this Pepsi man
commercial, most of the
commercials that was part of the
background going on CG people
that would make sure that
nothing silly was going on that
would make it almost impossible
to integrate a CG character into
a set or a camera angle the
cinematographers and the
director would go no, we don't
care what you think your job is
going to be getting that CG
character into this set. Don't
tell us how to shoot this
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the show.
Ed Kramer: For our listeners, if
you don't understand what match
moving is, if you've got a CGI
character, and you've got a
camera that's filming a live
action set, if you want to put a
CGI character into that room,
you have to create a virtual
camera inside the computer that
is acting exactly the way that
the physical camera acted, it's
got to do exactly the same pan,
it's got to do exactly the same
zooms if there's anything in the
scene that Pepsi man has to be
reflected into, you need to
create a piece of geometry that
matches that table and moves
exactly with that table so that
you can create computer
generated reflections in that
table and create shadows into
the environment, you need to
create a virtual camera that
exactly matches the actual
camera. And that's why these
measurements that Will's talking
about are so important, because
you have to know where was that
camera in physical space? How
high was that camera off the
ground? What lens did that
camera have? What was the
distance from that lens to where
the cameras focus, but these are
all parts of creating a match
move that allow you to then
create a CGI character that
seems to move exactly with the
live action background.
Will Anielewicz: That's a great
explanation of it. The stage
crew, the photographers, and the
people that do live action
shoots, knew nothing about that,
and didn't really care much
about that and just found it
annoying because it slowed them
down. Suddenly, somebody was
there telling them to pause
which costs a lot of money for
that entire crew to pause for a
few moments while somebody was
with a tape measure doing
strange things. It was
interesting to be a match moving
those days, I would think now
the way some of the modern day
live action integration works a
match movers no longer
unwelcome. They're very welcome.
There's a bunch of technology
that's available now that helps
with that in a big way, you can
triangulate, if you have a
special device that can scan the
set generates the geometry on
the fly
Ed Kramer: that's called LIDAR
LIDAR exam. It's a laser that's
shot out from an exact point on
the set and the laser looks
everywhere and where it hits an
object, it creates a point of
contact. By using that LIDAR to
scan a whole scene, you can
actually generate a 3d
environment as opposed to what
we used to do painstakingly. Now
LIDAR can capture that whole
scene using laser scanning 360
degrees, and it can also capture
texture information, the colour
Will Anielewicz: actually,
you're looking at Google Earth
nowadays, that's what they're
doing. They've got a truck
mounted LIDAR system that's
driving around in streets and
capturing buildings and sending
the full geometry backup to the
cloud so that Google Earth can
see walls and windows and all
kinds of structural things.
Ed Kramer: You made the
transition from commercials to
features on Star Wars Episode
One, what did you contribute to
Episode One,
Will Anielewicz: I got to work
on shots. I got to work on
texturing creating some of the
CG sets. I got to work on
lightsaber shots. I was a Star
Wars fan from the very beginning
when I saw the first original
movies for me to work on Sabre
shot was a magical experience
for me being a sci fi fan. I
just love doing that. There was
a shot where Darth Maul and the
other guy were in a fight. And
he was supposed to kick him in
the head. Well, he missed by
about three feet. I had to
stretch his leg to make it look
like it had contact with his
chin. I spent many a day trying
to figure out how to add more
the picture of his leg or the
moving action of his leg and
kind of stretch it in toward the
other guy's head just more
lighting technical Director type
of tasks on the Phantom Menace
today, let me work on whatever I
thought I could accomplish.
There was a couple of annoying
shots in there, which I didn't
understand why we were exerting
so much effort, there was an
angle where Darth maules Sabre
was right in front of the
camera, it was a close up shot
of him holding this lightsaber,
the plastic on the lightsaber
got so broken on set for
whatever reason that they
couldn't use that in the shot,
we had to figure out how to
match move and fix that
lightsaber. If somebody had
looked through the camera and
that shot and said, Hey, wait a
minute, just turn the lightsaber
two degrees, and nobody will
have to spend weeks working on
the shot, who knows how much
money would have been saved.
That was one of the other shots
that I had to work on is paint
out the weird broken up plastic
of a lightsaber, it was still a
great thing for me to work on
Phantom Menace, I got to work on
the next movie that was more of
a dev engineer scenario, we had
to develop some of the
reflection rendering approaches
at ILM, beyond what we were
doing before I was taking mental
ray reflection pipeline and
putting that together into a
rendering system. For the next
movie, I was very much involved
in the engineering aspect of
that writing shaders, getting a
pipeline going where you could
render in mental re render and
render man and merge the two
together so that they matched in
colour spaces and all kinds of
things. The second movie was
much more of an engineer role
that I had tried to help the IDI
artists to get their shots going
through Space Cowboys. Oh, yeah,
Space Cowboys, Clint was in his
70s he was in the movie, he did
not want to be upside down in a
harness, he refused to do that
we had to get his head into a
shot. That was one of the first
attempts at ILM to make a CG
generated face, there was a
bunch of modelling going on
texturing and all that. And then
also the spacesuit is the live
action suit was authentic, we
had to make it look just as nice
in a computer generated, I was
working on the shaders for that
I worked on shots, I worked on
lighting, and I did a bunch of
shader pipeline development.
Ed Kramer: When you say shader
development, obviously, I know
what you mean, explain to our
listeners what that actually
means.
Will Anielewicz: It means you
create a description that gives
the lighting person a way to
make something look forward to
real in order to do that, like
for faces and for eyeballs. And
that sort of thing. You have to
allow a painter artists to be
able to say, hey, this picture
of an iris of an eye goes into
this slot. In essence, you're
providing a way to have images
that are being glued onto
computer generated meshes so
that they look like what you're
trying to render. how shiny is
it how bright or dark it is what
resolution the images that's
supposed to glue on to geometric
meshes. That is really the
basics of shader writing. But
it's also getting involved in
some of the math points in space
that are supposed to be light
sources can actually look like
those lights really are in the
scene. And the shader has to be
able to react to that something
that looks like skin, something
that looks like the cloth mesh
of a spacesuit, something that
looks like nickel or gold, those
things have certain properties
that you can emulate. If you
give a shader enough flexibility
to go from gold to silver to
whatever other materials you
want to create and shaders give
the lighting artists the
flexibility to be able to make
it more like what they're trying
to simulate. Here's a little bit
of history for you about my
alias system. When Mike and I
first became involved with alias
he wrote to render we're sitting
in a room one day said okay,
what do we want? Do we want fast
or look good? What's the most
priority? Should it be really
quick at rendering? Or should it
look really nice? And Mike and I
decided, let's make it look
really nice. Yeah, it's slow.
But we want to make it look
really nice. We didn't tell the
owners that we didn't make that
decision. And unfortunately, the
alias system got a terrible
reputation for being
unbelievably slow. Still, it
looked really nice. As far as
renders, I may be the wrong
person to make decisions about
such things. But in the
beginnings of the alias system,
I thought making it look like
real stuff or real. That's the
thing. That's the challenge
here, not making it render
really
Ed Kramer: quickly. Alias was
the first system that allowed
you to use NURBS.
Will Anielewicz: Yes, yes,
that's because alias had hired a
professor who was implementing
NURBS. He helped bring that into
the renderer not necessarily
geometric primitives, but points
in space that described what a
nerd was and still be able to
apply texture maps to that too,
which was also very difficult.
That's because alias was focused
on cars. The first customer that
alias had with General Motors,
they wanted infinitely smooth
surfaces doing that with
polygons, that's hard. NURBS are
infinitely smooth. That's why
that became a focus of the alias
system, really, because General
Motors was trying to get away
from having to use clay they
wanted utterly smooth geometry
now
Ed Kramer: Next on our list here
in your IMDB is one of my
favourite visual effects films
AI Artificial and
Will Anielewicz: oh my god, I
loved working on that the best
part of that movie was the
storyboards what we got to see
the original storyboards were so
beautiful, so mysterious, there
was a darkness to that movie
that was clear through the first
half, it kind of turned into an
ET movie at the end. But the
original movie by the original
director who died before the
movie was finished was dark. The
AI thing was a beautiful,
wonderful experience. It was
sort of Blade Runner ish
aesthetic. A lot of the work
that I did on that was extending
the reflection pipeline that we
were developing an island
rendering an image with two
renderers was not easy. They
each use a little bit of
different math, different colour
spaces, trying to get the
geometry to match perfectly and
land on each other was an easy
making a bunch of materials
again, a lot of shader work, I
got to technical direct a number
of shots on AI as well, every
shot that had the weird little
creatures with guns. I was into
that the underwater shots I was
involved in some of that, for me
AI was just a beautiful,
beautiful movie. Yeah, so that
was really neat. Progressing,
creating the reflection pipeline
going on at ILM, mental ray and
render man combined. It went on
to men and black, I worked on
the guy who had very little
hair, a bulbous head, and his
body was sort of like a flying
saucer, and he had little flying
saucer creatures. To me that
looked like me, I was sort of
doing like a self portrait, I
did a lot of work making him
look for the real and the
transitions that have to happen.
And again, a lot of the
reflections going on in men and
black, I was behind the pipeline
for that, making it as easy as
possible for technical directors
to be able to render in two
different renderers and get a
good connection between render
man and mental ray, I was really
doing a lot of specialising in
mental ray, I got to actually
negotiate with the original
company, that own mental ray
with the ILM people to try and
get them to help with some of
the technical issues that we
were having with nickel Ray
being able to tell them about
some of the bugs that they had
and trying to convince him to
fix them for us. And they were
pretty cooperative. Because ILM
was a powerhouse. They were very
important mental ray, mental
images was the name of the
company,
Ed Kramer: and then in black to
shows you as sequence
supervisors. So that was kind of
a promotion.
Will Anielewicz: It was I got to
help other technical directors
run their shots. That was one of
the things I was trying to
convince the ILM dev department,
the engineers who were writing
tools for artists, hey, spend a
day with an artist and feel
their pain, then you can really
make tools that they'll
appreciate and be able to use
because if you're just a
software engineer, and you don't
know what these people go
through to make their scenes
look good, you don't really
understand what they need, what
would really make them happy.
Being a sequence supervisor and
being an engineer. I knew what
that was. I got to convince some
of the engineers to spend time
with artists just try and make
their life easier. Often. I
think software engineers don't
do this for a living don't do
scenes for a living. They just
don't understand what the
artists or what would make their
life you know, they can go home
finally, instead of having to do
things by hand over and over and
Ed Kramer: we have Pirates of
the Caribbean The Curse of the
Black Pearl Terminator three
Rise of the Machines.
Will Anielewicz: Pirates of the
Caribbean I took on I guess a
demotion in that I was working
on cloth sin. I did get involved
in the strangest shot in that
show where one of the pirates
gets a fork in his wood and I
that was a little gruesome I was
doing more cloth Sims multiple
shots. For me it also let me
know how difficult it was to
cloths him in those days, the
pipeline was a bit gruesome Zita
had to do it in layers, you had
to do a lot of things by hand.
Oh, and then of course, when the
pieces of cloth interpenetrated
you had to fix the shapes. And
you sort of did that by hand
keyframing them so that they
didn't look like they were going
through each other. So that's
really most of what I did on
Pirates of the Caribbean.
Ed Kramer: And then Terminator
three Rise of the Machines.
Will Anielewicz: Right? That was
more my mental ray pipeline dev
work and working on some
lighting, some shots and that
sort of thing. Nothing that
significant. I enjoyed lighting
a lot. I always saw myself as a
mixture of engineer, pipeline
developer and artist the more
shots I got to work on better
understanding it gave me what
things would make their life
easier. I was happy and willing
to do both on the Terminator
shots. That was the female
version of the Terminator. It
was a pretty darn challenging
movie. No question about it
didn't get as much attention as
the original but still it was
challenging. I was continuing on
my helping with the reflections
and using mental ray is in
conjunction with render man to
you know, in the pipeline that
was going on in Ireland,
Ed Kramer: you make a change.
It's a change that a lot of ILM
people made that was moving from
Ilm. to the orphanage, which was
just basically walking about 100
feet from the ILM building to
the orphanage building. Yeah,
Will Anielewicz: they call
themselves the orphanage because
they considered themselves
orphans of ilm, the people that
started the orphanage. All of
them worked at ILM. And they
decided to start this little
company that were lucky enough
to work on Superman Returns
siege, there were a number of
movies that they got to work on.
And some commercials, my heavy
interest in Houdini was why I
was at the orphanage, I was
tasked with putting together a
mental re rendering pipeline
there. So my combination of
doing simulations, we worked on
a Die Hard movie where a highway
was crumbling, I was working on
a bunch of simulation stuff
there. But also at the same
time, I was developing a mentary
layering pipeline system where
you could take the components of
a renderer, which in engineering
we talk are the specular
component, the diffuse
component, the ambient
occlusion, a bunch of the layers
that could be taken and
recombined in a composite, they
didn't really have a way to do
that I was tasked with having
every render split those things
out into separate files that
then could be conglomerated
together into an image later on,
I made that as automatic as it
could be at 1.1 of the owners of
the orphanage had tears in his
eyes when he saw because he had
for years been trying to do
that. And it was just nearly
impossible. In 3ds Max, I made a
system where nobody had to worry
about it. Every time you did a
render of a scene data was
generated that explained to a
pipeline that was reading that
data of how to recombine those
layers, nobody had to do a
thing, you could just render out
a scene all these files were
sprinkled out and then
recombined automatically.
Ed Kramer: That's called a o v
is a OBS right for anyone who's
listening and trying to figure
out what this means when you
light a scene light has a few
different components. The
specular component is what
creates highlights and
reflections. The diffuse
component is what just does the
basic overall lighting and
Ambient Occlusion provides
shadowing based on how close
things are to each other, what
will did was create a pipeline
where when you rendered it out,
it wasn't just all combined
together, the highlights would
be rendered as one pass and the
diffuse lighting would be
rendered as another and the
shadowing would be rendered as
another. So if the director had
said the scene is great, but the
highlights are too bright, can
you just tone those down a bit,
then you had the capability of
honing down the highlights
independent of everything else
that was going on in the scene,
or can you just lose the
reflections, they're a little
too strong in this area, you
could just pull down the
reflection pass. Or if you're
getting too much shadowing and
it's too dark in the crevices,
you can use a little less of
your ambient occlusion pass,
this represents a real turning
point in how CGI rendering was
done. That's
Will Anielewicz: a great
description that you just made
of what the issue was the
supervisor that was sitting in a
session with the compositor
could then say, hey, you know
their shins a little too bright.
Could you tone it down a bit and
in milliseconds that would
happen in front of him because
the composite or could just take
that layer and darken it a
little and reconstitute the
image. Normally, what that
visual supervisor would have to
do is sit with the lighting
artist and say net reflections a
little. Okay. You'll see the
results tomorrow as opposed to
sitting right there and seeing
it live right in front of them.
Oh, that's juicy. That's exactly
what I want the next day and the
old way of doing it. And that's
still a little bright. Could you
Okay, yeah, two days later, they
would see the result of that
because they'd have to rerender
everything totally giving the
orphanage supervisor the means
to do that is really why tears
came to his eyes, because that's
what he was wanting forever and
ever. It took me a number of
weeks to create that pipeline.
But there it was. Finally, they
could make aesthetic decisions
at the compositing session, not
like the lighter session if that
became a bit of a battle,
because sliders take value in
them being a lighter and making
lighting decisions. If you take
away that decision making out of
the lighters hand and give it to
the compositor or the lighters,
we're really in a sense
diminished. They were not
artists anymore. They were just
warehouse workers that made a
barrage of layers that were
really aesthetically turned into
a beautiful thing by a composite
or in some ways I was taking
something away from the lighter
and creating this pipeline for
the convenience of the visual
effects supervisor.
Ed Kramer: I remember feeling
that way but as a lighter
because that's what I was the
closer you got to what the
director and the visual effects
soup wanted, the less
manipulation that the composer
actually had to do
Will Anielewicz: exactly. And in
some ways, it would save the
time because instead of just one
image ended up with 12 images to
make a single frame of a shot,
the amount of disk space
multiplied dramatically a whole
bunch more images were needed,
especially when they were high
res that network traffic became
an issue. Those facilities
stopped hiring the really good
lighters, lighters that knew
photography knew what things
should look like to make it as
beautiful as possible. It's
debatable whether it's a good
thing or not, but having my boss
have tears in his eyes when he
saw the accomplishment of
something he'd been wanting for
years made it satisfying for me.
It's the same debate as is
happening with mocap and
animators character animators
got very annoyed with mocap and
ended up being unhappy that the
majority of their job was
cleaning up mocap it took away
from an animator who was good at
character animation turning into
more or less a janitor of data.
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Ed Kramer: I think a lot of that
has to do with the fact that ILM
is paradigm was trying to
incorporate CGI into live action
footage, everything that was
around it was moving with human
motion because it was actual
humans. Whereas a place like
Pixar or DreamWorks, the
animators could really stretch
their skills because they didn't
have to put their creature work
alongside of live action
characters, they can play with
the 12 principles of animation
as much as they want to
exaggerate overshoot, whereas at
ILM, we were trying to keep it
in the physical world realistic
looking. So we were kind of
limited in what our animators
could actually do.
Will Anielewicz: Right near the
secondary motion. The subtle
little bits of vibration that
happen in physical things that
jiggle around are difficult to
hand animate, certainly
destruction of a bridge that I
worked on on diehard that was
originally an animators
division. The animation
department wanted to do that.
But it looked animated, it did
not look like physical things,
we ended up doing a simulation
in Houdini for that the problem
was the director wanted the
event to match the live action.
So when the truck drove by, he
wanted that bridge piece to land
just in front of the truck. He
wanted it at frame 38. And the
only way to do that would be
keyframe animation. You can't
tell a simulation, how long it
should takes it's supposed to
try to emulate physics.
Sometimes it looks beautiful.
Sometimes it looks bizarre.
random numbers are generating a
motion. When you're doing a
simulation of destruction or
whatever kind of motion you're
trying to emulate. You pull the
lever hopefully the best takes a
while to simulate and it didn't
land at frame 38. Again, it's a
conundrum of the divisions of
production facility that's doing
CG the animation group has a
hard time making something look
physically correct in all its
complexities. But the simulation
division can't guarantee that
something's going to happen at
frame 38.
Ed Kramer: The last Mimzy is a
visual effects film that appeals
to families and all ages.
Will Anielewicz: Mostly it was
the orb that was like an energy
field. And that was all Houdini
mathematically generated motion
of lines making it look like an
energy field. Mostly that's what
I was involved in. That was a
fun movie.
Ed Kramer: Also at the orphanage
Iron Man shader development.
Will Anielewicz: Oh, yeah, the
orphanage invested a lot in
getting that project, they
actually created their own shot
just to be hired to do that
movie, they spent a lot on that
shot, the shot that they put
together as their bid for being
in the movie ended up in the
movie because the director loved
it so much loved the idea so
much. It wasn't in the original
script of the movie, but they
liked it so much. So they hired
the orphanage. My job was,
again, more mental ray
reflections, the material shader
development, making that
armature look as good as it did
on set in full CG was a
challenge. It had a kind of
iridescence to it that was
pretty difficult to emulate was
an unusual metal. It wasn't
really a metal that exists. It
was just something that whoever
created the actual models of the
Ironman suit. I don't know how
they made that material, but it
reacted to like very strangely,
the texture maps were incredibly
high resolution, the complexity
of the shaders, it took eight
hours a frame to render, you
know, I had to try and do
everything I could to get that
eight hours down to something
reasonable and really manage it
because it had to look this
photo real as possible and it
was a very, very close eye like
a headshot the entire frame was
a close up of the middle had it
was an extension of the mental
ray pipeline that I was putting
together. In the end the shot
the orphanage worked on the
animation got a bad review from
some of the people that got to
see an early preview of that
shot. They said it looked like a
video game. The producers of the
movie decided that it should be
taken out of the hands of the
orphanage and given to the
island one day, we had like 10
people from ILM come to the
orphanage offices and take away
everything. We had to give them
all the files, it was a bit of a
political scenario, it did end
up with a couple of shots that
stayed in the movie, but the
bulk of the movie went to Ilm.
And I think it was one of the
reasons why the orphanage ended
up belly up. By the way, another
silly little orphanage thing,
which not that many people know
about. I, by the way, loved
working with your furniture, I
was treated very well. I enjoyed
the people that work there.
There was a weird website that
was sharing what the artists
thought of the facility, they
rated from worst to best at the
time that I was there. And the
orphanage was dramatically rated
as the worst place in the
industry to work. And the reason
why is because there was a lot
of all nighters, a lot of
artists that had to spend many,
many hours working through until
their shots were done. I don't
know why but you take tippet
take ilm, you take a whole bunch
of other facilities that were
still alive and doing well. In
the day. The orphanage for some
reason was rated dramatically
the worst that confused me a
bit. There was a lot of
motivated people there. There
was a lot of excellent work
coming out of the place. Most of
the people were exile members
there, including the owners that
was to mesh with yesterday,
which was really critical there.
He was working at island there
was a division called the Mac
division or something like that.
I can't remember the group that
he was part of. And it was that
group that started
Ed Kramer: the orphanage that
was to mesh with John Rothbart
and Scott Stewart and Scott
Stewart Yes, take us up through
the present after
Will Anielewicz: the orphanage.
I started working at a company
working on photographic stills
bringing my eye into there. It
was mostly a Photoshop house
they hired me to develop their
computer generated pipeline
using Maya generating CG cars a
lot of emphasis on cars being
generated. After that I started
working for British chip
designer called Imagination
Technologies. They wanted to
create hardware like Nvidia GPU
renderer. But it was something
Imagination Technologies was
developing for telephones for
cell phone hardware, mobile
hardware that could do ray
tracing on the fly, I was making
imagery being able to generate
raytrace imagery on mobile
devices. It was not mental ray,
but I'm used to where I could
tell you exactly where every ray
was and at what stage it was and
how many bounces it had done in
this particular ray tracing
approach, which was a very smart
idea because it made ray tracing
very, very quick made it 100
times faster than it was in the
classic way. Imagination
technology was bought by a
Japanese company that decided to
get rid of the ray tracing
division in the US. That company
went belly up. I had been there
for about five years I worked on
a German magazine Der Spiegel,
which was a very political
magazine they like to do videos
was all about German
politicians. And I got to work
with a couple of guys on their
Spiegel that we were magical
together, I created a claymation
workstation that a claim Mater
could mould clay into action.
For me that was one of the first
times that could take my
engineering abilities and create
something for an animator that
made life easy for them. And we
created something quite
astounding. It won an award and
advertising award. It was all
made with claim so I got to be
part of a claymation world as
well. I started working on a
video for a band called Abba
with a large team a fella by the
name Steven Baron bomb was the
head person he was the owner of
that company as well making a
brand new Abba song that was
Abba when they were in their 30s
the whole concept was putting a
young Abba people onto the
bodies of standing Abba's a
brand new song that Abba had not
released yet we were all working
on creating photo real human
heads stitched on to stand in a
actors that lasted for a few
years. Somehow ABA decided to
get someone else to do the
finishing of that that video,
which was probably as expensive
as any video that's ever been
made. It cost millions of
dollars, two to five minutes in
length. A lot of animators doing
lip sync and everything for
real. There was hair done in
Maya that was simulated and had
a lot of technical issues that
we were trying to work out apart
from photo real looking hair.
The simulation of the hair had
technical issues. That was fun
for me too, because I got to do
some very nitty gritty pipeline
development on that project
helping animators get through
their day getting that rendering
pipeline worked out a lot of
engineering stuff to help the
lighters the enemy eaters Hair
simulation people. So I was much
more a part of the dev group
after that project sort of
melted. I had a physical
accident in my home, I fell off
my roof. My wife found me on my
driveway got sent to the
hospital got picked up by an
ambulance, I don't remember
three weeks of that event, they
had to cut half my skull off. I
spent a number of months in the
hospital recovering from that
this side from the seam right
here is plastic. That's high
density plastic right there.
It's like a whole hockey helmet.
They took a 3d scan of my skull
and printed this side. So like
they did a mirror image. And
this was inserted. What's his
2022? So it's about two years
that it's been in there. I can
tap on it. Yeah, it's medical
miracle. I don't know how they
manage that. It doesn't hurt.
This was all gone. Like I had no
skull there at all. For a while
they they had to take it out
because my brain was swelling.
And if they didn't take this
piece of skull out, I would have
died. I've recovered completely.
And now I'm back to my origins.
I'm retired. I call myself a
starving artist, which is how I
started in computer graphics.
And I get to do anything I feel
like doing on any day. I love
other people's opinions. If they
hate it, they can hate it. They
love it, they can love it, but
they can't tell me what to do,
which is very different for me.
And so I'm happily making
whimsical pieces that just bring
me joy and whatever I feel like
doing that day I do
Ed Kramer: you know that you
have so many friends who were so
concerned about you. I do
Will Anielewicz: know that
really is my daughter started a
little website and hundreds of
people set their well wishes and
in some ways, I think that's
probably what brought me back to
life. I should have been dead.
My brain was squished in and yet
somehow I'm back to life. I can
code again, I'm writing Python
code. I'm doing animated bits.
You know, every day is a new
little challenge for me. So in
some ways, I'm back to normal.
Back to having fun with computer
graphics.
Lawrence Kao: Thanks for
listening to CGI Fridays with
Industrial Light and Magic alum
Ed Kramer. The companion is the
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