"Bingo is an animation that stretches the boundaries of realistic representation while also pushing the limits of the technology," describes Landreth. "We wanted the characters to look a certain way and in every case, Maya delivered."

By using virtually all of Maya's tools in a variety of different ways, Landreth and a team of Alias|Wavefront employees who volunteered to help him, were able to give critically important feedback on how to make Maya a cohesive and comprehensive package that can withstand even the most challenging production environments. The Bingo team ranged from software engineers to customer support-line employees to product specialists, who were able to use the production environment to refine their skills and learn how to build and support the world's best software.

Keeping Up Appearances

The characters in Bingo range from the realistic to the fanciful. A variety of tools in Maya helped Landreth and his team achieve precisely the look they wanted. The blendshape feature was used for setting the facial animation for the characters. This tool allows for incredible precision and speed in developing facial animation by allowing the animators to set poses which connect the character's facial movement to the appropriate phonemes.

Landreth took advantage of the customizability of Maya to create unique shaders for numerous specific effects. Realistic hair was created by using a custom anisotropic shader which provides directional highlights across both the X and Y axes. Similarly, the strange and wonderful mechanical elephants have ears that were built using a variety of shaders layered on top of each other until just the right texture appeared.

Dynamic Movement

Movement of both characters and objects in Bingo is naturalistic and compelling. Characters not only have incredible depth of detail, they also walk, leap, and bicycle across the stage while exhibiting the subtleties of movement that make for very convincing animation. Objects such as balloons, cloth, and even ponytails move with incredible realism and interactivity.

Maya allows artists to apply real world dynamics to virtually anything in a scene, which means that animators don't just have to guess what a response would look like, they can actually simulate the real-world effect. For example, the little girl in Bingo twists and sways and her dress follows with all the fluidity you would expect from real fabric. Landreth achieved this feat by making the dress a soft body and applying weight, gravity and other properties so that it deforms with the flow and swish of cotton. To further add to the realism, Landreth made the little girl's legs collision objects which cause the dress to shape to the force of her legs each time she takes a step.

The inverse kinematics in Maya made it incredibly easy for Landreth and the other animators to set up walk cycles for the various characters. It also permitted an unprecedented level of control over the character's body language by maintaining consistent movement and characteristics throughout the production.

Mood-defining Effects

With Bingo, Landreth has created a world that is dark, stark, and unsettling. The powerful mood created in Bingo comes, in part, from the deft application of lighting and special effects. As the clown walks onto the stage, a subtle swirl of dust settles on his shoes, emphasizing the seedy circus atmosphere created in this scene. The dust was created using Maya software's phenomenal particle system which offers a collection of flexible particle creation and emission tools that can be combined with dynamics fields such as gravity, wind, and turbulence.

Further enhancing this scene are stark spotlights used in combination with gently fogged peripheral lighting. Artists who helped work on this scene were amazed with the speed and interactivity of Maya which allowed them to apply and adjust lighting and instantly see the result of their tweaking.

"Maya really lets you get to the heart of making art rather than spending time fighting tools or waiting to see your results," notes Landreth. "You spend more time finessing your work and in the end you have a piece of work where the artistic vision shines through."

Alias|Wavefront provides artists with advanced computer graphics software that helps unleash the power of their creativity. As the world's leading innovator of 2D and 3D graphics technology, Alias|Wavefront develops software for the film and video, games, interactive media, industrial design and visualization markets. Alias|Wavefront's film and video customers include Bluesky/VIFX, Cinesite, CNN, Digital Domain, Dream Pictures Studio, Dream Quest Images, Industrial Light + Magic, NBC, Pixar, Sony Pictures Imageworks, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Games and interactive media developers include Acclaim, CAPCOM, Electronic Arts, Iguana Entertainment, Interplay, Kronos Digital Entertainment, NAMCO, Nintendo, SEGA, Sony Interactive, Square, Virtual Worlds Entertainment and Williams/Bally Midway.

With headquarters in Toronto, Alias|Wavefront is a wholly owned, independent software subsidiary of Silicon Graphics, Inc. Alias|Wavefront has worldwide distribution via a network of Channel Partners and sales offices located in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information on products, readers can access Alias|Wavefrontís website at www.aw.sgi.com. Readers in North America can also call 800-447-2542 for the location of the nearest sales office or Channel Partner in their area.

Alias is a registered trademark, and Alias|Wavefront and the Alias|Wavefront logo are trademarks, of Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. Maya is a trademark of Silicon Graphics, Inc. and exclusively used by Alias|Wavefront, a division of Silicon Graphics Limited. Silicon Graphics and the Silicon Graphics logo are registered trademarks of Silicon Graphics, Inc.