By Claudia Kienzle



Sydney, Australia - For the movie, "House of Flying Daggers," 3D-animated effects were created by Animal Logic-using Autodesk's 3ds Max® software and Discreet® Inferno® interactive design system-that could not have been done as effectively as live action sequences.



In one of the film's effects scenes, a government policeman picks up some beans from a ceramic bowl and throws them so that they strike and bounce off the surfaces of large ornamental drums. Later, he casts the contents of the ceramic bowl causing hundreds of beans to scatter and bounce wildly on the drums.

"We used 3ds Max to model, animate, and render the 3D beans and Inferno to integrate the 3D elements into the scene because using 3D beans offered more creative control of the intricate, precise movement of the beans; so they would hit the drums and not the actors," said Nigel Waddington, visual effects/3D artist for Animal Logic.



"On the shot where we travel with a single bean hitting four drums, we spent the best part of two weeks blending and retiming the separate dolly tracks which were shot to create one seamless move in Inferno. This background was then camera-tracked in 3ds Max, before the beans were animated. We rendered the beans with Vray, and all of the rendered layers, which included dust hits, were then brought back into Inferno for the final composite," said Animal Logic's Andy Brown, co-visual-effects supervisor on "House of Flying Daggers."

The scene also features a magical long-sleeved dance during which the heroine wraps the end of her long sleeve around the handle of the sword. It appears as though her sleeve acts as an extension of her arm as it parries and thrusts the sword.



"Since wielding a real sword would be too heavy and potentially dangerous, a 3D sword was created using 3ds Max, which accurately matched reference shots of the real sword in intricate detail," said Brown.



Using a live action plate of the sleeve twisting and stabbing (under control of a puppeteer using wires to manipulate the fabric), the sword was hand-tracked in the 3ds Max application and composited in the Inferno system.

At the conclusion of the dance, the hero throws the ceramic bowl at the heroine, and she turns and strikes the bowl with the sword, shattering it into small pieces. While the sword was real in this instance, the ceramic bowl was now a 3D object created in 3ds Max, and appeared to shatter with the help of Particle Flow, a software plug-in for 3ds Max. Also used was Reactor® physics simulator software designed to simulate real physical phenomena, such as things bouncing, falling, colliding, or other movements where objects must appear to have real weight and mass.



"3ds Max is a powerful, versatile tool that enabled us to work at film resolution very easily," said Waddington. "Its versatility stems from the many plug-ins on the market that can extend the reach and capabilities of the core program in virtually unlimited ways."



Brown added, "House of Flying Daggers" illustrates how 3ds Max, working in tandem with Inferno, can create 3D-animated effects that behave realistically, which promotes the credibility of whatever illusion moviemakers want to create."



Autodesk, Discreet, 3ds Max, Inferno, and Reactor are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc./Autodesk Canada Co. in the USA and other countries. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. © 2005 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.