Matter of life or death. (user focus: DV).

Would you know what action take if you were faced with a life-or-death scenario? For instance, would you know the correct way to land if you fell from a rooftop, or how to tuck and roll if you leaped from a moving vehicle?

Every Wednesday evening, the cable TV show Worst-Case Scenario tackles many of the most extreme situations and demonstrates how best survive them as stuntpersons perform the incredible feats. However, illustrating certain techniques with live actors is too dangerous. Instead, the action is frozen, and the live actor is replaced by a 3D model. This enables the director to illustrate "the correct `textbook' move from different angles, which is impossible to achieve with regular cameras while keeping the technique within the hazardous environment," says Leslie Mien, creative director a Cinergy Creative (Studio City, CA).

Working within a tight cable budget, Cinergy produces the 3D effects using mainly Discreet's 3ds max and Character Studio software running on an Intel Xeon-based PC. The computer-generated imagery is then ...