T1000’s, Trex’s & Eyebrow Mites PG Connects Digital #2

we've got a Iker here it's got a great deal of experience in the computer graphics world CGI um James do we have do we have our next guest with us I'd like to bring in Steve Williams if he's there Steve hi you you're muted at the moment but if you if you're there uh very much looking forward to welcoming to the stage hi how you doing yeah I'm good thank you I'm good it's wonderful thank you for joining us where are you at the moment by the way you're in well thank you for joining us it's the morning over there you are um I'm gonna I'm gonna recede into the background here you've got um got a ton of experience to share but we'll we'll ask folk for questions so please do folks drop some questions into the room I'll

have some of my own I'm sure Steve if you want to say a few words and then yeah just just shout when you wanted to come back in and I'll come in and curate some of those questions for you sure I was just you know I show a couple of things you know first of all hopefully there's gonna be I know they'll be some latency I think in my past I was a chief animator at Lucasfilm Industrial at Magic for 10 years my animator by trade and a computer engineer as well so it was kind of a good combination so he joined ILM in 1988 and I was a chief animator on the abyss Terminator 2 Jurassic Park mask Star Wars a lot of other ones and stuff and so you know I one of the reasons I keep on getting asked about you know the t-rex you know which the story on that is that I was it was supposed to be stop-motion go motion and I said I can build this whole thing in data I just come off with building the t1000 for a memory or two so I use a sort of archaic old form of alias called

alias version two point four point one which is a four word kinematic system I posted a lot of stuff on LinkedIn about this so there's a short little documentary down a couple of years ago this kind of exemplifies you know what we have done on the Jurassic things so I'm gonna do a screen share with everybody on that if that's okay and hopefully you guys will enjoy this and I'll come back after that so let's just have a little look at that hopefully enjoy us everybody was stunned about the work in the shop all the light bulbs have went off and everybody's mind there was oh my god it's sort of like splitting the atom you know once it happens the industry shifts and everybody starts talking everybody wanted to see the movie everyone was excited about the movie I don't know how we made the movie that

was just in a moment realized what he was doing was absolutely Stan Winston saw at that moment that technology was gonna begin to encroach on what it was he did it was clear to everybody that the movie industry was change Island was in a building do not anymore but it was basically a warehouse building that was in San Rafael it was always interesting when you took people to ILM I think they had in their mind did they were gonna see something that was like magic and in fact it was a lot of guys sitting in front of computers ILM was not really a production facility that's what I loved about it was really a lab we're inventing you're experimenting with things was total Frankenstein shot the Divya to us it was just exciting I mean to us it was kind of that rush of yeah we're doing something that's so

incredible that nobody's seen before was a pretty small cadre of people that that had worked on shows like they were working on and it done the kinds of things we've done we've done a few really neat things you've done young Sherlock and the abyss and we took on Terminator 2 nobody saw when they saw t2 what was actually going on in that show that could be applied to anything but Steven came up with the idea of well I think you know let's go ahead let's do Jurassic the times arrived I have a slide but he wasn't thinking from CG Dennis Muren took us all out to lunch and he said this rivers coming over this phone and it's gonna be stop-motion tivitz all the work and it would be possible to add motion blur to the stop motion data so mark and I brought it up right away and let me just build the whole damn thing CG oh no no no no no can't do it I immediately stick up my arm and say hey come on my digital dinosaurs but it was definitely we had to evolve to that point Spielberg I believe it already begun the process of designing and building dinosaurs quite some time before with Stan Winston's they do

amazing animatronic puppeteering sculptures etc that whole world of physical visual effects and we was considered at the time the best in stop-motion some motion essentially is is that if you wanted to have a dinosaur want your posing it you take a picture then you do the next pose you take that picture but it seemed like an incredible loss opportunity here you've got this big thing going on and the fundamental imagery is going to be a process the survey you know on the verge of being obsolete you know I've been pushing for CG for years but I didn't think we were ready for I hadn't I wasn't sure I think the issue in Jurassic Park for everyone was can you do some that's real it's alive it's breathing it sweats so there was a lot of doubt about that you know stop-motion was sort of a well-defined process what Stan was going to do was well define we were just kind of coming in and saying well what if we can do this wouldn't it make a much more dynamic film we told ourselves if we don't try it myself and spaz and others

- we were believable like this is the way to do it the boat had left the harbor already you know kind of thing it was approved on stop-motion right we're gonna be adding motion blur to them so I secretly started to build a set of key Rex bones Steve spirit was a little bit of a rebel he said well let me just try it I don't care of anybody officially says we can't do this it's definite sisters and I worked with him doing the part of the lighting and shading and rendering that was done so after hours and spaz was did most of the early work entirely himself just he would just talk about it look for references look for ideas talk about what we're trying to do a couple of the guys working on mark the panes and Steve Williams were just saying no no we gotta let's try this let's try this and they were sort of working in the back and I was saying guys don't do this you know my buddy's job for everything else you know and just let this play out thinking that eventually there might be a sea change on the show so I built these set of Browns I had a walk and I knew I was not going to be allowed to show Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall coming up and I knew you're coming up on a

Monday in November of 1991 they came walking in and I had a plan on a monitor and the whole deal changed at that point it was immediately very clear and we're gonna get realistic movement to these dinosaurs that was gonna be far advanced from what we were doing with stop-motion it looked incredibly fluid like real bone sort of walking around by themselves so the next thing was well can we do it with a skinned dinosaur we're gonna try to really make this work we need to be able to do the hardest shot we could actually do let's just have this walked off camera does t-rex big walking toward us with kind of a wide-angle lens we're not hiding anything it took was a matter of weeks going on for this and when we looked at this thing it was like oh my god this actually looks real Tippett didn't really know this was going on so Dennis had met you know when adalynn said I gotta show you guys is kind of cool test it's just me and Stan Winston and we went down and showed it

to him and they just went nuts they were about five or six of us they gathered in the ambulance screening room and Dennis brought down the film and it was one of those incredible moments every now and then when you're involved in an industry if something happens and you know that it's just incredibly groundbreaking and it's gonna change everything and this was one of those moments every single one of us jumped to her feet because we couldn't believe what we were looking at Stan disappeared for like 30 minutes I still don't know what Stan did for the 30 minutes afterwards but I think what he did was he saw this amazing thing that ran out to the telephone or something so we got to get into this business computer business I think everyone's reaction in the room was probably the same was like we're seeing something you know special at that point time it just dawned on me that wow there's nothing that can't be done that this is truly a game changer and once everybody saw that I think that's when Phil got the phone call and said

the graphics we moved into gorilla mode you know we started building everything you know in computer graphics you know and service stuff kept on because he really was the knowledge when it came to you know dinosaur he'd studied him all his life it started out where it was only gonna be a few shots then it was a few more shots by the end of the show Stephen rewrote the ending of it so that we could do a close-up of a t-rex and it takes place in those rotunda where these two Raptors and the t-rex comes in it pans down a raptor jumps on it lifts it up and that's the most amazing thing and we had no idea two weeks prefer that but we can even do a shot that close I remember the first time outside with audience oh it's so much fun to just like this sitting around just just you know just just you know and suddenly the

writers contessa raised they never imagined they could tell you can do animals you can do tornadoes when they're real for the first time you can just do anything I just think there was a the explosion was visceral in that movie those dinosaurs come into our world I think that's reflective of the newfound power on creating imagery that was inherent in the computer after that there became a real trend towards over-reliance on CG and I think a lot of the great work that we did got overshadowed think it's about 15 minutes of dinosaurs in that whole movie the nine of it was done with with our practical dinosaurs in one shape or form or another it's not to take anything away from what great CGI work is done and how groundbreaking you how game-changing that was but no one really saw any was coming you know there was just a few of

us that really knew it was really time to do it but we were Mavericks at that time we really thought that always question establish system you know and we not done it then it probably would have happened five six years people did come to industrialize magic filmmakers when they wanted to do something which had never been done before and that was really exciting to be at that age it was a special place to be in it was a very creatively fertile environment they lettuce just go nuts that helped us to be able to do things like Jurassic Park myself and Steve in particular we were just you know planting the flag come on guys it's this is a chance that can do something unbelievable that's was kind of all we were doing you had him here because and we failed it with them yet you know there was no I love the term you will never and finally you will never see we're actually moving both [Music]

amazing yeah I think we can still hear the rolling but we can hear the notice okay no problem the the challenges are doing things remotely here we we can hear you again oh that's great that's great yeah one of the reasons I decided to show that especially with the venue exists is that the whole message has always been that you know you know we

were always resisted with our ideas right and we said no this is the way we do it this is the convention of how we do it rapist who said look it I had a very simple policy anything on the screen it's a bathtub full of color ball bearings anything is possible now somebody had asked the question the other day you know especially with the Unreal Engine said Oh No do you think with yet I said listen the Unreal Engine could have done the entire shot as a matter of fact it could have done all the shots if not it could have done the entire film so especially the most powerful weapon it seems you know in the gaming market right now is the epoch in real address and believe me I don't work for him right I know some of the guys there but this is sort of something we're always working towards so what's the easiest equation images on a screen whether their IP DLP LED right plasma photochemical doesn't matter they're a bathtub full of color ball bearings so any image on the screen as possible now one of the problems you know that I see am I trying to be like an old-school guy to do with

photochemical versus you know the technical or versus CMOS ApS right but there's definitely a color lookup table and there's a loss of certain things that are happening with the advent of technology right like one of the one of the most amazing things you look what old films like alien I'm talking about that on unlinked at a fair amount you know this is photochemical it was using this beautiful thick thing that's been forgotten moviemaking called pace the pace of the film starts out very slow you know it was like a sine wave distribution right and as it increases the intensity increases it also uses this other great thing called implication the idea of seeing stuff that you don't think you saw in the shadows by seeing bits of the creature and I know I've got I've got a lot of trouble with the press because I said Jurassic was the beginning of the end of moviemaking because you could literally throw a creature on for seven to eight 10 seconds on screen so yes it opened up the imagination of a lot of people but in a lot of ways it didn't give you much it was like like a funeral for your imagination so that's sort of we run

wide with us you know and obviously you know 40 years ago I used to write about digital humans that's inevitable isn't right no but we're driven by trying to replicate ourselves synthetically so we got a bit of a problem you know so that's you know that's fantastic oh yeah that's fantastic I tell you what I'm gonna I'm gonna come back in there a Steve that's okay and actually so if anyone has any questions please do drop them in the window but but but I'll start if I have them on that dust that's amazing and whether you're right now we see I'm always amazed when I see behind the scenes shots if you like of CG that's being done now where I've seen a scene on screen and I've assumed that maybe the character or the monster is CG and then I see the the mesh and realize that in fact the entire scene were spilt on a computer that's incredible right that the things that way the things would come on and as you mentioned they're unreal if I'm right the mandalorian the virtual sets of the mandalorian we're all crated under in unreal right that's them but you know

it's a relativity based thing because the thing is that if you go all the way back you go back to the caveman when they were doing depictions with Barry and blood on the side of the wall that was not art that was considered a story and was considered a snapshot of reality and of course the Italian frescoes come along and tied them with religion all of a sudden they become reality right and the cave paintings become Expressionism or art then Lou yeh comes along and starts laying looms down on top of things and that becomes the scientific reality in norm you know in other words photo-real okay you know or hyperreal I love that term hyper-real what the hell does that mean you know the best render in the world is nature you ever seen the way you ever seen an image at nature renders unbelievable there's no real such thing as invention it's really just archaeology and not we're uncovering what's already there you know so these are all little homage is to the way nature does things right so one says someone says computer-generated humans

will never happen few many times I heard that when I heard you can't do digital dinosaurs as a matter of fact I heard you can't do digital dinosaurs from the experts at ILM so every time you hear impossible it makes it inevitable so that's sort of the the message I'm not saying it's right but we us as humans there's what fifty six hundred different mammals you know that order might eat sleep and and the next Marcus mammal can't make a pencil so there's something wrong already we've come up with this ability to manifest our well in a conducive mediums like we're not happy with nature's production schedule we want to fly now man you know you know in time metaphysical modifications will be satisfied right but we want so we exact our will and metal and fire so we want to fly now it's the same thing with this courting of longevity you know computer graphics is really a blueprint for the inevitable which is we're trying to replicate ourselves synthetically with computer graphics because we essentially want to live forever so does that mean and every time somebody says I don't

think that will happen I love that that makes it inevitable it means it is gonna happen right so am i blocking too much no no this is this is great separate I have my grandmother's teddy bear on the wall right so whenever he's looking over my shoulder you know there's gonna be trouble well we got some questions from the others but I might actually just like to take an opportunity and say what are you working on right now Stevie you're your company's dream view right but what do you what do you you know I ended up directing a lot of live-action commercials and a lot of sequences and films so we thought you know what why don't we just build this stuff in data you know and companies like Wayfarer and other companies and say as opposed to doing studio shoots we can build everything close you know and it's turned to be a pretty now we're getting demands to do humans right oh do I objected gainst it I always think it there's a warning tag on this stuff you know kind of thing it's inevitable right I'm more fascinated

with you know the way nature to me I'm just still a student in nature I just you know like just watching the way water goes down a drain or why a cat purrs you know and studying like math is like if they've written a few times when if we write equations for like you know sorts child solution right or or force and stuff you know we see these elaborate you know our equals you know two times GM over R squared right for the sort of shell solution what nature sees as goo goo guy got poo poo pee pee right nature doesn't give a crap math is just something we've used to try to describe what nature's already know forever yeah Oh personally I like blacksmithing I like blacksmithing I can learn more from building and would you know and listening to the howl of cat purrs and stuff computer graphics is was sort of be an animator I'm always interested in slowing time down you know so dissecting time wait a literally freeze time you know so

that's you know that's wonderful we've got some questions here from folk but it's interesting that you you were saying that about with maths and computers trying to put numbers on things that nature already knows how to do I'm just fascinated blew my mind when some when I said to someone one time I can't figure out how to do differential equations I just don't have my numbers for that and they said but you can catch a ball right because that's all you're doing you're plotting the trajectory of absolutely like how does this you know like you know gravity gravity basically as a contract out on matter right and is to make its miracle I'm gonna make you spiracle or ever I'm gonna destroy it right okay everything you will to a field of sand and you look at a quartz bed all the quartz has been worked in time and it's all spiracle that's what gravity which is Einstein described was just being there and he was an atheist and he said it's a divine nature that's

where he finally concluded you know so we're not gonna we're not gonna figure this crap out am i so long as you don't hurt anybody cuz your hate gonna figure it out you know what I mean yeah yeah yeah well actually all not on that note there maybe this is relevant there's a question from the audience someone asks so when you're working on creating realistic animations what's more important getting the movement right the rhythm of the small features the expressions or are they all equally important there are all equally important you know inevitably but I mean obviously it's a process right so one of the issues to do with movies we do even in the case of Jurassic by example I'm sorry to go back 25 years but you know a t-rex okay realistically your brain does certain math about mass and gravity it knows when it's not right you can't really describe it it's almost like how a musician doesn't understand why harmony works but he knows or she knows when the note is right or wrong so what is that inherent with the system so in terms of human observation so with human

observation you also recognize the same thing to do with mass and gravity right so when you're animating a character even though you break the rules a t-rex would never chase anything unless it was of his own equivalent size if a t-rex could run okay that's another debate had hollow bones a massive cooling system in its stall it had a one-ton head okay so do you think it would run that would be a tremendous use of energy so therefore you look at the you know the use of energy therefore it says okay well if I use a ball at energy I have to be consuming food all the time but if I have to run all the time it's like the sharp is not a bad example this is just a killing machine right but it has a less amount of resistance because it's optimized for the water therefore an answer the question when you're animating these large creatures you're a bet yeah essentially bending the rule of physics to try and make it entertaining all right so that's where things become difficult okay so in terms of emulation of the way light awkward it's like

stochastic great tracing or subsurface scattering or any of the equations that have come up to do substitutions for basically what photon dispersal does those are just a matter of time as well you're already looking at as projective medium being a monitor you know which is an incredibly powerful weapon like and I said in 2001 Space Odyssey the second shot with the primates are all fawning over this black monolith that read information guess what everything you're looking at is a black monolith you know arthur c clarke was right you know you know all information comes off a stupid black monolith can we believe it so there's an irony about that you know so in terms of the answer to your question with 'i personally it was always to try and get the look of it okay so like Lucas had come to me after we had finished on some of the Star Wars stuff and he goes oh I have this charger base character now one of my earliest comments was you know okay it looks really good as a still drawing but when you add motion to it essentially nature

wouldn't make a character like this it would not make it it would not mutate something it wouldn't give it elephant feet you know so there is something to do with a Lamarckian theory versus a Darwinian theory to do with you know basically a force driven modification to the body and a mutation driven modification to the body so all those things imposed you become a critic even though you're not really trained in them but your human eye is basically trained to observe when the color doesn't look right and when the motion doesn't look right now of course movies have bent rules and I've been very critical about these fantastic camera moves all over from superhero films you know and I also mentioned one of the LinkedIn posts they said you know Spielberg got a great comment never put the camera where your I wouldn't believe it great rule okay so it doesn't really matter in a way because eventually you know you're you're if this sounds crazy right okay but I'm not the only one to say it but you know your awareness in

general is like a SIM card you know thanks and when your body wears down you're gonna move your awareness into another medium right that has the ability to move around a little better like a sports model right people say oh I don't think that'll ever happen thank you so much for saying that because it makes it evitable when you say no right oh essentially means yes we're we're almost out of time which is a real shame we've got a couple of questions I'm still gonna bring these to you if I can and someone this is a technical question from leet Lee Walker says when CG started we were all aware that rendering took ages right now have faster computers change that or are we trying to do more complicated things so the rendering is still a hugely complicated process and the one route I think there's a synergy related to that you know I think in other words a technology drive you know the actual creative desire or is it the creative desire that drives a technology there seems to be a synergy drawn with the two of them because somebody it's a blind curiosity

you know like chrome used to be elusive okay to do cubic reflection maps hair was elusive water was elusive right and again there are all studies of the way nature handles these things right so computational speed the computational speed really seems to be secondary to the desire because the one thing you can bank on is that Nvidia is going to make a faster graphics chip like the Titan v5 right kind of thing right so they're always going to make a chip that is quicker at calculating and look at mandalorian as an example rate real-time rendering you know I mean who ever would have thought ten years ago that real-time rendering ever would have been possible like in the Jurassic case did you mean except there's 24 hours of frame to calculate right and that was just a pre-processing to deal with all the assets prior to doing raster lying you know computation so in answer to the question real-time you know like I know you know in space-time Continuum's space and time are supposed to be associated I

think that time is going to be disassociated with space eventually you look at the certain neutrinos that can exist across the universe and one spins one so basically time goes away you know I'm is really just a human form of measurement right well you know on that note I would happily chaps you for four hours because there's some really interesting topics that have come there but we've got to press on to our next speaker I'm afraid Steve so what I'd like to do right away I really appreciate the time no not at all it's been fascinating I know I'd love to invite you back to a future session as well maybe we'll do one in person but definitely another one of these and we'll have a chat with you about we've got some some content plan and for our web sites down the line that I think would be real interest to you actually and about just the kind of them well thank you and thank you for joining us from from California look