Frantic Films Software Provides Vital Tools for Anatomical Travelogue Deadline, Krakatoa and Awake Help Realize Stunning Medical Imagery Eleven-year old medical visualization company Anatomical Travelogue defies easy categorization. Its work, which reveals the inner workings of the human body with stunning realism, has been showcased on health documentaries, in numerous books, on educational websites and in museum exhibits the world over.
The studio uses human data taken from MRI, CT, cryomacrotome, two-photon confocal microscopy and other state-of-the-art scanning methods in combination with 3D animation to bring these visuals to life. And because the company bridges the gap between science and storytelling, it incorporates the best production tools from both. Autodesk 3ds Max and eyeon Fusion comprise the animation and modeling backbone, with specialized medical, scientific analysis and visualization tools and proprietary plug-ins used as well.
In addition, Anatomical Travelogue has incorporated three products from Frantic Films Software into its production toolkit: Deadline render farm management software, Krakatoa, a high-volume point-based particle renderer for 3ds Max, and the Awake plug-in suite for eyeon Fusion, which became commercially available in April of 2008.
Deadline Render Farm Center of Companys PipelineAnatomical Travelogue has been a Deadline user since 2004, and boasts 60 render nodes installed across a render farm consisting primarily of Windows XP and XP64 systems running on HP and Boxx machines, with a couple of custom rigs also in the mix.
We got wind that Frantic Films was developing Deadline through a contact we had in its R&D department, who pre-sold us on the product before it was commercially released, states Chad Capeland, Director of Animation, Anatomical Travelogue. At the time, we were having lots of problems with the render queue software we had in place, and decided to give Deadline a shot at it. Plus, with Anatomical Travelogue growing in size, we had more artists vying for time on our farm, so we needed something that was accommodating for multiple users, and Deadline proved to be ideal.
Some of Anatomical Travelogues favorite features in Deadline were those that helped save the studio precious time. We found the Monitor UI to be very intuitive, continues Capeland. It was highly customizable and easy for our artists to find exactly what they needed. I also liked how Deadline archives all the old jobs, both successes and failures. Sometimes its easier to pull a job out of Deadline for re-rendering than it is to get it off the fileserver. This can be a huge timesaver when you have the finished frames and just need to change something like render resolution.
Another timesaver is Deadlines ability to schedule jobs across the render farm to optimize resources. Anatomical Travelogue recalls when Deadline helped save the day on a recent projectthe studio was up against a deadline and one of the artists was submitting jobs to the farm as quickly as possible. The jobs were taking a long time to render, so the technical director opened up the slower jobs in Deadline, optimized them and resubmitted them to the queue. By being able to see the entire projects progress in the Monitor, Anatomical Travelogue was also able to ensure it got the best quality renders while still hitting the deadline. And because Deadline allows super users to come in and fix problematic jobs from the artists, it really helped them prioritize their efforts and keep everyone doing what they do best.
Despite its complexity, the software was also relatively easy to learn Theres very little a new user can do that cant be easily undone, so anyone can start using Deadline pretty quickly, Capeland said. Deadline also boasts a lot of auto-magic in the submission scripts, and the software is easily installed and configured without much thought. It also features plenty of easy ways to automate tasks. For example, a user can stack jobs so when a 3ds Max job finishes, a Fusion compositing job can start. And since Frantic initially developed its software tools for use on its own feature film and television productions, products like Deadline are filled with useful feature sets that are very much designed by artists, for artists. Its very much UsWare.
Stunning Bio-Animations with Krakatoa Anatomical Travelogue became a Krakatoa beta tester in 2006. We were attending a co-located conference in Boston on point and voxel rendering before SIGGRAPH, and ran into the Frantic Films R&D team, including Mark Wiebe (Director of Research and Development) and Bobo (Technical Director of the Creative Team) at a bar in the city, recalls Capeland. The guys told us about a new point-based rendering system they were introducing at their SIGGRAPH booth, and my team was immediately excited about trying it out. We were already Deadline customers, and were doing a ton of particle work, so we knew wed have no problem getting up and running on Krakatoa quickly. Obviously we intended to do something different from what Krakatoa was designed for, but the potential was there.
Soon, the studio was creating incredibly detailed bio-animations with the software, including a Frantic Films demo it produced for SIGGRAPH 2007. This test animation showed the various layers of a human hand (skin, muscles, fat, blood vessels and bones) all rendered as volumetric clouds of particles using Krakatoa and a data set based on a real human hand. To view the animation:
http://www.franticfilms.com/software/support/krakatoa/downloads/Vifehandtest10_light_c_Full_.mov Most recently, Anatomical Travelogue finished a large education initiative promoting kidney health. The animations featured numerous vascular datasets, in which the surface area was extremely large, but the interior volume very small. This is typically considered the worst-case scenario for polygon models, but in Krakatoa, with the pointsets, its relatively easy. The main kidney dataset clocked in at over 43 gigabytes in size, and featured a lot of detail, including showing the whole kidney all the way down to just a hundred microns in one shot.
Anatomical Travelogue also used Krakatoa to render a tiny dataset of a coiled tuft of capillaries in the kidney called a glomerulus. The resolution of the scan was about 0.4 microns, and contained a complete Bowmans capsule, which is the expanded end of the kidney tubule surrounding the glomerulus. This scan was very unusual, and the only complete Bowmans capsule the artists had ever seen at that resolution.
The individual cells are very delicate looking, and theyre all intertwined, with the blood vessels very complex in shape, remembers Capeland. As a polygon model, it looked awfulthe intricate shapes were all lost. But in Krakatoa, we had this very faithful reproduction of the scan, and you could really see the membranes and cells perfectly.
For Anatomical Travelogue, the best part of Krakatoa was that it runs inside its primary toolset3ds Maxso it was incredibly easy for its artists to get up to speed. Once someone gets their head wrapped around the idea of pointset rendering, theyre 90 percent of the way there, Capeland said. Krakatoas lights, cameras and animation features are all standard within 3ds Max, so we already knew how to work within that environment. Krakatoa even supports lights and cameras from other renderers, so we could use Brazil renders and Krakatoa renders together with some simple compositing. And because Krakatoa is a floating point renderer, we found the color correction very fast and accurate. Krakatoa fit into our compositing system perfectly.
Awake Adds Power to eyeon FusionFrantic Films Software developed Awake, a plug-in pack for Fusion, while working on the stereoscopic feature film Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D. Anatomical Travelogue became an Awake beta tester soon after the software was introduced. We really like the filtering tools and the Edge Aware filter in Awake. Well use Edge Aware to remove noise from various scans including CTs, and also from our Krakatoa renders, explained Capeland.
One important feature often overlooked by those considering purchasing new software is the issue of licensing, adds Capeland. Awake floats using the same licensing system that Deadline, Krakatoa, 3ds Max and Fusion use. Many plug-ins currently out there for Fusion are node locked, so if we use them on one machine, well be creating comps that cant be opened elsewhere in the facility. Not cool. That situation makes for overly complicated pipelines. With the floating licenses in Frantic Films products, I know that everyone in the facility has access to the tools and can use them when needed.
Production-Proven Suite of ToolsOne big benefit in having Frantic Films Software closely affiliated with its visual effects parent division is that the tools have been developed and fine-tuned on demanding real-world feature film productions over the course of many big budget movies.
Deadline was created after Frantic Films artists were dissatisfied with the render management solutions installed across its Vancouver, Winnipeg and Los Angeles studios, so they scripted a program that would stand up to the rigorous demands of back-to-back feature film productions. Krakatoa was originally developed to handle the particle-intensive animations on the movie Stay, and was subsequently refined on Superman Returns.
Our company handles high-volumes of animation and 3D work, which means the problems we face, Frantic faces too, Capeland concluded. With Deadline, Krakatoa and Awake, Frantic Films Software has come up with great solutions to address many of the issues our artists face.
Anatomical Travelogue is an award-winning producer of high-end 3D animation based on actual human data. The company has four television shows currently airing on Discovery and PBS, and has published five picture books written by company founder Alexander Tsiaras, and created several web experiences, including the Webby Award-winning Healthy Heart site. In addition, Anatomical Travelogue has produced several traveling exhibitions, and made media appearances on CNN, ABC News, The Today Show, Good Morning America and Oprah. The company was founded in 1997 by renowned journalist and author Alexander Tsiaras. For more information:
http://www.anatomicaltravel.com/
Top Rated 
