Web-ready: Sony ports its Spider-Man movie model for use on the Internet.

Sony Pictures Imageworks may be captivating audiences with its groundbreaking computer-generated effects in the newly released Spider-Man feature film (see "Nitty Gritty Spider," page 14), but not all of the innovations are limited to the big screen. In a digital milestone, a team at Imageworks, working with interactive game creator WildTangent, successfully devised a method dial enabled Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment (SPDE)--which oversees the activities and assets within Sony--to repurpose a robust 3D movie character for other types of media applications.

As a result, Sony has been able to promote Spider-Man on its Web site by offering fans a free downloadable screen saver and an audio visualizer (www.sony.com/Spiderman) containing an optimized version of the actual Spider-Man model from the film. These PC desktop applications, produced by WildTangent, feature the character patrolling the city's rooftops, performing aerial acrobatics, crawling up the sides of high-rises, and using his webshooters to swing from building to building.

For years, Imageworks and SPDE have been exploring the concept of porting various movie assets for applications such as multimedia advertising and games, which would negate having to remodel characters from scratch. "We've been searching for a way to bridge the gap between what we create and what SPDE needs in terms of digital assets," says Chris Juen, digital production manager at Imageworks. "Until now, we had only been able to supply a gray [Maya] model but not the textures, which are generated later in the production process using proprietary software."

According to Juen, the problem has always had more to do with Imageworks' work flow processes than image-resolution requirements. Typically, the Imageworks team generates a high-resolution gray-shaded model in Alias|Wavefront's Maya, from which a lighter model is generated and this, lighter model is used for previsualizalion purposes throughout three-quarters of the production pipeline before it's replaced with the robust model through a series of scripts. Neither model, though, contains the dazzling details that give a character its technique appearance. That's because the surfaces, highlights, lighting, shaders, and other effects are incorporated later during the the texturing and rendering processes through complex proprietary software. At that stage, the models are transformed onto a proprietary format, and they are incompatible with other applications.

"Everyone wants us to provide a model as it appears in the film," Juen says. "but we've never been able to do that without incorporating our complex texturing and rendering solution." While second-party content creators could generate their own textures, they could never replicate Imageworks' minute details, so the models never looked the same.

The solution, which had eluded the group for so long, turned out to be relatively simple. Imageworks would provide a replica of its gray-shaded model along with fully rendered still images, from which the second party--in this case, WildTangent--would copy the textures and apply them to the 3D Maya model. "The simplicity of the approach turned out to be amazing," adds Juen.

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