DNEG (United Kingdom)

Après avoir rappelé le contexte dans lequel se déploie la littérature du trottoir des années 1885-1900, la crise boulangiste, le scandale de Panama et l’affaire Dreyfus, cet article étudie plus spécifiquement les complaintes liées à l’écroulement de la Compagnie universelle du canal interocéanique. Si toutes les chansons produites en 1892-1893 ne se rattachent pas au genre de la complainte, beaucoup d’entre elles en font partie, les victimes étant soit les petits épargnants spoliés, soit le peuple, le véritable destinataire de cette forme de propagande particulièrement venimeuse. L’antisémitisme et l’antiparlementarisme en sont les deux ingrédients principaux, le but visé étant la subversion des institutions et le renversement du régime républicain.

Storage and retrieval of production assets is vital for every modern VFX and animation facility. From the volume of assets being stored to the constantly changing variety and richness of the asset data, efficiently storing, indexing, finding and retrieving the assets you want is a growing challenge. This paper discusses some of the requirements of modern asset storage systems for VFX and animation, introducing two systems that were built to address these challenges as part of the collaborative EU funded "SAUCE" project; DNEG's search and retrieval framework, and Foundry's back-end asset storage. It also presents example use cases of the asset library from Filmakademie's experiments in virtual production, demonstrating more artist focused and task centered systems that enable greater asset re-use.

Machine learning techniques are not often associated with artistic work such as visual effects production. Nevertheless, these techniques can save a lot of time for artists when used in the right context. In recent years, deep learning techniques have become a widely used tool with powerful frameworks that can be employed in a production environment. We present two deep learning solutions that were integrated into our production pipeline and used in current productions. One method generates high quality images from a compressed video file that contains various compression artifacts. The other quickly locates slates and color charts used for grading in a large set of images. We discuss these particular solutions in the context of previous work, as well as the challenges of integrating a deep learning solution within a VFX production pipeline, from concept to implementation.

To deliver photoreal, dynamic and directable rock concert audiences for Bohemian Rhapsody to a demanding client brief, lead VFX vendor DNEG developed a novel crowd simulation solution based on multi-view video capture and image based modeling. Over 350 choreographed performances by individual crowd extras, totalling more than 70 hours of footage, was acquired on set using a video camera array. A system was developed to convert the video data to lightweight 3D sprites that could be quickly laid out, synchronised, edited and rendered on a large scale. Efficient artist workflow tools and scalable video processing technology was developed so that crew with little previous experience in crowd simulation could fill a virtual Wembley Stadium with a dancing, cheering crowd responding to Freddie Mercury's electrifying performance.

DNEG has grown from a small studio with 30 employees in 1998 to a world leading giant, with over 5000 employees, 20 years later. This talk will celebrate some of the major creative milestones that established its prowess, led to significant award wins, and solidified its relationships with many regular key creative collaborators.

Several years ago DNEG set out to build Loom, a new rigging framework in a bid to improve the performance of our Maya animation rigs. This talk is an update on its development in the light of the discontinuation of its original evaluation back-end, Fabric Engine. In particular, we describe the design choices which enabled us to achieve a DCC agnostic rigging framework, allowing us to focus on development of pure rigging concepts. Also how this setback prompted us to extend the framework to properly deal with the deformation side of rigs, targeting memory efficiency, GPU/CPU memory interaction and high-end performance optimizations.

One of the biggest visual effects challenges of independent sci-fi thriller Ex Machina was the development of a fast and flexible rigging solution for central android character Ava. It needed to be able to withstand a large degree of on-set costume-fitting variance, and facilitate the precise tracking and CG replacement of multiple body-sections, under the full scrutiny of being able to see right 'under the skin' to her internal structure and mechanisms. Our approach combines multiple levels of base-humanoid and custom rig modules with a series of multi-layered skin-clusters, utilising a mixture of joint and geometry-based skin-influences. The result is a very organised and adaptable rigging solution that gives tracking artists both a broad and fine level of control over each body-section, with minimal sacrifice of speed. This work builds on our knowledge and experiences from tracking the 'Synth' police robots on the recent remake of Total Recall (2012).

Christopher Nolan's science fiction movie Interstellar offers a variety of opportunities for students in elementary courses on general relativity theory. This paper describes such opportunities, including: (i) At the motivational level, the manner in which elementary relativity concepts underlie the wormhole visualizations seen in the movie; (ii) At the briefest computational level, instructive calculations with simple but intriguing wormhole metrics, including, e.g., constructing embedding diagrams for the three-parameter wormhole that was used by our visual effects team and Christopher Nolan in scoping out possible wormhole geometries for the movie; (iii) Combining the proper reference frame of a camera with solutions of the geodesic equation, to construct a light-ray-tracing map backward in time from a camera's local sky to a wormhole's two celestial spheres; (iv) Implementing this map, for example, in Mathematica, Maple or Matlab, and using that implementation to construct images of what a camera sees when near or inside a wormhole; (v) With the student's implementation, exploring how the wormhole's three parameters influence what the camera sees—which is precisely how Christopher Nolan, using our implementation, chose the parameters for Interstellar's wormhole; (vi) Using the student's implementation, exploring the wormhole's Einstein ring and particularly the peculiar motions of star images near the ring, and exploring what it looks like to travel through a wormhole.

Christopher Nolan's science fiction movie Interstellar offers a variety of opportunities for students in elementary courses on general relativity theory. This paper describes such opportunities, including: (i) At the motivational level, the manner in which elementary relativity concepts underlie the wormhole visualizations seen in the movie. (ii) At the briefest computational level, instructive calculations with simple but intriguing wormhole metrics, including, e.g., constructing embedding diagrams for the three-parameter wormhole that was used by our visual effects team and Christopher Nolan in scoping out possible wormhole geometries for the movie. (iii) Combining the proper reference frame of a camera with solutions of the geodesic equation, to construct a light-ray-tracing map backward in time from a camera's local sky to a wormhole's two celestial spheres. (iv) Implementing this map, for example in Mathematica, Maple or Matlab, and using that implementation to construct images of what a camera sees when near or inside a wormhole. (v) With the student's implementation, exploring how the wormhole's three parameters influence what the camera sees---which is precisely how Christopher Nolan, using our implementation, chose the parameters for \emph{Interstellar}'s wormhole. (vi) Using the student's implementation, exploring the wormhole's Einstein ring, and particularly the peculiar motions of star images near the ring; and exploring what it looks like to travel through a wormhole.

Musicologica Olomucensia is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal founded in 1996 at PalackĂ˝ University. The journal is intended for the musicological community. With historically, theoretically and analytically focused studies, the journal presents the results of fundamental scientific research.