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MillimeterCG Software Trends: The Convergence of 2D and 3D
Sep 1, 2000 12:00 PM, Audrey Doyle
It's not uncommon today for 3D modeling and animation applications to have a limited number of 2D effects and compositing tools, and vice versa. Vendors have been offering such products for the past several years. But it has become more important for artists to have sophisticated 3D software that's compatible with 2D effects and compositing applications.
Many of today's leading 2D and 3D software vendors are responding to this need by expanding their product offerings across all disciplines. Rather than focusing on just 2D or just 3D, they're striving - through new-product development, mergers, acquisitions, or alliances - to provide full-featured 2D and 3D applications that can be used by all artists throughout a facility.
Evolving Roles, Evolving Trends The 2D and 3D convergence trend did not spring up overnight - it has evolved over the past several years. "Ten years ago, it was advantageous to be a generalist," says Jeff Light, a CG supervisor at Industrial Light + Magic. "People who were good at everything did everything."
At the same time, graphics systems were specialized. "A 3D system was just for 3D, and the same was true for effects and compositing," states Phil Miller, senior director for Discreet software products. "Although the products were finely tuned for their specific tasks, artists had to stop one package and launch a new one to access different types of tools."
As more projects began incorporating increasingly complex digital imagery, artists - especially those at large facilities - began to specialize. "The trend in production at ILM has gone from being a generalist to being a specialist because of production demands," Light says. "Films started to have so many components that needed to go together to make a single shot, that to get those shots out quickly and efficiently, we found we needed specialists to do just one task and do it well."
To move images through the pipeline as quickly as possible, many large facilities starting developing their own tools to ensure compatibility between the 3D and 2D worlds. At the same time, artists in general started clamoring for tools that would boost productivity by simplifying the creation process and making their workflow more efficient.
One way vendors began answering those demands was by making their products more open. For instance, some created programs that allowed images created in one company's 3D modeling system to be imported into another company's effects or compositing application. "Once an artist finished doing his part," comments Mike Stojda, director of product marketing for Softimage|DS, "he could pass it to the next artist in the pipeline, who could easily import the image because the software was compatible."
Vendors then took that idea slightly further by incorporating some 2D effects and compositing tools, such as basic texture mapping and rotoscoping, into 3D packages, and some 3D modeling functionality, such as the ability to create simple geometry, into 2D packages. But most solutions of this kind were of limited use. "It's unrealistic to think you can put every single tool into every single product," comments Maurice Patel, technical product manager for Softimage. Furthermore, Patel states, although some users are excellent modelers, animators, and compositors, such artists are few and far between. "These are different disciplines requiring different skill sets, so it's rare to see one person who can do it all."
Today, most leading software vendors have broadened their product families to offer applications for everything from modeling to compositing. The idea behind this, says Richard Kerris, director of Maya technologies at Alias|Wavefront, "is to offer powerful tools that can be shared across a common architecture." In other words, because the systems are based on an open architecture, 2D and 3D artists can share work across applications.
"This is what facilities have wanted for a long time," says Robin Shenfield, CEO of London's The Mill Group, which includes Mill Film (for feature films) and The Mill (for commercials). "What most artists really need is technology that knits everything together effectively. It's a workflow issue. We want products that enable artists to pass material back and forth seamlessly so that they can refine their shots until they look perfect."
Discreet's Offerings One leader in 2D and 3D convergence is Discreet, which merged with Autodesk's Kinetix division in January 1999. "As a result of this merger, Kinetix's 3D Studio MAX technology has bubbled upward to our Inferno, Flint, Flame, and Effect 2D visual effects products," says Terry Ragan, director of industry marketing at Discreet. "Now, in the new version 4/7 of these products, users can import MAX objects and composite them into scenes fluidly." The company began shipping version 4/7 in the summer.
In addition to MAX integration, version 4/7 offers a Colour Warper feature that provides fast color-correction and color-matching tools, including selective color correction. New Batch Scripting capabilities enable users to perform remote render previews or automate daily jobs such as background rendering. Plus, a new Texture Projector enables users to project 2D images onto 3D models. Inferno features an enhanced 3D Tracker that follows an object's movement through a scene while extracting the original camera path and camera parameters, enabling artists to integrate 3D models into live-action scenes realistically.
Discreet is also addressing the need for convergence with its new Mac/Windows-based Combustion, which features tools for keying; motion tracking; color correction; vector-based, non-destructive paint animation; true 3D compositing; network rendering; and support for Adobe PhotoShop and After Effects plug-ins. According to Miller, artists designing effects in Combustion can share common motion tracking, keying, and color correction set-up data with Discreet's Inferno, Flame, Flint, Fire, and Smoke systems. Combustion also integrates with 3D Studio MAX and with Discreet's Edit for desktop effects, editing, and animation capabilities. In addition, users can paint or use composites directly in MAX, create textures and background plates, or post-process scenes in Combustion using MAX's Rich Pixel Format (RPF), with effects created in Combustion available directly within Edit's bins or timelines. "We came out with RPF last year specifically so that imagery produced in MAX translates into all our 2D effects products, including Combustion," Miller states.
In April, Discreet entered into an alliance with RealViz to license 3D tracking algorithms from MatchMover and motion-estimation algorithms from ReTimer and to incorporate the technologies into Inferno. MatchMover inserts CG objects into moving footage, and ReTimer is a time-warping application that slows down or speeds up the pace of a sequence by creating or removing frames. Both applications are part of RealViz's Image Processing Factory.
The company is also enhancing 3D Studio MAX with 2D/3D convergence in mind. According to Miller, the next major release will include an interactive rendering capability. "This will enable 3D artists to sit with clients and play what-if scenarios - change lighting, change colors - and get immediate feedback, right within MAX," Miller states. The new version also will include a "render elements" feature that will allow compositors to adjust the look and feel of a scene by working on each layer independently, without affecting anything else in the scene. The new version was previewed at SIGGRAPH and is scheduled to ship mid-winter.
A Softimage for Everyone Another leader in 2D/3D convergence is Softimage, a division of Avid. "For years, we've been shipping Softimage|3D with our Eddie compositing product," comments Stojda. "That's not because 3D artists want to do final compositing or because 2D folks want to create 3D objects from scratch, but because they want to work in tandem with each other."
Avid and Softimage are also placing all of their products under Avid's Unity MediaNet infrastructure, which provides a scalable networking architecture that connects all the company's editing, finishing, graphics, and audio tools with central storage resources, regardless of format or platform. By allowing simultaneous access to media throughout the production process, Avid Unity MediaNet enables collaborative digital media creation and enables dedicated systems to handle media management and manipulation tasks.
Stojda says that this interoperability allows the applications to share tools. "For instance, XSI has a wealth of paint and compositing tools, which we developed initially for DS," he says. "But because they share a common architecture, we were able to put functionality within DS that lets users import scenes created in DS into 3D or XSI and use the scenes as transition effects."
Taking that idea even further, the company announced that version 4.0 of Softimage|DS, in beta at press time and scheduled to ship this fall, will feature expanded interoperability with editing and workgroup systems from Avid. Avid senior product manager Andy Dale says that this will include the ability to read uncompressed media from Meridien-based Media Composer and Symphony systems. "This will let users offline a project on Media Composer and finish it on DS," Dale states.
Maya and Beyond Alias|Wavefront has been addressing the need for convergence in two ways, according to Kerris. For one, the company's Maya Live tool, which lets users combine 2D live-action footage with 3D elements using advanced match-moving technology, is now part of its Maya Unlimited package, which combines Maya's 3D-animation and visual-effects functionality with tools for modeling, clothing simulation, and fur rendering.
Last year, Alias|Wavefront announced a licensing and development agreement with Lowell, Massachusetts-based SynaPix. The agreement allows SynaPix to incorporate Maya into SynaFlex, the company's 3D analysis, choreography, and compositing solution. SynaFlex uses a technology called Visual Stream Analysis to transform 2D live-action sequences into reconstructed 3D visual representations. By licensing Maya, SynaPix will enable users to incorporate Maya objects in their SynaFlex scenes. SynaFlex was in beta at press time.
The company also announced a technology partnership last year with Markham, Canada-based eyeon Software that resulted in Maya Fusion, a Windows NT application that enables users to blend live-action 2D video with 3D imagery by utilizing interactive Z depth compositing technology. In addition to running native under NT, Maya Fusion also supports industry-standard plug-ins, including Ultimatte and 5D Ltd.'s Monsters. Plus, it integrates with animation and video products, including nonlinear video-editing applications working on different computing platforms, thanks to its support of cross-platform file formats including EDL, QuickTime 3, and OMF.
At NAB in April, Maya released the fruit of another collaboration. Maya on Quantel combines Quantel's editing tools with Maya's 3D functionality. According to Kerris, Quantel's upcoming online, nonlinear postproduction system, Monty, will incorporate even more Maya technology when it ships late this year.
Other 2D/3D Players Convergence isn't only the target of large software vendors. For instance, Nothing Real has been incorporating 3D capabilities into its Shake compositing application since it first shipped 2 1/2 years ago. "Shake users can do things like move 2D layers in 3D space, create motion blurs in 2D, and perform Z depth compositing," comments Jean-Luc Bouchard, director of marketing. "Plus, you can import 3D curve data into Shake for match-moving functionality."
"Most of our engineers have a 3D background," Bouchard continues, "and our founders were software developers at Thomson Digital Image [which was bought by Wavefront in the early 1990s, which in turn was bought by SGI and merged with Alias Research]. So historically, incorporating such 3D features has always been very important to us." Nothing Real incorporated native Maya architecture into Shake; Shake's open architecture also works with Softimage, MAX, LightWave, and Houdini and can be extended with custom scripts.
Meanwhile, 2D3, a brand-new company out of Oxford, England, debuted at SIGGRAPH with its product, BOUJOU. Similar to RealViz's MatchMover, BOUJOU enables users to derive complex camera tracks and calibration data from film or video material, without the need for manual tracking input. "Initially, we're aiming it at 3D artists," says CEO Chris Steele. "But we hope to build a whole range of tools for artists who work in 2D and 3D that will be based on BOUJOU's key technology."
BOUJOU's technology uses advanced vision-science techniques developed by 2D3's parent company, Oxford Metrics, to track features from frame to frame in 3D automatically. The software creates many more tracks than is possible using manual methods, thereby enabling users to analyze and eliminate tracking anomalies efficiently. After deriving 3D data from the footage, users can test it in Maya, Softimage, and 3D Studio MAX. At press time, The Mill was beta-testing BOUJOU, and Steele said the product should ship by the end of the year.
According to vendors offering tools for digital-content creation, the 2D/3D convergence trend will continue to evolve, much to the benefit of artists and animators across all disciplines. "The chasm between the worlds of 2D and 3D is getting smaller and smaller all the time," Steele concludes. "Five years from now, we'll no longer be talking about 2D and 3D as separate entities. It will all be considered simply `computer graphics.'"
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.