Discreet all over holiday blockbusters

Chances are that if you patronized your local multiplex over the holidays, you witnessed some film magic conjured up with the help of solutions from Montreal-based Discreet. Work done with the company’s systems is on display in The Cat in the Hat, Elf, The Last Samurai, Big Fish, Peter Pan and The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.

Los Angeles’ Rhythm & Hues Studios, the lead post house on Universal Pictures’ The Cat in the Hat, reports that it used Discreet’s inferno for FX and compositing on numerous scenes. It elaborates that the inferno toolset, including advanced tracking, matte creation and color correction, reduced production time considerably. The inferno’s tracking and motion capabilities were crucial in creating key scenes, including the closing, where the Cat dances down the street as the sun sets.

-www.discreet.com

-www.rhythm.com

SESI also in on the Hat

Rhythm & Hues also relied heavily on Toronto-based Side Effects Software’s Houdini 3D package on The Cat in the Hat.

The FX studio used Houdini for a variety of FX in the frenetic family flick, including clouds, vapor, flying goo, and a churning vortex. Houdini also served in the creation of motion-blur streaks for characters Thing 1 and Thing 2, water interaction between the Fish and its bowl, and incidental FX for a multi-armed cleanup car.

R&H had four FX pipelines on the go for the film with a fair bit of overlap, but reports that Houdini allowed for a streamlined workflow. Another challenge to the shop was that a fair number of new animators were working on the project, but with the software’s quick learning curve, production remained efficient.

Side Effects is now going under the sassy handle of ‘SESI’.

-www.sidefx.com

Animal Logic chooses Softimage|XSI

The animation process is reportedly underway on Happy Feet, a feature directed by Aussie George Miller (Babe, Mad Max), and Montreal software company Softimage is glowing after animation/FX house Animal Logic decided to switch over to Softimage|XSI for the massive undertaking.

Slated for release through Warner Bros. in 2006, Happy Feet tells the story of an Antarctic penguin who recounts his wild adventures through song and dance. Animal Logic, based in Australia, recently decided to convert its pipeline from Alias Maya software to XSI.

Animal Logic explains that it tested Maya 5.0 and XSI 3.5 with the demands of Happy Feet in mind, choosing the latter based on ‘creative and technical flexibility to the artists, and ultimately, to the director.’ Shop cofounder and managing director Zareh Nalbandian says that despite the cost of switching over, he expects to make that up in terms of XSI’s efficiency.

-www.softimage.com

-www.animallogic.com

Alias returns on Return of the King

Toronto-based Alias (the company dropped ‘Wavefront’ from its moniker on its 20th anniversary) may have lost out on Happy Feet, but its software was used on another project of note from Down Under – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, the final installment in the blockbuster series.

According to Alias, its flagship Maya system was ‘the core 3D animation software utilized in the production of the Trilogy.’

New Zealand’s Weta Digital, which won a 2003 Academy Award for best visual effects for its efforts on The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, had 165 seats occupied to achieve FX on the films, mostly using Maya Unlimited, the software’s premium version, according to Alias.

Among its other uses, Maya was used in the creation of series characters Gollum, Shelob and Mumakil. On the third film, Weta worked with the Alias Custom Development Center on custom Maya code.

-www.alias.com

-www.wetadigital.com