This article contains background info on how the opening animation was constructed.
* Design Constraints *
The title sequence needed to play back at 9" screen size directly from CD-ROM. This meant a 512x342 pixel movie with a data rate of 90K/second or less. Necessary information included the words "TV-ROM Too", "Another Eclectic Collection of QuickTime Movies", and "BMUG". Keeping the TV-ROM logo from the first disc was also desired. Total time was to be 15-20 seconds.
* Planning *
Instead of fighting the CD-ROM's data throughput limitation, I decided to intentionally use a very slow frame rate. Smoothness and continuity would be achieved with music, and the graphics would jumpcut on the beat.
The visual information would have to be spread over time, so that no one frame had a peak of data flow. Large graphic elements would have a slower pace of change (once every second or so), but smaller items could afford to animate every frame. I wanted to syncopate the visuals against the pulse of the music.
Also, folks would be seeing this movie whenever they opened the stack...it would have to bear repeated playings. I wanted to: include "little things" that wouldn't be seen right away; to use natural forms and textures instead of clean computerish ones; and to establish a mood of welcoming and relaxation rather than zap-powie-glitz. (Yes, I *do* live in Northern California...how could you tell?)
* Music *
Just as in classic Disney work, the soundtrack was the keystone. I logged through John Karr's great sound clips (on this disc) to find suitable music. "Thai Dreamtime" was the bedrock, and the "Delta Swamp" clip provided the nature sounds of water and birds.
These were edited together in Adobe Premiere. The clips were imported and dragged into the Construction Window, the graphics were deleted, and the sounds were layered three levels deep. The Thai clip was given a bit of echo to make it sound more like a gamelan. Fade-in and fade-out were done with the volume rubberbands beneath the clips. The final piece was just about 60 beats per minute...about one pulse per second. It was made into a "soundtrack.mooV" in one pass.
After the music was finished and analyzed, I decided to make the final movie with a timebase of 24 fps, output at 3 fps...each output frame would have an internal pulse of 8 frames. Or you could think of it as the visuals being in wholenote triplets against the music, with graphics changing on beats 1, 5, and 9 of a 12-beat measure.
* TV-ROM Animation *
The logo artwork, in Adobe Illustrator format, was brought into Adobe Photoshop and exported as a paint-type PICT. It was then imported into Macromedia's MacroModel as a background. Cylinders were lathed for each of the straight-line elements (four cylinders for the letter 'M', etc). The TV and the disc 'O' were extruded, the latter to a very thin depth. The crosspieces in the letter 'T' and the hook in the letter 'R' were bevel-extruded with a rather wide bevel.
Next, the objects were roughed up. Each of the cylinders was selected and simplified once down to a patch mesh. Extra points, in groups of three, were added to make bulges. The centerpoint of each object was dragged up the cylinder to the level of the central control points in each group of three. These central points were selected and then scaled 120%. This caused them to bulge out, and the extra points above and below this central group kept the overall diameter of the cylinder from expanding. (This is sort of a "reverse magnetism" technique in MacroModel.) Curves were adjusted, if necessary, to keep a smooth asymmetrical shape. This was repeated at the bottom of the cylinder, and then the centerpoint was moved back to the middle of the object.
The bevel-extruded pieces and the TV were roughed up by simplifying once down to a patchmesh, and then pulling and pushing Bezier curve handles and anchor vertices. The disc was left in its pristine parametric simplicity. All objects were named, and the file was saved.
This MacroModel file was then imported into Macromedia Three-D as separate objects. Screen size was set to 512x342. The camera was moved in so that the logo filled the screen. Object positions were copied into Frame 3. The positions and orientations in Frames 1 and 6 were then altered so that the objects would twist and zoom in, assume correct orientation in Frame 3, and then twist and fly past the viewer.
These six frames were rendered in Pixar's RenderMan directly from Three-D as sequential PICTs. The surface shader used was "Eroded", which simulates a metal eaten away by acid. Because this shader actually removes some of the surface (you can see objects behind the eroded surface), I took the PICTs into Adobe Photoshop and filled in areas of the alpha channel where the letters had been eaten away. This would ensure that the background would not show through eroded parts of the model.
While in Photoshop, a polished finish was given to the CD disc. First the matte disc was selected with the Magic Wand Tool. Then the "Gradient Designer" in Kai's Power Tools filled in this area with a radial metallic sheen. All six PICTs were then saved, ready for sequencing in Adobe Premiere.
The purple "Too" was selected in the original Illustrator PICT, then brought into its own Photoshop document. Four copies of this original were made, each with different settings of the Wave filter. An alpha channel for each PICT was created with help from the Minimize and Blur filters.
In Premiere, the 3D and 2D segments were combined into a single QuickTime movie. The "Too" PICTs were overlaid atop the main frame of the model sequence using the Motion (for scaling and positioning) and Transparency (for alpha channel) dialog boxes. Each of the 3D picts was held for 8/24 of a second (one frame of the final animation), except for the "assembled" frame which was held for two full seconds with a one-frame-each overlay of "Too" PICTs. The final result was a twelve-frame movie with a total length of four seconds.
* The Background *
Fractal Design Painter was used to make the water, the clouds, and the stars. All files were saved at 512x342 size, with a black background color.
Stars: The blank paper was inverted to white. The KPT "Grime" filter was used to fill the area with black dots, then the image was inverted back to white dots on black. Blur, Sharpen, and Contrast/Brightness controls were used to drop out most of the stars. This was saved as a single PICT file.
Water: The paper was filled with purple paint. A narrow rectangle was selected along the left side of the paper, stretching from top to bottom. This was then "Grimed", as above. Scaling controls were then used to stretch the rectangle out to fill the page. The result was wavy horizontal black lines on a purple background. The image was then Rippled a slight amount, and cloned.
The clone was erased to black. John Derry's "String O'Pearls" custom brush (accessible through the "Brush Looks" library) was then changed to a "Soft Cover Cloning" method in the Brush Palette with "Random Cloning" chosen in the Color Palette. Short soft brushstrokes in the clone revealed the original image. This process was repeated to make four PICTs, each slightly different.
Clouds: The strategy here was similar to that of the water. The original image was grimed, and then processed with Xaos Tools' "Paint Alchemy" filters. A "Smoke" setting was used. Painter's "Fire" brush look, again with soft cover cloning and random cloning, was used. First the outlines of the clouds would be painted, and then density would be built up with repeated brushings. The clones were painted by eye to give a rough four-frame loop as they traveled across the sky.
Finally, the water, clouds and stars were composited together in Adobe Premiere. Each PICT for the water and clouds was stretched out to two seconds...a full cycle would run eight seconds. The water and clouds sequences were offset from each other, so that on each main beat of the music either the water of the clouds would change. This was made into a movie.
* "Another Eclectic Collection" *
In Photoshop, Adobe's Glypha Bold font was placed on the screen, then filled with a red/yellow blend from the "Gradient Designer" in Kai's Power Tools. This was saved. Four PICT files were made by taking this original image and selectively deleting sections of the letters using the Lasso tool with the Option key held down.
* The Moon *
The letters "BMUG" were bevel-extruded in MacroModel from Adobe's Copperplate font, and then imported into Macromedia Three-D. Patch resolution was lowered for fast previews. The letters were placed around a sphere, and then locked to the sphere which was then placed in a corner of the screen. Rotating the sphere made the letters swing into view.
The moon's surface was morphed from a matte pale blue to a tie-dyed pattern and back again. The tie-dye was painted in Photoshop. The letters were given a white plastic surface with low diffusion and high specularity. They were invisible during the initial sequence, then snapped into view during rotation. Three-D, because it separates rotation keyframes from texture and other keyframes, was very useful for fine-tuning the multiple concurrent actions.
Before the sequence was sent to RenderMan, the RIB scene-description text files were edited to add further effects. The moon was assigned a custom displacement shader to give it a bumpy surface with rough edges. This shader was a variation of the "dented" shader in "The RenderMan Companion", modified to actually move each pixel, instead of just its surface normal as a bump map would do. (Tip: the easiest way to approach writing custom RenderMan shaders is to alter and combine existing shaders...there is a "toolbox" of existing effects you can use.)
Also, to duplicate the effect of a previous BMUG promotional piece, the front and back of the text letters were assigned a "glass" surface -- the patchmesh sides retained the plastic surface, while the flat polygon faces were rendered as semi-transparent glass. All of this text editing was done in the excellent shareware text editor "Alpha" by Pete Keleher.
The final results were saved as a series of seven PICT files.
* Final Composition *
The music, logo and background movies were imported into Adobe Premiere, as were the "eclectic" and moon PICT sequences. The A channel held the moon sequence, stretching across the length of the movie. The B channel held the background movie. A cross-dissolve special effect, set to 50% at both start and end and stretching the length of the movie, was used to combine the A and B tracks.
The Superimpose track started with a black color matte for four seconds...it faded from full opacity to full transparency, so that the moon and cloud background slowly faded in. This was followed by the main title movie, and then the "eclectic" sequence. The final frames in the Superimpose track held another black matte to cause the background to fade out.
After tests with the Animation and Graphic codecs, best results were found using the Compact Video (CinePak) codec. The final movie was 512x324 @ 3 fps, 22 KHz audio with standard block settings, Millions of Colors with a Quality Setting of 5, and keyframes were set every three frames (once per second). Compile time on a Quadra 700 was about 20 minutes. It was then checked with MovieShop, and the data rate was just under the target of 90K/second.
* Afterthoughts *
I didn't catch the stars twinkling through the moon until after the movie was done...wish I had caught that earlier. Also wish I had more time to play with the visual beat against the music...have the feeling that could have been a bit snappier. If I had declared the moon's displacement shader *before* its rotation, instead of after, then we would have seen its craters rotate....not celestially accurate, perhaps, but satisfying. I would probably redo the "another eclectic collection" element given the chance. Also would have liked to have tweaked the logo zoomout, so that frames four and five were clearer.
Originally I had planned to have the view zoom in through trees and a jungle...once I saw how the water and clouds turned out, though, I skipped the trees...but by that time, the music was already finished...just pretend you're on the edge of a jungle, gazing out over the beach, with a hungry lion at your back, and nothing but a bagful of marshmallows to protect you....
Making the sound file, modeling the logo, setting surfaces, and doing Painter experiments was accomplished before going to work during the week...about six hours worth of effort. Animating, rendering, painting, compositing, and compiling was done in a Saturday session...about fourteen hours. As usual, getting the 3D lighting properly set took longer than anticipated. Render times for the logo ranged from 7 to 10 minutes; for "BMUG to the moon" it was from 1 to 3 minutes.
The hardest part was figuring out what the thing would look like! It's easier to execute a plan than conceive of it. Once the music was set, though, it was straightforward to count out the beats and figure how things would fit together...much of this was visualized while taking a walk.
Hope you enjoy it, and thanks to the programmers who let us do such cool stuff!
