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DCP BlogrollStep By Step: The NFL on Fox
Jun 5, 2007 12:53 PM, By Ellen Wolff
An NFL promo transformation.
This promises to be the year of “transformers,” and Fox Sports graphics design department and Blur Studio have already made menacing robots work for them. Fox chose Blur Studio in Venice, Calif. to animate the 3D-CG show opener for its National Football League broadcasts, and the result was an Emmy-nominated production.
The 20-second piece features a massive battle-worn football player who runs down field for a touchdown while thousands cheer in the stadium’s tiers. As he runs, the stadium around him is transformed into a futuristic obstacle course filled with defender robots. After crashing into the end zone, he metamorphoses into the solid column that forms the logo on NFL on Fox.
“Our main goal was to bring back the Fox robot, which was an icon for Fox Sports and the NFL for many years,” explains Blur Creative Director Jennifer Miller. “It had been done in 3D, but it was very much ’80s ‘chrome.’ We wanted bring it into a more contemporary realm, and give it some grit.”
While the transformation process was a key part of this assignment, Blur didn’t present multiple frames to Fox to show how this would be done. Instead, the studio sold its design with what was basically a single image—created in Adobe Photoshop by Art Director Adam Swaab. “I don’t think we were given specifics,” Swaab recalls. “It was complicated to lock down how that transformation was going to happen in 1 ˝ seconds, and still be readable.”
Working with Fox Sports Graphics Creative Director Gary Hartley, the Blur team set about translating its design into animation. “We worked with concept artists to determine what would happen,” Miller says. “Do the robot’s arms and shoulders extend out? How does a robot turn into a box and not look hokey?”
Blur brought extensive experience to the task of creating a dirty, dinged-up bot. The studio previously produced the futuristic Rockfish, (short-listed for Best Animated Short by the Motion Picture Academy) and it has amassed a huge library of models and textures. “We have a vast assets that we tap into regularly,” Miller says.
But as CG Supervisor Jed Denjean explains, “We always add grime and dirt to the textures we use. That helps us avoid really ‘CG-looking’ things.”
“This project pretty much included everything that’s difficult in 3D,” Denjean says. “There were big, wide environments with a 180-degree pan. And everything was dissolving into something else—with a change of lighting in the middle.”
To gather animation data on how football players run, Blur brought in USC athletes for motion-capture sessions. The studio recently installed a 16-camera Vicon system in its 40’x60’ mo-cap stage, and the Fox Sports graphics people knew exactly the kind of athletes whose motion should be captured. “Our clients were very particular about whether these players were running backs or linebackers,” Miller says. “Sports buffs can really tell the difference!”
Once that data was translated into Autodesk 3DsMax software, Denjean’s animators went to work. “Robots are easy for motion capture,” Denjean says. “But there was still a lot of reworking to do with hands and fingers, which we don’t motion capture because we would get too much data.”
The animators also had to massage the mo-cap data to convey the incredible bulk of the football robot in this piece. “There were definitely a lot of things that we had to exaggerate,” Denjean recalls. “Even though USC running backs are pretty heavy, motion capture didn’t give us the sense of weight that you’d expect from a big robot. It is definitely the animator’s job to exaggerate that sense of weight.”
In addition to the player robots, Blur also had to animate the huge crowds that filled the stadium. “We had 70,000 people in that stadium,” Denjean says. “We had a library of 10 or 15 animations, and we looped them so that we had enough. We randomly assigned different pieces of animation depending on the different characters—I think we had 15 different models using 15 different textures and 15 different pieces of animation. When you randomize those across the crowds in the whole stadium, you never see the same things.”
Blur rendered all of this CG in multiple passes using Splutterfish Brazil software. Denjean describes the final look as “A stylized mix. There are a lot of elements that are not photoreal but that use the same techniques. Brazil is not just a photoreal renderer. It’s good at handling lots of polygons.”
“Most of the rendering went pretty smoothly,” Swaab says. “A couple of frames that were the most intensive were the frames where glass got very close to camera. That ate up the biggest render time, but overall, it was pretty manageable.”
Blur used Eyeon Digital Fusion for compositing, but the studio also had to deliver a package of animations done in Adobe After Effects (the software used by Fox Sports graphics). Some of these were ancillary pieces that Fox could use in its broadcasts as needed. “A few of these were different camera angles,” Miller explains. “One was a camera that moved 360-degrees around the stadium, with the crowds there all the time. So those kinds of elements did require quite a bit of work.”
“There was back-and-forth between Fusion and After Effects,” Swaab says. “A lot of the graphic work was done in After Effects and output—and then re-comped in Fusion.”
Following the success of this piece, Fox again chose Blur to animate the graphics for the next Super Bowl broadcast. “We’re using the robot again,” Miller says. “But he’ll be more of a gladiator, with sweeping camera moves around him.”
Meanwhile, look for Blur to extend their robot reputation with cinematics for Activision’s Transformers: The Game, based on the movie by director Michael Bay.
“Blur’s reel has quite a lot of testosterone in it now,” Miller says.
Credit Roll
Fox Sports
EVP/Creative Director: Gary Hartley
VP of Production: Cathy Perow
Lead Designer: Robert Howell
Blur Studio
Creative Directors: Jennifer Miller, Tim Miller
CG Supervisor: Jerome Denjean
Art Directors: Dan Rice, Adam Swaab
Animation Supervisor: Derron Ross
Executive Producer: Al Shier
Layout: David Nibbelin, Derron Ross
Modeling: Alessandro Baldasseroni, Luis Calero, Zack Cork, Joshua Cox,
David Stinnett, Tim Wallace
Lighting and Compositing: Kris Kaufman, Dan Knight, Dan Rice, David Stinnett,
Adam Swaab
FX: Brandon Riza
CG Character Technical Supervisor: Jon Jordan
Character Modeling QC Supervisor: Sze Chan
Rigging: Mattias Jervil
Cloth Simulation: Malcolm Thomas-Gustave
Mocap: Ryan Girard
Mocap Talent: Keith Brown, Desmond Faison, Christopher Hicks
Concept Design: Chuck Wojtkiewicz
