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MillimeterSculpting With Light
Jan 1, 2003 12:00 PM, by Ellen Wolff
“Total mystic weirdness” is the way Image Savant's Richard “dr.” Baily describes the outer-space milieu of Steven Soderbergh's Solaris. The director wanted his camera to pass through nebulous arcs and veils of light when it approached the mysterious fluid planet that's a central “character” in the film. To create such abstract CG atmospherics, Baily applied his unique software called Spore, which enabled him to animate swirling particle clouds in brilliant hues.
The planet appears in dozens of shots in Solaris. “Its atmosphere is a big thing,” says Baily. “Cinesite and Rhythm & Hues had created a planet that looked like really sexy lingerie. To enshroud it, they needed an aurora borealis effect.” When Brooke Breton at producer James Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment saw Baily's artwork, Baily landed the job.
Baily acknowledges surprise at getting this opportunity, since he'd initially created his imagery purely as fine art. “My original intention was to make high-res, massively complex particle paintings. I was basically trying to sculpt with light. I wasn't thinking of animation.” Working solo for months in his hilltop studio near the Hollywood sign, he'd developed a stand-alone particle system when commodity software couldn't achieve what he wanted. “I came up with an approach that would allow me to sculpt clouds of data with billions of particles. It wouldn't surprise me if other people realized this idea too, but I implemented it in a way that I'd never seen anyone else do before.”
One look at Baily's computer monitors reveals his purist approach. Lines of raw C++ code scroll on endlessly — there's no user-friendly interface here. His studio is packed with SGI equipment, some of it purchased for a song on eBay when he ramped up for Solaris.
Given his previous experiments, it didn't take Baily long to deliver. Production Designer Phil Messina had provided reference materials and asked when they could see some CG ideas. “I think they were figuring a week or two,” Baily recalls, “but I said, ‘You'll start to get your first images tomorrow. Then I'll keep feeding them to you as they develop. By the end of the week you should have about 15 designs.’ Eventually, I delivered 45 minutes of 16-bit animation rendered at 2K. To go from doing still frames to complex animation in a few months was wild.”
Solaris isn't the only beneficiary of Baily's ingenuity, either. Paramount's feature The Core and the television miniseries A Wrinkle In Time also showcase distinct variations of his technique. Baily is understandably reluctant to divulge much about his software. “[It's] a system that's sort of a continuum between order and chaos,” Baily says. “Some images reside firmly in the world of order, with the particles animated in a fairly straightforward way. Other images that look really twitchy and electric reside in the world of chaos.” Playing within this spectrum allows Baily to experiment with what he loves best. “Dealing with abstractions and psychedelic animation — that's my specialty!”
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
