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Organic textures with rough shapes and odd curves add complexity to the light paths, as do qualities such as translucency. When it comes to creating a furry digital creature, the realistic movement and sway of all those thousands of hair strands is taxing enough for the computer to calculate -- now consider adding that each hair is interacting with the light in a specific way, and reflecting and refracting light into its environment and surrounding hairs.

"It takes an awfully long time to generate hair for a lot of hero Wookiees," says Sequence Supervisor and Development Lead Patrick Conran, "and even with our most severe pipeline efficiencies turned all the way up, you've got a hundred Wookiees. It takes a long time before you ever manage to start rendering anything."

Before the Wookiee efficiency solution was cracked, ILM had to finish one shot for the November 2004 teaser trailer of a vanguard of Wookiee warriors charging from an embankment. "We had five practical Wookiee suits spread over four different shoots composited together, and we had to take that and add them into a miniature and digital matte painting background, and then generate our CG Wookiees behind them," explains Tim Fortenberry, Digital Effects Artist. "We rendered it the old fashioned way. It took something like 5,000 processing hours initially and a terabyte and a half on disc. So it was definitely not a good way to do the entire sequence."

The artists and technicians at ILM found a better way to create crowds of Wookiees to fit the already tight schedule of Episode III postproduction. "Looking at the concept art, we noticed that [Kashyyyk] was pretty overcast and there is pretty low contrast. We definitely used that to our advantage," says Fortenberry.

Rather than calculate the quality of light striking and bouncing off all the fur on their digital Wookiees for each shot and angle, ILM "baked in" a pre-set quality of light to all the Wookiee models. "We were able to do this without using any spotlights or deep shadows, which really made it much more manageable," says Conran.

Also helping speed the process along was letting a Wookiee's distance from the camera dictate the detail of the model. While the practical Wookiee suits were used for the closest of shots, the hero digital models had somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 hairs on their surface. The ones further in the background would have less, say 40,000 hairs. They'd be so small in "camera space" though that it wouldn't be noticeable, and it would speed up the computer's calculations. The ones furthest from camera had no hair at all -- they instead had thickened bodies with flat, painted hair texture on them.

Another time-saving technique had to do with the flexibility of the Wookiee models. After composing a shot with hundreds of Wookiee warriors, someone may want to change specific Wookiee characters. Rather than having to re-render the scene to accommodate a completely different Wookiee model, ILM built an "über-Wookiee."

"This model had all the variations built into it," says Fortenberry "It essentially puts all the changes to the Wookiee model at the very last step before rendering. So, if there are changes, there's no going back to Creature Development or the Animation Department. You'd turn on the features you'd want on the Wookiee, and dial out the ones you don't."

Star Wars Galaxies-Jedi Advent-Episode 7

Star Wars Galaxies-Path to the Force-Episode 7

Be sure to join us next week for the eighth episodes of Star Wars Galaxies-Jedi Advent, and Star Wars Galaxies-Path to the Force. Then join us every week as we continue these adventures from the Star Wars Galaxies videogame in the form of Gamics!

Hello. I attended the '05 SFX Convention in Toronto, Ontario, Canada this past weekend - Here's the latest bitz (covering all areas of 'SW) from Matt Wood, who attended as well as Kenny Baker.

- Matt started his Intimate & Interactive program off by taking questions from his associate (while in the adjacent room) as Gen. Grievous with his trusty Laptop & mic (Similar to C3/San Diego ComiCon) - seems Gen. Grievous didn't particularly enjoy working with GL 'cause he doesn't pay for OT 

- The last Q of 7 asked  "If on the 'ROTS' DVD would there be any scenes of him put back in?"  His response "I'd like to ask Shaak-Ti but I can't. 

- He was leaving for France Sunday to begin sound design on Mr. Speilberg's next film entitled 'Munich', the telling of the 70's Olympic tragedy in that city. 

- He told of his eerie experience during the re-mastering sessions for the OT DVD, Having had to rebuild the Dialogue/FX tracks completely for 'ANH', He received the original takes and looping tapes from GL which had several versions of each line differing from what we have all become use to. He stated it was strange hearing GL's conversations with Sir Alec about 'Force Philosophy' Etc. and various other discussions about how the dialogue could have been presented by the actors. 

- He talked of himself, his job, inspirations for Grievous (trips to Prague, Moscow - Eastern Europe) & discussion with GL about Grievous background. 

- In ADR Matt coughed at the end of the "Your lightsabers will make fine additions ... " line, So he quickly wanted to redo it but GL said no they would move on. At the end of that days work GL went up to the mike and coughed into it several x's leaving Matt puzzled, furthering that GL asked for all of the completed sessions (including the cough's) so he could personally rough-in some of the dialogue track. 

- He spoke of GL's thoughts (during subsequent ADR sessions) on the cough in relation to Grievous being rotten/sick to the core, his slight Biological state and his make-up a pre-cursor to the technology that would lead to Vader but how it wasn't quite perfected yet. 

- He had finished last Thursday putting the final touches on the Archival of everything Ep.3 - It's completely done. 

- GL is thinking of using a HI-DEF consumer camera (under $5,000) for some of the future 'SW' stuff. 

- In relation to a future Box Set Q ('07?) Matt confirmed that there have been calls to the Archive Dept. at the Ranch to start preparing stuff for new future supplemental materials. (can't wait!)

Thanks for the cool info Captain Sith Park! If anyone has Star Wars related information, please feel free to send it in!