Habib has worked for ILM since 1993. He joined the company as technical director for "The Mask." He quickly earned a reputation as the "Particle Man," because of a noxious green cloud of gas that he created for a key shot in "The Mask." The cloud was completely CG, created out of millions of tiny 3D particles. The studio chooses a director for the film, and he or she begins to look for companies to handle the various components of the film. Always look at where you are going to use your ladder. For example, if two people are talking to each other in a scene, and the camera switches 10 times back and forth to show the two actors' heads while they are talking, that single scene contains 10 shots. A fireman once told me "about an arm’s length from the building while standing is good" as another rule of thumb. The simulation needed to handle everything from rippling, still water, to waves the size of a 10-story building. A storyboard is a collection of still drawings, words and technical instructions that describe each shot.
Full-size boats would be controlled by giant gimbals in the pool during the shot. For example, in 90 shots in "The Perfect Storm," everything is computer generated -- the water, the boats and even the actors -- and everything looks totally real. In "The Perfect Storm," ILM had three roles on the team. A butcher-block top on an island, a window seat with a cushion, or a single shelf displaying three or four pieces of rustic pottery in earthlike colors will help balance the overall modernity of the setting. It would be hard to cover everything that ILM has done in any one article (or even in a single book), so in this article we'll focus on the incredible and revolutionary water effects used in "The Perfect Storm" as an example of their work. A shot is a piece of the movie from a single camera angle. Third, ILM integrated water and other effects into 250 shots that contained live actors or ships shot on a blue screen (see How Blue Screen Effects Work for details).
The originally planned position of the camera did not work when simulated -- the camera's motion would have taken it through a wall! Magnets have two poles -- a north pole and a south pole. If it's zing you want, combine two complementary colors; they're "complementary" because they lie directly opposite each other on the wheel. In fact, only two of the stormy ocean shots in the entire film are completely real! In "The Perfect Storm," the team was creating an entire ocean environment along with simulated boats, actors, buoys and so on. In things like water, dust, snow and rain, the entire visual effect that you see comes from the interaction of trillions of particles. By tweaking items like this in the storyboarding phase, directors are able to avoid many potential pitfalls that could lengthen the filming process and exceed the projected budget. The process of filming all of the live-action shots is called production. Most of the actual 3D modeling work took place using a commercial software application package called Maya, made by Alias|Wavefront. With some planning and the use of a few free computer programs, you can turn your patio into a sundial that will only work with your visitors' help (and a sunny day, of course).
His work reached entirely new heights with the amazing particle systems developed for "The Perfect Storm." Habib will use the knowledge gleaned from "The Perfect Storm," as well as the other movies he has worked on, to create incredible new effects for ILM. For splash pad kits example, Habib "Particle Man" Zargarpour, the associate visual effects supervisor for "The Perfect Storm," has a bachelor's degree in applied science and mechanical engineering and another bachelor's degree in industrial design (see sidebar for more information on Habib). During our visit to ILM, we spent most of our time talking with Habib Zargarpour. Now that you have a general design plan in mind, it's time to examine the space you intend to decorate. Fangmeier assembled a crew of 120 ILM staffers to develop the 340 visual effects shots needed for "The Perfect Storm." Ninety of the shots in the movie are completely computer-generated (including virtual actors), and another 220 have CG water or other elements. This simple-looking part plays an integral role in mixing the perfect cocktail of fuel and oxygen into an incredibly explosive potion. Its replacement may take too many years to grow to fill the space, so consider whether shaping, thinning, and pruning an existing tree will make it a grand part of your plan.