Feature frenzy. (viewpoint Film).

Last month, while I was gathering information about ILM's OpenEXR image-file format, I interviewed Gregor vom Scheidt, founder of NXN, who said something in passing that stunned me. Apparently, soon after NXN announced that Pixar Animation Studios had purchased its alienbrain software, he estimated that 40 studios working on CG feature films called NXN to ask about asset management for their projects. "Obviously the features are at different stages of maturity," vom Scheidt pointed out. It seemed like a lot, but to my surprise, once I began looking for examples and watching for announcement, I began to see a constant flow of 3D feature-film news items.

Why so many? Certainly, the major studios have noticed the driving success of the first CG films--Disney/Pixar's Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc.; then Dreamworks/PDI's Shrek; and most recently Fox/Blue Sky Studio's Ice Age, all among the top 100 revenue generating films of all time, each earning hundreds of millions of dollars. Indeed, the only CG movie to fail at the box office has been Final Fantasy, a technically sophisticated but expensive-to-produce, photo-surrealistic action/adventure story populated with digital humans.

"I think 3D allows us to tell a slightly different kind of story than 2D does, to create new, fully rounded worlds with extraordinary amounts of magic, fantasy, and great humor," says Penney Finkelman Cox, executive producer of Shrek, producer of Dreamworks' Prince of Egypt, and now executive vice president of Sony Pictures Animation. "Unlike 2D, there are no formulaic rules."

The first 3D feature animations were created by people who helped invent the medium, who relied on proprietary software honed for more than a decade, and who had partners with deep pockets. Until recently, the question in many peoples' minds was whether studios without those advantages could produce successful 3D features, even if they had a good story.

The answer appeared in the form of two features, Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, both produced by smallish studios--albeit ones with long histories in 3D computer graphics--using off-the-shelf software.

Chicago-based Big Idea modeled, animated, and rendered its Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie entirely with Alias|Wavefront's Maya software. Moreover, the feature film was largely self-financed with sales of half-hour Veggie Tales videos--more than 30 million in the past 10 years.

Austin-based DNA's Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, which was modeled and rendered in NewTek's LightWave and animated with pmG Group's project:messiah, received a nomination for the first Best Animated Feature Oscar alongside Monsters, Inc. and Shrek (which won). By the time Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies put the O Entertainment and Nickelodeon Production into movie studios, Jimmy was already a television star, thanks to Nickelodeon.