AllThingsD » Lucasfilm

Kabam Acquires Top LucasArts Game Makers to Help Build Hardcore Social Games

Tricia Duryee — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:18:39 +0000

Kabam, known for developing hardcore social games such as The Godfather and Kingdoms of Camelot, has acquired a company with deep roots in the console game space.

Fearless Studios was co-founded two years ago by notable game makers Haden Blackman and Cedrick Collomb.

Blackman was the creator and senior executive producer of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and Collomb was formerly director of engineering at LucasArts. The two will immediately join Kabam, along with all members of the team from Marin, Calif.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Acquisitions in social gaming are common, especially as emerging companies try to gain scale. But it is not often that a social game company purchases a console game developer.

In the case of Kabam, it matches with what that company is trying to achieve. It is the goal of the Redwood City, Calif., company to challenge the notion that all gamers on Facebook are housewives in their mid-40s. Instead, it wants to bring some of the high-end games found on consoles to social networks in order to attract more engaged players, who are willing to play — and pay — more.

In a release, Kabam CEO Kevin Chou said the team at Fearless has the right game-design skills and technology set to help social games become higher fidelity.

“Having the background and emerging technologies and proficiency in making the transition from 2D to 3D on consoles mesh perfectly with Kabam’s strategy,” Chou said.

It is not clear if Fearless Studios ever released any games, but in an interview with USA Today, the founders did say the team was interested in developing for the Xbox, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, and for other devices, such as the iPhone.

Fearless will be joining a much more established organization, with roughly 400 employees. But there are already some common threads between the two companies: Kabam’s COO, Chris Carvalho, worked at Lucasfilm for a decade; and Blackman spent 13 years with LucasArts.

The Secret to Some of Lucasfilm's Magic: Nvidia's GPU Chips

Arik Hesseldahl — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 23:45:04 +0000

Like the visual effects you’ve been seeing in movies these days? Of course, you already know that in most cases they’re computer-generated. And as you’ve seen over the last few days during my visit to Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic, the computing power used to render the visual effects isn’t exactly consumer grade.

But as I learned, the effects wizards at ILM have a secret weapon that shares a lot in common with your PC at home. If you play any graphics-heavy games, your PC probably has a graphics processing unit in it, and chances are pretty good that GPU card came from Nvidia. As you might expect, displaying ever-more realistic scenes in a PC game is similar in many respects to what you need to make a wicked cool effect in a movie. And in certain cases they’re better than even the most powerful traditional CPU chips from the likes of Intel or Advanced Micro Devices.

The story goes that when he was working on a scene for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” Chris Horvath was asked to create a “tornado of fire” (the picture above is borrowed from that scene). At the time, the conventional way of doing it just didn’t produce a satisfying result. “We needed to do this very complicated fire simulation and we just didn’t have a solution to do it,” said Craig Hammack, an ILM visual effects supervisor who was sitting near Horvath at the time.

Someone suggested to Horvath that he try working with GPUs, and not only that but writing an effects program to take advantage of their unique computing capabilities. (Horvath tells the story in the video below.) The result was a piece of internal ILM software called Verté that reduced the desired fire effects to a series of flat two-dimensional images linked together to look like they were 3-D.

Next came a new tool called Plume, used to simulate the movements of fluids. It’s written to take advantage of a newer Nvidia parallel computing technology called CUDA. Suddenly, the work required to create deeply complex visual effects involving images of fire or water sped up considerably because the software written for Plume could talk directly to the graphics chip itself.

“We used to have a smoke simulation engine that we had been using for I don’t know how long, and it rendered on CPUs, and the turnaround time was about a day,” Kirk Haller, ILM’s director of research and development told me. “You’d have to set things up and feel pretty confident that you were doing the right things,” because you wouldn’t see the result until the day after.

Plume changed the game in a big way. Developed first for use on “The Last Airbender,”, it allowed artists working on simulations to mess around with them on the fly, literally changing settings on software dials. “It’s a very friendly system. People who aren’t experts and don’t know exactly what numbers and settings to put in on the old system could tweak the settings and learn how it behaves, and get the artistic refinement and the look that they want,” Haller told me.

Plume sped things up so much on “Airbender” that effects artists were able to work with director M. Night Shyamalan in near real-time, allowing him to have input on how the simulated fire and water and air would look in each shot and how it would affect the characters on the screen, Olivier Maury, a research and development engineer at ILM, told me. Instead of waiting a day to see the results of each day’s work, an artist could work up as many as several versions of a complex simulation every day.

That’s why Plume–which is a proprietary tool–is now being used on every film currently in the works at ILM. And that’s a lengthy list, including “Cowboys and Aliens,” “Pirates of the Caribbean 4” and “Transformers 3,” to name but a few.

Plume simulation renders are run on a rack of 12 Nvidia Quadroplex 2200′s. Each machine in the rack contains two GPU chips, but each chip has 240 cores, the central computing brain of the chip. That means this rack has 5,760 computing brains jamming on simulations and effects shots at any time. That’s some serious horsepower. The rack is situated only steps away from the “Death Star” rack I showed you last week, though, silly me, I didn’t have the presence of mind to shoot any footage of it.

I wasn’t able to shoot any video to demonstrate any of this. But the folks from ILM like the results they’re getting from the Nvidia GPUs so much they appeared in a video about it last year that coincided with the release of “Airbender,” and it shows a good bit of the evolution of the process from “Potter 6″ to “Airbender.” Chances are you’ll be seeing a lot of shots first created in Plume in movies coming this summer.

PREVIOUSLY:

A Virtual Tour of the Town of Dirt, from the Animated Film “Rango”

Lucasfilm’s Data Center, and an Encounter With the Real Death Star

Meet Kevin Clark, Master Not of the Force, but of Data

A Virtual Tour of the Town of Dirt, from the Animated Film "Rango"

Arik Hesseldahl — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 22:30:51 +0000

How does a filmmaker plan a shot in a town that doesn’t exist? That’s the sort of challenge that the director Gore Verbinski had with the animated film “Rango.” Fortunately, “Rango” is the first animated feature produced by Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic, so there are a lot a technical tools that a director can call upon.

As part of my recent visit to ILM, where first I interviewed CIO Kevin Clark and then toured the ILM data center, I got a look behind the scenes of “Rango,” the tale of a pet chameleon who is unexpectedly stranded in the desert and then finds his way to a tiny Wild West-like town called Dirt.

Dirt doesn’t exist. There’s no movie set to visit to plan shots as you might do with a set for a live-action movie. So the folks at ILM created a virtual version of the town–and the interiors of all its buildings–to help Verbinski and his team map out how they wanted to shoot each scene.

The mock-up of the town of Dirt was created inside an empty studio at ILM, with numerous cameras pointing into the center from the walls and ceilings, and as you’ll see in the video below, a director can “see” it using a digital tablet that presents a scene as it would appear if you were a character walking around in it. ILM’s Colin Benoit, who was layout supervisor on “Rango,” and Michael Sanders, digital supervisor on the film, were my tour guides. The video ends with a clip of the movie, where you see how the technology comes into use. Enjoy.

[ See post to watch video ]

Lucasfilm's Data Center, and an Encounter With the Real Death Star (Video)

Arik Hesseldahl — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 18:00:44 +0000

Wednesday I introduced you to Kevin Clark, master of all things data at Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic. Today, as promised, I’m taking you into the data center Clark commands.

Shortly after my chat with Clark, ILM’s publicist Greg Grusby ushered me into the room, where, as you’ll hear, the roar of air conditioning units cooling all the machines makes it hard to hear much else.

The room is 10,500 square feet and contains the systems running all the things that you’d find in pretty much any other corporate data center for things like email and Web service. StarWars.com is hosted in the room, for example. But I was more interested in the machines used to produce the crazy cool visual effects. As Clark mentioned in our chat, ILM is using almost a full petabyte of storage–or nearly 1 million gigabytes–and for that it relies upon NetApp appliances.

I lingered over an older rack of machines nicknamed the Death Star. These are the old customized Racksaver servers, each containing a single AMD Athlon processor and 2 gigabytes of memory, that were used to render imagery for “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” They’re also now considered so old that it’s not cost-effective to run them any longer.

Then we saw the new machines: The IBM racks, which to me actually look like they belong on the Death Star, are a mix of LS22 servers with AMD processors and newer HS22‘s with Intel processors. They average 32GB of memory per blade and currently cranking away on several movies. If you’re among those eagerly awaiting the release of films like “Cowboys and Aliens,” “Pirates of the Caribbean 4,” “Super 8,” “Transformers 3,” “Battleship” and “The Avengers,” every blink of the lights on the Bladecenter brings them one step closer to completion.

We’re not done with the tours. Next up, I’ll take you on a walking tour of the Town of Dirt seen in the animated feature “Rango.” And before we’re done with all this, I’ll tell you what ILM considers its “secret weapon,” at least from a computing perspective. Enjoy the video.

[ See post to watch video ]

(Image via Wookiepedia)

Meet Kevin Clark, Master Not of the Force, but of Data

Arik Hesseldahl — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:30:40 +0000

Last week you may remember I paid a visit to San Francisco, primarily to check in on Hewlett-Packard and its new CEO, and also to visit with Salesforce.com.

I had one other destination, and it got part of me excited like an eight-year old going to a toy store. It was the Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio of San Francisco, home of Industrial Light & Magic. This is the part of the George Lucas entertainment juggernaut that makes all the cool things that happen on movie screens look devastatingly real. The geek part of my heart swelled with anticipation. This is, after all, one of the places that the Star Wars Universe calls home. Its visual trappings, like the Darth Vader mannequin pictured, are everywhere. As I approached, I resisted the urge to bow before the Yoda statue outside the entrance, but I did take a picture.

Naturally I was there to talk tech. And with a little help from the Force (actually it was ILM’s kind publicist) I caught up with Kevin Clark, Lucasfilm’s director of information technology, who like anyone else with that job title is constantly grappling with the basic questions of how to get the most productivity out of the machines under his command. One recurring problem: making changes to the live production environment, something he compares to rebuilding a race car while’s its on the track. But then most companies aren’t in the business of rendering the visual effects that will make or break the films coming out for the summer blockbuster season like “Transformers 3″ or “Pirates of the Caribbean 4.” Clark and I met just outside the ILM data center. Tomorrow, I’ll take you on a video tour inside.

[ See post to watch video ]

"Star Wars": A New Dimension

Voices — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:33:50 +0000

The quality of 3-D technology and the number of available venues have finally reached the point where George Lucas is satisfied he can wring a few more zillion dollars out of the “Star Wars” saga. Lucasfilm announced that all six films in the series will be converted–tastefully, of course–to 3-D over an unspecified period of years, starting with the release of “Episode I: The Phantom Menace” in 2012 (the same year James Cameron will raise the “Titanic” gross with a 3-D remake).

Better Stop Holding Your Breath for a Verizon iPhone

John Paczkowski — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:57:25 +0000

If Verizon is in talks with Apple to become the second U.S. carrier for the iPhone, they evidently aren’t going very well. How else to explain this iPhone-slagging ad campaign for Verizon’s forthcoming Android handset, Droid? (Click on video below.)

“iDon’t have a real keyboard
iDon’t run simultaneous apps
iDon’t take night shots
iDon’t allow open development
iDon’t customize
iDon’t run widgets
iDon’t have interchangeable batteries
Everything iDon’t
DROID DOES”

Shown on Fox and CBS (CBS) during a pair of NFL football games Sunday afternoon, the ad clearly positions Droid as the mythical iPhone killer. And while that might seem foolhardy, perhaps even hubristic, those who’ve seen the Motorola (MOT)-designed device say it’s at the very least a worthy iPhone rival.

Says Boy Genius: “[This is] the Android device to beat, and easily the most impressive. From what we’ve been told, Google had a direct hand in the Motorola Droid. Something to the point of almost dictating every move Motorola made when designing and making the phone….the Droid, even in its non-final form, is the most impressive phone we’ve used since the iPhone. It’s positively amazing.”

A gushing endorsement of an unreleased device and as such, to be taken with a grain of salt. That said, it’s hard to believe Verizon (VZ) would go all out here without good reason. And make no mistake, the company is going all out, even to the point of licensing the “Droid” trademark from Lucasfilm.

This past weekend’s TV commercial and a Droid teaser site are clearly the beginning of a major marketing push intended to position Droid as the Apple (AAPL) iPhone’s better, or at least its equal. Little wonder then that Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt was so upbeat about Android’s future during the search engine company’s earnings call last week.

“Android adoption is literally about to explode,” Schmidt said. “You have all the necessary conditions, you have the vendors, you have the distribution and so forth. This is a very critical period with all of everything being delivered.”

PREVIOUSLY:

Special D Tab and More to Come

Kara Swisher — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:21:53 +0000

The Wall Street Journal has a special “D: All Things Digital” tab today, with excerpts from several of the interviews that took place onstage a few weeks ago at our fifth conference. I did a video for it, embedded below.

The interviews featured are with famed filmmaker George Lucas, CBS CEO Les Moonves, Time Inc. CEO Ann Moore, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman and a solo interview with Apple legend Steve Jobs.

Here’s the video I did for the tab on the conference, focusing on the strides made by traditional media in dealing with the Web and its impact.

In related D news, our official conference page has now been relocated to this site from its old one, and you can now access it here. You can get all sorts of information, as well as pictures and videos from the first through the fourth D conferences.

We will not be opening registration for D6, which will take place May 27 to 29, 2008, until the fall, although Walt and I are already thinking about next year’s program.

Full pictures and video for D5 will be up on this site soon, first for conference attendees and then for everyone. Until then, check out our highlights of the conference with blogs, video and pictures here.

Oh, Everybody Loves Google, Alright …

John Paczkowski — Fri, 25 May 2007 18:01:39 +0000

[ See post to watch video ]

Mash Me Up and I Shall Become More Powerful Than You Could Possibly Imagine.

John Paczkowski — Fri, 25 May 2007 12:01:55 +0000

If there’s one thing you can say about Lucasfilm, it’s that it’s not afraid to keep milking the “Star Wars” cash cow, er, bantha. And so, in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the film–whose franchise has earned more than $22 billion since it first debuted–Lucasfilm is making 250 clips from all six “Star Wars” movies available on its Starwars.com site, inviting fans to remix and mash them up to their hearts’ content.

“We see what’s going on at YouTube,” Jeffrey Ulin, senior director for distribution and business affairs at Lucasfilm, told The Wall Street Journal. “We see what’s going on out there on the Web generally. And we wanted fans to come to Starwars.com as the center of fan activity … [this is all] part of keeping the love of ‘Star Wars’ and the franchise alive.”

And revenue as well, of course. Ultimately, these mash-ups will feature advertisements that, given the size and fanaticism of the “Star Wars” fan base, will almost certainly rope in some high-profile sponsors. That said, sitting through a vapid preroll advertisement would certainly be worth the price of admission to an episode of Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager populated with some of Star Wars’ original cast members….

The Yoda Fountain and Javva the Hutt Coffee: Kara Visits Lucasfilm

Kara Swisher — Thu, 10 May 2007 21:28:39 +0000

Geek Alert: Here’s another on-the-fly little video I made this morning, when I went over to the handsome campus of Lucasfilm on the Presidio in San Francisco, at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. I was there to see the demo that famed director George Lucas will be doing at the D: All Things Digital conference in a few weeks.

After years of bugging Lucasfilm’s Lynne Hale to nab him, we are very excited that the famed movie director and producer will be onstage at the conference (and clips of that interview will be on our site, too).

But the choice of Lucas was not because he is one of the most successful and influential moviemakers of all time. It’s because of his technology chops–his early combination of cutting-edge technology and filmmaking, along with mythic storytelling, have been groundbreaking. We hope to really delve into where he thinks digital video is going in all its forms.

From the demo I saw–about which I can say nothing until he shows it on the D stage–Lucas will push the envelope even further in a variety of genres (all I can say is via some amazing new breakthroughs in computer technology, Indiana Jones is really in big trouble now).

After the demo, I got a tour around Lucasfilm’s new home, a facility called the Letterman Digital Arts Center on a 23-acre campus overlooking the San Francisco Bay. I was not looking at the view, but at the cool array of movie and tech memorabilia scattered all over the place, which caused me to say “Wow” a few too many times. (Here is a link to one I did from the Cable Show in Las Vegas earlier in the week, where I said “Ahhhh” a lot more than I needed to.)

[ See post to watch video ]

Lucas started his legendary career in 1971, with San Francisco-based American Zoetrope and longtime friend Francis Ford Coppola as executive producer, transforming a student film into his first feature, “THX-1138.” That was followed in 1973 by the low-budget but giant hit “American Graffiti.”

In his third outing, Lucas offered the world “Star Wars,” and nerds have never recovered. The huge sci-fi hit garnered a clutch of Oscars, spawned a genre and many sequels, some better than others. He recently said there are more to come.

He also later created the classic adventurer Indiana Jones and co-wrote and executive-produced the successful series “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which got him another bunch of Oscars. A fourth sequel is coming next summer. (Lucas also made “Howard the Duck,” but we’re going to ignore that.)

Lucas has also created a lot of television and is now working on the creation of “Clone Wars,” the first computer-generated animated television series from Lucasfilm Animation.

All of his entertainment work inspired Lucas to create his own visual-effects company, Industrial Light & Magic, which is the industry leader, delivering such movie creations as the scary dinosaurs of “Jurassic Park,” the cool magic of the “Harry Potter” films and the icky-looking pirates in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies.

His Skywalker Sound is also one of the best regarded in the business of crafting of a film’s soundtrack and post-production editing. And Lucasfilm also includes LucasArts, a video-game company, and Lucas Licensing, which manages the creation of all that “Star Wars” merchandise.

(You adult owners of light sabers know who you are.)