By Stuart Silverstone
Graphics News Service
Special to AECnews.com
Using TruEarth satellite images wrapped on a Maya-generated still ocean wave, animator Keith English is building a realistic simulation of Santa Barbara’s Channel Islands for a film to be exhibited in the area’s new $8 million Sea Center. The project is part of the marine education and learning initiative at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
“A new technique in Maya for creating liquid surfaces allowed us to deform a surface using actual topographic data and have it look like the land,” explains English, animation director of Screaming Pixels. “It’s basically a wave that is frozen—separate from the simulated ocean itself.”
Original data was combined from a number of sources to produce an accurate 3D model of the eight islands, including NOAA underwater soundings and Coast Guard bathymetry. The data was blended by TerraMetrics, providers of terrain visualization datasets and satellite-photo composites, to produce a grey-scale height image of the islands.
A frozen wave generated in Maya becomes the foundation for recreating California’s Channel Islands.
Image courtesy Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Then a TerraMetrics TruEarth satellite image of the islands with a resolution of 30 meters/pixel was texture-mapped onto the height-data surface, allowing a realistic flyover of the unique islands.
TerraMetrics employs various computer-based techniques for integrating several wavelength bands from U.S. government satellites, such as Landsat, producing seamless images of large areas, such as the more than 300 individual satellite images that comprise the United States mainland. Detection algorithms ensure cloud-free composites and various digital filters are applied to achieve natural color. The only human intervention is a final aesthetic cleanup pass.
Underwater NOAA data are translated from a grid to more useful terrain models comprised of enough polygons to mimic only the changing slope areas of the islands below water. Presently, TerraMetrics bundles their wide-area satellite images with such terrain models in an easily accessible format for numerous animation and simulation projects, according to Greg Baxes, company president.
“With that bundle we construct textures in Maya to wrap on the underwater topography to make it look incredibly real,” added Keith English, describing the effects used for color, texture, material, specularity highlight, reflection, refraction and randomness.
The ecological importance of the islands the team is simulating is the result of northern cold water currents meeting southern warm water currents along the islands’ underwater cliff-like topography, producing massive plankton blooms that attract numerous forms of marine life from both northern and southern Pacific Coast habitats.
The story of that unique ecology is told through the eyes of a mother brown pelican leaving her nest on one of the eight Channel Islands in the film “Flight of the Pelican,” designed for the 140,000 annual visitors anticipated at the Sea Center on Santa Barbara’s Stearns Wharf. The film integrates live shots over the shoulder of a real pelican in front of a “green screen” with computer-animated flyovers and underwater views of Keith English’s simulated islands.
“The combined technologies allow us to better tell the story of Santa Barbara’s unique natural history,” added local filmmaker Michael Hanrahan, of The Ocean Channel, who co-produced the film with legendary natural history documentary producer Mike deGruy.