April2(idnesday • April 26, 1995
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The Battalion • Page 3
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^'VisLab provides qppon Dr tl/ie creation of
visualization, anifnatio
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alousy, stfl nyone impressed with the aAtics of “Ren
ally disti> Stimpy” have only seen thejtip of the i(
time awa;f In the Visualization Labbratory (Vis Lab),
Beinga garden of huge silicon grkphic monitors
ndingtim: ! «^> in the Langford Architecture building
mdingthTgraduate students spend months impressing their visions
th yourf^to computer simulations and animation
sy. . As part of the architecture departme
■ jealousy®sLab offers a few chosen students to
le of the * w ith, and eventually earn a degree in, t
of jealous;., e nce of visualization. The lab consists e
rrentlye:{°f 25 graduate student,
ent and Thuy Tran, a visiting professor from
^oneabot iIrian y’ describes visualization as having
contactth ; ! :ate & or i es: simulation and an-
serviceir^ff^ 011 -
45 442' E iTan said simulation is creat-
r q ” !ing computer-generated images
^ k that simulate real life. She said
that aircraft simulation is the
ost famous example of this science.
“Before you have pilots sitting in $2
million worth of aircraft, they are sit
ting inside a cockpit that is simulated with
scenes that are built with computer graphics,”
Tran said. “They fly in a sort of virtual environ
ment.”
I Tran said the main use of simulation in ar
chitecture is to visualize a structure that has
not been built yet. She said the computer can
take a person on a “walk-through” to see what
the structure will look like and how it will
ssler ' Llia ' function when it is built.
i “You could save yourself time and money for
investing in something you might not want to
have after seeing what it looks like,” Tran
said.
J Tran described animation, literally “to
bring to life” in Latin, as giving movement to
DavidTay something without worrying about physics.
I Kevin Reuter, a graduate student pursuing
the visualization degree, said while simulation
is geared toward the laws of physics, anima
tion is up to the animator’s whim. He said a lot
the fallak- of details in motion that go largely unnoticed
Station^ 81 e ver Y important in animation,
hiding,Te^ f “We see people walking around all the
time, but most people don’t actually sit
diversity'''' there and take a really close look,”
3 !f5®X®euter said.
“What’s the difference between the way a heavy
entbyTtV person walks and the way a light person walks?
I advertise ' There’s a lot of different things to take into considera-
3a.m.to5|T b s>
putef simulations
tHon when yotf’re trying to animate — like just someone
walking — to/get it to look like the kind of walk you’re
t ryinglto.”
Reuter saijd that the quest for perfection in anima-
a slovf, painstaking, and sometimes torturous
Opinion
■ editor
Sports e#"
s editor .
)to editor
xha, Libe^
;ddy Wylie’
apkins and!*’
«rt Rodrig^
lefield,
Clockwise: top stills from
Jeremy Goldman’s ani
mation “Tiamat,” Ball
room scene from “The
Dance” by Rhett Bennatt,
“Tiny” still by
KevinThomason, David
Esneault’s stills from
“HANS de XYMBOL-
KA,”and “Marionette” by
David Hisanaga.
Visualization on center stage
for Viz-A-Go-Go presentation
ter’s Ipiggest animation project involved a pounc-
ck panther.
Hefdescribes the piece as showing a sleeping panther
that ik suddenly awakened by someone off-screen call
ing out Jr name, as if to someone lost. The panther
ngri/y gets up, spots the yeller and leaps out at
him. j
the end, it is revealed that the man and the
panther are friends, and the man was
calling out to the cat the whole time.
At least, that’s how it was sup
posed to go.
“I basically got to the part where
the panther wakes up,” Reuter said.
“I spent most of the semester just
building the panther’s body, and
everything. For any decent amount
of detail, it takes a long time.”
David Esneault, another visual
ization graduate student, said that
he remains in the lab an average of
12-14 hours a day, due to the slow
process of animation.
He is currently working on an ani
mation 2,000 frames long for the sec
ond-year animation class. The first-
year class project was a 300-frame ani
mation, roughly 10 seconds long.
Reuter said that, according to a statis
tic he heard once, a good animator may
produce two minutes of animation in the
course of an entire year, due to the amount
of detail involved.
There are attainable rewards for talent in
computer animation. A few lucky students
from the VisLab have been picked up by big
names in the computer animation field.
Disney and Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light &
Magic (ILM) have hired about six VisLab
denizens since last year.
Tran said that jobs in computer animation
may be more easily attainable, due to a new in
ternship program the VisLab has set up with
ILM. The program is brand new, no one has
been sent yet, although all the students may
apply.
“I think our intern student will be, from what
I am told, the very first intern at ILM who would
have hands-on experience with doing animation,”
Tran said.
By Keryl Cryer
The Battalion
raduate students in
the College of Ar
chitecture will par
ticipate in Viz-A-
Go-Go in Rudder
Theater on Friday,
May 5 at 8 p.m.
The presentation will feature
paintings, sculptures, videos, an
imation and computer software
done by the students.
Don House, associate profes
sor of architecture and director
of visualization programs, said
one of the main goals of the-
show is to present the mem
bers of the program with an
opportunity to show
their works to a broad
audience.
"There will be
a video show
which will be
mixture of
computer ani
mation and
video film
making, and also some
work in ex
perimental
techniques
in visual
ization,”
House said.
“Then, be
sides the
video show,
we re going
to have
some inter
active
demonstra
tions that
will be out
side the
theater.”
In addition to completed and
experimental works, Viz-A-Go-
Go will include many “works in
progress.” These will be pieces
done in half resolution or lower
instead of in a finished form
since many works take so long to
complete.
“You can still see what the
work is like and what it will be
like in the end form,” Thuy
Tram, a visiting professor said.
“It’ll still be nice work.”
The first Viz-A-Go-Go, which
was held in the Rudder Forum
last year, attracted such a large
crowd that this year’s event has
been moved to the larger theater.
This year, it will also in
clude works that were
not yet completed for
last year’s show and
have been completed
since then.
“Students do not get one
instructive theme to
work on,” Tram said.
“They have to do
certain techniques,
but they get to
come up with their
own story.”
The students
get the opportuni
ty to show their
creativity when using techniques
such as
morphs,
which al
low the
students
to make
one
shape
change
into an
other
shape in
a tech
nique
called im
age pro
cessing.
Knowledge of these techniques
is particularly important when
recruiters are considering high-
paying job offers to the students
in the program.