A Segment from the film Finding Nemo - Essay Example

A Segment from the film “Finding Nemo” Abstract: Three dimensional animation movies have changed the way digital cinema is viewed. These movies have demonstrated the extent of creativity that human beings can tangibly demonstrate in Virtual Cinemas which is far more advanced & complex as compared to the movies with real characters. This short essay presents a segment from the film “Finding Nemo” and presents its conceptualization and creation procedure. The screenshots have been taken from the DVD video of the film. The objective of the essay is to present the production procedure of such a film at high level. Table of Contents: Table of Figures Figure No. Description and Word Hyperlink Figure 1 The Scene of Finding Nemo immediately after the Introduction Figure 2 Basic and extended shapes to carry out modeling (3DS MAX on my desktop) Figure 3 Dolphin object superimposed over Water Reactor, weeds with a blue background and light sources immediately above the surface of the water (source: My personal desktop) Introduction: Finding Nemo is one of the most successful animation film blockbusters. It was released in 2003 worldwide and took the entire world by surprise. Its stunning animation, the astounding undersea sceneries, Marlin Clownfish, Nemo (Marlin’s son with one fin shorter than other), Dory the Regal Tang with short term memory loss and all other characters won the heart of every animation film lover of all ages. The film presents a fully realized underwater world with bright & attractive colors and very natural dynamics – fish/tortoise movements, hydraulics, under water illumination effects, rigid body dynamics (like the boat movement), underwater explosions, etc. The story structure is excellent with seamless connectivity among all scenes. The film is produced by Pixar Animation Studios & Walt Disney Pictures, written by Andrew Stanton, and directed by Lee Unkrich & Andrew Stanton. The film grossed about $864.62 million worldwide in 2003 which is one of the largest revenue any animation film ever made. [http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=findingnemo.htm. 2003; Siebert, Perry. 2003] Pixar Animation Studios have many such successful 3D animation films at their credit. The primary process that they follow comprises of fourteen steps:– Story Idea is Pitched, Text Treatment is carried out, Storyboards are drawn (sketches), Voice recording is carried out, the virtual reels are created on the software, the artists create the look & feel, 3D Modeling is carried out, the sets are created (using computer graphics), the shots are laid, animations & behavioral aspects are added, the sets & characters are superimposed with appropriate shading, lighting of the scenes is carried out, the final computer data is rendered and finally, the finishing touches are carried out.. [http://www.pixar.com/howwedoit/index.html#] In this short essay, I present a small segment (scene) of “Finding Nemo” immediately after the introduction. The aim is to demonstrate a high level thought process from a producer and an artist’s perspective in designing the scene. Description of a Segment from the film “Finding Nemo” The story of Finding Nemo starts with Marlin and his wife Coral shifting to a new home. They were discussing about their eggs when a barracuda attacked and killed Coral and ate all the eggs except one. The only egg that survived got partially damaged as a result of the attack and Marlin promises that he will never leave it – and named it as Nemo as per the wish of his wife before death. The following scene is the introduction of the film – by Pixar Animation Studios & Walt Disney Pictures. The screenshots presented in figure 1 are taken from the scene immediately after the introduction. The lonely survived egg (named Nemo) has become a junior clown fish. In the first screen shot, Marlin is sleeping and Nemo is trying to wake him up stating that it is his first day to school and they are getting late. In the next screen shot, Nemo is stuck in the weed next to his home as he lost balance when trying to wake up his daddy. Marlin wakes up suddenly and is trying to pull Nemo out. In the next shot Marlin is trying to affirm that his son is alright and is asking him to count the stripes on his body. In fact Marlin is paranoid about Nemo’s protection given that he is his only son and has one of his fins shorter than the other (the egg was partially damaged due to the attack by the Barracuda. Figure 1: The Scene of Finding Nemo immediately after the Introduction In the next shot, Marlin is teaching Nemo the precautions before leaving home as the ocean is not safe. In the subsequent shot, Marlin is taking Nemo along with him to the school amongst the beautiful weeds. Nemo is curious whether his father has ever met Sharks & Tortoises & if the latter have very long life. Marlin is denying much knowledge about them stating that he doesn’t wants to meet them anyways. In the last two shots, they reach the school where other tiny tots (fishes) are waiting for the teacher to arrive. Description of the effects used in the segment: This shot has many objects superimposed on the scene in multiple overlay planes. Marlin’s home is made of weeds that slowly float in water. The weeds in the surroundings are modeled using basic & extended primitives library like capsules, torus knot, champher box, foliage, etc. These basic shapes are modeled as soft bodies by converting them into wire meshes by applying appropriate modifiers. The characters (Fishes) are also created using such basic & extended shapes by applying modifiers and then applying textures using “Render to Texture” feature. Figure 2: Basic and extended shapes to carry out modeling (3DS MAX on my desktop) The water effects are introduced using a reactor object called “water” and then interacting it with objects (like plane) using space warps because reactor objects cannot be directly rendered. The water reactor properties are set by applying values to wave speed, ripples, density, viscosity, depth, etc. and then allowed to interact with the plane. The plane surface (with appropriate texture mapping) begins to behave like water surface. The plane can then be placed on a large box with physical modifiers applied (refraction & transparency). The waves in the water reactor are created by applying another space-warp called “wave”. The wave space warp is configured by applying amplitudes, wavelength, phase and decay. Finally, the water object and the modeled weeds (using primitives with Bone Inverse Kinematics Chains for movements) are overlapped one above another in two different overlay planes. The final effects are arrived at by positioning appropriate lights and keeping the camera relative to the reflections of the light to achieve the desired shading. The characters are then overlaid over the entire scene. Obviously, the entire process is not as simple as described here – it needs lot of experience in determining the correct values of the parameters and in allowing the overlay planes to interact with each other. Some advanced mechanisms can allow dynamics of one plane to cause effects in the objects of other planes. The sound effects make the creation more realistic by making a human imagine the property of the objects visible (like the Barracuda’s screeching sound when attacking Marlin and Coral). The movements and expressions of characters are controlled through complex Bone IK (Inverse Kinematics) Chain embedded into the mesh objects of the models. The superimposition of a Dolphin object (with built in bone IK chains for movements) and 3D water reactor & weeds with light effects are presented in figure 3. Figure 3: Dolphin object superimposed over Water Reactor, weeds with a blue background and light sources immediately above the surface of the water (source: My personal desktop) Conclusion: I presented a high level description of mechanisms of 3D effects in a short scene of the movie “Finding Nemo” using my academic knowledge and some details on the Pixar Website. The process presented here is based on the features of 3DS Max which may vary in other tools like Maya. The mechanism explained here is more of a high level understanding of the procedure and not the in depth steps of development. Reference List: Box Office Mojo – Finding Nemo. (2003). Retrieved on 20 February 2009. Available at http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=findingnemo.htm Siebert, Perry. (2003). Finding Nemo Critics Review. Retrieved on 20 February 2009. Available at http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/finding-nemo/ 2/. The Pixar Process. Retrieved on 20 February 2009. 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