Datasheet

18
Product Overview
Shake 4
Feature Film Production
Large facilities like Weta Digital, Tippett Studio, and Industrial Light & Magic invest
millions of dollars in hardware and software to achieve the most productive work
environment. These companies are involved in all aspects of a movie—from shooting
to 3D animation to compositing to printing out on fi lm.
The visual e∂ ects section of a fi lm production company is typically a medium-size
to large facility of 20 to 500 people, each working on a shot for a few days to a few
weeks. For e∑ ciency, tasks are broken down between 3D artists (to create elements to
composite); compositors (to blend rendered or painted elements into a photographed
plate); roto-artists (who carefully rotoscope out masks of people and objects); matte
painters (who paint photorealistic backgrounds rather than build them in 3D); techni-
cal support (to write scripts and specialized code); and I/O people (to bring shots from
a fi lm scanner or send fi nished shots to a fi lm printer). This task distribution requires
a large network of machines that can easily talk to each other and share fi les and
resources such as rendering machines and disk drives.
Such tasks require products that can handle very large projects while maximizing
e∑ ciency. Shake 4 responds well to those needs because it was created to work
e∑ ciently on very demanding fi lm-resolution projects while maintaining an excellent
price/performance ratio. It has the ability to tackle complex composites with unlimited
layers and multiple simultaneous resolutions and bit depths, with an extremely power-
ful distributed render engine for fast local or networked image calculations.
Typical workfl ow for feature fi lm production facilities
1 Scan fi lm to a logarithmic fi le format, sometimes including HDR data like OpenEXR.
2 Create models and animation in 3D with a solution like Alias Maya.
3 Composite fi lm footage and CG elements in Shake 4.
4 Send the end result to a fi lm recorder.
Visual E∂ ects Boutiques
Visual e∂ ects boutiques—like Embassy VFX in Vancouver, British Columbia or Furious
FX in Burbank, California—are usually hired by the larger production houses to take
over multiple shots within a project. They are highly specialized and work with a small
team of talented artists and low overhead. Their success depends on their ability to
keep overhead low and deliver fi nished shots on time without sacrifi cing quality. They
need a solution to handle large projects very e∑ ciently and a∂ ordably.
Shake 4 is the perfect solution for these boutiques. It is fast and high quality, and
it has the fl exibility to work well in a shop that needs to develop custom solutions.
Shake 4 also has qualities that make it a great tool for fi lmmaking—for example, the
ability to tackle complex composites with unlimited layers and multiple simultaneous
resolutions and bit depths. It accepts numerous fi le formats for seamless integration
with other products used on a project and includes an extensive array of tools to
accomplish most types of e∂ ects.
Typical workfl ow for visual e∂ ects boutiques
1 Import fi lm footage and CG elements.
2 Composite in Shake 4.
3 Work interactively on the project.
4 Render through any available machine on the network.
5 Send shots to studios or to an outsourced vendor for fi lm print (output material to SD
or HD using Final Cut Pro 5).