Serenity

**Vision1** · 09-21-2005, 05:46 PM

hey, i think most of you know serenity
i'm looking forward to this film so i thought i browse for it and i found this
so maybe some of you didn’t read it so here it is

http://www.rendernode.com/articles.php?articleId=169

http://millimeter.com/mag/video_fly_inside_firefly/

and here are some video's i haven't seen them yet because they are very bigg and download isn't going very fast

http://www.fireflyfans.net/main.asp

**colkai** · 09-22-2005, 03:36 AM

Can't wait, this film is gonna be Shiny!

Have you seen the Viral Marketing videos of River (Summer Glau) yet?
Joss acts as the 'interviewer' - it's heartbreaking to see her go from a happy girl to the River we all know.

**fyrissian** · 09-22-2005, 07:30 PM

Yep. Come next Thursday, I reckon things are gonna get just a mite interesting out here on the Rim... Let's get rowdy!

edit... Thursday? Must have been having a gorram Jayne moment... the 30th is on a FRIDAY, moron!

**Bog** · 09-23-2005, 11:39 AM

*shrugs into brownish coloured coat*

I've seen Serenity, and to be honest it's the most enjoyable time I've ever had in the cinema. It's as simple as that.

Yes, I'm a rabid Firefly fan, despite not being too much into Whedon's other work, but the movie just rocks.

<edit> Just so nobody thinks I was being naughty, it was a press screening in Leicester Square. Anyone even considering downloading this instead of seeing it in cinemas needs their head read. BIG effects, dribble-drool

Can't wait for general release so I can go see it again!

Jolly well done Zoic and everyone else involved.

**Vision1** · 09-25-2005, 10:45 AM

i have found 2 other website about serenity vfx but they say that they have had some problems with lightwave

http://www.vfxblog.com/vfx/2005/09/z...peri.html#more
http://vfxworld.com/?atype=articles&id=2634&page=1

i hope that newtek knows about these problems and wil fix it

**colkai** · 09-26-2005, 03:22 AM

It's the way of most feature that they have problems with "off-the-shelf" software, which is why pretty much everyone ends up with the term "proprietary software" in their breakdown of what was done on the film.

**Bog** · 09-26-2005, 06:22 AM

It's the way of most feature that they have problems with "off-the-shelf" software, which is why pretty much everyone ends up with the term "proprietary software" in their breakdown of what was done on the film.

That's about the size of it. When you lean hard on any 3D software, the stuffing comes out sooner or later. Was it Ron Thornton who said "All 3D tools crash. LightWave crashes the least, though." Or something like that.

**riki** · 09-26-2005, 07:59 AM

yeah this should be good, can't wait to see it.

**Vision1** · 09-26-2005, 09:13 AM

i just hope that zoic doesn't move away from lightwave

in one of the interviews they told they created a new pipeline (Other software)

**AbnRanger** · 09-26-2005, 01:13 PM

Originally Posted by Vision1

i just hope that zoic doesn't move away from lightwave

in one of the interviews they told they created a new pipeline (Other software)

After reading that article, I was wondering if that's what they were thinking about....since they did mention incorporating Maya w/ Mental Ray into their pipeline. Perhaps they became so frustrated that they are now moving in that direction, since Maya and Mental Ray seem to have a good track record in those areas.
When I read the word "Limitations," regarding Lightwave's capabilities to run large-scale scenes, I translated that to mean they would be looking for a solution WITHOUT such limitations. Can't blame them really.
I wonder if Newtek worked with them at all to run LW 64 bit, seeing how Rob Powers was impressed with it surpassing the 32 bit barriers, running very stable, and NOT dropping any render frames on the project he worked on for Microsoft (showing off XP Pro x64).

**mattclary** · 09-26-2005, 01:33 PM

I know some of the PR for 64bit LW has been loading several Galactica models, so I would assume Zoic and Newtek are talking. They are probably beta testers.

**Bog** · 09-26-2005, 01:37 PM

Hum. I've had occasional minor stability issues with LW and Large Amounts of Large Maps. One of my clients is the British Library, doing re-creations of old books. These normally get five or six layers of mapping at about 1800x1000 (ballpark), and with thirty page-surfaces like that, I tend to worry a teenty bit about pushing F10.

It's usually more a case of render from a fresh boot than Oh Gh0d This Will never Work, mind.

**AbnRanger** · 09-26-2005, 02:01 PM

Here's a few revealing (and non-flattering for LW) clips from that article:

Setting Up New Pipelines
At the heart of Serenity is the spaceship of the same name. The model that had been developed for Firefly was rebuilt from scratch for Serenity, as it had no UV maps and the textures were simple NTSC projections. All the vehicles — and CG environments too — were built in Maya by model supervisor and ESC alumnus Brian Friesinger, using quads and shot-centric UVs, and textured by Lance Powell by hand. Once the animation was complete, the scenes were ported over to LightWave to be lit and rendered. Compositing was then carried out in Combustion. ....

The environment was later replaced with a Maya terrain system written by Brian Goldberg and Marcus Stokes. The bad guys’ hovercraft was mostly realized in CG. For this sequence, Peristere decided to switch to a Maya/mental ray pipeline, specifically to take advantage of the fluid and particles simulation tools of the Alias animation package.

This new pipeline marked a major departure from the LightWave/Flame/After Effects platform that Zoic had been using for television work. “LightWave has been a cornerstone here at Zoic, but it just needs some more refinement for high resolution work,” Peristere adds. “Although we had used it to its best on Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, the guys had to do far too much patchwork with it and it stressed them to their limit. They made it work, but it was brute force and they are the best users in the business. We also faced a resource issue. Between Zoic, Eden FX and Digital Domain, the key LightWave talent was booked up. There simply wasn’t anyone we felt comfortable with for these shots. Since Randy Goux had a team of super Maya artists from ESC who were available to do this work, we pulled the trigger.”

I wonder if Newtek will be providing video clips of interviews from Zoic Studios doing plugs for LW at SIGGRAPH...NEXT year?

**colkai** · 09-26-2005, 02:15 PM

I think the key statement here is....

"... Between Zoic, Eden FX and Digital Domain, the key LightWave talent was booked up. There simply wasn’t anyone we felt comfortable with for these shots. Since Randy Goux had a team of super Maya artists from ESC who were available to do this work, we pulled the trigger.”]

That suggests to me that yes, they did steer from LW, but I also get the impression it was because they couldn't find LW artists of a high enough calibre to handle the complexity of shots they were doing.
Thus the phrase "pull the trigger" in relation to using Maya more than LW.

After all, the 64-bit version of LW has been shown to handle larger scenes much better and I'm pretty certain I recall Zoic having a hand in showing that off.

I'd be pretty surprised to find Zoic and Newtek moving away from each other.