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Part 1: The Largest Film Ever Created
in CGI
Part 2:
Threshold Digital
Part 3: "I've got a challenge for
you guys"
Part 4: Storyboarding Science and
Religion
Part 5: The Problem of Playback
Part 6: FrameCycler to the Rescue |
The answer, it turned out, was near at hand. "We were doing all our
reviews the way we normally do, with FrameCycler," says Derek. "There we
had all the playback flexibility we needed and, since were working in
our native, frame-based formats; we always had instant access to the
material. We realized this would be a great solution for the Crystal
Cathedral, but before that could work there had to be a way to
synchronize playback from multiple machines."
So Derek Zavada made a call to IRIDAS. "I spoke with Patrick (Palmer)
and he told me that they would look into it: in less than two weeks we
had a first working Beta. Boy, did that make our work easier! For our
own review sessions, we lined up seven monitors. We could stop, step,
reverse, and so on - all with perfect synchronization. We got new
versions almost weekly after that and it only took three builds, or so,
until the sync feature was production-ready!"
Despite the short timeline, the development of the new FrameCycler
VenueSystem's sync technology went quite smoothly. "At one point we had
a problem with frames stepping for a particular sequence," reports
Derek. "We sent the sequence to Germany and within eight hours we had a
fix."
As if the production pressure alone was not enough, it turned out that
the opening day for Creation was also the date for VFX supervisor
Malcolm Sim's wedding! And since he was going to be away for the week
following that on his honeymoon, everything had to be ready, tested, and
working perfectly beforehand. Although with FrameCycler it's easy enough
to slip in new shots at any time, it was clear that - at least for the
first week of the show - that was not going to be an option. As the
deadline drew nearer there was a lot of gallows humor among the artists
about delivering on schedule "or Malcolm will be killed."
On June 9, 2005 Creation and FrameCycler VenueSystem performed
flawlessly delivering a fantastic show including two hours of 10k of
uncompressed content. And Malcolm Sim made it to the altar in time!
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Creation Image Gallery
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