We’re approaching a new show, with an even newer frame of mind. Currently our shows have had a bit of a mishmash style bordering cartoonish/realistic. The challenge being how does one do scientific content without reflecting some realism in the images that are created. Obviously, until live action video catches up to the dome, everything depicted will be a simulation, or digitally filtered into some variation of artistic interpretation. It would be nice to push a specific style forward, and try to really keep it consistent through the whole show. I’ve seen some other productions out there that use some stylization for portions of their show but end up falling back to the semi photo real content.

Domefest has always been a great place to check out some more experimental art direction, and visual concepts. I’d like to be able to do a collection of music videos themed for the dome and explore the potentials of certain styles on the dome.  Like the following examples.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Otherside – The funniest home videos are here

It takes a little more than grit and perseverance, although that probably helps. In the analog days, at least at Morehead, planetarium shows were put together using about 60 slide projectors, 3 video projectors, a slew of opti-mechanical do-dads, a computer to time everything out and a huge star projector that sat in the middle of all of it. The production staff consisted of two people, an outside contractor to do some artwork and a music composer.

Now that we’re in the process of going digital, it will be very different within the planetarium dome itself. The plan is to have two huge projectors that will project a 4000×4000 pixel image onto the screen. To put that in perspective, it’s roughly 8 times bigger than High Definition television. But the production staff is fairly similar. We’ve now got a producer, a director, two main animator/compositors/creative directors, the same music composer we used for the old shows, support from the Morehead staff and others here and there.

It takes this 4-5 person crew anywhere from 9-15 months to create a 3D animated 25 minute dome show, depending on the content and situation. To put that in perspective, it took Pixar up to four years, at least 400 people and $180 million to make Wall•E. Compared to that, we’re definitely coming in under budget.

The  time has come for us to consider some software upgrades. Let me preface this with the fact that generally I’m a content generalist. The majority of my knowledge is in the design and creation of content in multiple software packages, but requires me to know a little bit about the technical aspects of the software the we use.

Currently we run the following software packages:

• 3ds Max 2008
• Pixologic Z-brush 3
• Maya complete and unlimited 2008
• Mental Ray for Maya 3.6.1
• Adobe After Effects CS3
• Frantic’s Deadline 2.7

When considering a software upgrade, there are multiple factors.  One might be inclined to think that the cost per product would be the largest factor, but really the main concern is cost in time to install, trouble shoot, and hope that the upgrade doesn’t disrupt the current pipeline setup.  Our hardware set up includes a mixture of PC’s and Mac’s. For our PC’s we have 2 primary workstations and and 23 Render machines supplied by BOXX technologies.

On the Mac side of things we have 4imacs and 1g5 workstation. They’re generally used to create base assets that eventually get moved into the PC realm and finalized anyway.

We’ve got our eyes on upgrading the software to the following versions.

• 3ds max 2010
• maya 2010
• mental ray 3.7
• Deadline 3.1

We’ve also considered moving to cebas’s Final Render, but this change will be put on hold due in part to the fact we’re running 2 different 3d software packages. The support has arisen for both independently, but there is talk to have one standalone engine that both 3ds max, and Maya can use simultaneously.

Seams can be a problem not only in the dome master frames, as Pete illustrated in previous posts, but also in the projectors themselves. I learned from our resident dome expert, Eric Knisely, that seams can present themselves in the projectors themselves. Constant maintenance is needed to keep these projectors calibrated, and not every planetarium may be keeping up with theirs. Eric let me know how using solid colors can really make these seams stand out. He suggested that noise be added to them to break up the constant color, where even gradients may fall short. I can show in these quick illustrations below the scene that brought this problem to light, pardon the pun. The seams I put in are of my own doing, but I tried to make it reflect what we saw in the dome the best I could. The dome at RENCI uses 4 cameras, so the seam across the top was a cross shape.

The first example is what it would look like had it been with just a single projector.

The second is the same image projected using 4 projectors.

The third is with the noise applied to the sky, breaking up the values to help hide the seams.

When filming in a traditional flat screen medium,  one may use a variety of lenses to create certain dramatic effects. They can accompany these lenses with zooms and dolly moves to create the Oh-so-dramatic Zolly, where the characters world shifts around them. This video I found explains it pretty well, even though its a bit cheesy in style.

What’s covered are some classic filming techniques, but how can we translate them to the dome.

Unlike a window where you really only have one direction of z-space to sell, a dome is 360 degrees of z space. The viewer is fixed in the middle of a scene. In order for the environment to be correctly projected  on a dome, we’re stuck using only one lens setting, and can’t exactly zoom, because that would actually translate into a camera move.

Everything is based upon the 3d cameras proximity and placement within a scene, and its field of view has to remain a constant. The filming language we’ve grown to accept without realizing is subtle, and full of nuance.  The dome world is still building a shooting vocabulary, let alone a well developed visual language.

Text treatment can be pretty specific for flat screen, and even more so for working in dome space. Its always good practice to steer clear of serifs, as they can be hard to read on the flat screen. Television and Film this is kept in mind a lot, and should also be something to think about when projecting on the dome surface. We’re currently working on the creation of the credits for our conversion show The Magic Tree House, and learned a couple things from the experience. The distance the credits or text can play a big factor in ledgibility. The closer to the camera the more distortion we see. A good rule of thumb we’ve found is that if you keep the size of the text no larger than one of the cameras (a 90 degree section of the 360 dome), there isn’t much distortion. Another big part to remember is that the resolution of the dome can vary significantly from planetarium to planetarium. Although the text might look really nice and crisp in the 4k version, those planetaria that have 1k domes may not be able to make out the text very easily.

Often times I find myself being asked, “what do you do for a living?” and it’s never a short answer.

The response is usually, “I design Planetarium shows”. The conversation never stops there.  It’s usually followed by remarks of wonder, and enthusiasm, but never a sense of comprehension. So of course an explanation is needed to further fill out exactly what kind of planetarium shows that it is I design.

Explaining that Planetariums are no longer just planetariums is my first step, and introducing new vocabulary of Full Dome Video, is what follows. I usually explain that if they’ve seen an IMAX show, to imagine being inside the screen rather than looking at it.

We turn the entire surface of the dome into one large screen that uses modern animation techniques similar to that of the motion picture industry. Which of course makes for even more enthusiasm and excitement, and a little more sense of what it is I do.

This concept that Planetariums are no longer just grounded in space science has been something that most science centers, and planetariums are having trouble explaining to the public. We can do anything now, and seeing as this new spectrum of opportunities is wonderful, its equally troubling because the public’s expectations haven’t caught up yet. They come to a Planetarium to sit in the dark and see stars.  So of course “Branding” has become a central focus for newly converted domes.  Terms like SciDome, DigiDome and Dome Theater, are being used to get people to understand its not just a Planetarium anymore, but instead a Full Dome experience.  We here at Morehead are going through the same growing pains, and are currently in process of discovering what our new theater will be called once its upgraded.

As the medium continues to gain ground, and become more widely recognized, this will of course become a problem of the past. I’m excited to think that one day people will happily be able to go down to the science center not knowing what to expect, rather than expecting something they’ve seen before. That having a show about biology, or zoology will be just as excepted as seeing a show on the constellations, or our solar system. Who knows, maybe even one day going to the Planetarium looking forward to catch that new Hollywood blockbuster that has been released on limited dome screens.

Maybe that last part is just a nerdy fantasy of being able to see Batman vs Superman on a dome, but a boy can dream.

In production we know that Particles are just darn expensive. They require a lot of meticulous editing, and a massive amount of time to render.

We had the challenge to visualize a Black hole, but had to do it in about a 2 week period.  So of course doing a scientifically accurate simulation using particles and immensely complex equations to describe the physics of a theoretical object for a kids show was a little out of the question. I instead went with using animated textures and alphas, on solid geometry to create an artistic representation.

Working with our content expert, we reached a comfortable compromise and the final product is equally beautiful and terrifying as a result.

Morehead planetarium black hole test from Peter Althoff on Vimeo.

Now this is an example of keeping the target audience in mind. We know that this show is intended for children and families so it gives us some flexibility. Generally the public isn’t going to be all that concerned, or more importantly, notice a difference between something artistically visualized vs accurately simulated. If we were trying to generate something for scientific minds to analyze, we might not have gone this route.

I’m going to discuss some potential issues I’ve been mulling over about blending live action and cg on a dome. Following links will discuss in further detail some of the terms I may be using.
Chroma Keys (Aka, Green Screen)
Match Moving

Generating live action footage for a dome has been an on going challenge for anyone producing content larger than 2k. The current resolution standards on most HD cameras only allow us to create the bottom have of a 4k fisheye master. This means of course that part, if not all, of the environment that live actors interact with will need to be computer generated. Also shooting live action, you’re somewhat limited to how much motion you can incorporate into a shot.

The challenge of shooting a moving camera shot, is needing to match that motion in the digital 3d world. You’ll need to be able to record the camera’s position and orientation for each camera move, and replicate it so that your filmed and separated actor/actors are rooted to the scene. You could achieve this using a motion control rig that the camera sits on. With every take you can program the camera’s move so that human error is removed from the situation. The downside is the cost of renting and operating such equipment can be excessive.

Another option is to try syncing the camera up using some match move software and tracking markers. Though most of the software has been developed to track xyz positions in relation to a single plane of footage, and has yet to be calibrated for working with the unique distortion of a fish-eye lens. A work around would be to lock down the camera during filming and then move the actors image in 3d, but would be limiting in its ability to recreate complex camera moves.

Hopefully as Fulldome video becomes more mainstream, camera companies will develop the hardware that will make live action a more plausible solution for smaller studios. The benefits of using real actors, and building on existing sets, leads to a more believable experience for audiences. It also makes production a little simpler because practical solutions can be generated rather than leaning everything on being created in post.

A new idea in the works at the planetarium is visualizing science-related facts on the dome.  These little movies would last only a few seconds – long enough to narrate or write out something like “Humans not only have unique fingerprints – they have unique tongue prints as well.”  Then perhaps a person standing behind glass is filmed as they plaster their tongue print on the glass; to the audience it would appear as though this giant tongue were being laid on the dome.   Not the most glamorous of examples, but you get the idea that these facts are just supposed to make you go, “hmm.” or maybe even “Iii-nteresting.”  (plus it’s been done in Earth, Moon & Sun!  Though dinosaur tongue prints are probably negligible seeing as they are unavailable for filming.)

So far the facts that would work well on a dome have these properties:

• portrayal of “actual size.” For example the tentacles of the giant Arctic jellyfish reach up to 120 ft. in length – the lengh of that tentacle could wrap around our dome two times.  Imagine sitting in the black of the dome, the muted bubbling of water as something swims around and around – and then you’re caught in the huge arms of a ginormous jellyfish.  The sense of scale might be a hard sell, but I think it could be really neat.

• speed. Any fact dealing with speed caught my eye.  Did you know the pileated woodpecker can strike a tree with the impact of 1200 g?  A human could comparatively strike a tree at 16 mph.  Perhaps too greusome to show.

• inside the body. What makes you sneeze?  why do you get dizzy?  what causes hiccups?  All of these questions are interesting and they all lend themselves to taking the audience inside the body.

And generally cool or gross things caught my eye.  Like the fact that killer whales can destroy sharks by ramming into them with their snouts.  The force is so hard the shark explodes.  Of course, my research at this point is still in the brainstorming stages, so none of these facts have been completely substantiated – for those who would wait for sharks to explode.  Because 43.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.