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Interview With Brett Feeney
The 3D Supervisor who worked on The Matrix and The Lord Of The Rings series, talks about his daily work, the switch from Maya to XSI at Animal Logic and the industry.
February, 11th, 2004, by Alan Jones, Raffael Dickreuter, Bernard Lebel, Ed Harriss
 |  | Brett Feeney, on realizing he has to stay in Antarctica for 3 months, gathering reference for "Happy Feet"..."
| | |  | The Matrix
|  | The Lord Of The Rings
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How did you get started in the industry?
I got my first look into the 3D FX and Animation industry in about 1990. I started, as any nerd of the time did, with an Amiga. Eventually getting some work at the community TV station in Sydney and getting enough confidence in going out on my own as a freelancer. There were no schools or such in Sydney, like there are now. So you pretty much had to scour the net and chat forums looking for any info you could that would further your knowledge. It was difficult learning about an industry that was almost underground at the time, it was no where near as prolific as it is in Australia today. Which is what I guess drew me to it in the first place, as it was not only fun and exciting working in the industry, but no one really knew much about it, outside of it.
What is your average work day like?
Mostly flat out, which is kind of how I like it. With the current project commitments there is not a lot of spare time to sit and reflect, inside of work hours. I have a number of meetings everyday, which generate more activity usually. As Digital Supervisor, I have to keep in contact daily with all departments. To keep the communication between the various processes and departments. As well as keeping informed of the progress of all tools and techniques being developed. Then when its called for, rolling the sleeves up and getting involved in process, tool, or technique development and design.
What are your long term goals?
I am having a lot of fun at AL while we are moving into the fully animated feature world. So I would like to continue on this growing experience as it is one of the most fascinating roles and projects of my career. Long term, I hope to still be in this industry. Because of the ever changing shape of the industry and the technology related to it, it is hard to say where I want to end up exactly. There are new openings everywhere you look, the work is varied enough to keep me interested in researching it all the time. I am still like a big kid at heart, so the endless creative challenge of connecting all this together, the people and the toys, is going to always interest and amuse me. I would like to try my hand at a lot of things before I say I'm done. Its a great industry for people to get in there and have a decent go at anything they have a passion for.
Animal Logic doesn't have the mainstream coverage like ILM, DreamWorks, Pixar, Weta Digital and such have. Can you present to our readers Animal Logic?
Animal Logic is one of the largest, and longest surviving FX and Animation houses in Australia. Animal has competed very successfully on the world stage many times with its FX work on films like, Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, Babe (Pig in the city), Moulin Rouge, Lord of the Rings, Thin Red Line etc. I have seen Animal grow in stature, from 35 staff when I joined in 98' to now over 240 people on staff. We are currently working on at least 4 film projects, and 2 long form TV projects, as well as a regular stream of work in the Television Commercials and Broadcast Design departments. Our current projects have us doing a mix of Film effects and Character Animation work for features. Animal is starting to establish itself as a feature animation house.
Animal Logic has always had a strong R&D core that has helped in no small way with Animal being one of the top players in the industry. There is always a better way to do things than with the tools you can generally buy off the shelf, which is what keeps the R&D team focused on developing many ways to save us time and undue extra work. We have always relied on the R&D team to squeeze the maximum out of everything we have.
Animal is located on the Fox Studios Australia lot, in Sydney. Which is right in the center of all the action, being only a few minutes from both the City Center and some of the best beaches the city has to offer. Quite often in summer, pilgrimages down to the beach in the lunch break for a snorkel or swim, are not uncommon. A large portion of Animal Staff live in the eastern suburb which is an area rimmed by several bays, and no fewer than 7 beaches.
Could you describe the general pipeline at AL? For example, are there small teams of artists working entirely on shots, or is there a more streamlined workflow, like people only do modeling, others compositing, and so on?
Animal is actually a mix of those two examples. We often have small teams working on shots from concept through to final. As well, we have teams of people who will stick to only one discipline for a project. We are always trying to schedule and accommodate for people getting to move around as much as possible on a project. Where possible we try to tie a couple of disciplines together such as compositing and lighting. To give a bit of variety to your role.
Do you think that being among the few major studios of Oceania gives AL an edge over competition?
Not so much as you would think. If you are taking about the world stage. I really feel that everything Animal has in that regard, is hard fought for. Perhaps on a local stage it could be so, in that we probably get a lot of the high quality local work due to our success in the international arena. It certainly helps put us in mind, for productions wishing to shoot out here at Fox, but I think that generally we get work on past merit rather than geographical advantage :)
Animal Logic does a lot of development. Products like SoftMan and MayaMan come to mind. How important is development important for AL?
As I said earlier, Animal thrives on its R&D developments. It is really what set us apart from the local competition earlier in AL's career. Being able to achieve high end effects and solve pipeline choking problems with R&D's help has let Animal leap out ahead of its local competition, and remain in step with the rest of the international community. We are, and have always been, pretty centered on a Renderman pipe. Due to the way we like to work, and relative cost of other tools, we have found a great advantage to us to build our own pipeline to renderman renderers. They always start out as an in house tool, before it gets offered to other houses. It just makes the job that much easier to do when you know you can build a much more efficient tool to tackle a problem the way you need to.
The previous question referred to renderman-related products. Do you still use a renderman renderer in your pipeline? If so, is it a home made renderer?
Well, the beauty of making our tools available to others is that it has made us have to support a whole array of renderman renderers. We use several of them ourselves in production. We have not as yet written our own, as we have really close working relationships with some of the companies that make renderman compliant renderers.
Can you tell us anything about "Happy Feet"?
Yes I can tell you a little bit about "Happy Feet". As there has been some press releases already about it. "Set in Antarctica, the CG comedy--which involves musical and dance elements--follows young Mumble, a musically challenged penguin, with an unusual gift who finds the heart to pursue his dream. Mumble can't sing, but all of the rest of the penguins can. Gloria is the best singer, and she just wants to hear a heart song from him. Each penguin has a heart song. They think something is wrong with him and they send him away." It stars Robin Williams voicing several characters, among them being "Lovelace" the narrator. Elijah Wood plays "Mumble" and Brittany Murphy plays "Gloria". As well as many other marquee voice talents.
How much differs the Australian market from the North-American or European markets? what is different?
The local market here is a little different from those markets, in that there are a lot less people here for a start. The talent pool here is probably a lot smaller by comparison, but it makes everyone a lot broader in terms of their experience. We seem to have more of an "all rounder" culture here. People who are multi disciplined because of the traditionally smaller industry here in Australia. Which forces people to posses skills in a number of areas, as there is not always a need for focused specialist roles.
How do you think the Australian market is going to evolve in the near future?
I see now, with the size of projects increasing in Australia, there is going to be a larger reliance on more specialized roles. So we will see some turn around in what I just stated as the difference between Australian and the North American and European markets. Not a total about face, mind you, I think there will always be the great-Aussie-all-rounder.
Can you tell us about your switch from Maya to XSI? How long did the decision take? How did you go about determining which program would be chosen
Ah yes, the great software debate. It was an exhaustive search into what would be the best route for our pipeline. It was met with quite a bit of opposition originally. This was understandable due to the state of XSI at the end of the previous project, and the amount of in-house knowledge of the product. It wasn't until XSI3.0 came out that I felt more comfortable with the recommendation, as we saw a huge leap in stability of XSI in 3.0 and beyond.
The decision took somewhere in the order of 3-5 months to reach. We had to consider all of the facets of changing packages versus sticking with Maya and building what we needed to get the project done. It ended up being a bigger decision than for just the one project. Since we are mounting a huge change in Animals function at the same time, we had to be looking at the future as well. The types of projects and pipelines we will be working on after this one. So we chose XSI based on the newer animation architecture, allowing a lot more flexibility and ways to deal with animation and motion capture. We found that any of the animation tricks we could use in Maya, we could do equally as well in XSI. While having a bunch more ways of solving problems and building specialized tools.
The final decision was based on many details. Sure it was going to mean more tools and management to curve the pipe into and out of XSI for animation, not to mention a large investment in new software. However we worked out some really defined entry and exit points in the process, that we would have done if it were any other package pipe. A major factor was the level of support we have from Softimage. They have always been a great bunch to work with, and Animal has primarily been a Softimage house since birth. Since the release of XSI however, they have been even more available and on top of things. Key Animals in the R&D department have worked along side Softimage on the SDK and interface issues. While the rest of us have worked with the Special Projects Team at Softimage, and with the Beta teams on the new versions of XSI. A personal working relationship that we don't get from the other vendors. So we are happy to say that after all this effort, we now have a multi software system that has both XSI and Maya working seamlessly together to give us the best performance for our pipeline. Using a collection of inhouse tools and file formats, and dotXSI to get us there.
Can you say if there will be a renderman tool for XSI in the likes of Mayaman?
Well, anything is possible. We are not currently in need of one for our own pipe. So there has not been a lot of effort in that direction, other than looking at the architecture to see what we would have to do. If you know anyone that needs an XSI translator to renderman, they can always contact us to see what we'd be prepared to do.
Can you describe the previs process for the Matrix Series of films and how XSI was utilized?
We used XSI for prevising quite a bit of the Live Action components we worked on. We did a lot of camera moves on some of the shots of Trinity jumping the motorcycle into the power station. Where we turned that animation into drive information for motion bases and Motion Control cameras. The end result did not have much 3D in it at all, it was mainly about informing the Live action camera where and what to do.
We also used XSI for all the Agent take-over shots. They were heavily prevised to try and get the intent of the effects director. The shots were to have a Francis Bacon feel to the distortion of the heads. Many different approaches we trialled before the final one was arrived at. We had a highly complex setup of shapes and skeletons to achieve the look and timing, and XSI made it really easy to provide quick turn around on alterations or other options. Through using the Mixer to mix and blend the complex layering of shape and key frame animation. The shots were finaled for texture and lighting in Softimage|3D through the dotXSI transfer, then rendered in PRman through Softman.
We also did some ceiling replacements in some of the fighting shots. Where we fed in the cameras from 3D tracking software and finaled the shots in mental ray from XSI, using some GI lighting techniques. As the integration of MR from XSI was by far more superior than all the other translators.
What advice would you give to aspiring 3d artists working on personal projects or demo reels?
I'd say to any one suiting up to get a start in the industry today, soak up everything. Check out as much resource on your particular field of interest, as you can. If you get the opportunity, ask other people how they achieve things, go to professional seminars etc to learn how its all done. If you are putting a reel together, make sure its tailored specifically to showcase your talents. Try not to include things that are not your strong suite. Most of all just be confident and dedicated, things move at a pretty fast rate in this industry and it definitely pays to be aware and as up to date as possible.
Are we always on the lookout for great XSI talent ?
Absolutely, please drop by the website and check us out, drop us a line.
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