VizWorld.com

Imagi Studios invested $65 Million to create the CG Hit “Astro Boy”, and used Autodesk’s Maya along with a lot of proprietary software to bring it to the big screen.

Francis Kao, founder and creative director of Imagi Studios, said, “We chose Autodesk Maya as our animation platform for ‘Astro Boy’ because of its openness, creative tools, and large pool of trained artists. We relied on the software’s powerful feature set, and our programmers also developed custom plug-ins for Maya, enabling us to efficiently create high-quality animation.”

Specifically:

“For ‘Astro Boy’ foliage simulation we used the Maya software’s paint effects together with our in-house plug-in,” said Johnny Mak, head of technical operations at Imagi Studios. “Having relied on Maya for many years, we’ve seen great advancements in the software’s capabilities. It continually helps us deliver world-class animation.”

via Imagi’s Astro Boy Leaps With Autodesk Maya | CGnews.

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Astro Boy has just successfully navigated the rocky transition from ink to 3D with his new feature film, and CGSoceity talks to Director David Bowers about some of the unique challenges they faced in bringing a classic animated character to 3D.

“When you put him into 3D and turn his head, one of those horns will disappear and he doesn’t look like Astro Boy anymore.” The cheat they used was to occasionally switch the horn from the left to the right side depending on the location of the camera. “It’s a nod to the way he’s always been portrayed. I think it’s important that Astro Boy has the iconic two point shape.”

via CGSociety – ASTROBOY.

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