Drain the Ocean

Transmission Sunday August 9th 9pm National Geographic Channel US.


Read 'How we made it' article

Using real MARINE SURVEY DATA as their starting point, 422's CGI team have created a series of amazing landscapes that exist, unseen, at the bottom of the deep oceans. 422's managing director and senior technical director Craig Howarth - fresh from his pioneering data translation work for the BBC's Britain from Above, converted topographic data from recent scientific surveys into files that could be imported directly into 422's landscaping software.

Art director Eduardo Schaal and Director of CGI Rogerio Alves then took over, leading teams of CGI artists and compositors using procedural modeling, sculpting and digital matte painting techniques to reproduce the likely appearance of the ocean floor in nine diverse locations around the world.

Alves describes the process: 'While working on DTO we utilised in house scripts that gave us strict control over assets and data flow between Terragen and Maya. This enabled us to seamlessly match elements from maya (cameras, particles, etc) with procedurally generated terrains in terragen. In turn, this allows us to use scenery from Terragen that utilises billions of polygons, almost unlimited depth and resolution, on a planet wide scale. We are also able to incorporate geographic data from any area on Earth (and Mars) and augment that data, giving it fine the detail that the original scans could never hope to achieve.'

The technique was used to create locations such as the Bahamas, Monterey Bay in California and the mid Atlantic ridge. These areas might be geographically diverse, but they have in common the fact that they are the subject of intense scientific interest as well as offering impreesive spectacle in the shape of the world's grandest canyon, the steepest mountains and the biggest landslides.

Drain the Ocean is directed by Steve Nicholls and produced by UK based Burning Gold Productions

The work will be first aired on National Geographic Channel at 9pm on Sunday August 9th 2009.

Website:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/drain-the-ocean-3639/Overview#tab-Photos/4

author: adc
2009-07-16