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Creating Star WarsOn a PC

Star Wars, the apocryphal tale of a galaxy long ago and far, far away, tends to attract tech types like me. This attraction happens despite the fact that the movie breaks most of the scientific laws applying to the physical world and that it doesn't depict an "advanced age." Instead, its world is a universe completely separate from our own.

I've realized, however, that even from the very first time I saw Star Wars in 1977, I was more intrigued by how director George Lucas and his team of filmmakers created that fantastic environment on the big screen than by the science fiction depicted. I pored over books and watched short TV specials about the making of the first film, marveling at how they built the first Death Star and how little model X-Wing Fighters were filmed against a blue screen. The special-effects crew built so many models. They even built a portion of the full-size Millennium Falcon for filming. A few years ago, I visited the Brooklyn Museum, which was hosting a special traveling exhibit of some of these early props and models. I was in heaven.

So much time has passed between the release of the original Star Wars film (later rereleased as Star Wars: A New Hope) and the recent trilogy (launched 22 years later) that some of the people who enjoyed the film as youngsters have actually grown up to work on the newer films. The special-effects crews of the 1970s built tangible, albeit sometimes scaled-down, effects; this current generation has put down the hammers, nails, glue, muslin, silicon, latex, and even blue screens (it's all green now) in favor of a comfortable chair in front of a glowing computer display.

One such latter-day special-effects whiz, Steve Sullivan, now director of research and development at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM), first saw Star Wars when he was 10 years old. When we chatted recently about his journey from fan to movie-technology whiz, Sullivan told me that he thought Star Wars "was awesome" when he first saw it, but he was not obsessed, and didn't consider it "his lifelong mission" to work in special effects.

Even so, as a kid growing up in Kansas City, Missouri, Sullivan did catch the tech bug, and can trace his computing roots all the way back to a TRS-80 color computer. Like other young geeks in that era, he followed up with an Apple II and then the lovable Commodore 64. Sullivan never graduated to a Commodore 128, but was in close contact with these machines when he worked in a computer store. Suffice it to say that he has always had the tech bug that, in a roundabout way, led him to ILM and Star Wars.

Sullivan retained his tech jones through his years at the University of Missouri, where he majored in electrical and computer engineering. He then studied robotics and computer vision at the University of Illinois, where he earned a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering. Even then, however, Sullivan told me, "I had no idea I'd be in this kind of work, until I graduated."

Jurassic Turning Point It wasn't until he saw a "Making of" special for the wildly popular 1993 Steven Spielberg film Jurassic Park that Sullivan saw the opportunity to blend his technical expertise with moviemaking magic.

Jurassic Park was notable for its extensive use of computer-generated 3D imagery. But what most people do not know is that, in order for the 3D actors (in this case, dinosaurs) to interact believably with the real world, the camera movements on the set and those of the virtual camera that captured the digital action for the computer had to be nearly identical. During the documentary, Sullivan noted that the Jurassic Park crew was clearly struggling with this problem and was basically moving the camera by hand, taking measurements (camera height, size of some objects, and so on) and then adjusting the 3D imagery, frame by frame, to make it look as if the dinosaurs actually "lived" in the live environments throughout a scene.

It inspired Sullivan to create the technology to matchmove via computer control. So, now the computer analyzes the movement of several 2D points in the live action over time and, with perspective projection (the farther an object is from the virtual "camera," the smaller it appears in the final image), estimates the structure of the virtual 3D scene and the movement of the virtual camera within that scene. The end result is the seamless integration of 3D actors in real-world, filmed environments.

With this software in hand, Sullivan contacted George Lucas's special-effects company, ILM. Unfortunately, George and company were not interested, since they, too, were doing their matchmoving by hand.

"It's all about timing in this industry, if your skills match the need at that moment," said Sullivan.

Undeterred, Sullivan took his formidable technical skills to another major special-effects house, Rhythm and Hues. Two years later he was talking to ILM again, and soon he was stepping into an already-in-production Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.

Rebuilding Star Wars on the PC In the mid-1990s George Lucas had stunned (and appalled some) Star Wars fans by rereleasing the original trilogy with new 3-D, computer-generated elements seamlessly woven throughout the films. Now, with the new trilogy, Lucas was ready to take computer imagery and moviemaking to new heights. Sullivan's matchmove technology would be an integral part of this, as many of the sets and even characters in the next three films would be built inside computers.

With each new Star Wars film, the balance between actual sets, actors, and props and computer-generated ones has shifted increasingly toward computer graphics (CG). The latest, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, which opens this week, had virtually no sets. In fact, Sullivan says that the greatest hurdle in this film was found in the massive environments Lucas wanted to make, which included landscapes, cities, and even planets.

Sullivan's R&D crew extended its own proprietary "Zeno" software platform, and even created a new application called Zenviro. Using complex projection and mapping techniques, Zenviro takes photographs and applies them to shapes to create realistic-looking 3D buildings. Sullivan said it was far faster than creating the buildings from scratcheven if they only did them in CG.

When I quizzed Sullivan on ILM's preferred platform, he surprised methere were virtually no Macintoshes. Instead, ILM primarily uses Intel-based, 2- to 3-GHz, single-processor Dell PCs, running Linux Red Hat version 7.2. Most of the special-effects artists have two of these systems on their desks and at least two monitors. In addition to a wide variety of homegrown software, artists are free to mix in other 3D applications, such as Maya and Softimage. But for features and functions ILM cannot find in these off-the-shelf solutions, they build their own software.</p

"But where are the Macs?" I asked. I was under the impression that everyone in and associated with Hollywood used Macs. "Generally [we] don't use Apple stuff. There's a few scattered around the facility, but they're not part of our production pipeline. Maybe we use it for presentations. Some might take it on the road but, in general, artists don't use Macs."

Since so much of their work is done on computer, artists keep their e-mail on separate systems. No one wants a virus to corrupt a year's worth of CG work. Also, most of the mail and productivity apps are Linux- and Unix-based.

Episode III also represented a bit of a turning point for ILM, a transition from their old software system (in use for 10 years) and applications to their new software pipeline. The latter showcases a whole new set of tools and even, for ILM, a new way of working. "[Episode III] shows both environments," said Sullivan.

Looking at the last two moviesand even some of the digital inserts on the first threeI'm a bit saddened over the loss of physical effects. But Sullivan is unsentimental, reminding me that the kind of movie they're making today simply could not have been done in 1977. "Certain characters that have to be computer-generated could not have been puppets [and] could not have been men in suits."

In the end, computer-generated effects save producers money and, says Sullivan, "take you to a higher level of quality. It lets artists work on the beauty of [the film]."

He's right. I know that. Maybe Episode III will finally live up to the hype and I won't have to get all misty-eyed for the days of cool sci-fi props, sets, and men in crazy rubber alien suits.

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