Prehistoric Insanity: Boneyard 20: Making of "MEETING A PREHISTORIC CREATURE"

This entry into Boneyard 20 is probably not going to be a very typical "meeting a prehistoric creature", but should hopefully still prove entertaining.

Our diligent crew of one here at Prehistoric Insanity Digital has been kind enough to take us through the process he takes to make some of our cool CG Dinosaurs for our movies and The Tyrannosaur Chronicles (which has its own entry into Boneyard 20 here).

Our idea for the contest is that taking you through how we make our CG Dinosaurs you'll get to see how hollywood allows people to "meet a prehistoric creature". Granted our efforts aren't as mainstream, high budget, and professional as real special effects professional, but this should give you some idea how its done.

The various processes and steps included here might be for non moving pictures, but the principles are the same for animation. The only thing that happen is these steps are repeated by a person or computer frame after frame.

Now follow us through the step by step creation of two pictures being used on The Tyrannosaur Chronicles.

Picture 1: When Dinosaurs ruled the Earth

This "photo" is one being added to the chronicles sidebar in the next week or two (time dictating). It show cases one of our new wave generation Dinosaurs and the revamped Cousin Larry. We'll take you through how we made it...

1. The Setting

First one needs the setting of the scene. In this case we used a photograph of Mount Ruapehu in Northern New Zealand. We could also have conceivably made a purely CG forest setting, but this doesn't ever look as realistic, and is a LOT more work.

The majority of special effect companies use the same strategy for the same reasons, realism and effort, only they use moving pictures instead of still shots.

2. Model your 3D Dinosaurs

This can be a long drawn out process, and the actual making of these two Dinosaurs was many posts worth of steps.

We do have how the Lambeosaurs texture was made here, and we plan on some further 3D modelling tutorials for anyone out there interested in learning how we made them. Check back for them here over the next couple months.

We include this picture so you get an idea of what Craig sees 9/10s of the time he is working on such projects. Those are 100% 3D and can be rotated spun and moulded anyway he chooses (with some restrictions he tells us, but for the most part anything goes).

3. Placing the Dinosaurs

The first major step is the placement and posing of the animals in the composition. Typically Craig models their poses than figures out their angle and placement afterwards. In this shot's case though he positioned the Tyrannosaur unposed (which looks very rigid like this) so that he was sure it fit in the tight framing of the photo.

Animators use this same technique only, unlike Craig, they typical don't place and animate fully textured models, and rather use an unshaded version (which looks identical to the middle Tyrannosaur in this post).

4. Compositing

A.

To add the sense of presence and realism a shadow is necessary. Steps like these that 3D artists use to integrate their creations into the background are called compositing.

Of course the problem is that though the Dinosaurs cast a shadow these shadows don't interact with or fit in with the photo yet so...

B.

A few things could be done to remedy this. In the case of Prehistoric Insanity Digital they typically opt for the easiest solution of photo shop, and cut out elements of the original photo to cover up any bits of Dinosaurs or their shadows that shouldn't be visible.

Other techniques are usable. A 3D transparent stand-in can be made that interacts with the 3D lighting system to simulate the photographic originals presence and shadow. These are much more complicated (and frankly are impossible to explain in writing, even Carrara's manual doesn't make sense without the pictures) and time consuming so PIP Dig doesn't tend to use them unless a Dinosaur is directly interacting with an object.

Animation professionals use a combination of these two techniques as well. Many modern programs exist that mimic the abilities of photoshop for moving pictures allowing you to select an object, cut it out, and repaste on top of added effects while keeping track of the object in the shot as the angle changes. Simultaneously special effects companies will stick in those light catcher objects where needed.

The point being Prehistoric Insanity Digital does its best to mimic the pros in this very hard process (watch the making of any of the BBC Walking Withs and they say immediately the hardest thing is compositing) on our $0 budget and Craig's limited precise free time.

5. Finale!

Glue the cut out objects back on top of where they came from, and... TA-DA! One complete scene with newly added CG Prehistoric Creatures!

Picture 2: Romantic Sunset

This picture was required for the touching finale of Traumador the Tyrannosaur's entry into Boneyard 20 in which his imaginary date with Lillian the Albertosaur ends with a sunset dinner.

This particular picture had some unique challenges not present in the Dinosaurs Ruling the Earth.

1. The Setting

Nothing new here. Starting with this photo as the baseline, Craig set out to add the CG Lillian to the scene first (Traumador being a real puppet was a photo element to be added at the end).

2. Modelling

Again, been here seen that. Sadly a lot of the work that went into bending Lillian's legs to have her lie down was lost in the final shot. So look closely in the early shots.

3. Lighting

Due to the relatively straight forward nature of the last photo's lighting scheme this step was ignored for this post, but in reality this step is a key one for any 3D effect. The colour of the light, direction it comes from, and its intensity can be the most important make or break component of the CG creature looking real or not.

As you can see in this test render the lighting has not been adjusted to either the right intensity or colour to match the sunset. Some re-tweaks were needed to make the light match the orange quality of the horizon and some extra lighting was need to illuminate Lillian's very dark side.

Hollywood goes to great lengths to capture real life lighting conditions during filming of the stock footage. You'll notice people running around with big rubber balls in CG baseline shots, this is to capture the lighting characteristics off the ball which allows the computer to mimic these conditions (cheating in Craig's opinion, but we remind him this is simply his jealousy of Hollywood's expensive toys talking...).

4. Fancy Compositing

Another problem emerged. The baseline photo was of too low a resolution to render Lillian full detailed. As of such she was rendered with a classic Hollywood trick the Green Screen at a much larger size. Green is used because it is a very unnatural colour and thus easy for a computer to isolate and eliminate.

Once Lillian was cut out (without neon green surrounding her) she was shrunk down to match the size of photo, but yet keeping her detail.

Now with the obvious problem of sticking out atop the grass she should be behind...

So more photo shopping...

Followed by a pasting, and one Lillian added to the scene!

Sadly Craig didn't document the adding of Traumador to this photo for us. To be fair it wasn't overly exciting. He was cut out of another photo, and colour balanced to match the red and yellow bias of the photo and pasted in last.

So that is how many modern "Meetings with Prehistoric Creatures" are made. Whether by amateurs such as ourselves here at Prehistoric Insanity or by Professional Computer Artists in Hollywood.

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