TITLE: Spy
NAME: Steve Schaneville
COUNTRY: USA


EMAIL: schaneville@hotmail.com
WEBPAGE:                This page has my storyboards and a few early test renders
               I had intended to continually add many of the test renders 
               and test animation as I made progress, but quit doing that 
               quite early on.  Oh well, here's what I've got:
               
              
http://schaneville.homeip.net:81/spgm/index.php?g=A_Cartoon_In_The_Making



TOPIC: Escape
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
MPGFILE: spy.mpg
RENDERER USED: 

               Mental Ray 3.2


TOOLS USED: 

               Softimage XSI
               Adobe Photoshop
               Adobe Premier


CREATION TIME: 

               Storyboarding:          2 weeks   (5 hours?)
               Modeling:               3 weeks   (20 hours?)
               Animating:              5 weeks   (100+ hours?)
               Texturing:              1 week    (5-10 hours?)
               Rendering/Compositing:  1 week    (15 hours?)
               Sound:                  1 evening (4 hours)
               Total:                  way too much...


HARDWARE USED: 

               AMD 1700+, 384 MB




ANIMATION DESCRIPTION: 

---------------------

     The Spy vs. Spy characters are at it again.  While browsing the internet
     for ideas, I came across a site that said that they are making a new 
     Spy vs. Spy game for the PC and game consoles.  I really liked the old
     game on the Commodore 64, so I was intrigued.  That's what gave me the
     idea for this animation.

     I'll be happy to give the original sources to anyone interested, but 
     they are very large (100s of MBs), so I didn't included a zip file.
     
     Please Critique!  ;)
     



VIEWING RECOMMENDATIONS: 

-----------------------

     There is an audio track.




DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED: 
    (short version)
-------------------------------------------------------------

     Modeling -- all models are polygonal surfaces.  Nothing special, just
        pushed and pulled points until I was happy for all models.
        
     Animation -- Most animation was straight keyframing.  Simulations 
        include the bomb fuses (cloth sim) and the smoke, sparks, and 
        explosion effects (particle sim).
        
     Texturing -- mostly straight colors, with some procedural textures
        thrown in here and there.  2 bump maps and a single specular
        map were also used.
        
     Rendering -- rendered in 10 passes.  Most were simple matte passes.
        Special rendering techniques include radiosity on the non-animated
        objects (walls, floor, bars, bed, and bench), and motion blur
        on the white spy and object he holds.
        
     Sound -- all sounds were downloaded from the internet and mixed
        in Adobe Premier.  I did the sound in 4 hours... really had 
        intended to have *much* more in there, but ran out of time.



DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS ANIMATION WAS CREATED (long version):
------------------------------------------------------------

     All modeling, texturing and animating was done specifically for this
     round of the IRTC contest (except the scissors, which were downloaded
     from 3D-Cafe).  
     
     Modeling:
     --------     
     
        All models are polygon subdivision surfaces or polygon primitives.
        
        SPY -- for the spy, I started with a polygon primitive sphere and
           just pushed and pulled points and polys until he looked right,
           referring to pictures I found on the web of the original cartoon.  
           His entire body is a single surface, including skin, clothes, 
           hands, etc.  Only the hat and eyes are separate models.  Of 
           course, the second spy is just the same model with different 
           color textures.
           
        ROOM -- the room is very simple... single polygons for walls and floor,
           and primitive cylinders for the bars.  The two bars that are spread
           apart by the Black Spy were deformed by spline for the animation.
           
        BED -- the bed is mostly simple primitives.  The only fancy technique 
           used was for the rumpled blanket, where I applied a cloth simulation
           to a grid and let it wrap itself to the bed.  I then removed the
cloth
           simulation leaving the blanket in a shape that I liked (had to 
           tweak the shape a bit by hand).
           
        BENCH -- the bench is just 8 primitive cubes heavily subdivided and then

           deformed a little bit.
           
     
     Animating:
     ---------
     
        The smoke/sparks and the end explosion were simulated with particles,
and the bomb fuses used a 
        cloth simulation while being carried by the spy.  All other animation
        was done by straight keyframing.
        
        SPY -- with all objects in a single scene, the computer was not too
           responsive.  So most of the animation of the spy was done in a 
           scene all by himself.  Each camera cut was animated separately.
           Once I had all the clips of spy animations, I merged them together
           in a scene with all the objects and placed the animation sections
           in order.
           
           I think that him climbing the ladder and jumping off, and his face 
           just before he thinks about the scissors, are my best bits of
           animation yet.  I enjoyed seeing those in action once they were
rendered.
           
        BOMB -- the bomb was mostly simulated.  I used cloth simulation to cause
the 
           fuse to flop around while being carried.  This wasn't as straight 
           forward as I had thought it would be... the fuse kept collapsing
(flattening)
           on itself with the cloth sim.  In the end, I had to constrain a
spline
           to the object that was simulated and then constrain a primitive
cylinder 
           to that spline, so that the cloth animation was sent to the
primitive
           cylinder that wouldn't flatten.  In a couple shots, though, the
fuses
           were animated by hand, such as when the fuses cross and the second
bomb
           ignites.
           
           The smoke and sparks were simulated with particles.  The particle
emitters
           were constrained to the end of the fuse.  The sparks have obstacle
interaction
           with the bomb and the floor.
           
        OBJECTS -- Whenever the spy is holding an object, the object is
constrained to
           his hand using position and orientation constraints.  Those
constraints
           were animated so that he could be seen picking up or throwing down
           the various objects.
           
        
     Texturing:
     ---------
     
        Compared to the animating, very little effort went into the texturing,
as I 
        was running out of time.  The bench, bed sheet, bed frame, walls and
floor
        have procedural textures on them.  All other textures are simply
constant 
        colors, including the spy (his eyes have simple image maps).  The only 
        object that has a bump map is the bomb and cell bars.
           
    
     Rendering:
     ---------
     
        There were way too many polygons in the scene for the whole animation to
be 
        rendered at once (with motion blur, 5-10 minutes per frame?), so it was
rendered in 
        10 passes instead.  The passes were carefully separated so that
interacting
        objects could still interact.  The passes are listed below, in order
from the 
        bottom most to the top most (the order changes for a select few scenes,
like
        during the "sawing" scene).  An interesting note: none of the lights
cast
        any shadows...
        
        ROOM PASS -- the bottom most pass (in most shots) is the room pass,
which
           includes the walls, floor, cell bars, bed, and bench.  Since nothing
in this pass
           was animated (except the camera of course), I was able to calculate a

           global illumination map for the whole scene and use that map for 
           all frames in the render.  This gave me fast radiosity for the room. 
In 
           several of the shots, the background was blurred during composition
for
           added depth.  This is the only pass that used radiosity.
           
        BLACK SPY PASS -- because the spy is a heavy model, he was rendered in
his
           own pass.  ("Matte" pass composite)

        SKY PASS -- the sky and window bars were rendered in a separate pass to
account
           for the animated bars that were not part of the ROOM pass. ("Matte"
pass composite)
           
        SHADOW PASS -- as mentioned above, none of the lights cast shadows.  The
only
           shadows seen in the animation are under the bed, under the bench, and

           under the spy.  The bed and bench shadows were created by the
radiosity
           in the ROOM pass (and were rendered as part of that pass), so the
SHADOW
           pass contains only the spy's shadow.  The spy's shadow was created
simply by
           shining a light on the floor below the spy and setting it NOT to 
           interact with the spy at all, but instead, set to REMOVE light from
           from the floor rather than add light.  This saved tons of render
time, and
           was good enough since all the light in the room is soft anyway.  I
should
           have added similar shadows to the various objects (bombs, ladder,
etc) but
           didn't have enough time.  ("Subtract" pass composite)
           
        SPY AND OBJECT PASS -- the white spy and all animated objects were in a
pass
           together.  The reason they were not separated is because most of the

           objects are very light models and didn't overload the renderer, and
that 
           way I didn't have to worry about them interacting properly after
compositing.
           This is the only pass that was rendered with motion blur.  ("Matte"
pass
           composite)
           
        BOMB SMOKE/SPARKS PASS -- two passes were created for the bomb and
smoke
           particles, 1 pass for each bomb.  ("Add" pass composite)
           
        EXPLOSION PASS -- the explosion particles were rendered separately.  
           ("Add" pass composite)
           
        MANY MINI SPIES PASS -- there were 15 miniature spies in the final scene
running 
           from the cell.  The big subdivided spy had way too many polygons to
render 15 of 
           them together, so I took the original spy model before it was
subdivided and
           textured it to create the mini spies.  This significantly lowered the
poly count,
           so all 15 spies could be rendered together in a reasonable amount of
time.  
           ("Matte" pass composite)
           
     
     Sound:
     -----
     
        I did the sound in only a single evening.  I had much bigger plans for
that, wanting
        to add many more effects than are in the anim, but simply didn't have
the time.  Also
        I had trouble finding the sounds I wanted on the internet (all sounds in
the anim
        were downloaded from various internet sites).  I used Adobe Premier to
do the mixing
        and timing of the sound, but probably won't use it again in the
future... I got 
        frustrated with it.
        
        
     

