monsters vs. aliens

Still from the Halloween TV special - 'MvA: Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space'. I wrote a tool to auto-generate and move lights for these pumpkins using their joint information.  Image © 2009 DreamWorks Animation Studios — Still from the Halloween TV special - 'MvA: Mutant Pumpkins From Outer Space'. I wrote a tool to auto-generate and move lights for these pumpkins using their joint information. Image © 2009 DreamWorks Animation Studios

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama watching the 3D commercial we worked on, during Super Bowl 43

'Monsters Vs. Aliens' (MvA) was my first feature film at DreamWorks and the first 3D film for the studio. I worked on it as Lighting Technical Director.

Scope of Work

Re-designed the studio's model caching and reading mechanism to improve workflow efficiency. Resolved many technical problems related to the studio's new stereo pipeline and supported a large group of artists with their day-to-day rendering and other technical problems. After the movie was completed, I was assigned as a TD for a 3D Super Bowl commercial and then as the only lighting TD on a Halloween TV special - 'MvA: Mutant Pumpkins for Outer Space'.

Tasks of note

One of my first major tasks was to overhaul the studio's model caching and reading mechanism to make the artist workflow faster and more efficient. This required me to re-write and/or modify a large suite of studio tools across various departments. Deploying these major changes on a live show (which was already dealing with the first stereo pipeline) was a potential fire hazard, so we had to make sure that there were no loose ends. Eventually, the changes were released successfully and everyone was happy.
Improved efficiency of our bounce lighting calculation by bypassing lights that had a zero bounce dial. Before that, we were passing all our lights to the renderer's bounce light set which caused its calculation to be much slower.
On the TV-special, I wrote a tool to quickly create lights for each crowd character (they were walking pumpkin lamps) and transform them per-frame using the respective joint animation of every character.

Challenges

Since MvA was my first feature film, I spent a lot of time learning the animation pipeline and in-house software. Having to support artists with tools that they already had expertise with, was challenging and motivating at the same time. It was a great learning curve and a very rewarding experience.

Fun Fact

If you've ever seen that image of President Barack Obama and First lady Michelle Obama wearing 3D glasses while watching Super Bowl 43, that was for the commercial we had worked on!