MICHAEL THURMEIER: "There was this gradual roll-out from Sun during production as we had some 300 people working on it, and you don't just drop 300 new computers at one time. "And every film we try a new technology, and so we went from Silicon Graphics to a Linux-based PC, and this time we hooked up with Sun and their new Ultra 24 workstations."
But that comes with a cost attached - while the software is way better today than what we had just a few years ago, it also needs a lot of power to render and process, and every year we're looking to see what's the newest, fastest equipment that's out there that can help us. It's beautiful software that we developed at Blue Sky and our trademark is the look of the movie. SALDANHA: "With every project we try to find the best way to get the film done, and we're very proud of our proprietary software and our renderer. POST: Tell us how you got involved with Sun Microsystems on this film? And then the composition needs to be tweaked a bit sometimes, and the camera needs to be adjusted a bit sometimes, too." It's post in terms of doing all things for your left eye, and then they go into the scene files and place a second camera. But it's not a post process in terms of taking strictly 2D imagery and turning it into 3D. You have two cameras on the set, to make it 3D. You animate, and render for the regular version, but then you have to re-render with the two eyes. POST: Isn't the 3D stereo like a post production process for you? After the second sequence was animated, we decided to go 3D and put a team together to make it work, and we started to be very aware of camera composition and movement and character placement." When we started we didn't know for sure but there was speculation, so we had to evaluate technically if we could do it in the timeframe. SALDANHA: "Yes, and we knew early on we'd go 3D.
POST: When did you decide to do it in 3D, and how did that affect the whole approach? Don't you animate and then have to re-render?
It was very designed and coordinated so we could build sets that looked vast." "Blue Sky has more experience at building and lighting sets now, so we're able to build more geometry, and we tried to take a smart approach by building sets that were reusable. When we did the others, all the design was done against ice, and on this we begin in the ice but then go into the dinosaur world where the scale is ginormous, the characters are huge and the color palette is totally different. POST: What sort of film did you set out to make, and talk about the challenges you faced in producing an animated film of this scale?ĬARLOS SALDANHA: "We knew it'd be bigger than the second film in terms of production scale and having to create this whole dinosaur world.
HOLLYWOOD - Dinosaurs and the Ice Age? OK, so co-directors Carlos Saldanha, who helmed Ice Age: The Meltdown, and Michael Thurmeier, who was supervising animator on Robots and on Ice Age: The Meltdown, took a little artistic liberty with the latest installment of the blockbuster franchise.įeaturing the voices of Ray Romano, Denis Leary, John Leguizamo and Queen Latifah, and an immense, lush, underground world populated by dinosaurs, the film also showcases the latest technology from Sun Microsystems, which powered the film's visuals, created by Greenwich, CT-based Blue Sky Studios (Here, in an exclusive interview with Post, Saldanha and Thurmeier talk about making the film, the challenges involved and the CGI tools that made it all possible.