DKP creates animated DVD-N - Post News

Post, July, 2003 by Marc Loftus

TORONTO -- DKP Effects spent eight months working on the production of Scourge of Worlds, an interactive Dungeons & Dragons Adventure that takes advantage of the animation studio's development of DVD-N technology. The fully CG animated DVD follows the adventures of three fearless heros - Regdar, Lidda and Mialee -- who've embarked on a treacherous quest to save the world from evil beings armed with the ultimate weapon.

Viewers follow the adventurers' journey and help decide the different paths they can take as the story progresses. A complete adventure takes around 45 minutes to view, but the combination of paths numbers nearly 1,000, so DKP had to create two hours and 45 minutes worth of animation to cover all of the options, most of which were created using Alias\Wavefront's Maya software.

According to DKP's VP of technical production Terry Dale, the DVD-N disc is based on the standard DVD protocol and allows viewers an impressive level of interactivity using their standard DVD player and controls. Unlike a videogame, says Dale, a DVD-N does not require constant attention and feedback from the user. Instead, they can sit back and enjoy the content, while still having control over the story's outcome.

While discussions with licensers Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, began months before production started, once DKP was given the greenlight, the process came together relatively quickly. Dale estimates that between 15 and 18 staffers worked on Scourge of Worlds during its eight-month production cycle.

All of the animations were created in the 16x9 format at 960x540 resolution, or "half HD" as Dale calls it Maya was used for modeling, 3D, environments and rendering. Side Effects' Houdini was used for architectural elements, which were then brought into Maya. Textures were created using Adobe Photoshop and Right Hemisphere's Deep Paint 3D, which allows artists to paint directly onto 3D models and scenes.

Characters all incorporate the same underlying skeletons and were animated at Giant Studios in Atlanta using the facility's motion capture system. Facial animation and hand animations were all keyframed.

DKP is equipped with 85 Pentium 4-based NT workstations for animation purposes. The systems are also used for rendering. In addition, DKP has between 50 and 60 Linux P4-based machines that serve as dedicated renderers.

Elements were composited using Shake, which is running on the Windows platform at DKP. Editing was performed using DKP's Jaleo nonlinear systems. Dale estimates that 1.6 million frames were created for the project. He was very impressed with the encoding process for the DVD, which took place at Crest National in Hollywood. DKP provided Crest with a Digital Betacam master of the final picture edit, while audio house Crunch in Toronto supplied a surround sound mix on TASCAM DA-88 tapes. Content was encoded as MPEG files and the final delivery format is on a dual-layer DVD-9 disc.