I recently finished CG Supervising the 3D stereo conversion of the new Disney CG animated film called, Meet The Robinsons. It was a significant task, as it meant converting the entire film, over 1600+ shots (Over 3200 shots if you include the delivery of both Left and Right eyes!) in under six months. Insanity!

What we were contracted to do was to take rendered Disney elements and their shake comp scripts, re-composite the Left eye (which is the mono version of the film) and construct the Right eye with a new camera. We did this by a number of clever projection techniques and custom tools we wrote. The final composite was done in Nuke, DD’s in-house compositor.

This was my first CG Supervising role at DD and because of the uniqueness of the show, my role was actually closer to that of a VFX Supervisor (Although I didn’t get that credit, I did get a Lead CG Supervisor one ). I was responsible for making this show work; Period. From guiding the direction of technology and tools to figuring out pipeline and data management issues to approving and maintaining a very high standard of quality on all of the delivered shots… And that’s just the tip of the iceberg! DD offered me an opportunity to do something the company had never done before. That huge challenge was what attracted me to the project. Learning about Stereo along the way didn’t hurt either!

The task of how to finish an entire film within 6 months was daunting.. We had to build an entirely custom pipeline and workflow for this show, creating tools and scripts to complement that workflow and doing everything possible to make communication as clear as possible. At our peak we were a crew of over 80 people from Artists , Coordinators, Leads to Supervisors and Production all working to an aggressive schedule that delivered a week early. When you look at all the things that went right on the show, it was a great success. I’m very grateful to have been able to work with so many fantastic people on the crew, and to have been able to play a significant part in the shows success.

Here’s the latest trailer of the.. ahem.. mono version of the film. 3D is where it’s at! If you go see this movie, make sure to watch it in 3D! It looks incredible.

Start Slide Show

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 10th, 2007 at 2:06 am and is filed under movies, work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.