With franchises like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar to its name, DreamWorks Animation has spent the last 20 years building an animation mini-empire. The studio’s movies have pulled in over $11.5 billion in global box office, and, despite some recent underperformers, it’s continued to diversify with pushes into TV, apps, and online initiatives. This weekend the studio is heading back to movie theaters with the release of How To Train Your Dragon 2.
Written and directed by Dean DeBlois (Lilo & Stitch, the original How To Train Your Dragon) the movie is one of DreamWorks’ most visually stunning films to date. Dragons swarm in epic battle sequences; humans gracefully race, flip, and fly; and key dramatic moments are powered solely by the visual nuance of a computer-generated character’s performance. It’s a leap in terms of both spectacle and emotion, and at the heart of it was a new version of the studio’s flagship animation software — one that’s letting DreamWorks animators do more than they ever could before.
Throughout the studio’s history, it’s relied on a custom piece of animation software named Emo. Originally developed in the 1980s by Pacific Data Images, Emo was designed to animate primitive graphics and text, but evolved into the kind of tool that could bring Princess Fiona and Puss in Boots to life. Despite several major overhauls, however, it had begun to show its age. Animators would have to work with rough geometric approximations of creatures rather than fully-realized models, or turn off different body parts altogether to get the software to run at an acceptable speed. Then there was rendering, which would tie up the workstation completely.
Like a lagging version of Photoshop, Emo simply wasn’t using modern hardware to its full potential. So five years ago, the studio met with its hardware partners HP and Intel to get a sense of where their respective products would be going in the years ahead. Realizing that a simple update wasn't going to get the job done, DreamWorks decided to rebuild its entire suite of production software from the ground up.
Super smash flash 2 v0.1. The Emo working environment in a scene from the original 'How To Train Your Dragon.'
DreamWorks CTO Lincoln Wallen went to the company’s artists, asking them to daydream what kind of tools they would like to use in a perfect world. 'I recall it very well,' Simon Otto, head of character animation for Dragon 2, tells me in a suite at the studio’s Glendale headquarters. 'One of the first things was, '[What] if you just forget everything you’re doing today?' People with backgrounds in all different types of animation were consulted — from 2D animation, to stop-motion, to video games — in an effort to create a software solution that could bring together the best of all possible worlds. 'We created a big list of why certain mediums have advantages over others,' he says. That list provided big-picture guidance for the software team as it began building and iterating on a new animation tool for DreamWorks — and the end result is named Premo.
The differences between the two programs are obvious at first glance. Rather than forcing animators to deal with rough approximations or partial versions of characters, Premo allows them to work with the fully realized and skinned characters, which they can interact with and modify in real time. Camera positions can be moved on the fly to get a better vantage point of a particular movement, and thanks to robust support for the latest multi-core processors there’s enough power to put as many different characters in a shot as the director wants (some of the sequences in Dragon 2 feature dozens of different dragons flying around simultaneously). Rendering is still a requirement, of course, but Premo does it all in the background without tieing the app up and preventing additional work. Otto showed me a demo of the software on a machine with 16 cores — quadrupling what you’d find in the base-level Mac Pro — and the moment he tweaked a character’s position the sequence re-rendered seamlessly without even the mildest hiccup.
But while the raw power is nice, that alone doesn’t change the way artists actually interact with the software. To give you an idea of how computer animation usually works, once a character’s design is locked in it gets handed off to a different department that 'rigs' the model. That process essentially consists of creating the joints, limbs, and various points of articulation that the artists will later move around to pose the figure. (Imagine an old-school GI Joe action figure, but with 1,500 to 2,000 different moveable parts.) In Emo, animators used their mouse to move those pieces around, or edited the positions manually using a massive spreadsheet-like database. It was functional, but clunky to say the least.
With Premo, DreamWorks provided animators with large, pressure-sensitive screens from Wacom. Using the tip of their pen, they can interact directly with the CG character — with the skin, muscles, and other elements responding in real time — resulting in an experience that’s closer to posing a physical model than it is to mind-numbing data entry. According to Otto, it’s a more immediate, naturalistic way of working that allows for more experimentation — but more importantly, lets the artists bake more nuance into the final product.
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An animator poses the face of Toothless in 'How To Train Your Dragon 2.'
How To Train Your Dragon 2 was the first DreamWorks film to use the studio's upgraded software suite — collectively known as Apollo — and animators point to several examples where Premo’s influence shines through. A scene in which the character of Stoick (voiced by Gerard Butler) confronts a woman from his past plays out largely through the character’s facial expressions alone. It’s a powerful piece of performance, and watching the conflicting emotions battle on his face is simply remarkable. There’s also a sweet moment where the dragon Toothless casts a longing glance back at his owner, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel). That moment didn’t exist in the original storyboards, and if using the older software the animator would have needed to turn off everyone but the single character they were working on. With Premo, however, they could keep everything turned on — and like an actor improvising in the moment, the animator saw the opportunity for an added interaction that makes the film better.
Despite all the advances, Otto is already looking past the immediate horizon, to when the studio’s tools can put even more control in the hands of the animator. 'I still want to go to the final lighting of the movie,' he says. Today, a given shot is first animated by an artist, and then shipped off to the lighting department where the virtual cinematography is put into place. A future version of Premo could conceivably swap that around, he says, allowing animators to move their characters around a fully-lit environment — though it would require a complete reimagining of the computer animation workflow. 'Now that’s a long way,' he smiles, 'because that’s really challenging.'
How To Train Your Dragon 2 opens Friday, June 13th. All images courtesy of DreamWorks Animation.
Below are some simple animations that I put together for forAST 105: Introduction to the Solar System, AST 203:Astronomy, and AST 205: Introduction to Planetary Sciences.
All of these are coded in python, using the matplotlib library forplotting. The source code is provided in each case. These codes arenot meant to be interactive -- they simply dump out frames of theanimation that can be assembled into a movie using a program likemencoder. This python script (mkmovie.py) provides an easy interface to mencoder for stringing a bunch of PNGs into movies.
You are free to use these codes or animations for teaching purposes (please credit Michael Zingale). If you find a mistake or make an improvement, please send it alongto Michael.Zingale @ stonybrook.edu, or fork the github repo and issue a pull request.
Many of these animations are now up on YouTube:
Solar System Motion / Kepler's Laws
Planetary Orbits and Kepler's Laws [HD] | |
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Integrate the orbits of two planets around a star, neglecting the gravitational force between the planets themselves. This is useful for demonstrating Kepler's third law. We work in units of AU, years, and solar masses. The semi-major axes are picked such that one planet has an orbital period of 1 year and the other of 2 years. As the animation plays, you should see that the speed of the outer planet varies, becoming fastest at perihelion and slowest a aphelion. You will also see that the outer planet takes longer to complete its orbit around the Sun, since P2 ~ a3. Movie of orbits: | |
Kepler's Second Law [HD] | |
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Show equal areas in equal times, by shading the area swept out by a planet in equal time intervals. second law animation: | |
Solar System Harmonic Law Figure | |
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A simple figure plotting the period of planets (+ pluto optionally) in our solar system vs. semi-major axis on a log-log plot, showing the P2 ~ a3 relation. Optionally plot the Galilean moons of Jupiter on the same axes, showing that they obey a P2 ~ a3 relation as well, but with a different constant. Harmonic law figure (just planets): harmonic_law.png | |
Retrograde Motion [HD] | |
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Integrate Earth and Mars in their orbits around the Sun, starting a bit before opposition, and draw a line indicating the line-of-sight to Mars from Earth against some background stars to show the change in apparent motion. Note: the orbits are simplified here -- the semi-major axis and eccentricity are correct, but it is assumed that both ellipses are oriented the same way. For demonstration purposes, this is not all that critical. Movie of retrograde motion: | |
Parallax Animation [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing how parallax works, illustrating the motion of the Earth around the Sun and the apparent shift seen in the position of a nearby star against the background, more distant stars. Parallax animation: | |
Mercury's rotation [HD] | |
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Illustrate a 3:2 resonance between the rotation period and orbital period of Mercury. The semi-major axis and eccentricity for the planet drawn match Mercury. The black dot on the surface of the planet represents a person standing initially directly under the Sun at perihelion. Mercury rotation animation: | |
Moon's Synchronous Rotation [HD] | |
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Illustrate the synchronous rotation of the Moon. The black dot represents a person standing on the surface. The orbit is taken to be circular, for simplicity. Moon rotation animation: | |
Orbital Energy [HD] | |
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A simple showing the orbit of a planet around the Sun, outputting the kinetic energy / unit mass, the potential energy / unit mass, and the total energy / unit mass along the way. Orbital energy animation: | |
Lunar Period [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing how the time between successive full Moons (the synodic lunar period) is greater than the true (sidereal) orbital period of the Moon. Orbital energy animation: | |
Sidereal vs. Solar Day (for Earth) [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing how the true rotation period of Earth (the sidereal day) is shorter than the time between noons (the solar day). Orbital energy animation: | |
Phases of the Moon [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing the phases of the Moon and the corresponding point in the Moons orbit around the Earth, with respect to the Sun. Phases animation: | |
Solstices and Equinox [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing the Earth at either solstice or and equinox (with the time set as noon UTC). Summer Solstice: Winter Solstice: Equinox: Another rendering, this time from noon to noon, centered on Stony Brook, NY Summer Solstice: | |
Earth Diagram [HD] | |
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An animated diagram pointing out how latitude, zenith, and horizon are defined, as well as showing the orientation of Earth on the Summer Solstice and showing the tropics and (ant)arctic circles. earth_summer_solstice.avi [MS MPEG-4v2] | |
Seasons [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing how the Earth's axial tilt does not change direction over the course of an orbit, giving rise to the seasons. Seasons animation:
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Resonances in the Asteroid Belt [HD] | |
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A 2:1 resonance between an asteroid (shown in red) and Jupiter (black) as they orbit around the Sun. Some randomly placed asteroids are also shown. Seasons animation: | |
Tidal locking [HD] | |
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An illustration of tidal locking of a moon in orbit around a planet. The rotation of the moon is visualized by coloring alternate quadrants differently, and watching a stationary person rotate with the moon. The tidal distortion is always along the planet-moon line. Tidal locking animation: | |
Ellipse Properties
Ellipse Geometry Figure | |
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A simple figure used to illustrate the geometry of an ellipse. Here, a is the semi-major axis, e is the eccentricity, and b is the semi-minor axis. r and r' are lines connecting a point on the ellipse (the black dot) to the foci. Ellipse geometry figure: ellipse_geom.png | |
Eccentricity of Ellipses [HD] | |
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A demonstration of how varying the eccentricity of an ellipse changes the shape. Ellipse eccentricity animation: | |
How to Draw an Ellipse [HD] | |
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A demonstration of how to draw an ellipse. Here we show the distance from each foci to the position on the ellipse, and show that their sum is constant. changes the shape. Drawing and ellipse animation: | |
Mechanics
Achieving an Orbit [HD] | |
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A simple animation that shows a projectile with increasing horizontal velocity, working up to the circular velocity. (This script uses the image earth.png; image credit: NASA/Apollo 17) Achieving orbit animation: | |
Circular vs. Escape Velocity Animation [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing how the orbit of a projectile around Earth changes as we increase the change the tangential velocity from less than the circular velocity to greater than the escape velocity. (This script uses the image earth.png; image credit: NASA/Apollo 17) Escape velocity animation: | |
Changing An Orbit [HD] | |
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A simple animation showing how an initially circular orbit is changed into an elliptical one by increasing the velocity at perihelion. Two boosts are modeled. (This script uses the image earth.png; image credit: NASA/Apollo 17) Changing orbit animation: | |
Radiation / Thermodynamics
Blackbody Spectrum (frequency) [HD] | |
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Show how the Planck function varies as temperature is changed. A 'thermometer' on the right keeps track of the temperature. Some reference Planck function curves are plotted every 2 orders-of-magnitude in temperature to illustrate the shift in the location of peak intensity with increasing temperature. Also, the visible frequencies are highlighted with a blue shading. Blackbody spectrum animation: | |
Blackbody Spectrum (wavelength) [HD] | |
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Similar to the animation above, but in terms of wavelenght instead of frequency. Show how the Planck function varies as temperature is changed. A 'thermometer' on the right keeps track of the temperature. Some reference Planck function curves are plotted every 2 orders-of-magnitude in temperature to illustrate the shift in the location of peak intensity with increasing temperature. Also, the visible wavelengths are highlighted with a blue shading. Blackbody spectrum animation: | |
Random Walk [HD] | |
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A demonstration of a random walk process. A number of small hops are taken in random directions, until the overall displacement is equal to the radius of the circle. If you change the seed used for the random number generator, you will get a different result. Random walk animation: random_walk.avi [MS MPEG-4v2] | |
Thermal Motion | |
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A demonstration of the effect of temperature on random thermal motion. Many particles in a gas are shown at two different temperatures. Note: for simplicity, we do not model collisions between the particles. Thermal motion animation:
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Waves
Wave Propagation [HD] | |
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Show two waves of different wavelengths to illustrate the difference between wavelength and frequency. The propagation speed of the two waves is the same. The wavelengths are 1 and 1/4 cm, and the velocity is 2.0 cm/s. A point 'fixed' to a vertical line moves up and down as the wave passes by, to illustrate the concept of frequency. Wave propagation animation: | |
Doppler Effect | |
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Show a moving source emitting waves. The wavefronts are plotted as red circles. The source has a speed of 1 m/s and the waves have a propagation speed of 2 m/s. The wave frequency is 3 Hz. Doppler effect animation: | |
Doppler Effect 2 | |
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Show two moving sources emitting waves. The top source has a speed of 1 m/s and the bottom source has a speed of 0.5 m/s. The waves have a propagation speed of 2 m/s and frequency of 3 Hz. This version shows how the compression of wave fronts depends on the line of sight velocity. Doppler effect 2 animation: | |
Binary Systems / Exoplanets
Binary Star Orbits [HD] | |
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Animation of a binary pair orbiting their common center of mass (shown as the black 'x'). The case of e = 0 and e = 0.4 are shown, with a mass ratio of 1 or 2. These animations show that, in a binary system, the two stars are always opposite one another, with respect to the center of mass, and must have the same period. binary star animations:
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Planetary Orbit and Stellar Motion [HD] | |
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Animation of a small body (planet) orbiting around a larger body (star) showing the small motion of the larger body around the center of mass. This uses a mass ratio of 50 between the two objects. planetary orbit animations: | |
Radial Velocity Planet Detection (circular orbit) [HD] | |
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Illustrate the radial velocity of a star with an unseen planet over the course of a period. Here, the planet's mass was greatly exaggerated to enhance the effect. We also restrict ourselves to being in the plane of the orbits. radial velocity animation: | |
Radial Velocity Planet Detection (elliptical orbit) [HD] | |
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Illustrate the radial velocity of a star with an unseen planet over the course of a period. Here, the planet's mass was greatly exaggerated to enhance the effect. We use an elliptical orbit but restrict ourselves to being in the plane of the orbits. The semi-major axis is not perpendicular to the observer. radial velocity animation: | |
Eclipsing Binary System | |
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Show an eclipsing binary system and the resulting lightcurve. Here we assume that the smaller star is hotter. eclipsing binary animation: eclipsing_binary.avi | |
Apollo Animation Software Download
Video Animation Software
Transiting Planet System | |
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Show a planet transiting across its parent star, and the resulting lightcurve. This is similar to the eclipsing binary system animation above, but now we assume that the smaller object (the planet) is cool. transiting planet animation: | |
Apollo Animation Software
Equipotentials | |
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An animation showing the equipotentials of the gravitational and rotational potential in the co-rotating frame of a binary system. We change the mass parameter, μ = M2/(M1 + M2). In the frames, the less massive star (M2) is on the left. equipotential animation: | |
Apollo Animation Software
Stars
H-R diagram figure | |
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A simple H-R diagram. The main sequence properties are found from Carroll and Ostlie, Appendix G. Lines of constant radius are drawn in, as well as the location of the white dwarfs. H-R diagram figure: HR_radius_wd.png | |
Radioactive Decay
Radioactive decay figures | |
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A sequence of figures (each represent 1 half life) illustrating the radioactive decay of a sample. Initially 2500 markers are 'parents'. Each half life, there is a 50% chance a marker decays. After a number of half lifes, no parents remain. A plot showing the exponential decay follows. radioactive decay animation: radioactive decay figures: | |
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