Login
X
Forgot your password?
Register

  • CGSociety :: Artist Profile
    25 March 2010, by Barbara Robertson

    Rob Powers was the first CG artist Jim Cameron asked to join his team on 'Avatar'. This was in 2005, when 'Avatar' was still 'Project 880.' Every morning, Powers would drive through the gates leading to Cameron's house in Malibu, California and spend the day working with Cameron's LightStorm team creating the concept designs for the characters and environments.

    "It was amazing," he says. "Film school on acid. I worked with Jim [Cameron] directly. Working directly with one of the best minds in the field was the best possible über experience. Everyone knows he's a brilliant director, but people don't understand that he's a Renaissance man. His skill level as an artist and painter.... he can paint a creature that looks gorgeous."



    Virtual Art Department at LightStorm.    		When Powers joined LightStorm, his title was 'animation technical director,' and his job was to move the concept art into 3D, to create flight cycles, walk cycles, and so forth to test the early character designs and explore the environments. His room was next to Wayne Barlowe, the legendary science fiction and fantasy artist.

    When James Cameron asked if he wanted to create and supervise a virtual art department (VAD) for 'Avatar', Powers leapt at the chance. The VAD team would create the assets - trees, bushes, floating mountains, and so forth - and build the digital locations Cameron would scout and then use on set.

    "Jim [Cameron] was clear about what he wanted to have as a workspace and how he wanted to get realtime feedback, but there wasn't really a system that had tied all those knots together," Powers says. "No one had visualized the process in the way Jim wanted to do for 'Avatar.' People want to say it was previs, but Jim liked to say, 'This is not previs. This is vis.'"

    Before starting work on 'Avatar', Powers had already worked with Cameron - he had been creature animation supervisor on the director's 2005 documentary 'Aliens of the Deep,' a job he found through Chuck Cominsky, visual effects supervisor for the documentary. At the time, Powers was working out of Ignite Digital Studios, a studio he had founded in Glendale, California.


    Larger ViewBefore he founded his own studio, the USC (University of Southern California) film school graduate had been lead animator for the famous baby in the TV series 'Ally McBeal' while at Encore, had worked on the TV series 'Voltron' and the film 'Bats' as an animator at Netter Digital, and was a digital artist at Kleiser-Walczak for the film, 'The One,' among many other projects.

    That experience equipped Powers to pitch Cameron for 'Aliens of the Deep.' But, he believes it was a personal passion that landed him the job.

    Larger View"Chuck believed in me," he says, "but I thought it was a long shot. I'd always been a fan of Cameron's work; I was a member of one of the first VFX clubs at USC. I loved 'Aliens'. I thought, 'What are the chances I'd get awarded this work?' But, I was passionate about the subject matter.

    I've always loved the ocean, sea life, sea creatures, biology. So, I filed away that I was talking to Jim Cameron and focused on the problems they needed to solve."

    When Cameron told Powers that he visualized an alien creature having the motion of a Spanish dancer, Powers knew immediately what he was talking about. "I think Jim [Cameron] had a moment where he saw past the computer technology animator and saw a deeper connection," Powers says.

    "I think I brought things to 'Aliens of the Deep' that someone who didn't know about sea life wouldn't have. When I was young, I spent summers in the Florida Keys looking at anemones and other sea life. You don't realize how much your early passions can be useful later in life."    		Larger View


    His other passion - filmmaking - was more obviously useful. "You've probably heard this a million times, but when I was six years old, I saw 'Star Wars,' and it was really an inspiration for me. Aliens, spaceships, and alternate worlds. That's where I wanted to live."
    By the time he was eight, he had convinced his father to buy a video camera. By high school, he had graduated to a Hi8 camera. He wrote scifi scripts. A cousin starred in a horror film that he created. A theater organization he was involved with voted him, 'most dramatic.' He was acting, writing, making music.

    "The whole thing," he says. "But, my favorite class was art." Like many high schools in the US, the school he attended lacked funds for arts programs, but Powers was lucky to be living in an artistically-minded community, Asheville, North Carolina, known for music and art festivals, theater groups, and a bevy of famous writers.
    In high school, he began programming a Commodore 64 to create computer graphics that would enhance the movies he was making. He created collages based on those early computer images and won art contests. At age 17, as he was about to graduate from high school, his adviser asked him where he wanted to go to college.



    "I told her I wanted to go to USC film school," he says. "She handed me a catalog from the University of South Carolina." When he explained that the USC he had in mind was in southern California, she apologized for not having that book. "Don't worry," he told her. "I already have it."




     Go to page 2



  •  
    "I had always wanted to go to USC film school," Powers adds. "I thought my whole life would be over if I weren't accepted." So he didn't take any chances. With his application, he sent a huge package of material: Fractal landscapes made with computer graphics. Film scripts. Oil and acrylic paintings. "The paintings were mostly of sea life," he says. "Interestingly, some of the colors were bioluminescent and the themes were strangely in line with Cameron's vision." He also sent music that he had composed.

    "When I was working on Pandora's jungles [for 'Avatar'], I saw the composition with light and dark forms musically," Powers says. "I tied it into the way that in music when you have a repeated theme, you build interest by having the chorus come in, by creating the wave of music."

    For example, "Let's say you have a sequence of trees in a forest," he says. "If you create a composition with a tree, a tree, a tree, a tree, it's boring to the viewer. Same if you sing a song or speak like that. So I had visual cues that equated to changes in musical scores."    		Larger View

    Larger View

    Larger ViewPowers first became involved with 3D computer graphics while he was a film student at USC. "It was so frustrating to work with actors because we weren't paying them so they found any reason they could to not show up," he says. "We had to get pizza for everyone. Then they didn't like pizza.

    If they did, we didn't get the right kind. They're vegetarian. So when I learned about NewTek's Videotoaster, I had to have one. It came with LightWave, so I jumped into that. I could build my own stories and I didn't need actors."

    Although he would learn and use other 3D programs - ZBrush, Maya, and so forth - he continued to use LightWave, so in 2004, when NewTek needed someone to create an animation for Bill Gates' keynote at the Windows 64-bit OS launch, they turned to Powers.

    "It kind of brought together all my skills," he says.
    "I modeled, textured, animated, rendered, did soft bodies, and wrote the music." The creature he created and animated was blue and bioluminescent. Moving onto 'Avatar' the next year must have felt like coming home.

    When Powers finished 'Avatar,' he moved straight on to 'The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,' working with director Steven Spielberg to create a virtual art department for that production.

    "Steven had looked at Jim [Cameron's] workflow, so this was the same idea," he says. "But, it was a totally different type of project and Steven had a different way of implementing the same technology.

    		Larger View

    "I supervised the VAD for Steven on the portion done in Los Angeles and suggested workflows for Weta's inhouse team in New Zealand."
    And, when he finished working on 'Tintin,' he decided it was time to try something new. "The thing about doing another movie is," he says, and pauses. "Honestly, it will be a long time before another movie comes along like 'Avatar.' I was thinking that even if a project is as super successful, there's no way it will be as innovative as what I was doing for the past five years, or as high profile. And, I like new challenges."


    And that explains why he's taken a job as director of entertainment and media development at NewTek. "We started a conversation while I was working on 'Avatar,'" Powers says.

    "NewTek was helpful and it became clear we could do useful things together."
    Powers thinks his new job has many similarities to his work on 'Avatar.' "The interesting thing about the VAD on 'Avatar' is that it evolved into kind of a hub," he says.     		"It brought a flow of communication for the art department, production, and post facilities that was useful and unique.
    I see similar patterns - being a centralized communication hub, conveying that workflow at NewTek. So it's similar in that way. It's different in other ways, but it's exciting to think about having an impact on the tools and helping streamline the process in a way that's good for the artists.

    I'll be using NewTek's technology for my own art and I look forward to pushing the limits. I want to contribute the production experience I've had, and I can be here in Los Angeles for the production community."

    CGS: Tell us how the Virtual Art Department (VAD) fit within the Avatar production pipeline.

    RP: There were two major workflows for creating the digital sets used. The first and most common was that the Virtual Art Department (VAD) would receive one digital concept painting of an environment from one point of view from the art department. We would take that and create a 360-degree, fully 3D environment that would work for Jim Cameron's shots.

    The translation from a single painting view to a fully realized environment that he could view in 360 degrees was quite a challenge due to the extreme complexity of the jungles on Pandora.

    The second workflow was less common but still produced some compelling digital sets that made quite an impact on the film.

    The sheer volume of environments required made it difficult for the Art Department to create a painting for every single environment for the film. So the VAD designed a handful of environments completely within our interactive 3D workspace.

    One example of this is a scene in which Neytiri and Jake run through the bioluminescent night jungle and Jake bangs on some large glowing anemone plants as he passes by.

    Another example of a VAD-originated digital environment process was a large portion of the barren and burned out forest after the attack on home tree.

    		CGS: This led to a recent VES award for the Weta Digital artists who created the final version of the jungle/biolume, didn't it?

    RP: Yes. The virtual workflow is so cutting edge that there really aren't any awards categories for it yet. The awards infrastructure is still based on an older process for creating films. We are between the traditional art department and visual-effects post houses, so we can only hope they mention us when they receive awards.

    CGS: How were VAD's digital sets used in planning?

    RP: Rick Carter, the production designer, and Jim [Cameron] would often do virtual location scouts. They would scout virtual locations in a real time environment where alterations could be made to the sets in the moment. We had thousands of individual 3D jungle plants and assets in a library to work from. After the virtual location scouting trip, they might ask for changes to the assets, but for the most part, the assets were already created.

    CGS: How were the sets used during filming?

    RP: Using LightStorm's virtual production process, Jim drove a virtual camera on set in a real-time digital environment with CG characters. (The CG characters' creation was a very involved process that began at LightStorm in the art department and went through a long process involving both LightStorm and Weta.)

    Because a majority of the creative decisions for the film would be made in the real time workspace created by LightStorm, we placed a high priority on maintaining the visual look and feel of the world of Pandora. A key focus was the texture detail, atmospherics, lighting, and composition. When Jim handed a digital environment to WETA for post-production, it was an exact template for the shot he wanted. This was a real revolution in the filmmaking process because prior to this, most of these directorial decisions would occur later, during post-production.


    CGS: Did you create any techniques specifically for this process?

    RP: We created some unique techniques in the VAD to facilitate the flexibility of the 3D digital sets. Our 'virtual light switch' would instantly change any daytime jungle set to a bioluminescent night jungle with the push of a button and, in effect, provide us with two sets in one.

    Another cool technique was a 'perimeter asset consolidation baker' that would consolidate deep layers of 3D assets into virtual environmental domes. This would give the impression that all of the geometry was still there without the overhead. The cool thing about this technique was that we could use it throughout an enormous set. We controlled it by placing an interactive sphere to enclose the area we'd bake.

    I also developed a technique that allowed the environment to emit from a virtual actor's body. This would generate an environment based on their performance and was very useful in creating scenes in which characters ran across a giant branch or log. With this technique, their feet never improperly intersected the geometry.

    CGS: What software programs did you use?

    RP: We would get feedback from Jim [Cameron] or the production designer that something had to be ready to shoot tomorrow. We used any tool that helped get that done quickly. ZBrush, LightWave, 3ds Max, Maya, Motionbuilder, and Vue. We used LightWave primarily to bake radiosity into uvs - to get the benefit of that renderer, and we did most of the polygonal modeling in LightWave, as well.

    		 
    yout 2 cents worth
     

    Previous pageMore Articles



blog comments powered by Disqus

The Society

The CGSociety is the most respected and accessible global organization for creative digital artists. The CGS supports artists at every level by offering a range of services to connect, inform, educate and promote digital artists worldwide

Contact | Privacy | Advertising | About CGS

© 2002-2012 | The CGSociety - All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced unless for personal use without prior written permission from The CGSociety.