1993Landmark Computer Graphics:
For the first time, digital technology was used to create a living, breathing character with skin, muscles, texture, and attitude. This breakthrough expanded the filmmaker's canvas and changed the cinematic art of storytelling. ILM's contribution to Jurassic Park is widely recognized as a high watermark in computer graphics and a pivotal moment in the history of cinema.
1995: Fully Synthetic Speaking Character
Industrial Light & Magic created the first fully synthetic speaking characters with distinct personalities and emotions for Casper. Whereas Jurassic Park had six minutes of digitally animated dinosaurs on the screen, the ghosts in Casper are on the screen for more than 40 minutes.
1996: Facial Animation
Industrial Light & Magic's proprietary facial animation software brought the 3D digital character of Draco, the star of Dragonheart, to life. With the voice and facial physique of Sean Connery as their guide, ILM's team of animators redefined what could be successfully shown on screen.
1999: Realistic Digital Human
The Mummy starred the most realistic digital human character ever seen in film. Featuring totally computer-generated layers of muscles, sinew and tissue, the ILM team again elevated its artistic and technical skill level in bringing a digital character to life.
2000: Performance Capture w/ Real Time Feedback:
Building on the real time 'on-character' motion capture system ILM developed for Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace in 1997, the team expanded its capabilities to provide Director Stephen Sommers with similar on-character capture which could now be dropped accurately into 3D space derived from the filmed plates in real time. The resulting system combined flexibility with unprecedented speed allowing the performance for ILM's CG Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo) to be directed as it would be on a traditional set.
2001: Ambient Occlusion
ILM developed Ambient Occlusion in an effort to produce a greater level of realism for the CG imagery in Pearl Harbor than had ever been produced before. By providing accurate shadowing and directional lighting information Ambient Occlusion allows renderers to create realistic and efficient lighting effects. Since it's development, the technique has become widely used in the field of computer graphics.
2003: Subsurface Scattering Techniques
ILM's Research and Development department received its seventeenth Sci-Tech Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the development of practical methods for rendering skin and other translucent materials using subsurface scattering techniques.
First Extreme Close-up CG Human Character
Sunny, the digital baby in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events marks the first film to feature a computer graphics human character seen in extreme close-up.
2006: Imocap: On-set Performance Capture
ILM develops Imocap, a revolutionary image-based performance capture system for the production of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, a film that would later earn the company its fifteenth Oscar, the BAFTA for Visual Effects and six VES awards. Among the system's key attributes are its extremely low footprint on set and ability to operate in any and all conditions.
2007: Fluid Simulation:
To create the epic sea battle for the third installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean series ILM brought to bear all of the fluid simulation knowledge that they had gained over the years creating effects for films such as Perfect Storm, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Poseidon. The centerpiece of the sea battle is the half-mile wide CG Maelstrom that required the simulation of over 15.5-billion gallons of seawater and additional simulations to create subsurface bubbles, foam, spray, splashes and ship wakes. The software environment for this "virtual water tank" was ILM's proprietary system Zeno. PhysBAM, the fluid dynamics engine that operates within this environment was written in collaboration with researchers from Stanford University. The engine was parallelized so it could be run across 40 processors and even so, it took quite some time to compute. The renders for these passes took anywhere from a couple of minutes to 20 hours per frame.
2008: Fez Animation System
With the large body of complex facial animation required for The Spiderwick Chronicles ILM pushed its R&D team to develop a replacement for their award-winning 'Caricature' system, which had been originally created for the 1996 feature Dragon Heart. 'Fez', as it is called, is a next-generation system developed at ILM that takes a unique approach to complex facial animation allowing for greater flexibility with regard to artist interaction. Two modular interfaces were developed: FaceDon which helps large teams of animators stay "on model' using a sort of virtual model sheet in the form of a facial library of preset expressions, and FaceSelect which allows for the fine-tuning of animation performances utilizing an interface based on human anatomy.
2009: Verte GPU Engine
Creating a massive firestorm the likes of which had never been seen on screen before might seem difficult enough but this, in combination with the fact that the fire needed to be completely directable and now you've got a true challenge on your hands. That is exactly the situation that the ILM crew found themselves in whilst creating the effects for the sixth film in the Harry Potter series. Rather than piece together hundreds of practical elements shot on a soundstage, the team took a different tact, they developed a new software system that would simulate high-resolution, photorealistic fire that was 100% CG.
REFERENCE:
Books:
Mark Cotta Vaz and Patricia Rose Duignan; (1996)
Industrial light & magic: into the digital realm /
Virgin Publishing, ISBN/ISSN: 1852276061
Smith, Thomas G; (1986) Industrial light and magic: the art of special effects.
Columbus Books, ISBN/ISSN: 0862871425
Journals:
3D World – article on Rango (March 2011)
Article:
The Times, Maher, Kevin. (2011) Animation: the future of film? (Times, Play, Saturday 5th March)
DVD: Film
Minority Report, (2002) Film DVD Extras, Special Features including ILM Featurettes. Twentieth Century Fox.
STAR WARS, (2004) Trilogy, DVD Bonus Material, 20 Century Fox.
DVD: Music
Williams, John, (1997) The Empire Strikes Back, The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack. RCA
Web:
Company:
http://www.ilm.com/
http://www.imdb.com/company/co0072491/
ILM –Creating the Impossible – How ILM changed cinema forever
Lucas Film Spin Offs:
http://www.thx.com/about-us
Feature Films:
http://www.rangomovie.co.uk/
Lucas:
http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/538/summary.php
People:
Future & Legacy:
Present Day Success:
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