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From pitching Disney's Tron to opening the Stargate, all way through to Judge Dredd and X-Men, Research and Development Artist and Programmer Frank Vitz discusses how he got started in the visual effects industry and how his career in CGI evolved with the changing technology. He contributed to the visual effects of the late Doug Trumbull’s multimedia Luxor Las Vegas attraction, and its spiritual successor, Roland Emmerich’s ancient astronaut action movie and accidental franchise-starter, Stargate (1994).
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.
Frank Vitz: Hello, I'm Frank,
this and I opened the Stargate.
Ed Kramer: You had just an
extraordinary career that kind
of defines the history of CGI
and history of CGI projects
along the way, you know,
starting out in movies changing,
you know, transitioning to games
and working in VR. I did an
interview with Jeff Kleiser.
Yeah. And he was like every
other sentence. Yeah, we got to
thank Frank Fitz, for that. Oh,
yeah, thank Frank for that.
Also, you know, so
Unknown: I'm actually working
with him right now. And he's got
another project in the works,
that I can't really talk about
it. But it's the other kind of
thing where he, he always has
the great vision about what's
possible. And he goes, Yeah, we
can do that. Frank, how are we
going to do that?
Ed Kramer: Just made an amazing
career, you know, because his
timing was also from the
beginning of CGI till now.
That's right. The way I usually
start out these interviews is by
asking you, where you grew up,
where you went to school,
Unknown: okay, I was actually
born in Tucson, Arizona, and my
parents moved to California when
I was very young, because for
health reasons for my parents.
So I was lucky to grow up in
Southern California, you know,
learning about model rocketry
and studying math and science in
school. I never knew exactly
what I was going to do. I
thought I would go into
something having to do with
technology. When I graduated
from high school, I had an
opportunity to go to, I could go
to Stanford or to Occidental, or
to a couple other schools and I
picked Occidental, so I went to
Occidental College in Los
Angeles. But then I met my wife
Randy Savage there, and we kind
of branched off into a lot of
other adventures. We studied
abroad in Italy. I knew that I
was going to be trying to do
something that involves art and
technology from an early date.
Ed Kramer: What was the trail
that eventually led you to
Robert Abel and Associates?
Unknown: So when I graduated
from school, actually, I
graduated from Chapman
University in orange I moved
when we came back from Europe, I
went back to school at Chapman
got a job as a waiter like a lot
of people do, but I decided that
that was the beginning of the
microcomputer revolution, so I
decided I needed a
microcomputer. So they were
expensive at that time. So I
told my wife that I wanted to
build my own. So I set out
studying how to build micro
computers and built a s 100 Bus
computer with a Z 80 processor
in it from Chrome Emco. And I
brought home bags of parks and
gave them to my wife that you're
going to make the RAM board I'm
gonna with a wire wrap the Disk
Operating System Board and so I
taught myself all about
microcomputers because I thought
somehow computers was going to
be the future. This guy, a
friend of a friend caught wind
of the fact that I was doing
this and he was building a
company up to do automation for
industry. He was a graduate of
it. His name was Chris Knutson.
He had a company called Knutson
systems. And they are all about
microprocessor control systems
for automated manufacturing. And
he hired me and I started
working on stepper controlled
motor systems and solid state
interfaces to control devices.
It was fascinating stuff. But I
was unhappy because it was all
pure technology, there was no
art involved. So I cast around
and this was like in 1979, or
something like that. And I saw
this company called Robert Abel
and associates that appeared to
be using motion control
technology and a lot of you
know, combining a lot of
different technology together to
produce what we call multimedia
and those days and so I thought
How the hell am I going to get
him to hire me, I'm just a guy
who was a waiter, you know, with
a degree in communications who's
built his own computer. So I
prepared a really elaborate
resume to send to him that
actually worked. It was one of
these things where Bob Abell
would go out to go out to Palm
Springs with a stack of resumes
very popular company at that
time. And he said there No,
that's no good. Oh, this No, no,
that's not it. Oh, this one
looks nice. What a nice
envelope. I'll open that
envelope. Oh look, it's in a
really well embossed folder
printed on high quality paper
typeset no less. Oh, I'll open
that up. And then it went there.
And I spun the story that
because I knew how motion
control systems worked and had a
degree in art that I was the
perfect person for Robert Davis.
He says well, I'll give him a
shot. So I came in to get an
interview with with Bill Kovacs
and that was my first
introduction to the company.
Ed Kramer: Well this this is
amazing that I'm now talking
with someone first of all, who's
been a friend for years and
yeah, I can evolve that was
there at Robert Abel in the
belly of the I mean, it's not
the beasts but I mean yeah That
was the greatest thing that was
happening on the face of the
planet at the time.
Unknown: It was the convergence
at that time because Robert Abel
and Associates had motion
controlled cameras had down
shooting animation stands. It
had, you know, cell animation,
it had live action, miniatures,
optical printers, you know, all
that stuff. And they had the
nascent software, in cam con and
DirectX, and a few other things
that attempted to tie all of
that together into a coherent
whole. So it was it was a Yeah,
it was like the birthplace of a
lot of the stuff we do today.
Ed Kramer: And so did you.
Personally, did you hang out
with Bob Abel?
Unknown: I did he he interviewed
me and he was It was pretty
funny because I was in his fancy
office on the corner there
Highland and romaine when he was
interviewing me for the job. And
he was talking about all this
stuff. And off suddenly started
on buttoning his shirt and
taking his shirt off. And I
went, Oh, what kind of interview
is this going to be? You know,
and then Priscilla, his
assistant walked in with a with
a tuxedo on a on a hanger. And
he said, Sorry, Frank. I'm going
to another award ceremony this
afternoon. And I have to put on
my tuxedo, but I really want to
keep our interview going here.
You know. And so he changed into
his tuxedo while he was
interviewing me. And then he
says, You know what, you should
talk to Bill Kovacs. And I think
we there's a place for you here
or something like that. And I
was just, I was thrilled.
Ed Kramer: Wow, wow, that's
fantastic. I just, this is a
side note. And I don't know if
I'll even put it into the
project. But at the time you
were there. I was at a company
called Image West. Yeah, I
remember image West and image
West was just a block south of
you on North Island. We were at
North Island and oh, God, I'm
trying
Unknown: Willoughby, Willoughby.
Yeah, I know where that was.
Ed Kramer: Yeah, so it was just
like a block or two south of
where, and I had no idea that
all of this amazing stuff was
going on two blocks, you know, I
could have at lunchtime, I could
have walked over to tables, but
I was at image West. You know,
working on scanner mates at the
time. So crazy
Unknown: to me what a technology
that was. I remember we had a
thing that signpost up ahead,
Highland and Romain, you just
crossed over into the ABL zone.
Ed Kramer: That's, that's great.
And were you there when
Christina Hills was there? Yes,
I was. Because I worked with her
years later at an Industrial
Light and Magic.
Unknown: Yeah, that's very cool.
There were so many people at
Robert Abel and associates that
founded and went on to do so
many other things. I started
there as a technical director,
that's what they were, they were
hiring me for to take the
position of the guy who was in
charge of motion control
systems, not surprisingly,
because they built all their own
stuff. They had camera G with
the track cameras and all that,
because the guy whose job it was
to change who was in charge of
that department had committed
suicide. So I went, Oh, this is
not a auspicious beginning. But
But Bill COVID said, you know,
Frank, you're not. You're not
just a hard work, I think you'd
be a better technical director.
He put me there and introduced
me to Kenny Merman. And to Steve
Cooney and Randy Roberts and all
those types of people. I started
working on bringing ideas to
life rather than just bringing
machines to life.
Ed Kramer: Did you work on that
Randy Roberts piece with the
Memphis style characters with
the parasol? And
Unknown: yes, I did. By that
time I was in charge of the we
call it the raster graphics
department. Abel ran Evans and
Sutherland picture system vector
graphics systems, which we use
to simulate and preview what it
would look like to look through
a model camera or miniature
camera or whatever, all that
software and it was capable of
making really high resolution
vector images which were used on
the black hole intro and for
some of that sort of thing, but
we couldn't do Shadid raster
graphics, 3d Scan graphics, and
so I was instrumental in moving
into that area and inventing the
first version of April's raster
graphics system. And Randy
Roberts, Project high fidelity
was the inaugural project for
that it was an in house project.
It wasn't for clients, but it
was meant to show the potential
of it. And Curbelo was the
Technical Director on it. And I
was pulling my hair out trying
to get our icon, a spring buffer
to capture the beautiful stuff
that they were coming up with. I
was right there in it, but I
didn't I wasn't the technical
director with Randy at the time.
Lawrence Kao: I hope you're
Enjoying TGI Fridays with visual
effects pioneer Edie Kramer who
worked for George Lucas at
Industrial Light and Magic. If
you want to read more Star Wars
stories to companions got you
covered sign up to a companion
membership at the companion dot
app. That's www dot the
companion dot a PP. Now, back to
the show
Ed Kramer: but that's it's still
just an amazing era. Because
before that, I remember able did
that folded paper aeroplane that
flew through all those
environments. And that was just
wireframe. That's right. And it
knocked everybody's socks off at
the time. And then, you know,
just the following year or, you
know, just a couple of years
later. Now we're looking at
fully rendered shaded, texture
mapped, hierarchically animated
3d.
Unknown: That's right. It was a
explosion in stuff, you know,
and, and early on when I was
working with Kenny Merman, we
attempted to do shaded graphics
using the Evans and Sutherland
system we would, we did a series
for TRW all the changing,
changing pictures. And you know,
tomorrow is taking shape at a
company called TRW with birds
and fish, all those sorts of
things, and they combined hand
animation and vector imagery,
but we tried to shade them we
tried to fill them in tried to
make them look solid, because
the vector images were always
transparent, but never quite
even the stuff we did for Tron.
The opening title sequence was
done using the vector graphics
and it flickered and had all
kinds of weird anomaly. So it
was definitely a time of
transition. You know,
Ed Kramer: speaking of
transitions, you just made one
two Tron. Yeah. So tell us a
little more about because, you
know, I think our companion
subscribers are really
interested in movies and how the
stuff was actually used in
things that they remember from
their childhoods, you know,
right,
Unknown: right. Richard Taylor
was a former art director at
Robert Abel and Associates. And
he was always known for doing
really crazy stuff pushing the
technology to the limit. I think
he were I'm not positive but I
think he worked on some of the
second up commercials and things
like that. And he had gone off.
And unbeknownst to us,
unbeknownst to me anyway,
because I'd only been there at
April's for a few years when he
came back with this project
called Tron it was Lisberger his
idea of a world inside the
computer mostly people were
afraid to do it because they
thought that it was too wild and
too crazy. And Kenny merman
Iseman all knew that while we're
I would love to work on that, so
we had no idea what we were
getting into. But we went into
it. And while they were still in
the process of selling the
movie, we did a trailer or a
teaser for it, which had the
City of Lights using the
evidence Southern and picture
system, the idea would be that
you'd see what looked like a
city at night flying over like
Los Angeles at night, and then
it would transition into
circuitry with electrons flowing
along the streets and you would
go on into the into the game
world and that Richard Taylor
loved it so much that it became
the it segwayed us into doing
something like that for the
title sequence for Tron, which
looks really primitive by
today's standards. Now, you
know, but at the time, oh, oh,
3d flying over a city at night.
And now we're in a computer.
Ed Kramer: What's great is it's
making a comeback. Yeah, I keep
hearing from a lot of people
that they're trying to emulate
the look of the old stuff. Now
you did the title sequence for
Tron? Did you do any of the
other work in the film? I know
that the light cycles were what
NYSEG I believe in magic,
Unknown: they use the procedural
combinatorial geometry and they
were advanced in shading stuff.
We did the Kenny merman and I
and of course all the other
people can McGovern was on the
team and several other people.
We also did we called it Flynn's
ride or the real world to game
world transition, where, you
know, Jeff Bridges gets
digitised sucked into the
computer and hauled through this
kaleidoscopic digital world to
land on the world of Tron who
actually built a stable optical
bench and use that to build our
own film recorder with a flat
CRT screen because we had 6000
by 6000 addressable points,
which is a lot of resolution,
but it's all just vectors, but
we wanted it to be stable enough
that we could shoot a camera at
it and shoot multiple passes. So
we wouldn't be limited by how
much data the system could show
at once. We were traditional
animators schooled in that so we
came up with the idea of
layering things. And so some of
those shots would take you know
20 for hours or more 30 hours in
the darkened room with the film
recorder, capturing pass after
pass. And the way we got the
illusion of depth and solidity
was by carrying BiPAC mats, you
know, actual pieces of film that
would hold out part of the film
from being exposed by the light
on the CRT screen, and we could
create the sense of solidity in
depth, and the camera would roll
back and forth, back and forth,
you know, and sometimes you'd
have to go in there and change
the filters, we'd have like a
diffusion filter, or a little
star filter, all these things
that often fell to me. So I
would sit there in the Evans and
Sutherland room, you know,
managing the computer while it
was doing this. Frank, it's time
to change the filter, and I
change the filter. And so we had
a turnout, we had a light leak,
we thought we had a light leak
in the computer, I mean, in the
camera system. So we on that
real world, again, will
translation where the cameras
flying down through this tunnel
on there's all kinds of, you
know, effects flowing past you.
I had to go in there into the
room, and we taped up the door.
So they're no light could get in
and I had a couple of bottles of
water and a pizza and stayed
overnight, because we didn't
want to take the chance of, you
know, spurious, lightly ruining
the shot. And you know, so it
was bleary eyed, you know, 36
hours later, or whatever it was,
it was at least 24, I came out
and the shot was a hero. And so
I was really pleased about that.
And it turned out what we
thought was a light leak was due
to the film going through the
camera, the main film, and the
matte film would be separated
and then come back, the other
separated back come together as
the BiPAC mat would push it past
the gate of the camera. And that
was creating static electricity
and the static electricity cut
was causing flashing onto the
film. And the place where we
changed the mass most frequently
was right when you went through
the tunnel around the corner,
they created these blue flashes.
And Kenny merman looked at it
goes, You know what? Free
animation that's we'll keep that
effect. Oh,
Ed Kramer: that's just such a
classic story. Because I mean,
today, you know, well, why not
just digitise it and paint out
those frames?
Unknown: Exactly. We didn't have
that. No, we had did not have
that option.
Ed Kramer: It's, it's crazy.
Looking back. And you know,
what's great is that this, these
changes have happened so fast,
that it's still within the
memory of the people who used to
do it that way. And now do it,
you know, digitally just, you
know, in a microsecond.
Unknown: Yeah, I mean, you could
do a better job than we could do
on the on that title sequence
today in After Effects, you
know, probably in a few hours,
and it would be higher
resolution. But it wouldn't have
all those interesting little
pops and flickers and things
that make it look sort of I
don't know. Primitive, yes, but
also sort of genuine or
Ed Kramer: something? Well,
that's the effect that all these
people who are just now
discovering what we did, you
know, 3040 years ago, and people
are just now discovering it. And
that's the thing that they all
keep saying there was just
something about it. And what we
know is they were the
limitations that we were just
having to deal with. But now
everybody loves them. So yeah,
well, what a great, what a great
time to be alive.
Unknown: Yeah. Kenny Merman. And
I remember, late one, one, early
morning, you know, when the
camera was finishing up a shot,
we were talking about how the
visions we had for Tron were so
spectacular, but limited by the
technology we had to work with,
we felt that we had done a good
job trying to bring it to life.
But we we knew even then, that
this was going to be just a step
along the way. And that what we
had done would look primitive by
future standards, but we felt
really excited to be at least
getting people to look at that,
you know, in those days computer
animation in the movies, was not
that had not ever happened
before. So we knew that there
was going to be a lot of stuff
that would be eclipsed this but
at least we were part of the
birth of that whole new way of
seeing things.
Ed Kramer: Well, that's great.
And so before we move on from
Robert Abel, do you have any
other recollections from that
particular period of time? I
know you you achieved you rose
to management level I
Unknown: did. I was a it was
great because I bill Kovacs was
basically my mentor and, and he
was the one who was in charge of
the software system there but
you Robert even will and
Associates always built its own
software just for its own
productions. And so to
commercialise, it was never a
very viable option. They'll
Kovacs felt limited by that and
wished that he could do more. So
he actually left and formed
wavefront and took everything
that he had learned at Robert
Abel associates and built the
wavefront software package. And
when he left, he turned over to
me, the running of the software
department and r&d at Robert
Abel and Associates. And so when
when Bob Abel saw what wavefront
was able to do, he said, he
turned a lot of our resources
toward trying to take the ABL
software, which was never
intended for primetime use by
others, and to try to turn it
into a commercial thing. I
argued that it wasn't a great
idea. But it was a great idea,
actually, because people knew
how to use it. We had built a
suite of tools that mimics
everything that you see today, a
animation tool, a compositing
tool, a painting tool, you know,
all these different things. It
all work, but it was pretty
fragile. That was
Ed Kramer: the Abel image
research with Shannon, right?
Are everybody knows Joan
Collins, she was selling that
right? That's
Unknown: right. We actually sold
quite a few copies of it to
German companies. Stein,
Steiner, I think Steiner, some
schools and things like that.
That was ill fated in terms of
it did it. It was the one of the
contributors to the zeitgeist of
what, what constitutes a digital
animation studio software
package. But that was kind of
the closing chapter of April's
was when that was happening.
Ed Kramer: So yeah, of course,
Bob Abell passed away.
Unknown: Yeah. But he had, he
had a knack for finding people
like us, you know, and bringing
them together and throwing them
into the pot, you know, and
seeing what would come out of
it.
Ed Kramer: And, you know, the
entire history of computer
animation is the better for it.
You then made a transition to
Well, we talked about wavefront
and Bill Kovacs going to start
that I know that you've worked
with Jeff closer like I did for
many years on wavefront That's
right. So what was let's see
what what came next after Robert
able for you?
Unknown: Well, I decided I
wanted to be a consultant. So I
set up Frank admits technical
consulting on the banner under
which I would do work for people
actually worked for Kovacs here,
and they're, you know, writing
little tools. And I worked on
compact disc interactive, which
was one of the first sort of CD
based interactive things. And
then Jeff started having some
very interesting project, I
actually met Jeff at Bob Abels,
because Jeff was working on the
bid character for Tron and he
would come and visit with us and
so we hit it off. And he's, he
always had really ambitious
vision still does, you know, and
so we started collaborating,
we'll collaborate on a lot of
things from like, 19 must have
been 1988 through 2000 or so.
And you and I worked together on
several projects.
Ed Kramer: Yep, absolutely. All
of us work together on Stargate
and we know that there's a big
Stargate fandom in the
Companions, you know, viewers,
just so you met Jeff in 88. And,
yeah,
Unknown: or 87, something like
that. I can't remember the first
commercial project we worked on,
but we had ideas of Jeff's idea
of some Thespians, you know,
computer generated characters
that could act and you know,
take on a life of their own
still. It's just now coming to
fruition the way we envision in
those days, but, and no one knew
what we were talking about. He
came up and he and Diana came up
with the idea, you know, dozo as
a character to carry a message
about climate change in the
world, you know, that we're
causing our own ruin timely even
today for For heaven's sake, you
know, but the motion capture was
what we wanted to do. We want it
to be driven by a real a real
person. Perla Batali, I think
was her name. Who was the singer
in the song that I believe Diana
wrote that song? I think I'm not
positive. Don't quote me on
that. But it felt to me to try
to figure out how to map the
independent points of motion
capture system onto a
hierarchical skeletal animation
that had not been done in those
days yet. So we came up with
something that started worked
and the motion capture system
was capable of capturing about
20 seconds worth of animation
that was that was usable. So we
looped that and made the dozo
thing come to life and get You
and I were both sort of Starry
Eyed about that. And we realised
that this is as primitive as
that was with its little
glitches and stuff, the
potential for characters created
in animated in that way was just
over the moon,
Ed Kramer: it gives me chills
just to think about, you know,
we're talking about the very
first time, two people were
talking about doing this. And
now, you know, it's something
that everybody in the in the
world has seen over and over and
over and over and over. Yeah,
Unknown: oh, I thought of an
interesting aside there. Because
how did I get to that point of
hierarchical animation through
mocap, when there was a project
that we were talking to this
company called biovision. And
when I was at Abels, but it
didn't come to fruition. So when
I, when April's collapsed, I
went off and worked with them,
because I realised that they had
this idea of using motion
capture to analyse the
performance of athletes, in
particular golfers capture a
golf swing, and you could, you
would be able to analyse it, and
maybe help golfers become
better, and plus, golfers have a
lot of money. So it'd be a good
place to try to commercialise
that. So we took my ideas of
hierarchical animation driven by
mocap, and implemented it into a
piece of software that was
intended to be commercial for
capturing the performance of a
swing, it was a short duration,
just one swing. And then you
could look at the velocity of
the club head and all that sort
of thing. And that were your
knees were and give a person a
tape to take home with them with
exercises on how to improve
their golf swing based capture
based upon, you know, real data
about how their swing was. And
that capability was the
framework for being able to
capture that's where we that was
the crucible in which we tested
the ability to capture motion
data and convert it into a
hierarchical form that could
drive a 3d character. And so we
were set up well to try to do
dozo. And then you know,
everything else just flowed out
of that today, you can buy a
motion capture system and run it
on your iPhone.
Ed Kramer: Another thing that
people don't think about, is if
you watch the dozo animation,
you'll see that her body is
responding to the, to the motion
capture quite well. But there's
no skinning that's taking place
to keep the body parts together
and to hold the geometry in
place as as a top level activity
after the motion capture to
exactly geometry intact.
Unknown: Yeah, the whole
problems of multiple targets on
the outside of the body being
able to be interpolated into
where the real joints would be
to, you know, to create the
underlying motion of a skeleton
and then musculature over that
and skin sliding over that we we
thought about all that we had
no, no computer fast enough. And
Nora time to be able to solve
those problems like you can
today. But yeah, so it's it's
very uncanny valley the way she
moves, you know?
Ed Kramer: Yeah. And you know,
just as a side note, in 98, we
were working on the mummy. Yeah,
we developed all the ad
Industrial Light and Magic, you
know, and I was a CG supervising
sequence. And we develop
technology, not only to keep the
skin together, but to emulate
the movement of muscles
underneath the skin and yeah,
all that stuff. So it's, you
know, these were the humble
origins of, of this technology
that we take for granted that
Unknown: it's so fascinating how
there are so many people that
contribute to it as it gets
further and further along. And
things that were prototypes for
us have now been incorporated
into off the shelf tools that
you can buy. It's amazing.
Ed Kramer: Absolutely. I'm just
looking at your IMDB right now.
I've got a bunch of stuff up
here. I've got your AMD profile.
I've got all kinds of stuff in
front of
Unknown: me here. Did you send
one of your bots out to troll me
on the web? To find
Ed Kramer: out you know, again,
dude, you're going to the AI
solution. I just use brute
force. So it goes Tron in search
of the obelisk so Oh, yeah,
let's let's talk about what you
did on the Luxor project.
Unknown: Oh, man, that was
another crazy and visionary
project by Doug Trumbull. You
know that because of my
connection with Jeff. And also
because Jeff was in the
Berkshires. And Trumbull had his
thing out there. We became
involved in the project even
though it was for the Luxor
hotel in in Las Vegas, but it
was super ambitious and and it
had trouble bowls, show Scan
Type technology 60 frame per
second, this division plates,
you know, and I had a number of
unusual formats, kind of a dome
screen format for this motion
based ride part of it and got I
was just like in hog heaven, you
know, because we had money and
the, you know, all these great
technologies and things we
wanted to try to figure out how
to do with it, you know, and so
I could contribute not only to
the technology, but to the look
of it, which is always my sweet
spot, right? I mean, we had
procedural flame animation, I
wrote a little particle system
that we use for these blobby
creatures, they're looked like
they were made out of water, and
then they turned to glass, and
then they turned to armour. And
there was there was the first
fisheye lens distortion
correction programme that I
wrote was for that as a matter
of fact, also, I don't know
there are so many things we
could say about that. But that
was a really fun project because
it it pushed the envelope in
terms of the veil between the
you know, what you're seeing on
the screen and reality you
couldn't tell trembles goal was
to make you not able to tell
whether what you were seeing was
really happening there or was
happening behind the screen. So
Ed Kramer: for our listeners, I
just want to say that what this
was, this is one of three
attractions. And it was a show
scan presentation, where the
audience felt like they were
watching live people performing
in front, right, it felt to you
is sitting in the audience, like
you were watching a guy on
stage. But it wasn't it was the
show scan 60 frames a second
high resolution imagery, and the
stage was dark, everything was
dark. And it really looked like
that guy was there in front of
you. And then at some point,
this thing starts happening in
the sky. And you look up and
it's this amazing CGI, where are
these dancing characters, a male
character and a female
character, they're made out of
water, and then they're made out
of glass, and then they and
they're doing this beautiful
dance and then it starts getting
violent and they start you know,
fighting with each other and
wearing armour and, and it all
felt like it was happening right
there in front of you. And you
could not tell that it was being
projected on a screen. Yeah,
Unknown: it was it was mind
blowing. And then Trumbull was
such an expert at setting the
audience up and that it planting
the seed that you know, because
the the show scan was actually
running as you as the audience
was piling into this into this
auditorium. Right. And you
didn't know that though. So you
just saw the stage with a light
grid overhead people are sitting
down talking to themselves and
then a technician walks across
who you don't know is on on film
and then another one walks
across in front of the screen so
all this stuff is making sure
that he is completely blurred
Ed Kramer: that he got something
over didn't he like knocks
Unknown: yeah, there's a light
grid falls down and a guy comes
out on a ladder and puts it back
up and that was part of the film
rather than part of in front of
it so by the time the the
interviews that led to all that
crazy animation started you
believe that what you were
looking at was all happening
right there on the stage. It was
that was a brilliant setup, and
then we hopefully paid it off
with the with all the magical
effects.
Ed Kramer: That was an awesome
project. So
Unknown: were you on that
project
Ed Kramer: I supervised the the
theatre of time the 70 foot tall
VistaVision screen elevator? No,
the 90 degree VistaVision so it
was a 70 foot tall screen
Unknown: that was insane you
made you feel like you're going
down into the heart of the
underneath Las Vegas because
unbeknownst to most people there
was a secret crystal down there
that made you more likely to win
if you were to gamble at the
Luxor Hotel. Ah,
Ed Kramer: you know until you
just now said this I did not
know there was a relation
between that crystal and and
winning at the Luxor but but
there's I mean, and you're
talking about the the motion
based ride where you get the
story of Osiris and oh, actually
he's there's both of those.
There was the motion base. Yeah,
screen that wrapped around you
horizontally. And then there was
the one that I worked on, which
was the screen that wrapped
around you vertically, and every
seat was a balcony seat.
Unknown: That's right. Boy, that
was crazy, very ambitious.
Ed Kramer: And you know, it was
there for a long time, but none
of that is there anymore.
Unknown: Now it's like that's we
did a pretty good job on those
kinds of projects when we push
the envelope too. A new level at
sufficient quality that it could
last in a in an industry where
everything changes from year to
year if you could get to that
fidelity so your thing survives
for five years. That's amazing.
Ed Kramer: Absolutely. So any
other CGI things that you can
remember having to solve for
Luxor before we move on to
Stargate?
Unknown: No, I think that's, uh,
I know I'm there's lots of
things I could dredge up and not
right offhand.
Ed Kramer: Okay, well, we'll get
to judge dredge in a second. But
okay, so So make the transition
then from working on Luxor to
working on Stargate.
Unknown: By the time we got to
Stargate, we had at as you know,
because you were part of this,
we were kind of a boutique
company, you know, with clients
or walls, that construction
company. But the boutique
approach included all of the
tools necessary to do digital
visual effects at very high
resolution and frame rates.
That's kind of what Luxor set us
up for. I don't remember the
details of how we landed the
project. I was usually like,
like I've mentioned before, I'm
the guy that Jeff would call in
when we when the vision that he
was seeing required us to come
up with a new techniques to
solve them. But Roland Emmerich
the idea of this epic adventure
across time and space through a
portal. Oh my god, that was just
a fabulous idea. So we as you
worked on Stargate with me,
right? Oh, yeah, we had we had a
lot of different than Mecco
morph didn't you work on the
Mecco Morris
Ed Kramer: that that was me and,
but what was great was being
able to drive from our studio on
Sunset Boulevard down to Long
Beach to the to the Spruce Goose
dome. Oh, yeah. And go in there
and actually see the Stargate
that they were they were
building physic build a
Unknown: full scale Stargate
using that soundstage. That's
right, because we had the mother
our mothership for a plaza was
Act was the back in the
Berkshires, the studio there.
But we had an office in
Hollywood as well. And with a
team working on it, both places
as well as some satellite people
working. Yeah, the Stargate was,
you know, that was a
breakthrough thing for me to get
to work on on that, because I
was the set of individuals
visual effects supervisor for
the Stargate effect. And this
onstage supervisor for the live
action that said set the gag up,
which was in that vast space,
the Stargate was so impressive
to see. It actually moved and
rotated and everything.
Ed Kramer: I'm sure our
listeners are just like, Oh my
God, oh, my God. Oh, my God. So
what did you I, I remember
seeing initial drawings, where
you were figuring out where the
camera was going to be. And
they're there, what perspective
we were going to look at that
from and but you're pretty much
the guy who created the water
effect, and the Carthage and all
that
Unknown: it was you Roland
Emmerich is, as in my
recollection, had the idea that
he wanted the surface of the
Stargate instead of being
crackling energy, or grid or
anything like that. He wanted it
to be something fluid, and
organic and dynamic. So he had
the idea, I want it to be like
water, but we'll turn it on its
side. So the remind you of
water, but it'll then do things
that water could never do. And
Jeff Oaken was the visual
effects supervisor for the whole
movie. And we got together and
talked about that. And he goes,
Well, what do you what do you
think he means by that? You
know, because it's like, it was
almost like back to the ABL
days, we wanted to make
something new that reminded you
of something you've never seen
before, you know, so you have
this kind of a mind melt down
when you saw it. So I went off
and started trying to figure out
how we would do that. And you
know, looking at practical
effects. And whether were the
fluid simulation software at the
time was very primitive. So I
wrote a finite element model
programme that would take a mesh
of points, and compute the
propagation of force through it
over time. So you could emulate
ripples. You couldn't do a
breaking wave or anything like
that. But you could introduce a
perturbation, and then the
ripples would propagate out from
that. And if you could retrace
that and get a reflection, and
it looks pretty amazing. And so
we set about trying to figure
out how to, you know,
incorporate that into the live
action plate of the actors
walking up to this empty
Stargate. And that's where all
those drawings you talked about
came into play because the
important thing was be James
Spader and Kurt Russell walking
up toward this shimmering
glowing surface and see
themselves reflected in it as
they touched it. And bow I could
talk for a long time about that,
but the main gag was the fact
that the taking camera, the live
action camera from the front was
duplicated on the backside of
the empty Stargate with another
camera at exactly the same
distance away but a reflected
angle so it was seeing what you
would see through looking out
through the Stargate. I use that
to create an animating texture
map we couldn't really animate
and reflection map we couldn't
afford to raytrace in real time
so we used a reflection map.
Because of the place the
accurate placement of the two
cameras. The reflection worked,
it was accurate. And they had to
be synchronised in time that the
live action cameras had to be
frame, you know, frame to frame
accurate with each other. And we
also put a laser, a little red
laser light in the plane of the
imaginary Stargate. You have to
remember that Kurt Russell and
James Spader were walking up to
an empty Stargate. The only
thing was there were there are a
couple of grips shaking pieces
of mylar with 10k lights shining
on the rippling mylar to create
this kind of flickering light on
the actor's face while they're
standing in awe of something
that's not even there, you know,
a classic CG problem. That
worked out pretty well because
the laser beam created a
invisible plane where the
Stargate was when James Spader
reached his finger forward and
touched it, we could see the
little red line where his finger
passed through the surface and
use that as a point in our
because you know, there's all
digital by that point, we could
take frame by frame the live
action plate of him and
rotoscope away his finger as it
passed into the nonexistence
surface. There have been some
great work done with that going
forward from it. But that was
pretty, pretty cool. Oh, and
then of course, we shot real
footage of actual water to do
the fluid simulation stuff that
we couldn't do. And that was in
a big tank, a big cylindrical
tank with Jeff Oh can enrol and
Emmerich in all the you know,
the prime cameras facing this
tank with an air cannon facing
down into blow a big blast of
air into the tank. And we were
looking through the sides of the
tank, shooting wet for dry. So
what looks like water coming out
of the air, the out of the
Stargate was actually air going
into the water. It's an inverse.
It was a great gag that way
because it looked like water.
But it was doing things that you
couldn't figure out why it would
do that. And combine that with
the reflection effects. And
suddenly you've got the iconic.
I'm simplifying. Of course,
Eileen was the TD that put all
the pieces together to make it
into a seamless whole.
Ed Kramer: That's Eileen O'Neill
for our listeners. Yes, Eileen
Unknown: O'Neil.
Ed Kramer: She was good. Also,
Mary Nelson, I think worked on a
bunch of those.
Unknown: Yeah. It's weird when
we remember these things. I
always remember it from my
perspective. And it's easy to
get caught up in the technology.
And forget about the fact that
this kind of stuff, the scale
that we were getting to here now
requires just like any movie,
but even more so and CG, just
the talent of a huge crew of
people. You know, it's not, I
didn't do all that I just helped
provide the framework and
guidance for these very amazing
and creative people like
yourself to do it. Tell us about
the Mikko Moore's?
Ed Kramer: Well, we'll leave
that for another time. But okay,
I did. I did mention that when I
was talking to Jeff, so just for
anybody who hasn't heard that
yet, this was at a time where we
didn't really have either the
technology to make perfectly
believable CGI helmets. And we
didn't have the technology to
make them track perfectly. And
we didn't have the technology to
render it all in the amount of
time that we needed. We could
have, we did have the technology
to composite it. We could have
done that. Yeah. So what we
ended up doing was using the
actual pixels that were shot on
set, and using a software called
elastic reality, to actually
just kind of morph the pieces
around and make those shots
happen. They
Unknown: weren't great. They
were integrated in the
continuity, a character would
turn toward the screen and there
and, you know, they do that in
the Marvel movies all the time.
Now, they have magical helmets
that could dissolve and form.
But that was the first time
where you believed it. And it
wasn't like locked off shot.
Ed Kramer: Yes, the cameras
could continue moving with this
technique that we were using
because we were just using the
consecutive pixels from
consecutive frames. So that's
right. Yeah. Well, thanks. Okay.
Oh, do you want to tell us about
the first time you sent some air
into that tank?
Unknown: That was That was
hilarious. So yeah, that I kind
of to buzz through it really
fast but it was a very large
tank, cylindrical glass tank
that we were we had the the main
taking camera two cameras as I
recall to film the practical
effect that we hoped would
become the Stargate that set
when the Stargate erupts and
this big column of, of what
looks like water comes out like
I said it was it was actually
air going into the tank so we
had this air canning faced down
into the tank. And I don't
remember Jeff Oh, and my
somebody was very eager to do
it. You know, let's let's just
fire the air cannon and see what
happens. And I said wait a
second. We haven't really we
don't really know how much this
is going to how powerful the
aircon is maybe we should cover
the cameras up with plastic and
so forth. So in and is always
the case you don't have very
much time. Well, it's just no
no, no, take just a minute, you
know, cover it up. And so
counted down, press the solenoid
release valve, the air cannon
went off, blew air down into the
tank and pretty much emptied the
tank all over the whole
soundstage and water went
everywhere. And we were everyone
was so glad that we had at least
covered up the cameras.
Ed Kramer: That's great. So you
basically saved the production
with that. Oh yeah, well
thinking
Unknown: that probably wasn't
only me, but we dialled it way
back and then it started really
looking good. And I also did a
lot of tests, little underwater
tests in a pool and things like
that. I don't remember whose
idea it was but we also swirled
the water to create the strudel
is what rollin emerald Emmerich
called it, which was the
Stargate would, would erupt out
would come to Carthage out of
the front, you know, and then it
would the the reaction as it
went, the surface went back in
would cause this spiral out of
the back, which linked to the
transit tunnel to the other
worlds. And that was a practical
effect as well as kind of a
water vortex. The Carthage and
the strudel those are Jeff
Wilkins terms, I believe for
them.
Ed Kramer: And that's how it
really is out there, folks.
Yeah. And
Unknown: it became an iconic
effect. You know, I mean,
porthole effects are so
important in so many movies
like, you know, through the
looking glass, you guys done
stuff. Alex, we're looking at
similar the idea of going
through whatever portal that
Terry carries you to another
world. That's the moment of
transition, and I am happy with
how well our effects that are
Stargate effect appeared to
withstand the test of time,
Ed Kramer: just a shout out to
Jeff Williams, who did the
roller coaster of effect through
space and time at the other end
of that Stargate to, to
transition through the universe.
Unknown: Right, because the
Stargate linked you to that
network. And our idea was that
it was almost like they were a
net, you know, as a
transportation network, but
almost kind of like a neural
network with little nodes that
were linked by these transit
tunnels. And just like the one
of the soldiers said, when you
got to the end of that ride, and
you stepped out onto the planet
go, Oh,
Ed Kramer: what a rush. Yep,
yep. So okay, after Stargate, we
moved into Judge Dredd, I helped
Unknown: work on the law master
sequence to a large extent, you
know, trying to the idea there
being the law master,
motorcycles were flying
motorcycles that were very
dynamic, they could fly up the
sides of buildings, and there
was you know, turbulence. And
the problem was getting the live
action characters look like they
were on. We could do CG law
Masters by that point. In fact,
we could even use one of our
early attempts at Digital stunt
doubles. So you could longshots
have a law master with dread and
other characters writing them.
But to get the movement accurate
to look like they were really
writing them, we had to
incorporate real world physics.
And the way to do that was
coming back to motion capture.
So if you could put a person on
a Lawmaster mock up, that was on
a motion base, and then have a
motion capture system attached
to that stunt person you could
get, you could move the law
master motorcycle, and the
person writing it would react
and the forces were correct.
It's one of those common
problems we have in CG, that
people may not understand all
the math that's going on behind
the scenes or the physics, you
know, the mass and momentum and
forces and reactions, but when
they when it's wrong, they can
see it people we know through,
you know, millions of years of
evolution, how to interpret the
way things are supposed to look
in the real world. So we set
about trying to capture the way
people really would react if
they were flying a flying
motorcycle and is jerky. around.
So we built this giant mock up
of a law master. And we tried
driving with motion base, we
also put handles on it so we
could wobble it. We experimented
with various motion capture
systems, including flock of
birds, and also a motion capture
with motion analysis
Corporation's optimal track. But
the flock of birds was one of
the first ones with magnetic
sensors that you could wear a
suit. And it would in real time,
give you the position and
orientation of all the sensors
on a character's body. And we
could do real time testing and
see immediately rather than
having to go off and solve the
data and look at it later, which
we had to do in those days with
motion analysis.
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Ed Kramer: Just for our
listeners, that's because those
motion analysis were little
visual cues that had to be
filmed by cameras. And then code
had to be written to get, you
know, to figure out which marker
each camera was seeing. So that
it could be figured out to track
that marker in space. And it was
a very optical and, and
secondary kind of calculation
problem. Whereas with magnetic
it was actually transmitting
data,
Unknown: it was sending us the
position and orientation of each
of those markers in real time,
which was revolutionary at the
time. Yeah, that's a really good
point. And because the Today,
that same technology that you
just outlined, is we could do it
in, we can do it in real time
now. And so you see that you got
all those shows, everybody's
doing that in real time. But in
those days, the amount of
processing necessary to combine
all those different camera views
into one and keep track of all
the markers was too expensive.
So you would do a take, then you
process it, and then you would
review it, but our approach
allowed us to do it in real
time. And for the purposes of
the fidelity of these law
masters, they're flying around
and you know, bouncing and, and
almost throwing their riders
off. It looked great. And
Ed Kramer: so was that the the
big kind of advance from Judge
Dredd? Were there any other
samurai?
Unknown: Well, we did, I did
some, he flies, the Lawmaster
through a plasma display a giant
billboard, it was like a 3d
holographic plasma. And it's
opening and closing and Judge
Dredd makes it through just
before the plasma reforms. And
one of the, the, you know, one
of the bad guys that's chasing
him, flies through it on his law
master and gets blown to
smithereens. But that was
nothing that was standard by
then technology that we use for
that. That was the confusing
days when wavefront and alias
research and several other
companies were started milling
around, and Autodesk was
figuring out how to buy them all
up. Right.
Ed Kramer: And Maya was the end
result of that. And I know Jim
Horahan was involved and Santa
Barbara studios with with coming
up with the particle system that
became part of that's right,
Unknown: that was a great
particle system. I don't recall
I believe we were using wave
fronts particle system at that
time, although I had written a
particle system as well. My
particle system was super
lightweight, and could make
millions of particles but it
couldn't do a lot of fancier
stuff. I'm very proud of the
fact that my little particle
system, I gave it to Richard
Bailey doc Bailey, it was one of
his first particle systems,
that, of course, he's renowned
for what he did with billions of
particles and a lot of the
feature work that he did, I'd
like to think that, you know, he
got to play in the sandbox with
my original particle system as
part of starting that.
Ed Kramer: That's great. And I
know he was active for years in
at SIGGRAPH and doing the
introduction to SIGGRAPH. That's
right every year. Okay, so after
Judge Dredd, the rage carry, too
Is there anything you want to
mention about that before we
move into the amazing adventures
of Spider Man
Unknown: Oh, Ah, the rage was
was really interesting. I was
the onset supervisor for a lot
of the weird little effects that
we did. There were lots of
practical effects in that with
glass walls being shattered by
her telekinetic powers, you
know, when she comes back and
takes her revenge and all the
people that are treated her
poorly. And so they had that
fake glass that would blow the
walls out with giant air cannons
to blow them in onto the set. It
was quite dangerous, actually.
But even with all that stuff, we
still needed to add a CG debris
and smoke and stuff like that.
So that was a integration into
the live action plate. For in
support, you know, I call like
secondary effects. We also did
that for the a lot of there's a
lot of flames, she burned
everything, you know, she burned
the whole place to the ground. I
didn't have anything to do with
this, except that I had to work
within the context of this great
set that they built. I think it
was in Carolina, North Carolina,
it was a building in which there
was a huge opening in the
skylight that they could
evacuate all the air out of. So
they could like the whole set on
fire with gas, burn it for like
1520 seconds were all shot was
on and then shut it down and put
the fire out well enough that
the whole place didn't burn
down. And then we look at what
we shot and then add effects to
it. And Bo Janssen did a really
cool effect. I think he in the
team, maybe back in the
Berkshire is did this the shot
of the tattoo on her on her arm
coming to life. That was great.
Do you remember that shot?
Ed Kramer: I don't remember it.
But you know, I'm sure there's
plenty of listeners who do find
Unknown: it. She had a little
heart I think on her forearm and
this was when she really got mad
when she gets really mad. It's
kind of like, you know, the
power overcomes her, the
telekinetic power passes through
her. The tattoo started to grow.
And it looks like a thorny vine
that's wrapped around her arm
and down her arm and the camera
is moving as they see her face.
And you see this tattoo tracking
and deforming the shape of her
skin. And it was using the
techniques that you started with
the Mecco morphs but now applied
to adding an effect right on the
skin and making it look like the
skin was being deformed. That
was one of my favourite shots in
that movie.
Ed Kramer: Wow. Okay, well, now,
Spider Man. Spider Man,
Unknown: The Amazing Adventures
of spider man. That was a big
project.
Ed Kramer: Jeff talked about
squinching
Unknown: squinting. Yeah, yeah,
because there's lots of
different things that was my big
contribution to it closer was
Zach was well suited for this
because of our reputation for
being able to solve unusual
problems and create beautiful
solutions to them. And also
because we weren't in Hollywood,
because their Universal Studios
idea was to produce the ride,
kind of on the sly and in, you
know, in a secret location. They
had a big warehouse down in
Orlando, and then our studio
Jeff studio in the Berkshires.
But it was the idea of a dark
ride where you wouldn't be able
to tell what was real and what
was imaginary or what was CG in
the tradition of Mr. Toads. Wild
Ride is what I like to think of
you know, which was a car that
runs through a dark, it's a dark
ride goes through on a track and
different gags, startle you and
entertain you. But this was
taken to a whole nother level.
And their idea was to have
multiple screens, that would
present the story step by step
where the action and the
characters that you saw on the
screens, you couldn't tell
whether they were there, or they
whether they were CG. And in
order to do that, you had to get
rid of this this artefact, which
is that when an image is
projected onto a screen, and you
move your head from side to
side, or you walk past it, even
if it looks great from one
particular point of view, if
you're moving past it, your mind
immediately can see that it's a
projection on a surface. It's
you're not looking through into
a 3d world. And that's what the
squinching solved. And you know,
I can talk for hours about that.
But it does it was a really cool
idea. And I wrote some weird
algorithms to to make that
possible. So that such that from
the point of view of your car as
you're moving past a screen, we
could have Spider Man as long as
he didn't hit the edges of the
screen, he could actually come
forward and to you it looked
like he landed on your car and
combine that with the amazing
ride control hardware that they
had that they were evolving and
developing while we were doing
the graphics. You could have
sound effects and air effects
and The car can shake right when
spider man landed on your car,
creating lots of sensory cues to
reinforce the illusion that
spider man is right there. Look
mommy.
Ed Kramer: And and it really
worked. I mean, I remember going
I think it was the Orlando
SIGGRAPH where Yeah, put
together a screening for select
folks to
Unknown: go over and get a
customer. I'd have it Yeah,
Ed Kramer: exactly. I remember
that moment really well, when
spider man landed on the car,
and he was like, two feet in
front of you, or, you know, just
three or four feet in front of
you. It really looked like he
was there. And also, I remember
there was he came, somebody
crashed through a wall, probably
dakak. And, and one of the
bricks from the wall comes and
hits the windshield of the car
and you in the face? Yeah,
Unknown: that was great. It's
like 3d technology on steroids.
And, you know, the design of the
animation, which we work with,
with Universal Studios, team.
And our animators came up with a
lot of those different gags, you
know, to, to make it really pay
off. It
Ed Kramer: was really great. And
I think, well, actually, Jeff
just said that it's still there.
Yeah, 10 years ago, he said they
replaced this 70 millimetre
footage, they've been playing
that thing off of a film strip
for this long, those films
Unknown: would only run for a
certain period of time, then
they would have to print new
ones. So it was incredibly
expensive to say nothing of the
bob and weave of the film gate,
you know, and all the scratches
have evolved, they went to a
pure digital system, they
restored our archive, and did a
pass on the animation improving
the shaders and such, but it's
still pretty much the animation
that we developed, because it
was all locked to the way that
the ride moved. But they re
rendered it with much higher
fidelity and it's still stands
up.
Ed Kramer: I'll bet they did
that. Not only because they
wanted to, but because that was
the only way they could render
it with using today's shaders.
Unknown: That's right. And they
took our squinching. To be fair,
it was their idea. And they
patented the idea of the you
know, because we did it as work
for hire, but they applied that
those squinching techniques to
the Transformers ride and then
the Harry Potter ride the whole
idea of flying through a dark
world and seeing things
happening around you that you
can't tell whether they're
really real or not. It's really
powerful stuff. Right. And
Ed Kramer: that still has his
roots back in the Luxor.
Unknown: That's right.
Ed Kramer: Isn't that crazy?
There's
Unknown: a theme here, isn't
there?
Ed Kramer: There? There
certainly is. Okay, so any other
things about Spider Man of CGI,
historical import?
Unknown: Yes, there was a little
often overlooked contribution to
all these movies today, which is
in the area of pre
visualisation, you and I know
all about how important pre
visualisation is to getting a
movie, right, or in this case, a
a ride. But it's kind of
uncertain, because you don't see
it in the final result. But you
see the fact that it's good.
What Universal Studios did for
Spider Man is they built a
physical mock up a model of the
whole ride where the floor level
of the Imagine space was right
about a table height. And they
made it possible for you to sit
on a chair and ride around
through the model with your head
at the level where the the ride
vehicle would be. Based on the
scale of this model where all
the screens you pass by all the
screens, I think there were 14
screens, including the toroidal
screens and the flat screens.
And they were trying to get an
idea of what it would look like
what those sight lines would be.
And so we thought that was a
great idea. But we then built a
CG model of the entire ride in
Maya, and then got motion data
from Universal so we can drive a
simulated ride vehicle through
our CG model at exactly the same
pace and timing as the proposed
ride would run. And so we were
able to as a team with Universal
Studios and the the ride
hardware guys evolve the
performance of those when the
car would turn when they would
thump when SpiderMan landed on
and all those sorts of things.
And we can iterate on it. As
opposed to just waiting until
the ride hardware was
operational. We simulated the
entire ride, including the
screens that the animation was
going to be on. Because then in
Maya we could see the screens
relative to the position of the
ride and that became central to
the squinching working properly
so the illusion of the animation
on the screens would hold up but
it also was a powerful tool for
refining and extending seeing
the excitement of the ride
because you could try moves out
and try out, you know, slowing
the ride. vehicle down speeding
up, how far can you turn before
you break the illusion pre
visualisation for ride films was
something I had never done. We
did. We've always done previous
for any kind of animation for a
movie. But that was something
that was very interesting. That
is very interesting. And I
didn't know that when you do
that previous and then you get
down to the that mysterious dark
warehouse and see some film
that's you have the end process
of all this stuff, you've
created a piece of film, you
take it down there and run it,
you get in the vehicle and go
holy shit works, it actually
works.
Ed Kramer: Oh, that's great.
What a great feeling. A lot of
that stuff was then to later
inform the work that you did in
VR, you know, in Oh, yeah,
exactly like to present time,
but we're gonna get there. We
have really fun
Unknown: what a closing shot
there was there for me is
because we have people all over
the place working on the spider
man ride, that periodically we
would get together because you
in spite of the fact that you
could pre visit you could not
get the full effect, unless
you're there and the giant
screens and everything. So we
would fly down to Orlando, Jeff
Williams and Jeff Kleiser. And
me and the rest of the team, the
animators, and I remember one
time the soundstage wasn't open
yet but Jeff got out dropped,
stuck his laptop out on the
roof, you know, instead of his
antenna so we could get
connectivity, you know, and Jeff
had a camera and we were all
dressed in black. We felt like
we were some sort of special ops
guys going in to solve some
technical problem which we were
really but it really was
exciting.
Ed Kramer: You need to get some
kind of hat black hat with the
you know, the equivalent of
audit should say CGI instead of
FBI CGI. All right.
Unknown: No, don't worry about
it. Ma'am. We're with the CGI
team.
Ed Kramer: There you go. I'm
sure we have a lot of fans of
the X Men movies.
Unknown: Yeah, what a what a
great series of films those are
and I was happy and lucky to get
the lead the team that did the
mystique effects predominantly,
we did some other stuff in the
movies from almost all Mystique
effects in X Men one and X Men
two. Well, you were on that
project too. Are you?
Ed Kramer: No, no, I was not I
was already at ILM by that point
and talk about the evolution of
the effect. And then you can
tell a little bit about
technical details of of how you
got it to work. And
Unknown: all of the characters
and X Men have these incredible
powers. Some of them are more
flamboyant, you know, or energy
based and stuff, mistakes power
to be able to shape shift,
presented a unique challenge
because she needed D had to turn
into all the different
characters so that we had to
make an effect passed over her
body when she changed form, but
then have it also mapped
seamlessly into all the
different characters that she
was able to become. So that was
the main challenge. And we had
Daniel Roisman writing their
nonlinear transform software
that allowed us to do a shape
shift that wasn't just you know,
a morph over the whole body in
one pass, we could control what
part of the body would happen
when what we wanted to have was
this idea that her body would
organically go through a stage
where it would partially
dissolve and reform itself. And
this effect as it passed over
her body would leave behind a
normal looking human, for
example, and then it would turn
to this kind of almost squishy
substance and then turn into
mystique and in that process for
little scales would come through
the skin and erupt out and then
grow and then lie down. And it
all happened smoothly over time
driven by this process that had
like a front away front that
would pass along the skin. So
the ability to animate 3d
texture maps to control that
moment of transition, what they
were controlling was a set of 3d
assets that were the character
animating both as mystique and
as the target character in 3d
space. I'm kind of getting
Tongue Tied just trying to
describe it. But when it worked,
it was pure magic, because
Rebecca would turn toward the
camera and then this thing would
pass over her body and the
scales would erupt out and lay
back down and it was graceful
and beautiful. Not horrific. And
so that was the coolest thing
about Mystique in my mind was
that we were able to bring make
it seem almost effortless and
yet very dynamic at the same
time. Does that make sense?
Ed Kramer: Well, it makes sense
to me. I don't know. Much is
gonna make sense to people
listening. You know, the things
like this in words are Yeah,
Unknown: one of the things we
were doing then at that point,
we were refining the idea of
High Dynamic Range environment
probes the idea was not new by
that point but of going on set
and capturing, you know, 360
images of the set to capture the
lighting that was present on the
real world actors. And so, we
had been doing that at low
dynamic range. And I worked with
Paul Debevec, who helped me
figure out how we could capture
these environment probes in HDR,
and then use them, we actually
used a tool that he embedded we
where we could convert those
probes into high dynamic range,
individual light sources, which
we could then emulate the real
world lighting in CG without
having to retrace the whole
thing still was too expensive to
raytrace which we can get to
later too. But so getting that
the sense of the lighting being
accurate on these effects, while
the character was still in the
real world was was critical and
being able to make Mystique look
like she was in the scene while
she was transforming was a big
part of our success. That's also
Ed Kramer: a technology that
Paul Debevec pretty much
invented it, right, and it
revolutionised everything that
we do to make visual effects for
movies. Because before that
technique of capturing the
world, we were trying to look at
reference photos and trying to
say, Well, where did where was
this light positioned in 3d
space? Where was this light
position? What bulbs did they
use? You know, how bright was
this one, and we were just kind
of faced in the
Unknown: dark. Yeah, I was a big
fan and advocate for Paul's work
on that. And one of the first
tests we did for X Men was to
shoot some of those HDR
reference environment maps and
light, an arm as a single arm, a
synthetic arm that there's a
prototype Mystique effect passed
over so a human arm turned into
a mystique arm lit by CG lights
that mimicked the reference
footage of the practical plate.
And that was what we took to the
director and said, This is what
we think we can do. And Mike
think was a big supporter of us,
because He knew that that would
be important. And in effect,
like Mystique, it was not
flashing and flames and things,
it was a more intimate kind of
thing to have her changing shape
right before your eyes. And it's
Ed Kramer: become the signature
effect from the entire X Men
franchise.
Unknown: That's, I guess its has
and I remember one of the
effects people from the
subsequent movies that I didn't
work on. He had a quote, like,
how they went back and looked at
what we did. And they went, Oh,
my God, how did they do that?
How do we have to do better than
that? That made me pretty proud.
Ed Kramer: The next thing in
IMDb is corkscrew Hill.
Unknown: I wasn't involved in
the actual production, but I
helped Jeff set up the pre
visualisation. Again, it was
similar to Spider Man, much
smaller scale. But it was a very
innovative ride, in which the
whole audience is in a box and
the box is on a motion base. So
when the audience is in this
theatre, the box moves around.
And then there's a screen that
rides with you the whole time
rather than a separate screen
when that's locked to the
ground, and you're on a motion
base that moves. So we we
simulated that we set up kind of
like what we did for Spider Man,
we simulated the geometry and
the physical characteristics and
sidelines of that theatre, and
then had little 3d glasses that
you could put on. So you could
watch what the visuals would
look like from any point in the
proposed audience theatre for
corkscrew Hill. Because in
corkscrew Hill, the whole
audience gets shrunk down in
there inside a box that's being
cared carried by some magical
creatures through this weird
landscape and you're looking at
through the front of it. So
getting that that's a really
weird problem to solve to make.
You feel like you've been shrunk
down and the scale is proper,
and you know, have it pay off.
So I got to work on figuring out
how to prove that our approach
was going to work
Ed Kramer: nice. Now there's
something I'm I'm completely
ignorant of and fascinated by
just when I went to the IMDB and
I saw that you worked on this TV
mini series called evolution.
Unknown: Oh yeah. That was for
WGBH in Boston, I took a stab at
running my own animation studio.
Most of my work has been as an
independent consultant, you
know, independent CG Supervisor
for other companies, mostly
because that's in my experience
was the best way to get an all
the resources that I needed to
try out my harebrained ideas,
you know, I didn't have the
resources and visual by that
point, you know, a small team
could be put together and do
some great work. I decided to
try it myself, you know, on a
smaller scale. So, in Lincoln,
Massachusetts, I set up a
renderer for I'm in my basement,
and I hired four or five
animators. This was after I
landed the project by talking to
them. Lisa mirowitz was the
producer at WGBH. And they had
this series all about evolution,
it was a really cool idea is
like a classic Netflix series,
each segment was directed by a
different director, and would
feature a certain amount of
budget for visual effects to
show off what does DNA look
like? Or what does it look like
when someone sneezes? What Where
do the Where did the little
viruses go through the air,
which you know, is
Ed Kramer: particularly relevant
in the age of COVID.
Unknown: Exactly. And then we
also did the opening sequence
where life starting as DNA
recombining and you know,
growing and evolving up through
the water, and plants and trees,
finally, manifesting itself into
the tree of life, which was sort
of the logo for the Evolution
Series. It was a lot of work.
And I had an animation team,
including Simon shear and Kevin
noon, and some of the other
people from Kaiser was act that
was a big project. And it took
several years to get it done.
And it was exciting, really fun.
They were more about cost
effective animation, because we
had had hominids that look real
but you know, you couldn't
afford to do a full simulation,
and a lot of Mo capsa was hand
animated. And it was having a
variety of different effects in
support of whatever the thesis
of each segment was. So for me,
that was a it was a management
challenge. Anything else?
Ed Kramer: And that was just for
reference in 2002 that that was
going on. There's one more thing
in your IMDB and then we're
going to move into games and,
and VR and AI and everything
else that you've been into for
the last couple of decades here.
So how to boil a frog? What?
Unknown: Yes, I work with my
friend John Cooksey and my wife
Randy Savage was a producer on
that how to boil a frog is a was
a project that John Cooksey put
together, you know, about
climate change and overshoot and
everything that could go
possibly go wrong with our
planet. And he was he's very
passionate about it. And I
helped him by making a little
title sequence with it at the
beginning, which was the world
with a little pot on the top of
it and a frog who is sitting in
the pot, you know, as the water
gradually heats up, because, you
know, the how to boil a frog is
a metaphor for the fact that we
don't notice that the change is
happening so slowly and
inexorably that most people
don't realise that they're
slowly going to be boiled alive.
We did some fun low budget
animation for that show,
including stop action that my
wife directed. And I figured out
all the techniques for doing
stop action animation using ID
camera on a little stand and
stuff like that and some CG as
well.
Ed Kramer: And you know, just as
a side note about climate
change, I'm sitting here in
Denver last night it's 700 homes
and Boulder just burned to the
ground because we had super high
winds that brought down
powerlines and right in the
middle of highly residential
area we we lost a lot of houses
last night
Unknown: fires and floods here
in BC you know? Yep.
Ed Kramer: So are your living in
BC your your Are you officially
a Canadian?
Unknown: Yes, I am.
Ed Kramer: When did you do that?
Unknown: I think it was in 2007
or eight something like that.
I'm a dual citizen, American and
Canadian. i There's a whole
thing that happened with EA when
I came up here to work on the
convergence between the film
industry and, and gaming
engines. But after that, after
that got underway, I took a job
with EA in Stockholm. So we had
a dual residence. I lived in
Stockholm, and then also in
Frankfurt, Germany and my wife
and I will be going back and
forth. But we always maintained
our residents here in West
Vancouver. It's a beautiful
place.
Ed Kramer: It is I've been there
for a couple of SIGGRAPH. Now
we'll be there hopefully in
person in July or August of
2022. Hopefully,
Unknown: if that comes on, and
there'll be a party at my house,
we're
Ed Kramer: there. And in the
long standing tradition of
SIGGRAPH, so of course exactly
now that we have finished film,
how did you get involved in the
games industry? And how did that
transition
Unknown: occur? We were using
more and more real time
technology to do pre
visualisation, even some
effects. You know, this was like
in 2002 or three. And I was
starting to you know, evangelise
the idea of using game
technology as a tool to support
pre visualisation and
development of concepts for
films. I was talking about this
coming convergence between film
and game Games and how the
innovation had been happening in
the movies and you know, by for
life in games, but now, things
were starting to invert. And
people would come up with ideas
in games, even techniques in
games that would make their way
back into movies. And I thought
this is a really exciting kind
of direction that the whole
industry was taking someone whom
we all know Glenn Entus, from
Pacific data images. PDI had
recently moved to Electronic
Arts. And he was the chief
visual officer. I thought that
was the coolest title. He knew
that I was talking about this
stuff. And so he so frank, stop
talking about it, why don't you
come up here to EA and make it
so he wooed me from
Massachusetts to come to
Vancouver, where he and Don
Mattrick are essentially running
Electronic Arts from there. And
he wooed me by saying you will
be able to set up your own team
to investigate and develop
technology for this convergence
of which you speak. And it's
like, how can I turn that down?
You know,
Ed Kramer: that was like a
silver key on a platter or so.
Unknown: Yeah, exactly. I mean,
nothing ever works out as simply
and easily as you hope it will.
But that was the promise of it.
So I came to Vancouver and we
set up a team, we had lots of
interesting projects is right at
the beginning of the PlayStation
three launch. So we took some of
EAs software and managed to
create a real time playback
rendering of two boxers. It was
a that was like a conceptual
piece for boxing. And it wasn't
real time mocap but it was real
time cameras that could fly
around the sequence, and show
you the quality and fidelity of
movement and skin shaders and
everything that we could do with
bringing over a lot of the
techniques we had invented in
film characters, including
mystique and so forth. It was a
very heady time we had George
Bush who cough who had worked on
the Matrix films for the capture
of the agents and Neo skin
shaders in real time EA started
taking a lot of our work and
incorporating it into fight
night, the game and into
battlefield and stuff like that.
Ed Kramer: I'm just gonna read
some of these to our listeners
Need for Speed you were thanked
on technology Plants vs. Zombies
Garden Warfare. Art graphics
MSX. I know Henry worked on that
one, right. That's right.
Unknown: And also, Habib zarger
por worked on the Need for Speed
franchise. There were already
other people along with me who
were kind of crossing between
games and and film
Ed Kramer: and Habib's on my
hitless believe me for a good
he's great. One of these
interviews. I've worked with him
for many years at ILM sat next
right next to him in our office
when we were working on Twister,
so
Unknown: it's always so calm.
That's what I love about him.
You know, he's, he's doing this
crazy stuff. And yet he's just,
you know, it seems like
everything is always under
control,
Ed Kramer: always under control,
always got a smile on his face,
even tempered, and like you
solving unbelievably technical
problems. What were the things
that you were inventing for
those games that just hadn't?
hadn't been done before?
Unknown: Good question, we set
up a bunch of different
projects. Some of the early
things were the skin shaders,
getting the you know, skin
shaders that could capture
translucency, and ambient
occlusion and being able to do
those things in real time. And
there were lots of different
ways to implement them. So we
tested those, the real time
mocap was now a thing that we
could do did even though you
couldn't do that in a home, the
connects was coming online where
you could do some real time
mocap, if you could incorporate
that in your game, you'd have to
have a framework that could use
it, and then apply the shaders,
and you only have a certain
amount of computing power. So
you have to divide up the
shading with the processing of
the animation and everything.
But we were an r&d group. So we
were testing things and trying
to implement sample code that EA
could use. So I didn't initially
do anything directly in the
games and just provided
technology. I also work
continued my interest in high
dynamic range, you know now, in
real time, it's rather than
capturing an environment map for
a movie, we would try to render
in high dynamic range in the
game engine itself and EAS Paula
lines, graphics libraries, there
were one of some of the first
ones that would allow us to run
in real time in high dynamic
range. So that was interesting.
Ed Kramer: It was a time you
know, the I guess 2010s or 20,
teens, whatever we call them.
That was a time where so much
game technology was going on.
And you seem to be working with
every one of the game platforms
unreal unity Cry Engine, there
was even one I had not heard of.
So compare and contrast.
Unknown: Wow, that's a big one.
One of the cool acquisitions
that EA made was dice In
Stockholm with the Frostbite
engine, when da decided to
disband the fundamental research
park that we had been doing, it
was the worldwide visualisation
group that I was running under
Glen antas, they decided to
focus more specifically on
titles, and consolidated because
in those days EA which has grown
by virtue of acquisition, they
had invested and then acquired
dice. They also had a couple of
studios down in Los Angeles,
they have three or four
different rendering platforms,
and they thought it would be a
good idea to try to consolidate
that. And so rather than having
my group tried to invent another
whole one from scratch, they
decided to figure out which ones
would be the best. And I had an
opportunity with Johan Anderson,
genius guy at dice. He wanted,
he saw what we had been doing,
and he was in charge of the
rendering for frostbite, he
invited me over to Stockholm to
talk about how we could further
incorporate some of those ideas
and advance the agenda for
frostbite. And I don't think he
thought about this initially,
but it became possible that
frostbite could become the
engine for Electronic Arts, it
was pretty funny because EA
Sports at that time had an
engine called Ignite. Ignite
engine was the one that powered
all the sports games and
frostbite powered plant. Well,
later Plants vs. Zombies, but
battlefield primarily and
Mirror's Edge and things like
that. And so they decided to
have a contest between Ignite
and frostbite. Last vs fire,
this is a great metaphor, you
know, Jeff skeleton came over
from EA to Stockholm, and I
would show him what we were
doing. And we had all of this
evaluation that eventually they
decided on frostbite, partly
because by that time, I had a
group in Stockholm that was
doing content creation tools,
and helping guide what was
important for frostbite. While
these genius programmers
implemented it, and frostbite
had a clear roadmap to become
the dominant engine within EA.
So that was pretty cool.
Frostbite was a proprietary
engine. Frostbite was the engine
for EA and could only be used by
EA, whereas unreal is a engine
software platform that anybody
can use. And so there was two
opposing philosophies there that
were very interesting, you know,
it looks like Unreal is the one
that's really winning in the
long term now because of their
success in a number of titles
that they brought out that have
allowed them to push the
technology not only for their
own games, but for everybody's
game so far.
Ed Kramer: And where would you
go unreal versus unity
Unknown: that's been back and
forth over the years I think
their unity was more open source
in the original iterations of it
but then they became more
proprietary Well, unreal, became
more open, which it had been a
closed system to start with more
or less, but now it's more open
and they release all of their
source code. My friend Neil
Blomkamp is here in
Ed Kramer: the are friends with
Neil Blomkamp, though Yeah, he's
got his studio. What district
nine?
Unknown: Yes, exactly. He has
both studio is his operation
here in Vancouver, and he is a
unity studio and I've haven't
done any projects with them. But
we've talked about some
possibilities and he loves
unity. On the other hand, Kim
libreria unreal is a champion of
all things new and cool through
his avenues and underwriting
they have purchased three
lateral or acquired three
lateral which is the arguably
the best scanning and facial
animation system in the world as
part of Unreal now. So the all
these things we've been talking
about continue to evolve and
different alliances form and
we're moving the bar every year.
Ed Kramer: Let me throw two two
letter acronyms at you. Okay,
AI, and VR.
Unknown: Boy, that's those we
could talk for an hour or more
on each of those. I guess I
should throw it in the context
of your the chronology of my
experience. I didn't do much
with AI at all until I got to
AMD which was the my most recent
large company i i was the
Creative Director for frostbite
and then Creative Director for
CryEngine. AMD is arguably one
of the engines that power all of
those different software
platforms.
Ed Kramer: AMD is a chip maker
Correct? That's right.
Unknown: So this that that's why
I'm kind of pausing because I
don't know quite how to explain
my switching from software back
into hardware. It kind of goes
full circle from when I was
designing hardware. And now back
to the hardware that's running
the software we've been talking
about. AMD and Nvidia of course
are big rivals. And AMD wants to
be sure that their hardware, and
their plans for their hardware
incorporate all these things
that we've been talking about
their hardware runs PlayStation
and Xbox. And the big server
farms. They've, they're in, you
know, the Google and Amazon
clouds, but they realise the
importance of the publicity they
get out of their hardware being.
They're at the leading edge in
gaming. And in fact, they make
some of the best gaming, laptops
and things like that. So anyway,
Carlos Silva at AMD, did
something similar to what
happened to me with EA, he said,
Frank, why don't you come and
help us work on the actual
hardware that's powering these
things you're talking about, you
know, the next, what is the next
wave? And how can AMD do that?
So I spent three and a half
years working for AMD, not
directly on the hardware, but on
immersive technologies. The idea
there was what do we need from
AMD? And what do we need in the
ecosystems to allow real time
technologies, including AI, real
time AI and virtual reality? to
flourish I created with my team
in Markham, it was on the
outskirts of Toronto, the
immersive technology team there
created, as I usually do
prototypes of various new
techniques that show how you can
marry reflection mapping the
things we did for Stargate, you
know, offline, we showed how you
could capture in real time, a
high dynamic range video of your
environment, and then use that
as the lighting for a character
which you then insert back into
the video with a two frame
delay, and now your character is
being lit by the changing
lighting of the real world,
which you go, Oh my God, this
makes augmented reality. Now,
it's another way to make
augmented reality more
believable, because it doesn't
look like it's just flat
composited. So we did a lot of
things like that. And I got to
work with the designers of the
chips about what are the
important things that you need
to be able to do? Where's the
computational power?
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Unknown: We started exploring AI
driven characters where the
behaviour of the character would
be leveraging all this motion
capture data that we would have
a library of behaviours that a
character could do. But the
actual decision and the blending
between reactions to a player or
you know, a competitor would be
not just mechanically triggered,
but would be behaviorally
modified by an evolving a I was
quite a mouthful. And so we're
talking about intelligent
agents. That's exactly it. Yeah,
that's much more articulate way
of putting it. So you're always
good with that.
Ed Kramer: When we started
talking, we were talking about
the vector graphics for Tron.
Yeah, and now we're up to AI
driven autonomous characters for
games.
Unknown: That's right, that that
interact with you in the in the
real world, either through your
phone or your you know, your
laptop in real time.
Ed Kramer: And that seemed to be
lit by the environment they're
looking at that your
Unknown: both AMD and Nvidia now
have aspects of their hardware
dedicated to real time ray
tracing. And you know, my laptop
that I'm talking to you on right
now has an NVIDIA 3080 chip for
the graphics processor, and it's
got a risin AMD CPU, so they're
collaborating together and it's
capable of running real time. 60
frames per second ray tracing,
it just boggles the mind but you
know, it doesn't stop
Ed Kramer: because you said it
doesn't stop. Let's let's kind
of sum up where we are now in
the life of Frank Fitz because
you know, what's great about the
people who worked in at the
origins of CGI is we're all
like, you know, 3040 years
older, but we're still alive and
still kickin and still doing
stuff. So two part question,
first part look Looking back on
your career up to this point,
where do you see you fitting
into the timeline of CGI
history, and then just use a
little bit about the future.
Unknown: Just looking at what
we've talked about, I feel like
I've been, you know, weaving in
and out, you know, there's like
this giant population of people
working on things. And I've been
fortunate to be kind of jumping
back and forth, working in
various parts of that as the
front line of our knowledge
progresses. So I feel very
fortunate about that, because
I've spanned, like you said, the
timeline of a lot of it. And
various aspects of no one person
can, can be involved in
everything, obviously. But so
that makes me feel really good.
And it feels like a lot of the
things that I've been working on
are coming to fruition, you
know, the things we talked about
in that Kenny merman and I
talked about in Tron that we
could imagine, then we can now
do, and there's a sense that
there's, it's like, the toolkit
is way bigger the palette of
tools and brushes that we can
use, which opens up the best
part of it, which is, you know,
opportunity for creativity, I
feel like I've been part of that
I have come back home to West
Vancouver from working with AMD.
So now I'm back to Frank Fitz,
Creative Technologies, you know,
working, I think I can still
work on some projects on a
consulting basis, one by one,
that's my plan. And also, I've
always loved digital music. So
I've been putting together my
own high resolution, digital
audio system for capturing of
high quality audio and
processing it and I'll probably
be back with Jeff Plaza on that
again, because he's got a Dolby
Atmos studio in his garage that
I've been exercising with him
periodically. I'm active in the
VTS. So I think I might work on
that as well as something to do
with SIGGRAPH. So I know you're
very active in that. So I'll
probably be turning to you for
some ideas. I was consumed by
computer graphics for so many
years. And it actually wasn't
the only thing I thought of
along the way. Now I'm going to
try to realise some of my other
ideas, like both designs, and
you know, electric technologies
and things like that.
Ed Kramer: Frank, this has been
just the most fun, maybe we'll
update this in a couple of
years, I
Unknown: really appreciate you
doing this, because it's fun to
have someone like yourself who's
so knowledgeable about this
field, look back through the
processes and the pathways that
led us here and set it into some
kind of perspective. The thing
that Kenny and I noticed about
how the things we do in our
industry, it's unlike most other
art forms, the technology is
changing underfoot constantly.
And that has not changed yet,
even though we've gotten to the
point now, where you can't tell
when you watch a movie, whether
it's real, or CG, it still
continues to evolve and how we
as artists, cope with that and
stay abreast of it and, you
know, make sense of it and
decide what we want to do with
our talent is just an ongoing
problem and a challenge. So
that's kind of a way of saying
you know that here we are and
the magic never stops.
Lawrence Kao: Thanks for
listening to CGI Fridays with
Industrial Light and Magic alum
Ed Kramer, the companion is the
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