Los Angeles, Oct 17 2011

The robot-boxing adventure Real Steel earned over 100 million dollars worldwide in its opening week, and Concept Overdrive is proud to announce its significant role in the creation of many of the the films special effects.

"We were approached by Real Steel visual effects supervisors in late 2009 because we had developed real time motion systems used on 'Avatar'." said Concept Overdrive President Steve Rosenbluth. "The robot boxing of Real Steel required integrating streams of motion, and our technology fit the Virtual Production paradigm well."

"Simul-cam", the process of combining computer graphics robots with real world actors and sets, gave the Director and the the DP the experience of shooting the whole scene live. The process allowed the robot shots to be framed in-the-moment with the actors, and facilitated artistic decision-making. Concept Overdrive collaborated with partners Video Hawks and Giant Studios to provide the Simul-cam system on-set, where camera lens metadata and camera motion was streamed and stored by Overdrive systems.

As on-set robot footage accrued, Editorial renders and 'Turnover' packages for the Visual Effects house were needed. Concept Overdrive's "Synthesis" automation system churned through hundreds of robot shots and assembled scenes which were rendered in game-resolution for the Editorial department. This involved the automated combination of digital assets like robot animation, image-based motion capture footage, Simul-cam metadata and on-set take-management data. Post-production was made more efficient, and less expensive, by utilizing this system.

A new graphical take-management tool called "Upstage" was developed on Real Steel to capture stage activity, from Action, Cut, and Print events to Directors notes and camera metadata. The information entered into Upstage was databased for the Synthesis render process which the Editorial department relied upon.

A Virtual Camera was used prominently on Real Steel to shoot the all-CGI robot boxing shots. The camera device contains Concept Overdrive DSP hardware which handles analog and digital inputs. That data is sent through an Overdrive computer to be both captured and streamed into the 3D computer graphics world. Virtual Camera devices were a collaboration between Concept Overdrive and Technoprops Inc, and were an essential part of a filmmaking process where some of the main characters exist only in computers.

The film's real-world hydraulic robots were created by Legacy Effects, who utilized an Overdrive system to perform animatronic robots like Noisy Boy, Ambush, and Atom which seamlessly matched their computer graphics versions.

In total, four Overdrive motion management systems were used during production, and a Synthesis pipeline system was deployed as 10 on-set computers. The majority of the film's robot shots flowed through Concept Overdrive systems and protocols. "Being a deterministic hard real time system, the Overdrives were the only computers on set that could gen-lock to camera shutter and time code, so they were very valuable." Rosenbluth says, "In the old Ford factory where 'Crash Palace' was set, it was really satisfying to walk from the Simul-cam area to the hydraulic robot area and find another crew using our stuff, unassisted."

The technologies deployed on Real Steel saved a lot of labor and made the virtual production run like a live-action shoot. Industry experts are now recognizing that the Real Steel technology ensemble saves productions money while giving the film-makers the tools and workflow with which they are familiar - such that shooting boxing robots is like making a live action movie.

Concept Overdrive released version 2.1 of Synthesis and version 2.6 of Overdrive in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Los Angeles, Dec 21 2009

James Cameron's 3d computer graphic adventure Avatar earned 242.5 million worldwide in its opening weekend, and Concept Overdrive is proud to announce its extensive role in the creation of many of the film's special effects.

"We were approached by the Avatar production in late 2005 because we had been developing real time motion management systems," said Concept Overdrive President Steve Rosenbluth. "The Avatar workflow was all about integrating streams of motion in the production environment, both real and virtual, so our technology was a perfect match."

Six Overdrive motion management systems were used during production, and the "Synthesis" render pipeline system was developed. Concept Overdrive technology was also integrated into Virtual Camera and Wheels applications.

Avatar's biomechanical "Amp-suit" was on a hydraulic motion base controlled by an "Overdrive" motion control system. Motion paths from Maya and Motion Builder were imported, accelerations modified on the Overdrive timeline, and ethernet SDK triggers from other systems synchronized the base with camera and CG departments.

Hi-Def camera telemetry was gathered by Concept Overdrive's streaming SDK in microcontrollers on the camera bus. Overdrive read camera focus, iris, zoom, interocular and convergence data, acting as a streaming telemetry server. Datasets were recorded in the Overdrive motion editor by remote computers using the ethernet SDK - thus the real world camera metadata was both distributed live to other departments and stored for post production.

The "Samson" helicopter was filmed on a hydraulic gimbal controlled live by the Overdrive control system. Actors and camera operators alike performed inside the helicopter while outside operators simulated a flight path with joysticks. The helicopter motion was captured so the moves could be matched in the 3D computer graphic environments.

Simulcam was the process of combining real world actors and sets with computer graphics actors and sets, giving the director the experience of shooting the scene live. This new process allowed the shot to be framed accurately and facilitated artistic decision-making "in-camera". The camera motion in Simulcam, both lens data and gross positioning from an optical mocap system, streamed through an Overdrive system. The data was sent live into the 3D CGI world via Concept Overdrive's ethernet SDK, allowing the "compositing of worlds". Automated datasets were generated for post-production, and a video application called "Vcap" was developed by Concept Overdrive for the calibration process. Industry experts are saying that Simulcam was the groundbreaking technological advance of the film.

Overdrive systems were used to motion-control camera lenses in shots which utilized previously captured Simulcam data. The continuing development of Overdrive's hard real time math engine enabled the on-the-fly lens mapping.

Concept Overdrive developed the Synthesis system for Avatar, which was the editorial pipeline of the main camera stage. The harvesting of metadata from this mocap stage was largely automated by Synthesis, which assembled assets from multiple departments after each take. The system gathered the data, modified it and rendered it into computer-game resolution video files which were "digital dailies" for the editorial department. A flexible task-sequencing architecture was designed which utilized networked resources to automate the render process. Nearly every CG shot in the film passed through Synthesis; the renders were the final editorial cut of the film before the high-resolution rendering.

The Virtual Camera, which is prominent in Avatar publicity, contains a Concept Overdrive microcontroller which handles analog and digital inputs, sending them through an Overdrive system to be streamed into the 3D computer graphics world. A camera-wheels device was also developed with an internal embedded Overdrive computer; this was fed into the CG world and used for dolly shots with frame-accurate sync. Nearly every CG shot of the film flowed through Overdrive computers and protocols.

"Being a deterministic hard real time system, the Overdrive boxes were the only computers on set that could gen-lock to camera shutter and time code." Rosenbluth says, "On some shots there were four of our systems running in parallel, it was really satisfying to see it all happening simultaneously." Concept Overdrive systems ran unattended for months at a time.

The technologies deployed on Avatar saved man-years of labor and made the virtual production run like a live-action shoot. Industry experts are calling the Avatar technology ensemble one of the greatest technological achievements of recent cinema history.

Concept Overdrive released version 1.0 of Synthesis and version 2.3 of Overdrive in the fourth quarter of 2009.