Double Negative

Visual Effects
Customer Success Story

Autodesk Maya

A-list effects.
Double Negative Visual Effects
delivers blockbuster results with
Autodesk Maya software.

Maya has always offered

clear advantages for us.
Its full featured, and I
think weve used every
Maya tool at some
point here. Another
huge benefit is the
Maya API [application
programming interface],
which is excellent.
Almost everything can
be accessed within Maya.
Its a very open system.
Rick Leary
Cohead of 3D
Double Negative Visual Effects

2007 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

The Company
Double Negative Visual Effects, located in the
heart of Londons Soho district, was formed in
1998 as a small studio with a staff of about 30.
Today the company is a major player in the
United Kingdom digital effects market, boasting
more than 220 3D artists and animators, and a
reputation for quality and talent that has secured
its place on Hollywoods A-list of facilities that
create digital effects for film.
Top-Quality Shots
As Double Negative has grown, so too has
its show reel, which features increasingly
sophisticated effects for an impressive selection
of moviesfrom independent productions to the
latest blockbusters. Through it all, the team has
relied primarily on one 3D package to help them
consistently deliver top-quality shots: Autodesk
Maya software.

Maya has always offered clear advantages for us,

says Rick Leary, cohead of 3D. Its full featured,
and I think weve used every Maya tool at some
point here
Another huge benefit is the Maya API [application
programming interface], which is excellent, he
adds. Almost everything can be accessed within
Maya. Its a very open system.
Beyond Boxed Software
As Leary explains, large studios like Double
Negative need to combine off-the-shelf and
in-house software to remain successful. The Maya
toolset serves so many applications extremely well,
from commercials and TV to films and games. But
when you work at the high end of any of these areas,
you sometimes need a capability that off-the-shelf
software doesnt yet offer.

Gain Flexibility with MEL Scripting

As a result, on some films, Double Negatives
R&D department writes a MEL (Maya Embedded
Language) script to accomplish some specific task
that no commercial software can do at that time.
The strength of Maya software is that its full
featured, yet open, so we can do most of our
work in Maya and write scripts that plug into
Maya to accomplish specialized tasks, says Leary.

Deliver Spot-on Accuracy

According to Leary, the team built the 3D model of
the Sky Vessel entirely in Maya software. Only
about 90 feet of the 130-foot ship was built on set
for use in deck shots. So in shots of the ships bow,
and in all the wide shots showing the hull, youre
seeing our CG ship, explains Leary. To make our
model blend with the live-action shots of the ship,
our model had to be spot-on accurate.

Leary notes that these dual strengths have served

Double Negative well in all its projects, including
its most recent endeavor, Stardust, an enchanting
tale of a shooting star that crashes into the
magical kingdom of Stormhold and turns out not
to be a star, but a beautiful woman chased by an
array of seekers who want her secret powers.
Double Negative was responsible for about 330
shots in the film, the most difficult consisting of
the Sky Vessela fantastical flying shipand a
photorealistic rendition of Stormhold as seen
from the Sky Vessel.

To aim for accuracy, the team started with the art

departments blueprints of the ship. We scanned
them in, used them as image planes in Maya, and
modeled the curves of the ship on top, Leary says.
This is a Victorian ship, built from wooden planks.
With the NURBS tools in Maya, it was quick and
easy to project curves onto the surfaces to work
out exactly how the planking should be arranged
to match the on-set model. Once we got that
finalized, we converted to polygons, which we
turned into subdivision surfaces. As a final step,
the team used LIDAR (light detecting and ranging)
scans of the on-set ship as reference while
modeling the finishing touches in Maya.

The strength of Maya

software is that its full
featured, yet open, so we
can do most of our work
in Maya and write scripts
that plug into Maya to
accomplish specialized
tasks.
Rick Leary
Cohead of 3D
Double Negative Visual Effects

2007 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

Create Complex Hybrid Environments

Whereas the team relied solely on robust
modeling tools in Maya software to build the
photorealistic 3D Sky Vessel, they took advantage
of the softwares built-in features and a pair of MEL
scripts to create the Stormhold environment.
For the aerial view of Stormhold, the team began
with photos of Scotlands Isle of Skye, which they
purchased from an aerial survey company.
We bought a 21x20 kilometer area split into
410 tiles, says Leary. The photos were of
phenomenally high resolution; about 25 centimeters
of ground for each pixel in the photos. The
company also provided Double Negative with
LIDAR scans of the area. That gave us a digital
elevation map, which we turned into a polymesh
in Maya, he says. We used this for the environment immediately below the Sky Vessel.
Organic Modeling with Maya Artisan
To extend the Stormhold data set to the directors
specifications, the team added to the mix some
survey data of the Rocky Mountains and used
Maya Artisan to make the Rockies look more like
a cross between the Alps and the Himalayas.
We use Maya Artisan for all our organic modeling,
says Leary. For Stardust, we brought in chunks of
the Rockies and used a brush to quickly and easily
give them the precise look we were after.

2007 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

Cloud Building with Maya Fluid Effects

In addition to landscape elements, the team
generated cloudscapes for these shots, simulating
moving foreground clouds using Maya Fluid
Effects and static background clouds using dnCloud,
a cloud-building plug-in for Maya that Double
Negatives R&D department developed within MEL
for an earlier project, the World War I drama Flyboys.
Manage Large Data Sets
The resulting photoCG hybrid environment
measured about 90 kilometers from center to
edge, and weighed in at around 60 GB. To
manage this enormous data set, the team used
Tecto, an innovative landscape management
system they also had developed within MEL to
manage similar work in Flyboys.

According to Leary, being able to extend Maya

softwares already robust capabilities with a tool
for managing enormous data sets has played an
integral role in the facilitys success in generating
photorealistic environments. Weve used Tecto
on lots of projects. For Stardust in particular, we
had to render huge sections of environment from
around 4,000 feet. So we built a grid of squares
in Maya and used Tecto to load into Maya the
high-res photo tiles we wanted to use, along with
spheres to represent the clouds, he explains. This
enabled the team to do a CG flyover and preview
how the scene would look before rendering.

2007 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

Seamlessly Blend Photos and Effects

The Stormhold environment is a great example
of how the Maya toolset, combined with its open
API and MEL scripting, enables artists to achieve
otherwise impossible effects shots. These shots
encompass a large distance and needed to be
photorealistic so that there was no discernible
difference between these shots and the Isle of
Skye photos, says Leary. The only way we could
view and work with this data set was with Tecto.
Integrate Toolsets
Tecto and dnCloud are among a handful of MEL
utilities the team has created through the years.
Its quite interesting because once youve been
at Double Negative for a while its easy to forget
whats Maya and what isnt, because our tools
integrate so well with Maya, says Leary. This is
something at which Maya excels, and its one of
the reasons Maya has stayed the market leader.

2007 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

Create Unique Creature Simulations

Its also one of the reasons Double Negative will
continue to rely on Maya. The facility has recently
been working on the films 2000 BC and Hellboy 2
both which feature a heavy amount of creature work.
Were basing this work in Maya and using MEL a
great deal to write our own tools to achieve some
unique muscle and skin simulations, says Leary.
There are a lot of innovative effects on the horizon
for us, he concludes. And Maya will continue to
be an important element to our success.

2007 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

To learn more about Autodesk Maya software,

visit www.autodesk.com/maya.

2007 by Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

Once youve been at Double Negative for a while its easy to forget whats Maya and
what isnt, because our tools integrate so well with Maya. This is something at which
Maya excels, and its one of the reasons Maya has stayed the market leader.
Rick Leary
Cohead of 3D
Double Negative Visual Effects

Autodesk and Maya are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and/or other countries. All other brand names, product
names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. Autodesk reserves the right to alter product offerings and specifications at any time
without notice, and is not responsible for typographical or graphical errors that may appear in this document.
2007 Autodesk, Inc. All rights reserved.