Avatar presentation at Autodesk University

www.autodesk.com/modernpipeline Academy award winning producer Jon Landau talks about how Autodesk's Digital Entertainment Creation tools were essential elements in the creation of Avatar at Autodesk Univeristy 2009. Avatar producers and their production teams used Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder to pioneer many virtual filmmaking techniques that are now making their way into leading feature films and games cinematics.

[@ConstantXplorer]

All I can say is technology like this is freakin brilliant.

[@dannyr2976]

It's kinda extraordinary to believe that Avatar was released 5 years ago...

[@dszarts]

7 years

[@gamebreakers6437]

DSZ arts 8 year ago

[@EvelynHernandez]

10 years now, and it holds up to all the latest CG heavy films

[@mr.sunflower3461]

11 years

[@Dpate10]

12 years

[@zool8008]

in fact Avatar used Lightwave 3D for it's production

[@Autodesk]

Thats because you are seeing the real time previsualization of the movie not the final shots. The previsualization then gets passed on to artists to make it the final shot using products like Maya.

[@ofonwilliam]

I never knew this much work was input in making this movie, Autodesk products ROCK.

[@battlestarvfx]

It's funny he mentions titanic and the academy award... the key product used on that was LightWave. Avatar's previs and VAD was done in LightWave.

[@jmasterxx]

Now we stand at the apex of a brighter future in the area of technology. Our team at JYSproductions, LLc. truly believes in this evolution that Autodesk represents and we FULLY embrace this concept as we start our new projects in the year 2011. Thank you Autodesk for showing us the way and making it possible for startup media companies like JYSproductions to reach the Stars with ease.

[@tigervision7]

wow.. that virtual camera technology is absolutely breathtaking

[@EquinoxParadox91]

How they got it from that low-res, almost PS1 graphics looking stage to the final image is beyond me.

[@IvySummers]

I am always so amazed when i watch this video at how far technology has come. I use Maya to make silly cartoons but this is stuff is just fantastic way out my capabilities great stuff. .

[@ktmbua]

amazing stuff

[@olamidetoto2001]

the one you see is the low poly character. so that it could render in real time. after that there will increase the polys for more detail character that you see on TV. i am a 3d artist my self.

[@Xswats]

Sencillamente espectacular ,,,

[@PhungkhaBrahma]

Great Inspiration.

[@Surannhealz]

Pretty badass camera Mr Camerons got there.

[@ashelinrose8893]

Those students sitting in their desks, if only they knew how amazing this movie would be XD

[@0TylerDurden0]

FUCK! i cant wait for this Avatar movie. December 18 baby!

[@VFXLtd]

+Tyler Durden holy sht its already been 7 years......

[@EquinoxParadox91]

Thanks for that. This makes a lot more sense now.

[@ResizePixel]

HOLY CAWH! That's insane! I was thinking 2011, or 12.

[@tulaa10]

It's amazing!

[@ChaleiwPrasertsook]

thanks

[@AxelTiger]

freeking awsome and inspirational!

[@XSDarkMoonZX]

@WeAreChuckNorris: Damn bro. Awesome comeback. I don't think I'll ever recover from that.

[@TheWaynelds]

Because you're looking at the unrendered version of the animation in the software, like at 4:48. 3D/CGI software has to calculate all of the lighting & shading, textureing, ambient occlusion settings in the scene and the software cant do this in realtime during the animating process, so these shots you're seeing havent been fully rendered yet.

[@HDHOTDUDE]

LOVE AUTODESK!!!

[@techforhad]

HOLY CAWH! That's insane! I m thinking 2017, or 18.

[@vlweb3d]

Would be nice if there were some tutorials about creating detailed cg scenes and characters like in the movie.

[@avtpro]

This camera has great appeal to motion captures studios such as my self. I have been eyeballing the system since WETA first presented on their BTS DVDs on LOTRs. It would be great if the HUD Capture cam and this RT submersive mocap cam was affordable and available for startup studios such as myself. It would be great if Autodesk didn't drop the ball on with Maya on 64 bit OSX.

[@3dfantast]

Yes, you understand something in computer graphic. You are Great!

[@ranjeetkumar2]

good and nice software

[@Milkshakman]

@dewalt23293 They LAN every system (which can range from 20-200 depending on the size of the company) to share render times overnight, and usually use dual 6-core CPU's.

[@zelda85876]

The program exelent

[@4evil2me]

I really wonder how long it took to render the all the 3D parts together :O

[@karlosx8]

on the aurodesk website it says that the rendering of the movie transformers would take an average computer 16000 years to render it

[@skorpionkkp]

I love edeting and compostiting films

[@ChilombeSimwami]

yes

[@misric17]

@tenhatchets where is the uni located. do you know

[@daneoman1000]

@ermalkoci please explain why?, i've been using Maya since version 2.0 back in 1999, and i think the transition from alias/wavefront to Autodesk has been good improvements each year. I love Maya 2011 and no i don't work for Autodesk. im not a consistent 3DSmax or Softimage user if thats the software your referring to.

[@Morpheuos2010]

where do i buy a virtual camera?

[@mr.sunflower3461]

now its called vr

[@Mankkubus]

They used a bit of every program, but the major programs was Maya(Animation and fine detail) and Zbrush(Fine detail), Motion Builder(Animation) and believe or not LightWave(Preview Low-Rez visualization)

[@ned316]

@yuriynyr yeah but 48 hours?! wouldnt that take years?

[@bandos4lyfe]

@dewalt23293 they only had a limited rendering when viewing in real time. in order to get the production quality they had to bake it.

[@CyberKineticFilms]

@dewalt23293 almost 10,000 cpu cores and like 10 terabytes of ram (from "3d world" magazine)

[@QuranWithUrduTranslation]

i agree with you

[@avtpro]

Youre going to be presenting AVT Production hopefully with 64bit OSX, when you guys really get it together :)

[@aesthetical97]

Wait.....wtf...? what else did they use to detail the characters because they look like there from the 90's in that behind the scenes part.

[@deemon8888]

what course in college that specialized in this kind of job?

[@sohamp28]

Its all done with autodesk maya so any course related to that like animation course!! And i am doing it!!

[@Touchgrassplz]

2 years of post-production, and 930 artists in New Zealand

[@Touchgrassplz]

search on Google image or Maps. their facility is HUGE! its almost like a city of Weta Digital!

[@andiperim]

I love 3d studio max n_n

[@EquinoxParadox91]

Renderman is a wonderful thing.

[@RunningLemonStudios]

@hackstermaster haha definitely, although if you're looking for fast renders, my strategy of building a render farm out of armies of good will computers works quite nicely.

[@eaacon]

Wow OMG

[@MunkFano1]

@andiperim I'm sorry to tell you but they used maya not 3ds max

[@artsbrand]

maya & motion builder forever ))!!!

[@kevinrittenhouse4015]

James Cameron is one of the best film makers out there, he is a perfect ionist

[@ClaudiaShifferLA]

Someone know what happen with 3DMax, why nowadyas is dead (I'm talking about cinema movies)

[@nogert]

@dewalt23293 tbh alot of the real time rendered footage was extremely low poly, probably wouldn't need to be amazing.

[@mbsfaridi]

@dewalt23293 acually not much cause they were not final rendering in real time they low quality models so it doesn't take as much as you think it would

[@BenDy994]

@dewalt23293 if you look at what they see real time it's all low poly model and no lighting so if your pc can run a game from 1999 it can probably do the same.

[@Touchgrassplz]

they actually have HUGE facilities (based on company website) wetanz com < its big, but its beautiful too!

[@Lancemaker]

@andiperim i belive its maya.

[@MStoica]

@dewalt23293 yeah, they must have had pretty fast computers... but... they weren't running "full rendered movie" in real time... it was a graphical enough representation so they'd know about how it's going to look like, but a computer to run that FULLY RENDERED and in REAL TIME doesn't exist yet... as we know of...

[@rudal90]

@CyberKineticFilms no, the virtual camera is the most important things in this movie.,

[@riazulrahil]

Back when Autodesk was great.

[@rwhunt99]

They don't mention the first person J. Cameron hired was a Lightwave 3D artist, and created all the previs environments He was talking about. Lightwave 1o has all that he is talking about, check out Rob Powers@ Newtek.com He worked with Cameron for four years. Not that MAYA isn't very good at what it does, but Lightwave3D can do the same thing for about a quarter of the cost, plus it can do it quicker with just a couple of artists.

[@aznsorawarrior]

@anysternon was that sarcastic? or agreement?

[@stefanocelsi]

@yuriynyr it can't take 48 houers per frames because the movie has 30 frames per second so that would be like 1440 houers of render per second or 60 day per second so in 3 houers of movie whith mor than 80 persent of 3d seans it would be like 12441600 houers or 518400 days or 1420 years of full render it is rally rediculus considering that a frame in a normal sean in a good computer takes like 3 minutes in that render farm it would take less than a second

[@Robopencil]

@stefanocelsi @stefanocelsi No, heavy scenes can absolutely take 48 hours a frame to render. It's just that there are many images rendering simultaneously. 1 second a frame rendering time... Maybe if they traveled 10 years into the future and brought some tech back with them. " a frame in a normal sean in a good computer takes like 3 minutes" I'm a hobbyist modeler and I've rendered out single images that take several hours to finish wth 4 gigs of ram, ATI 4890, and an AMD Quad Core 955 BE.

[@Mankkubus]

Avatar was mostly made in Maya Max was usede in space shots and HUDs

[@misric17]

is this a online univerity or a physical university

[@rollokb2]

@dewalt23293 quad quadro's 5800 dual 3.2 ghz Xeons 32 gb of ram

[@RunningLemonStudios]

@hackstermaster Uhh, minicomputer. Right. My desktop has 16 processers with 40 cores each XD

[@vasbyollu]

WTB Live Action Scene!

[@ManhuntFTW]

An autodesk university?

[@DrR1pper]

Holy cow does time fly......Avatar was released in 2009.

[@masterpanos1990]

@SolsticeHalcyon Well I hope they render the new Pac-Man game with that machine

[@razielweskergaming9408]

Wait... Avatar is made from 3Ds Max

[@d3tach3d]

Shouldn't that guy in the beginning be dumping a body in jersey somewhere?

[@APhamx7]

@CyberKineticFilms and months to render :D

[@CruzieX]

December 18th? That's my Bday ^^

[@TheKSProduction]

dude. how mean.

[@MartinRMcGowan]

@dewalt23293 The Matrix CPU, Skynet's RAM, and a whole lot of coffee

[@elpatriotaLX]

@andiperim No Maya, Maya really rocks...

[@KyleMckenzieOnline]

They didn't even mention Weta Digital

[@syth406]

they left out that all the textures created for all the creatures were done in adobe softwares...

[@HimmiJoe]

In a few years there will be no more need for animators in film and television. Just actors, their virtual counterparts performing on virtual sets.

[@metallPAUL]

pretty good, for example the movie 2012 was made with 3d max

[@driedpancake]

autodesk made 3ds max.....?

[@rudal90]

@HDGekko Maya.,

[@LordOdin]

and my friend works at disney so i put that as my profile picture as a joke :P

[@JV_LD]

@dewalt23293 Those PCs probably cost a leg, your dead hamster's spine, your best friend's virginiry and your grandmother's soul.

[@PHlophe]

They probably needed a render farm the size of Aoteaora

[@kafanakodtome]

Is he real or is he CG?

[@RunningLemonStudios]

@hackstermaster Hehe I was joking. I'm just a poor 18 year old, and the only reason I have a quad core is because I built it myself (it's about half the price if you do it all yourself)

[@kill-o-]

The thumbnail kinda looks like they are taking a selfie. Anyone else or is it just me?

[@thehandleiwantedwasntavailable]

@juanfjimenez9 EVERYTHING looks shit when it starts out; even Maxwell renders. The process of creating VFX is one of never ending refinement. A sculptor working in stone starts with a solid rock, and slowly but surely turns this into something beautiful. Although that analogue is one of subtraction, the CG process is the same..

[@ahmad3d]

if you use maya you use maya, if you use max you use max both do same

[@carrzkiss]

@dewalt23293 The new 64 bit systems can go up and beyond 320Gb of Memory, and that is KEY when it comes to processing all the data, plus a Graphics card that is around and over 1-2gb. The newer generation of system components makes it easy to do near about anything that you want. You just need the funds to hands the project with, and that part my friends on youtube is the hard part especially in todays economy. carrzkiss picdrive.net

[@RunningLemonStudios]

@hackstermaster Oh don't even get me started on my gaming computer! It's pretty much a reproduction of google's servers, just with better video cards. *this message was posted on a netbook lmao