8:15am – Sponsors logos are being displayed on screen.
8:17am – Keynote begins, lights fade out, intro video shown, featuring the ‘make your mark’ theme. Fairly lame song, Microsoft technologies shwn, Photosynth, Popfly, etc. Forza 2 and xbox ccontroller shown, Frank Arrigo made a cameo appearance, shots of the Gold Coast.
8:20am – Welcome Frank Arrigo – Frank arrives on stage and brings 4 tourists with him. Frank is Tech.Ed tour guide. Biggest Tech.Ed because they sold out ? Will have 2 check the attendees on this one. Frank shows off Virtual Earth zooms into Gold Coast Convention Center, transitions to 3D of building, then shows floorplan.
8:26am – Welcome Michael Twigg, Animal Logic. Involved with Matrix, Happy Feet, 300 etc. Demo reel from Animal Logic, featuring all their visual effects. Harry Potter, Engergizer, Carlton Draught, Wholy crap this demo reel is impressive, receives applause. Originally established to created TV commercials, as technology improved, demand improved, then moved to feature movies.
8:32am – Michael is giving a run down of stats for media/animation industry – 25,000 – 30,000 people involved in the digital media industry (TV, Film, Animation), actual animation is only around 4-5000. Animal Logic, Rising Sun, Photon are really the only Australian companies.
8:35am – General trends – more digital f/x shots per film, faster turn around – shorter production schedules, more complex shots and greater realism, greater interactivity, more for less.
8:38am – Run down of Carlton United advertisement, giving overview of what’s required. Story boards displayed, simple 3D characters, cloth simulation, crowd simulation, composite video shown, again receives applause.
8:43am – Speaking about 300, filmed in air craft hanger, warehouse, actors had to imagine environments. Video of 300 being shown. Started with concept art to transform the graphic novel into a video. Most crowds are CG, only foreground actions was actors, environments completely 3D. Layers of composition displayed.
8:53am – Animal Logic created the Matrix code, responsible for ‘the Twins’ flying through cars etc. Concept art shown, looked at sea creatures, spent a year doing concepts. Around 6 million particles, around 20-30 layers per character, a lot of cloth simulation.
8:56am – First animated feature was Happy Feet that received an Oscar, received applause. Overview of the production pipeline. Standard production pipeline displayed, simple, Happy Feet production pipeline shown as a massive number of elements. Hardware overview – 100TB of data. – times by around 20 if you include draft versions during development. 2000 machine render farm, around 4000 processors, produced around 100,000 renders hours per day.
9:00am – Happy Feed demo vid shown, concept art displayed, motion sheets shown. They have around 60 animators. The worked with a Penguin expert. Used a combination of keyframe and motion capture to create animation, lip sync done by animators, character rigging used. 6 million pieces of fur, reacted to being wet, wind etc. Real images were taken from Antarctic, these were converted to 3D models, however environment didn’t match the required look, these were scrapped and an artists impression was used. Video of motion capture process shown, actors moving like penguins. Crowds, some shots had 5-600,000 penguins. Added a number of visual effects.
9:13am – Another clip of Happy feet shown, we now have an appreciation for what went into creating the movie. 300 and Happy Feet were being created at the same time in the same building so the guys had a bit of fun and combined the 2, a vid of the main penguin bein slayed, 300 style.
9:16am – Tourists are back on stage with Frank, used to explain food location, lanyard name tags etc. They really should have skipped on this idea. Largest number of women at this years event.
9:30am – Keynote finished.
