A Question of Communication: Thoughts on Digital Set Design
From ADG Art Direction Wiki
by Tino Schaedler, Art Director For Digital Sets
Recently, computer generated images have taken a big leap from playing a minor role to becoming the lead act. In films such as Sin City (2005, Jeanette Scott & Steve Joyner, Art Directors), Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004, Kevin Conran) or Warner’s upcoming 300 (2007, Jim Bissell) digitally generated worlds set the entire look of the film. This has lead to a reevaluation of CGI. It is no longer simply an asset for the VFX department; instead it has become an indispensable part of the Production Designer’s creative repertoire. It is now necessary to give this asset a position in the work pipeline, both to guarantee artistic consistency and to insure that CGI is fully integrated into the film’s design process. Unlike miniatures or stage sets, digital set generation is still new territory for which no workflow has yet been established. We are currently in a transition phase where new strategies must be evolved that will lead to a standard process for digital set production.
As an Art Director for digital sets on films such as V for Vendetta (2005, Owen Paterson), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005, Alex McDowell), the upcoming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007, Stuart Craig) and His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass (2007, Dennis Gassner), I would like to share some thoughts on these issues and contribute to the discussion. Especially on the two latter productions, the Art Departments were able to develop new strategies to improve the workflow and guarantee more consistent artistic input from the Production Designer. It all came down to questions of communication – the structure of communication lines, and the means used to communicate – between the VFX and Art Departments.
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Cross train
The main prerequisite for communication is an understanding of each other’s disciplines. Unless Art Departments have a basic knowledge of CGI production (and vice versa), we cannot adjust our workflow, nor can we optimize our means of communication; cross training is essential to this whole discussion. I do not think this means everyone in the Art Department must master the skills of a post-production artist, but the department needs people that have the dual knowledge and the desire to foster education in both the VFX and Art Departments. These special issues of PERSPECTIVE and the wiki database – their web-based counterpart – are indispensable tools to share experience and to educate each other.
Structure of communication
In order to point out effective communication, let’s look at the well-established pipeline for stage set construction:
- Following concept illustrations and research, Production Designers and Art Directors develop designs.
- Set designers, working in the Art Department, prepare plans and construction documents.
- The construction coordinator and his team then build the sets according to the Art Departments plansand directions.
- During construction, the Production Designer and the Art Director supervise the artistic elements in the building process.
- All personnel work hand-in-hand at the same place, the studio, and the same time, during preproduction and filming.
Most digital sets are brought to life in post-production when the designer has left the film. As Ken Adam points out, the work is often done by companies spread all over the world. This disjunction of time and place removes the designer’s ability to check on the set’s progress, to discuss finishes or make design changes if necessary (see diagram 3). To restore more effective communication, we have to give up the traditional production structure of pre-production, filming and postproduction and make way for a complex, non-linear and parallel, digitized production process. Post-production for digital sets should be integrated into the design stage. Employing a mixed team of postproduction artists and digital set designers ensures a smoother workflow, enhancing dialogue and collaboration (see diagram 1, pg. 100). This requires digital set designers who have an understanding of the technical demands of post-production; post-production artists, at the same time, need to be familiar with the design process. This will streamline the pipeline and use each talent appropriately.
Located within the Art Department throughout pre-production and filming, this team is ideally led by an Art Director with understanding of both sides of digital set creation: the technical requirements and the design issues. This Art Director for digital sets (see diagram 2, pg. 100) can act as a mediator, respecting the artistic and technical boundaries. Later, during the post-production process, the Art Director can continue as a consultant to supervise the execution of the digital sets by the post-production houses. This proposal demands a rethinking of the Art Department by all participating parties: Producers, Production Designers, VFX supervisors, post-production houses, and Art Departments. This does not yet happen as it should. On New Line Cinema’s Golden Compass, Dennis Gassner wished to extend my responsibilities as an Art Director into post-production, visiting the post-houses and supervising the artistic aspects as needed. We were unfortunately not able to convince all parties of the advantages of this arrangement. In my judgement, this offers a flexible and cost effective way to extend artistic continuity into post-production.
Means of communication
The most common means of communication to describe a design to the persons who will realize it are construction drawings. Unlike carpenters, postproduction artists are not trained to understand the abstract language of plan, elevation and section, and this leads to misinterpretation of the design intentions. It is therefore necessary to develop new ways of handling the flow of design data between Art Department and post-production. The most promising approach, which was used on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is to prepare the information for post-production using an integration of 3D modeling and animation. This demands an understanding of the technical implications of CGI, which fortunately my dual background in architectural design and 3D animation and VFX provided. The following is a short overview of how we used these tools.
The Atrium of the Ministry of Magic
This is a gigantic set, conceived as a huge stage set built with digital extensions. Throughout the design phase we used all available tools, from physical models and hand-drafting to 3D modeling and animation. This integration of traditional and new techniques worked very well and suited the set’s hybrid quality. When it came to preparing the data for VFX extensions, we discussed with VFX supervisor Tim Burke possibilities for optimizing the 3D data. The set was immense and very detailed, with layers of period trim. If we had modeled everything to the finest level of detail, the file would have been unmanageably large. We decided, instead, to break the 3D model down into different levels of detail and created a set of 3D modules that could be used by the post-production artists according to their needs. We built the complete virtual set according to the design, and then marked certain parts of the model with a distinct color and added a reference number. This indicated to the 3D artist that there was further 3D information for this specific part of the model. For each detail we produced three files of varying complexity – from a basic card to be used in the background, to a medium detailed version for the mid-ground, to a fully detailed 3D model for the foreground. Like traditional drafting, the 3D data was broken down into plans of varying scales, each showing progressively finer detail.
The Room of Requirements
For a magically emerging door in the corridor in front of Hogwart’s Room of Requirements we realized how valuable animations can be in the design of time-based elements. The corridor was built on stage and the magical function was a digital enhancement done in post-production. We started by photographing the existing set to acquire quick texture maps which we then applied to a very basic digital 3D model. This technique saved us a lot of modeling time while still achieving a very good 3D equivalent to the constructed set. Once the modeling was done we discussed how the door would emerge from the wall. I did quick animated studies in Maya® that had the quality of sketching in 4D. The camera was positioned in 3D in a straight-on view. These animatics helped to mark out the general order of the transformation: first the frame emerged, then the wood of the door and finally the iron strap work.
The next step was to focus on the timing and choreography. Stuart Craig was very excited to have this level of control throughout the design phase. Once the schematic transformation was worked out we obtained a rough assembly of this scene from the editor. We animated the choreography of the transformation through the actual camera perspective on top of the edited footage, and we had to adjust our animation repeatedly until it perfectly integrated with the footage.
I broke the information down for post-production. Since it was a time-based design I decided that animatics would be the most appropriate means of communication. I edited the test footage side by side with our final animation and added a time and frame-count index that gave a comparison to the Quicktime® file. To show the exact times when each element appears in the animation, I assigned a color to each element, chose a straight-on elevated view, and rendered the animation again. I also produced a 2D color-coded diagram in Adobe Illustrator® to show each color and its appearance in the animation. Then I created a third animation that showed the movement of the transformation in detail. As for the Atrium set, we created a large-scale detail construction drawing and transferred it into a 3D model.
Finally we sent a package including the three Quicktime files, 2D Illustrator diagram and a Maya® file to the VFX department to assure that the design was workable in every relevant aspect. Traditionally, this choreography would have been communicated with three or four concept illustrations and then the animation would have been worked out by the post-production house. That would have meant a huge loss in terms of Stuart’s ability to provide creative input. We applied similar approaches to other sets that also had time-based elements.
The Chamber of Prophecies
The way this set was to be realized – either constructed on stage, as a digital set, or as a combination of the two – changed several times throughout production. The initial design Stuart had in mind was a simple repetitive geometry of endless glass shelves. Based on his drawing, I quickly modeled the set in Maya.® We used animations to explore complex parallax effects caused by the camera moving through the 3D model. The results were inspiring and allowed us to quickly explore rather complex spatial phenomena.
We also used animatics for the Chamber of Prophecies. Since the design went through several changes, the animatics were an effective way to visualize the design intentions in a language everyone understood: the perspective of the moving camera.
Film production is moving towards a homogenized workflow within a digital framework and we must adapt to the change. The artistic potential of the new tools is far-reaching and we have just scratched the surface of what is to come.
