Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

25 March 2005

 

Mac 3D: Luminetik Animation Studios gets "Dis_Konnected" with New Computer Animated Feature

Macintosh Loving Super Animation Studio, Luminetik, Discusses Its Studio Animation Feature

Press Report: Luminetik Animation Studios was founded by fearless trailblazers and geeks from a wide range of atypical studio executive backgrounds who rallied behind the idea of creating something completely different in the animated film genre. A mixture of gut-feel and extensive market research supported the idea of an animated feature aimed at "tweens and teens", a demographic commanding a whopping $170 billion in spending power.

Research supports the notion that the market will support a unique film that combines the strengths of Luminetik's talent-base in the areas of music, extreme sports, the arts, visual effects and animation into something fresh and appealing to the special sensitivities of the tween & teen. Before diving in head first, Luminetik conducted focus groups, ran marketing studies and accumulated reams of data ensuring that their ideas have strong business legs to stand on.

Introducing ALEX

Thus, the genesis of "Dis_Konnected" was formed and a quest for a digital motion picture masterpiece was launched.

"Dis_Konnected" is built around the super-heroine ALEX. Introduced to the world two years ago, ALEX has slowly evolved based on detailed feedback from public "sneak peeks." To her credit, ALEX has received over 100,000 e-mail inquiries. Who is she? A video game character? A motion picture heroine? Soon, an animated short will reintroduce ALEX so her audience can decide themselves.

The secret sauce in Luminetik's talent pool is a musky geek gene embedded deep in its DNA. Every Luminetik animator and story teller has a geeky sixth sense that guides them to hot technology and how to convert it into bar-raising graphics. And if it doesn't quite reach, they'll write new code to get it there. Knowing how critical good hardware/software is to the cost/quality paradigm, Luminetik is extremely picky and proud of its production pipeline.

AMD Opteron Beats Apple, but Apple Very Much In the Pipeline

After extensive testing, the solution delivering the highest quality image for the cost proved to be a dual AMD Opteron processor-based workstation using the NVIDIA Quadro FX graphics card in the IBM APPRO line. This solution solved every complex production issue and bought something very valuable...time. The AMD Opteron architecture drops render times so significantly it gives Luminetik artists the freedom to create without fear of technology limitations. "Dis_Konnected" will push the envelope in many areas of computer-generated animation graphics.

On the software side, Luminetik uses Alias's Maya, New Tek's Lightwave 3D, Messiah Studio, Alias's Motion Builder and a few more packages. Luminetik is also using Apple's G5 workstations in their pipeline and dedicating their entire storage to Apple's storage solutions. The film will be edited in Apple's Final Cut Pro HD and composited using Apple's SHAKE software

About Luminetik

Luminetik is a 3D and special effects studio that works much like a consortium of artists, animators, modelers and renderers and production artists, working together in a studio environment. Akiko Ashley, a partner in the studio and the executive producer of "Dis-Konnected", is a passionate supporter of Apple's technology and specifically its UNIX-based operating system and the general innovation on the platform. She is also an experienced 3d professional, IT technologist and writer. Architosh published a Firm Profile article on Luminetik several years ago when the studio was in New York City.

Architosh Analysis: First off, we are thrilled with the news of the exciting progress being made with Luminetik's first feature. We have seen pictures of ALEX and she is really really cool. We can't wait to see her in motion and to learn about her character and personality. Luminetik is absolutely right to focus a character like this on the tween and teen market -- they love this stuff, just look at the success of Pixar's Incredibles.

On the technology side, we understand from several conversations with Ms. Ashley, who coincidentally is a senior associate editor at Architosh and a trusted adviser and industry insider, that the single biggest reason why Luminetik was forced to use the Opteron platform for their primary pipeline segment was not the performance of the IBM PowerPC 970 (Apple G5) processor but rather a series of performance issues relating to graphics performance. Chief among these were the lack of very highend workstation-grade graphics card options for the OS X platform. In fact, there are no highend graphics card options that qualify as "workstation" grade.

As Akiko said in an IM conversation recently, "everyone here in California in visual effects or animation is using a top of the line $3000 card", referring to the best Nvidia or 3DLabs cards available. Such cards often have up to 512 or even 640 MB of visual ram onboard, plus the fastest GPUs in twin engine versions and advanced support for multiple displays.

Luminetik's full pipeline includes extensive use of Apple G5-based Power Macs and Xserves and Apple storage solutions. Moreover, as mentioned in the press report, they also use the industry standard Final Cut Pro video editing software. Akiko said they would love to make the production an entire Apple affair, but they must go with the strongest technology in order to meet schedules and budgets.

As an aside, many readers of Architosh and other observers on the Net have wondered when Pixar would go all Mac, sorta speak. Luminetik's situation and choices seem to suggest that if Steve Jobs wants Pixar to seriously produce a film entirely on Apple hardware then he personally should get involved in fixing these last remaining annoyances with Apple's professional-grade hardware options.

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