3D Characters for Television Production

Kaydara’s Online 3.5 creates animated hosts for RadioCanada’s interactive television game show WIZZ.

Radio Canada, Canada's French-language public televisionbroadcaster, has a reputation for innovative programming. We delivertelevision that is both challenging to develop and creative andinspiring for our viewers. That's why we decided to developWIZZ, a realtime interactive television game show that uses 3Delements along with very human characters that provide a connectionbetween real and virtual worlds.

As we looked into the requirements for the project, the costs andtechnical requirements seemed significant, but not impossible. That'swhen we heard about Kaydara Online, a 3D production system that allowsbroadcasters to add 3D characters to live-to-air and live-to-tapeproductions. Online became the backbone for this project and anessential tool for making WIZZ a reality.

We initially approached Kaydara with the story concept forWIZZ, a game show that revolves around two contestantsattempting to answer questions in order to win money and prizes as theyinteract with animated characters. Kaydara helped us imagine all of theoptions that would allow this to happen in realtime and provided thetools and training to put our plans into action using KaydaraOnline.

We started out using Kaydara Online for the character and scenedevelopment. From sketches and illustrations, Kaydara Online allowed usto previsualize how the characters would interact and run through thedifferent aspects of the game in realtime. This helped us both definethe overall look of the show's environment and determine what gamemechanics could actually be achieved.

When the time came to go into production, we brought all thecontrols over each character to two simple devices: a microphone and ajoystick. This way, the puppeteers are able to interact with thecontestants and provide live feedback to the show host as if they wereactually real actors on the studio floor. Online allowed us to take allthe information including data feeds, joystick, audio, video, and videoclips and then generate a final image that we could use in a livetelevision production.

We also used Kaydara's MotionBuilder software to develop acombination of mo-cap and keyframe animations that generated an arrayof movements for our stars, Bo and Pixel, such as walk, jog, run, turnleft, turn right, fly, and jump, etc.

The big difference between the Online system and any other 3Danimation technology on the market is its ability to allow aperformance to be rendered in realtime. This feature alone allowed usto produce WIZZ in a timely fashion — we record five showsa day live-to-tape without having to go in postproduction — andall within a reasonable budget. With the kind of diminishing budgetsthat we are faced with across all television production, it iswonderful to have a product that allows you to make a 30-minute show in30 minutes.

We did find that there were some hardware limitations with Online.Our content library is constantly growing, and the rendering systemdoesn't seem to be capable of handling that growth. As broadcasters, weare always pushing the limits of our systems; any improvements inOnline's rendering speed will allow us to enhance the quality of ourshow.

Throughout production we were also very impressed with Online'sability to accept last-minute changes. For instance, we constantly addnew video clips or new billboards in the city in order to make it morealive. With Online, we could do one show with a certain billboard andhave a new one for the next show.

On some occasions during production, we may run into technical oroperational difficulties. In most cases, we stop the recording of theshow and re-cue all the equipment. The host goes back to a time priorto the error, and we resume the recording of the show from that moment.When the problem is beyond this simple procedure, we simply take theshow for a little ride in our postproduction department and make thenecessary fixes to get a final version. For this, we may have to shootsome extra material with the host and the contestants in order to havematerial to use for the edit.

Animating the voices of Bo and Pixel was also an importantproduction component because it gave the puppeteers the ability to makeeach character speak. Through the use of Kaydara's Voice Reality (aphoneme recognition system integral to Kaydara Online), an audio signalcan modify the look of the character's face by changing its mouth fromone position to another, thus creating the illusion that the characteris actually speaking.

It is wonderful to see the level of emotions that Bo and Pixel canconvey through their facial expressions and gestures. One of our fearswas that the contestants would be too shy to speak to the charactersand that there would be a distance between them, but that was not thecase. It's amazing to see how the contestants adapt rapidly. I believethe realtime aspect of Online brings a level of interaction that makeseverybody comfortable.

We were also pleased to see that the Online system comes as anintegrated solution with all the interfaces required for a broadcaster.We haven't had to use external converters or adapters to connect thesystem to our studio because the system can be genlocked to our plant.Online also supports serial digital video input and output, and theincluded professional quality audio card offers balanced audioconnections on XLR connectors. We also really like Online's ability toplayback non-compressed AVI video clips directly from the system's harddrives. This gave us the ability to integrate moving images to thecity, giving the game more life.

Kaydara Online is a very good system but is not without itschallenges. One of the biggest challenges we faced was the lack oftraining available. Because Online is a new product in the broadcastindustry, it is not easy to find freelancers to operate the system. Wehad to train three people internally to get us going, and now we areself-sufficient. I'm sure this issue will be resolved over time asthere are more Online systems in broadcast facilities.

Overall we were very happy with Kaydara Online's performance forthis project. It was incredibly diverse and easy to use even with theWIZZ's advanced character animation and player interplaychallenges. Online's advanced features helped the WIZZ emergefrom a series of sketches into a fun, unpredictable show withinteractive and dynamic realtime character animation. Every episode isdifferent and anything can happen.

Since 1977 Johanne Bouchard has worked at the CanadianBroadcasting Corporation in various positions, including productionassistant, producer, and most recently coordinating producer.Bouchard's production credits include L'enfer, c'est nous autres(Julie Snyder), Christiane Charette en direct (Christiane Charette),and Les détecteurs de mensonges (Patrice L'…cuyer).For more information about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation andKaydara, visit www.millimeter.com.