Enki Bilal himself rubbed shoulders with it as early as 2001. The director had used an application to create a 3D storyboard of his feature film Immortel Ad Vitam. The making was to last more than two years and constitute the starting point for the development, by the company Duran Duboi, of many tools applied to 3D production.

A few years of development later, D-Viz (for Digital Visualization) now enables one to represent sets with more texture, colours, character movement and even facial expressions. Every camera movement, from dollies to cranes, thus becomes possible.
"We just need to recover photos of the shooting locations and actors to model them in D-Viz", explains Jacquemin Piel, head of the company's special effects studio.
From there, the director has at his disposal all the ingredients to experiment with his shots and lenses in an animated storyboard.

D-Viz is not marketed by Duran Duboi as traditional software. It is above all an entry way to move into productions. Such was the case in 2003 within the framework of the 3-D animation of the Danish feature film The Ugly Duckling and Me and its breakdown into 26 episodes for television. All the direction of this animated film was carried out using D-Viz which equally lets one create the storyboards for more traditional productions.

Steven Spielberg inspired by "Unreal Tournament".

A recognised French director is today using the application to prepare his next film. But bowing to confidentiality, the identity of the filmmaker remains hidden.

The product has not failed either to attract a few great names of Hollywood, even if most of the studios develop their own in-house solutions.

"The learning-curve of the tool is quite fast. The director only has to deal with elements he's already familiar with. This enables him to optimise its future shoot by deciding, for example, if in such and such a scene it would not better to place special effects, or determine the level of risk for stuntmen". What equally serves to cut production costs.

Naturally, D-Viz operates across networks. Every profession taking part in a shoot may thus simultaneously intervene on the simulation.
For rookie directors, there's a 3D storyboard software market with more basic products and prices around three hundred euros.

Others prefer to reuse video game environments and characters to simulate scenes by integrating their own camera movements. Even the greatest.

It was thus that Steven Spielberg used part of the environment of the game "Unreal Tournament" to prepare his film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. And that was as early as 2001.

By Rodolphe Helderlé
News.fr

Published on 25 May 2007