Industrial Light and Magic
Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) is a visual effects company located at the Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio, San Francisco, California. It was started by director George Lucas in 1975 to create the visual effects of Star Wars. ILM is a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. ILM is considered responsible for starting the modern era of visual effects.
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History
Star Wars
Started in May 1975 (studio started July 1975) in Van Nuys, California.
Classic Optical Era
The George Lucas and the Steven Spielberg films. The 80s.
Early Computer Graphics Work
The Lucasfilm CG Group (Pixar)
The Digital Revolution
After the Pixar spinoff (1986) and the early 90s
Recent History
From the Star Wars prequels onwards.
Important Contributions
- Motion control. It's a system involving a computer controlled camera, originally developed for Star Wars. The camera is moved via actuator motors controlled by a computer. This computer is also capable of recording camera moves and then playing them back, essential to film the several passes (beauty, lights, matte) needed for miniature photography. The work was derived from John Dykstra's work at
- VistaVision use in VFX. VistaVision was a format originally developed by Paramount Pictures in 1954 to compete with other wide formats like CinemaScope, but it was never successful. VistaVision consists of a negative with twice the area of the traditional 35mm film and ran horizontally. Because it was twice as wide it was often referred to a 8-perf (8 sprocket perforations along a single frame instead of the 4 for regular 35mm). The format was chosen for several reasons: the larger negative area would mean better quality for subsequent composites which would suffer generational degradation, the equipment was cheaper because it was on disuse and also much easier to handle than 70mm format. VistaVision would be used for both cameras to shoot VFX elements as well as for the optical printers. Concurrently ILM would also help develop high quality optics needed to achieve the best quality possible.
- GoMotion.
- REYES and shading trees.
- Particle systems.
- Digital compositing (compositing math).
- Pixar Image Computer.
- Film scanners (CCD).
- Laser film recorders.
- Morphing.
- Paint systems for film work.
- DID.
- 3D paint system.
- Hair systems.
- OpenEXR.
- Production ready Subsurface Scattering (SSS).
- Ambient Occlusion.
Software Used
As with most larger VFX studios, ILM uses a combination of commercial software and proprietary applications developed inhouse. ILM's use of proprietary software goes back to its early days with the hiring of Ed Catmull in 1979 and the creation of the Lucasfilm CG Group. Back then commercial animation software, in the modern sense, didn't exist (Alias was founded in 1983, Wavefront and TDI in 1984, Newtek in 1985 and Softimage in 1986). Most commercial animation studios back then relied on inhouse software.
Currently ILM's animation pipeline is based around Zeno, a proprietary application. It serves as a hub and animation environment for most of the pipeline. Zeno started its life in 1998 as a neutral file format and file translation facilities which would allow allow interchange between commercial packages. It then evolved as a proprietary rigid body dynamics system developed for Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace. It was continually developed until it was decided that it should become the basis of ILM's visual effects infrastructure with an extensible architecture. At Dennis Muren's behest, War of the Worlds (2005) became the first project to mainly use Zeno. It was followed closely by The Island. In 2006 Zeno entered its third major version. Zeno also served as the base for LucasArts infrastructure, and their game level editor Zed is an extension of Zeno.
Maya is the main commercial animation package package and it's tightly integrated into Zeno. For example, digital artists can setup and animate a character inside Maya, take it into Zeno to apply dynamics, and export it back into Maya. Maya's adoption came from ILM's long tradition with Alias' PowerAnimator, first used on The Abyss (1989), and mainly used as a modeling tool. Maya is also used for some of the modeling tasks.
ILM used to be a big Softimage house but it has largely fallen in disuse.
Caricature (also referred as Cari) is a proprietary specialized animation tool, mainly developed by Cary Phillips, that was first developed for the facial animation in Dragonheart. It subsequently was extensively used to create all sorts of secondary animation. Nowadays the animation work is being taken over by Zeno.
Other notable proprietary applications used at ILM include ViewPaint, used to paint 3D models and mainly developed by John Schlag, Brian Knep, Zoran Kacic-Alesic and Tom Williams, ISculpt in particular for organic modeling and Lux, an interactive lighting tool.
In the compositing department ILM uses 3 main applications: Apple's Shake and the inhouse developed Sabre and CompTime. Sabre is a set of extensions developed on top of Inferno and Flame systems. CompTime was developed from the ground up as an extensible (via Python plugins) composting system. ILM has also been known to use Adobe's After Effects.
In the rendering department ILM mainly depends on PhotoRealistic RenderMan (PRMan) and mental ray. The precursor of PRMan was originally developed by the Lucasfilm CG Group. When the group was spun off as Pixar in 1986, part of the agreement with Steve Jobs was that ILM would get early access to any technology developed by Pixar. It even specified source code access to a few individuals. Since then PRMan has become the rendering workhorse at ILM.
ILM started using mental ray in 1995 and entered a software licensing and custom support and development agreement with mental images in 2002. mental ray has been used in particular to render objects that have required global illumination, reflection, refractions and subsurface scattering. In many cases ILM uses both PRMan and mental ray in the same shots for different elements. Also several prominent ILM members came from mental images' commercial division, including Stefen Fangmeier, John Berton and John Nelson, who all joined ILM to work on Terminator 2: Judgement Day.
Over the years ILM has also developed many proprietary renderers for specific tasks, such as rendering hair and particles. Some have been in use in recent times like pRender. SplutterFish’s Brazil is also used at ILM's Digital Matte Department.
The Digital Matte Dept. uses Zenviro, a camera mapping tool developed mainly by Dan Goldman and Alan Trombla. It allows the artists to project high resolution images onto 2D cards and 3D geometry and also create camera moves in the environment.
Pixologic's ZBrush was recently incorporated at ILM in particular to generate high resolution displacement maps. It's first big use was to detail the characters in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.
E-on Software's Vue Infinite environment creation software was officially adopted by ILM's Digital Matte Dept. in 2006.
Python is considered the main scripting language. It was adopted around 1996
ILM has an agreement with Stanford's Computer Graphics Group (since around 2001) to develop cutting edge software. The group, led by Prof. Ron Fedkiw has developed software for ILM mainly for fluids, fire and smoke simulations, as seen on such films as Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Poseidon.
Notable People that Work(ed) There
Current
Chrissie England, Dennis Muren, John Knoll, Scott Farrar, Bill George, Pablo Helman, Steve Sullivan
Former Notable Employees
John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Phil Tippett, Ken Ralston, Craig Barron, Joe Johnston, David Fincher, Lincoln Hu, Habib Zargarpour, Scott Ross, Jim Morris
Projects
ILM has worked on over 225 film projects, dozens of commercials as well as TV, video game and special venue projects. They have worked on some of the most successful franchises including the Star Wars saga, the Indiana Jones trilogy, the Jurassic Park trilogy, the Harry Potter films, the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, several Star Trek films and the Terminator sequels.
What is less known is that ILM has also contributed to smaller and dramatic films, mainly providing invisible type effects work, such as on Out of Africa, The Doors, Schindler's List, The Green Mile, Magnolia, Gangs of New York and Munich.
In recent years a good percentage of their projects have involved "911 calls", projects where they come in very late in the schedule for reason like expanded VFX shot counts, new endings, films going over schedule, general cleanups and the like. Examples include Titanic, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Herbie: Fully Loaded and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
For 2006 ILM's big projects include Mission: Impossible III, Poseidon, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Eragon. Further down the road they are already slated to work on Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Transformers, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and The Spiderwick Chronicles.
External Links and Resources
The Letterman Digital Arts Center at the Presidio
The Letterman Digital Arts Center at the Presidio Press Preview
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