Science is changing the world of animation. Filmmakers are
reviving old techniques, like rotoscoping, and making it new.
And a group of university mathematicians has created an
algorithm that makes animated hair look more realistic.
"A Scanner Darkly" uses rotoscoping, a technique revived by
MIT graduate Bob Sabiston,
in which live actors are filmed and then animated, frame by
frame. Rotoscoping was first used by cartoonists in the
1930s. For "A Scanner Darkly," it took about 500 hours of
computer time to create a minute of film.
Hair tends to look flat in animated films, because in real life,
each strand of hair individually reflects light. Now Cornell
University computer scientists Steve Marschner and Jonathan
Moon have created a mathematical formula that allows
computer animators to create the same effect. In order to
get this just right, animators need to calculate the
path of each ray of light back to the original light source.
Since this requires hours of calculations, computer artists
used to have resort to approximations, but now these
mathematicians have devised a formula that does it
automatically.
Marschner won an Academy Award in 2004 for creating a
method of depicting translucent materials, including human
skin, which helped to make the character of Gollum in
the "Lord of the Rings" films more realistic. His new method
for making hair look realistic helped to create the computer
animated version of the actress in the arms of the computer
animated gorilla in the 2005 version of "King Kong."
Film used to seem like
magic?
before we understood it.
Visitor
experiences can seem like magic, probably because they
follow quantum laws which few of us really understand. Listen
to Whitley Strieber discusses
time
travel with serious scientist
Fred Alan
Wolf on this week's
Dreamland! The first 20 people who get a one-year
subscription to our website will get a FREE copy of Fred's
fabulous book, The Yoga of Time Travel, so
subscribe
today!
And here's more magic: All subscribers will receive a free
signed bookplate to put into your copy of The Grays?so
order
your copy TODAY.
To learn more,
click here and
here.
