Stanley And Stella Breaking The Ice Poster

“The SIGGRAPH '87 film show featured a different kind of computer graphics production: "Stanley and Stella in Breaking the Ice," a collaboration between the Symbolics Graphics Division and Whitney/Demos Productions. This two-minute film introduced behavioural animation, a new system of animation in which the group characters' behaviour and interrelationships are modelled, as well as showcasing new research in character animation. The film tells the story of two worlds divided by an ice barrier, one a world of birds, the other a world of fish, and develops a relationship between two of these characters. The film was created, animated and rendered using Symbolics 3600-series workstations at sites in Westwood CA, Chatsworth CA, and Cambridge MA. The flocks of birds and schools of fish in the film—called "the first computer-generated extras" by producer Michael Wahrman—are controlled by a system for behavioural animation that allows the flocks and schools to be animated as a whole. The members of the flocks and schools are given behaviours, goals, and constraints; each individual's action is determined from these. Research behind this animation was done by Craig Reynolds and will be presented at this year's SIGGRAPH Technical Program. By putting the responsibility for detailed decision-making on the animated character rather than the animator, behavioural animation made it easier to populate the screen with many characters since it was not necessary to explicitly specify the path of each. The film includes scenes in which as many as 160 birds and fish were involved, each character "ad-libbing" its path around obstacles and neighbouring flockmates while staying close to the flock. In addition, the animator can provide stage directions for the flock, that is, "suggestions" that the flock will follow approximately, but that will be modified by interaction with their other behaviours. The film also demonstrates new techniques for organisation and the effective production of character animation. The subtle character animation used to give the stars, Stanley and Stella, the nuances of expression was developed by Philippe Bergeron of Whitney/Demos Productions (co-director and character animator of the "Tony de Peltrie" animated film in 1985). These techniques were developed on top of the Symbolics S-Dynamics animation system, and allow for fine control of expression and detail. The rendering of "Breaking the Ice" was carried out at three Symbolics locations, one on the east coast and two on the west. Machines for the project were contributed from every portion of Symbolics: manufacturing, training, marketing, software products, software support, VLSI and other architecture groups, as well as the Graphics Division itself. Many of these machines were only used overnight when their normal user was home asleep; other machines were dedicated full-time to the project. Using experimental software written by Joseph Goldstone of the Graphics Division, with assistance from Charles Hornig and others in Cambridge, object and script definitions were shipped across the network to each rendering location, at which point a controlling machine for that location divided the shot up on a frame-by-frame basis and parceled it out to the other local machines for actual rendering. Completed frames were shipped back (by network or magnetic tape) to Westwood for recording on 1" videotape. The controlling machine centralised handling of frame storage, error recovery, and relative shot priority (when multiple scenes were rendering at a given site). Shots in progress across the country were often recorded on video tape while they were in the process of being rendered to verify their correctness. The way in which colour, visual texture, and surface irregularities were rendered demonstrated several features new to Symbolics' rendering system. The film demonstrates not only texture and opacity mapping, which predate this project, but also bump mapping, in which uneven surfaces can be described for 3D objects, and reflectance mapping, whereby shiny objects reflect their surroundings. This was a crucial element in effects such as the surface of the ice barrier and the gleams from Stanley's polished exterior. The film's innovative technical achievements are complemented by its progressive look overall, with art direction being provided by L.A.'s Hitman of Design. The Hitman team focused on integrating all the features of the Symbolics Animation System into a dynamic visual whole. Symbolics S-Paint and S-Geometry software proved especially well-suited for producing the complex character modelling and the variety of textural effects called for. "Breaking the Ice" breaks new ground in many ways. It demonstrates new technology in behavioural and character animation, exercises distributed networked rendering, establishes the relationship between Symbolics and Whitney/Demos, and exercises the Symbolics animation system in a large scale project. We are happy to be a part of the SIGGRAPH 1987 Film and Video Show and we hope you will enjoy viewing "Breaking the Ice" as much as we enjoyed creating it.”