Meteor Studios

Meteor Studios' CG animation enlivened Chasing Giants: On The Trailof the Giant Squid.

No matter how you view the emergence of Canada's Meteor Studios, yousee significant signs of the times. The Montreal-based company,overseen by a Los Angeles-based director who specializes in HD, createsrealistic CG on TV budgets. Throw in a steady flow of assignments fromparent company Discovery Communications, and add a penchant forcost-effective production tools and Web-centric communications. Theresult is a recipe for efficiently produced — and highly rated— Discovery Channel shows such as When Dinosaurs RoamedAmerica, which included over 500 scenes with CG integrated intolive-action HD.

“Our Dinosaur show doubled the best rating that theDiscovery Channel had ever achieved,” notes director Pierre DeLespinois, who co-founded Meteor with Discovery and who serves as itspresident. “The most popular movies are the ones with lots ofvisual effects, and now that's possible for Discovery.”

The prospect of creating reliable quantities of cost-effective CGwas a key motivation for the Bethesda, Md.-based Discovery to launchMeteor in January 2001. By setting up a permanent facility that couldbuild CG libraries of extinct creatures (along with ancientarchitecture and weather phenomena), Discovery would get a steadysupply of images for its programming.

“They knew it was no longer acceptable to show apaleontologist simply holding up dinosaur bones,” notes DeLespinois. “We'd have to bring creatures back to life, and to dothat we had to build the studio of the future.”

Ensconced in a large, fashionably upgraded warehouse that formerlyhoused Montreal's electric company, Meteor grew from 20 to 110employees during its first year and completed 208 minutes of animation.For 2002, the studio is aiming for 300 minutes. The studio's mainanimation software is Maya (Meteor has 55 seats), and the company alsoruns the commodity packages Shake, Photoshop, Combustion, Flame,Inferno, and Boujou on SGI Windows-NT computers. Meteor has a 200 CPUrender farm, and an SGI Origin 3200 server anchors the facility, whichis connected with an ATM network.

Meteor is building a digital library of prehistoric creatures,including this fur-covered bison.

De Lespinois travels to Meteor once a month to oversee the CGwork-in-progress, but most of the time he collaborates remotely fromhis Los Angeles-based Evergreen Films, where he produces HDlive-action. While De Lespinois describes himself as “a die-hardMacintosh and Final Cut user,” his L.A. staff utilizespassword-protected websites to make the collaborations with theNT-based Meteor run smoothly.

“The first thing we do is scan the storyboards into ourMacs,” says De Lespinois of the process. “We put them ini-Movie and get our pacing down. Then we export things over to FinalCut and start bringing in animatics. We do that in L.A. and then shipeverything to Meteor. We create private websites where everyone can seethe work.”

Using websites is crucial in cases where Discovery's scientificconsultants, who are scattered around the world, have to check materialfor accuracy.

“They can click on ‘Models’ and up will comeMeteor's Saber-tooth Tigers or Wooly Mammoths,” De Lespinoisnotes.

Once the models are approved, the compositing of the animation getsunderway.

“Anyone can click on ‘Approved Shots,’ and up willcome a little Quicktime that will show the blocking of the shot,”says De Lespinois.

While this way of working is becoming standard practice at severaldigital post facilities, De Lespinois is pushing the integration of CGand live action even further up the production pipeline. A newminiseries called Prehistoric World, which the directordescribes as “costing tens of millions of dollars,” is oneexample of early CG/live action integration.

“We're sending wireless feeds from our HD cameras right tolaptops running Maya, Shake, and Final Cut,” explains DeLespinois. “While we're shooting, we can do quick composites tomake sure that everything is well. Then, at the end of each day, weburn a CD and send it up to the team at Meteor so they can jump on theanimation.”

When it comes to animating extinct creatures, Meteor has pros likeDon Waller and George Wong, veterans of Disney's Dinosaur. DeLespinois is bringing Meteor's CG experts onto location shoots, aswell.

“We'll have an animator who's running the Maya version of a CGdinosaur on his laptop, right there in the field,” he notes.“I'll tell him what millimeter lens we're shooting with, and sendthe plate shot to his laptop wirelessly. He'll quickly modify the Mayaanimation to that scale, composite it with Shake, and edit it withFinal Cut. We can determine if we have a lock on a location or ifthere's anything else we need to shoot.”

De Lespinois explains that he and two colleagues had a downconverterand a wireless transmitter custom built for this purpose, and that isnot the only new technology impacting their way of working. At anygiven time, Meteor has about six to 10 programmers developingproprietary code, and they've created creature “cloning”software as well as Maya plug-ins to create fur and feather animation.Meteor has also developed a tool for removing unwanted objects fromplate photography.

“Meteor has so many shows coming through the door, includingthe work of people who don't have much experience shooting for visualeffects,” says De Lespinois. “We realized that we needed tocreate software to clean up their shots. Our tool saves hours ofclean-up time by having computers do the mundane tasks. The wholeprocess becomes faster — and better in terms of cost.”

Especially notable is Meteor's proprietary asset-managementsystem.

“Our Job Tracker software tracks all the techniques, tools,and hours that we spend, including administration and the overhead ofoffice equipment,” De Lespinois remarks. “It calculateswhat things cost when we do a particular type of shot and tells us whatwe have to bill for it. One of the hardest things to do in our businessis bid a shot. For many visual effects companies it's been a realguessing game for which there is no template. It takes effort to makethings accessible with the push of a button, but the effort we've spentallows us to be more efficient in our budgeting process. Our producerscan put in the parameters of a potential project, and the databasesthat they can call from are huge.”

De Lespinois notes that Meteor has been amassing a growing libraryof CG elements, from character models to particles.

”As our producers bid jobs, they can do a data search of thelibrary for various elements because these things are created indistinct layers. All of this means efficiency, which means lower costs.Spending the effort to build these databases makes a huge difference inhow we can approach production.”

Future plans to improve efficiency include a switch from Windows NTto the Linux operating system, licensed from Red Hat. Although Meteorhad to modify the Linux kernel for its ATM network, De Lespinoisconsiders the transition vital.

“We'll be allowed to integrate Apple products,” he says,noting that Apple's OSX is, like Linux, a Unix variant. “We thinkthat a mixed equipment environment is the future.”

For now, Meteor remains focused on keeping its CG critters robustand supplying high-res imagery for Discovery's recently launched HDchannel. Meteor's animators are even tackling the challenge of creatingrealistic human-character animation. De Lespinois even predicts that inthe not-too-distant future Meteor “will bring Abe Lincoln back tolife.”

“We're taking areas that have been exclusive tomultimillion-dollar theatrical projects and doing them fortelevision,” De Lespinois asserts. “The core idea behindMeteor is creating more for less.”