MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 11 — SGI visual
workstation and server technology was tapped for Final Fantasy: The
Spirits Within, the first hyperReal, all-CGI feature film,
featuring a cast whose physical and emotional characteristics are
virtually indistinguishable from live human beings. Produced by
Square Pictures, Inc., Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is
distributed by Columbia Pictures, a Sony Pictures Entertainment
company. It opens in the U.S. July 11, 2001.
Four SGI 2000 series high-performance servers, four Silicon
Graphics Onyx2 visualization systems, 167 Silicon Graphics Octane
visual workstations and other SGI systems were used to create the
film. Alias|Wavefront Maya software was used for animation
authoring on the SGI machines, and Pixar RenderMan software was run
on Linux OS-based systems.
Production on Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within began four years
ago, when Square opened its offices, recruiting what would soon
amount to more than 200 CGI artists and close to 30 programmers
from all over the U.S., Japan Europe and Asia. Square purchased 40
brand-new (at that time) SGI IRIX OS-based Silicon Graphics Octane
workstations. That acquisition was soon followed by the purchase of
four newly introduced SGI Origin 200 systems.
“If we didn’t have the power of SGI equipment four years ago, we
couldn’t have achieved this movie today,” said Kazuyuki Hashimoto,
Square USA’s chief technology officer and senior vice president.
“Octane workstations from SGI gave us the highest performance
graphics environment to work in, especially to create all the
plug-ins for realistic physical characteristics in Maya, which runs
best on SGI.”
The major difficulty in making Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
was creating photo-realistic humans. Relying on the power of
Silicon Graphics Octane workstations, SGI Origin family servers and
Silicon Graphics Onyx family graphics systems, Square USA’s
programmers extended the Maya software, creating approximately 100
plug-ins. Especially difficult was a hair plug-in, for realistic
flowing hair and follicles, and a cloth plug-in that re-creates the
physics of cloth-how it wrinkles and drapes as the body wearing the
fabric moves. Portraying the fluidity of human movement was also an
integral part of the creation process.
“Our artists did extensive research and overcame these
difficulties with the help of SGI technology,” said Hashimoto. “But
it’s important to remember that it’s not only the technology; the
artists also face the difficulty of developing the texture, the
ways to control the face and so on. It’s up to both sides-the
technology and the artists-to collaborate. And that was achieved
because of SGI systems and Maya software.”
“SGI is extremely proud to be the platform of choice for this
milestone of CGI magic,” said Greg Estes, vice president of
corporate marketing, SGI. “hyperReal virtual characters will be a
part of the future of digital storytelling in Hollywood and around
the world. SGI has a solid history of supplying the collaborative
technology that enables artistic visionaries, and our technology
will continue to be the bedrock on which the filmmaking of the
future will arise.”
Square USA will also look to SGI for its next, as yet undecided,
project. “For the future, as we think about the next project, it
must have even more quality and more detail,” Hashimoto concluded.
“It will need an even more powerful environment, and I expect that
powerful environment to come from SGI.”