Don McCoy - Area 51
Area 51 has been producing groundbreaking, award winning effects for many years now, culminating with an Emmy® for Outstanding Visual Effects for a Miniseries, Special, or Movie for their work on Sci-Fi Channel's Frank Herbert's Dune. They are nominated again for 2003 for work on the sequel, Children of Dune, and as before, NewTek's LightWave was the key 3D weapon in their effects arsenal.

Digital Artist Don McCoy notes that while the producers of Frank Herbertís Dune filmed the actors on stages with sets and matte painting backdrops, on Children of Dune, ìthey decided they would not confine us to the backdrops that they created. They shot everything in front of a blue screen, so we were able to create beautiful environments, from building city landscapes to beautiful mountains, and of course some really cool looking ships.î

Area 51 was able to take the effects to a whole new level for the new miniseries. ìSince this one was shot in blue screen, and had some very interesting lighting - the most eerie scene was backlit -- that was an advantage to us since with LightWave we were able to accurately simulate light sources,î says McCoy. ìCreating a LightWave 3D environment, we could put the light source back there and light up the surrounding area and match the lighting put on the actor. It was very easy to create that look and effect.î

ìLightWave has been designed for the filmmaker,î Don concludes. ìYou are able to do everything with LightWave from modeling your vehicles, your buildings, your environments and your characters, and you are able to put realistic textures on them. You put a camera in your scene, put in light sources that you can match to known values, and you render. The resulting image has a beautiful, real look to it.î

Visit almost any of the top visual effects companies in the world, and youíll find LightWave 3D. In the last ten years seven Emmy® Visual Effects awards went to productions that used LightWave as their 3D tool of choice, as well as countless films, games, music videos, and commercials. Both Emmy® VFX category winners in 2001, Star Trek: Voyager and Frank Herbertís Dune, were produced using LightWave 3D, as well as 2001 Oscar® nominee for Best Animated Picture, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.

The Emmy®-winning tradition for LightWave-powered productions continued with 2002 Series VFX Emmy winner Enterprise: Broken Bow, and with seven of ten nominated programs in the visual effects categories for 2003, including all five nominees in the series category (for the second year in a row), the string of wins will go on. Great artists know a great tool, and will make the best use of it to bring incredible visions to the screen, and to achieve this extraordinary level of recognition.

Animation
LightWave's Layout is designed with the filmmaker in mind. On this virtual soundstage you can quickly and easily arrange your 3D models and precisely control their motions. Set lights and match them perfectly to real footage to insure perfect integration of the real and the digital elements in your project. Add and control multiple cameras, and precisely match their characteristics to the real cameras shooting your live footage. In sum, you can precisely design the actions of every element of your scene, and exercise full control over the look of the final rendered output.

Integration
One of the first considerations in selecting a tool for your production pipeline is how well it integrates with other tools. LightWave's support for output to formats such as RLA and RPF insure that your 3D elements will work well with your compositing applications. Object import and export capabilities, including 3DS, OBJ and DXF make LightWave able to mesh well with other 3D applications. The powerful API and scripting language insures that you can create custom additions to extend LightWave's power and further integrate it into your pipeline in any way you need.

Physics
LightWave 3D includes powerful and easy to control physical simulations. LightWave's soft-body dynamics can be used to create realistic flowing movement for cloth, Jell-O, flesh, hair or other materials. A variety of standard material selections are included, such as thin cotton, thick cotton, rubber, and more, and you can customize the characteristics of your materials as well. You can adjust settings for the effect of gravity, wind, and other environmental conditions on your material. As of version [8], the hard-body dynamics capabilities provide you with accurate simulation of solid objects, including the breakup of such objects in collisions. Flexible settings allow you to model the behavior of virtually any solid, whether it be brick, metal, or a fragile pane of glass.