DISCOVERY BRINGS BACK TASMANIAN TIGER
SYDNEY
It may not quite be Jurassic Park, but a new documentary produced
by Discovery Networks Asia, Becker Entertainment and Photon VFX
is using animation and animatronics to bring the extinct Australian
Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger back to life.
Entitled End of Extinction: Cloning the Tasmanian Tiger, the documentary
traces the efforts of scientists at Sydney's Australian Museum to
clone the extinct Tasmanian Tiger (a distant relative of the kangaroo
and wombat, also known as the Thylacine) using DNA samples taken
from a 136 year-old fetus.
"What Professor Mike Archer and his team are attempting is as scientifically
exciting and technically challenging as splitting the atom or landing
a man on the moon," says Maurice Paleau, Vice President, Production
& Development for Discovery Networks, International and Executive
Producer of the film.
"We are excited to capture this amazing story, bringing the Tasmanian
Tiger back to life on television screens around the world."
The Tasmanian Tiger was a carnivorous marsupial which ran like
a wolf but had a pouch like a kangaroo, and thrived in Australia,
New Guinea and Tasmania until they became extinct. The species'
demise was brought about by human interference, when a bounty was
placed on the heads of Tasmanian Tigers due to their supposed attacks
on sheep.
In lieu of a real life clone, Australian visual effects specialists
Photon VFX were charged with bringing the extinct Tasmanian tiger
back to life through animation and animatronics.
"It's always a challenge to make a creature look lifelike," said
Soren Jensen, VFX Producer, Photon. "But to achieve the animation
of an extinct creature so effectively was extremely satisfying."
To achieve the most realistic result, Photon recommended using
a lifelike robotic animal (animatronic) of a Tasmanian Tiger for
close ups and a computer generated (CGI) version for medium and
wide shots. While the animatronic looked good in close up shots,
it was limited in movement. The CGI model provided the movement
of the Tasmanian Tiger walking through medium and wide shots.
According to Jensen, one of the most challenging aspects of creating
the Tasmanian Tiger for the documentary was the identical matching
of a CGI version to the animatronic. To achieve this the CGI model
had to go through several stages of production. Before the animatronics'
own fur was added, it was scanned to create a 3D wireframe model
- an identical digital version.
Using the scanned wireframe version, Photon then recreated the
way that the creature would have walked, using scientific data and
sketches of Tasmanian Tiger tracks in the wild. The next steps involved
building up the layers of the animated model, including its bone
and muscle structure.
The major challenge when producing the CGI model was the creation
of a lifelike fur effect for the animation. Photon's staff studied
the traditional methods of fur creation used on the animatronic
model and then utilised similar methods to shorten the research
and development (R&D) time with their software. In fact, the final
fur look was based almost totally on the animatronic tiger. All
the colourings and markings in the CGI model were also matched exactly
to those on the animatronic. The digital fur is made up of over
1,000,000 individual strands of fibre, each of which has 20 different
attributes, such as length, colour, and curl.
"Fur recreation is an evolving technology in the VFX (video effects)
field," continued Jensen. "It will become easier and faster as time
goes on but at the moment it is not an easy thing to accomplish.
We're proud that with our in-house R&D with Maya Unlimited software
we achieved the results so quickly."
Once the 3D animation had been produced it had to be composited
into filmed footage of the Australian bush.
"The Photon VFX team has truly partnered with us to realise the
Tasmanian Tiger, both creatively and practically, for our documentary,"
said Sue Clothier, Producer, Becker Entertainment. "We couldn't
be happier with the outcome."
"The ability to actually show what a Tasmanian Tiger would be like,
returned to existence via the scientific breakthroughs performed
by scientists at Sydney's The Australian Museum, is a very special
aspect of this production," said Discovery Networks' Maurice Paleau.
"Thanks to cutting edge CGI and animatronic technology we were able
to make a high quality documentary film which translates scientific
theory into visual fact."
The End of Extinction: Cloning the Tasmanian Tiger is scheduled
to premiere in July 2002. It will be broadcast on all of Discovery's
channels globally in 155 countries and territories and translated
into 33 different languages.
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