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Millimeter3D Characters for Television Production
Mar 1, 2003 12:00 PM,
Johanne Bouchard
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Kaydara Online 3.5
 Kaydara’s Online 3.5 creates animated hosts for Radio Canada’s interactive television game show WIZZ. |
Radio Canada, Canada's French-language public television broadcaster, has a reputation for innovative programming. We deliver television that is both challenging to develop and creative and inspiring for our viewers. That's why we decided to develop WIZZ, a realtime interactive television game show that uses 3D elements along with very human characters that provide a connection between real and virtual worlds.
As we looked into the requirements for the project, the costs and technical requirements seemed significant, but not impossible. That's when we heard about Kaydara Online, a 3D production system that allows broadcasters to add 3D characters to live-to-air and live-to-tape productions. Online became the backbone for this project and an essential tool for making WIZZ a reality.
We initially approached Kaydara with the story concept for WIZZ, a game show that revolves around two contestants attempting to answer questions in order to win money and prizes as they interact with animated characters. Kaydara helped us imagine all of the options that would allow this to happen in realtime and provided the tools and training to put our plans into action using Kaydara Online.
We started out using Kaydara Online for the character and scene development. From sketches and illustrations, Kaydara Online allowed us to previsualize how the characters would interact and run through the different aspects of the game in realtime. This helped us both define the overall look of the show's environment and determine what game mechanics could actually be achieved.
When the time came to go into production, we brought all the controls over each character to two simple devices: a microphone and a joystick. This way, the puppeteers are able to interact with the contestants and provide live feedback to the show host as if they were actually real actors on the studio floor. Online allowed us to take all the information including data feeds, joystick, audio, video, and video clips and then generate a final image that we could use in a live television production.
We also used Kaydara's MotionBuilder software to develop a combination of mo-cap and keyframe animations that generated an array of movements for our stars, Bo and Pixel, such as walk, jog, run, turn left, turn right, fly, and jump, etc.
The big difference between the Online system and any other 3D animation technology on the market is its ability to allow a performance to be rendered in realtime. This feature alone allowed us to produce WIZZ in a timely fashion — we record five shows a day live-to-tape without having to go in postproduction — and all within a reasonable budget. With the kind of diminishing budgets that we are faced with across all television production, it is wonderful to have a product that allows you to make a 30-minute show in 30 minutes.
We did find that there were some hardware limitations with Online. Our content library is constantly growing, and the rendering system doesn't seem to be capable of handling that growth. As broadcasters, we are always pushing the limits of our systems; any improvements in Online's rendering speed will allow us to enhance the quality of our show.
Throughout production we were also very impressed with Online's ability to accept last-minute changes. For instance, we constantly add new video clips or new billboards in the city in order to make it more alive. With Online, we could do one show with a certain billboard and have a new one for the next show.
On some occasions during production, we may run into technical or operational difficulties. In most cases, we stop the recording of the show and re-cue all the equipment. The host goes back to a time prior to the error, and we resume the recording of the show from that moment. When the problem is beyond this simple procedure, we simply take the show for a little ride in our postproduction department and make the necessary fixes to get a final version. For this, we may have to shoot some extra material with the host and the contestants in order to have material to use for the edit.
Animating the voices of Bo and Pixel was also an important production component because it gave the puppeteers the ability to make each character speak. Through the use of Kaydara's Voice Reality (a phoneme recognition system integral to Kaydara Online), an audio signal can modify the look of the character's face by changing its mouth from one position to another, thus creating the illusion that the character is actually speaking.
It is wonderful to see the level of emotions that Bo and Pixel can convey through their facial expressions and gestures. One of our fears was that the contestants would be too shy to speak to the characters and that there would be a distance between them, but that was not the case. It's amazing to see how the contestants adapt rapidly. I believe the realtime aspect of Online brings a level of interaction that makes everybody comfortable.
We were also pleased to see that the Online system comes as an integrated solution with all the interfaces required for a broadcaster. We haven't had to use external converters or adapters to connect the system to our studio because the system can be genlocked to our plant. Online also supports serial digital video input and output, and the included professional quality audio card offers balanced audio connections on XLR connectors. We also really like Online's ability to playback non-compressed AVI video clips directly from the system's hard drives. This gave us the ability to integrate moving images to the city, giving the game more life.
Kaydara Online is a very good system but is not without its challenges. One of the biggest challenges we faced was the lack of training available. Because Online is a new product in the broadcast industry, it is not easy to find freelancers to operate the system. We had to train three people internally to get us going, and now we are self-sufficient. I'm sure this issue will be resolved over time as there are more Online systems in broadcast facilities.
Overall we were very happy with Kaydara Online's performance for this project. It was incredibly diverse and easy to use even with the WIZZ's advanced character animation and player interplay challenges. Online's advanced features helped the WIZZ emerge from a series of sketches into a fun, unpredictable show with interactive and dynamic realtime character animation. Every episode is different and anything can happen.
Since 1977 Johanne Bouchard has worked at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in various positions, including production assistant, producer, and most recently coordinating producer. Bouchard's production credits include L'enfer, c'est nous autres (Julie Snyder), Christiane Charette en direct (Christiane Charette), and Les détecteurs de mensonges (Patrice L'…cuyer). For more information about the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Kaydara, visit www.millimeter.com.
