Reallusion Tools Enable Real-Time Filmmaking

John Martin

This slab of the spectrum is a space where I share the POV of a real-time 3D frontiersman. When not thwarting the world of evil villains, I'm working with Reallusion to evangelize and further develop our real-time 3D and 2D animation software tools, iClone and CrazyTalk. Reallusion is part of the Intel Software Partner program (full disclosure achievement unlocked) and to put it simple, we can't do our magic without the magic of Intel. Stay tuned for more transmissions from the real-time frontier...

Writer becomes Animator. Real-time innovation, prime suspect!

While such an endeavor is possible, it's still quite ambitious to leap from a written storyteller to animator. There's so much to learn just to dip your toe in the animation waters. You've got to have content, right? You need models. Do you model? Okay, there's a book for that and tutorials or you could go to school to get that part down... What about the nuclear-powered PC you'll need and that render farm?!? Eee-aye-ohhhhmfg. The animation aspirational has a lot to consider, but you wanted to just tell a story, right?

The wheels of innovation are turning for animators; pro & aspirational. Real-time is flattening the learning curve between those institutionally skilled and newcomers, like a garage-band animation movement flowing into the fray. Just like Tom, you can put away your boots and put the idea of needing a render farm out to pasture too. Tom Weston has been writing short stories and books for a number of years and was interested in bringing his stories to the screen. "The story came first, but as soon as I had written it, I knew that it would be the first animation to come out of the company and I knew that iClone was still the only software we could seriously consider." Tom's film, There be Monsters!, is one of the early stories behind this movement. Tom utilized Reallusion's iClone to bring his fairy-tale to life and all the way to the film festival circuit.

Tom's experience is chronicled on Reallusion's blog with details on his journey through the writing and animation process.

A quote from Tom that really speaks to the innovation commitment from Reallusion and Intel, "I don’t know how iClone works its magic, but the real-time rendering is amazing. To be able to create a scene - and it may be a 30 second scene - but to do that in real time, to run the animation, make a change in lighting, run it again, make a change to the camera, move a character, add a prop, change a costume, whatever – to do all that in real time and then be able to say ‘OK that’s a wrap, print it’ – and to do all that in a fraction of the time it takes the competition to render a single frame – I’m impressed."

There Be Monsters! clip:

Award winning writer, Tom Weston, moves into the director’s chair for the animated adaptation of his short story, There be Monsters! Tom’s previous work includes the screenplay, fission, which was selected as a finalist at the 2008 London Independent Film Festival, and which is scheduled to be published as a novel in early 2011. Tom’s other works include the Urban Fantasy novels, First Night and The Elf of Luxembourg, collectively known as The Alex and Jackie Adventures. Currently, Tom is writing the third book in the series, titled, Feathered: being a fairy tale. For more information, visit Tom at his web site, http://www.tom-weston.com.

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