Cooper gives special thanks to HP, stating, “Without HP’s super-fast computers, we would never have been able to complete the incredibly complex rendering calculations required to achieve the film’s visual detail.”
More than 300 HP workstations were used by the digital artists for “Shark Tale.” State-of-the-art dual processors and the fastest available memory allowed the animators, designers, effects team and other departments to see more visual detail interactively on their desktops. This allowed the artists to scale the complexity of the environments in which “Shark Tale” exists to create a richer, more believable undersea world.
In addition, the HP renderfarm allowed the filmmakers to see what had been produced with amazing alacrity. Janet Healy attests, “It was terrific to be able to imagine a movie with so much complexity and still be able to get through all our processing and look at the images every morning. It was astonishing.” The design team worked closely with the directors and the layout team, headed by Gil Zimmerman, to determine the best camera angles with which to capture the action. Layout is akin to cinematography in a live-action movie, and Daniel St. Pierre says that they discussed the camerawork on “Shark Tale” in live-action terms. “We would say things like, ‘This has got to be a steadicam from this point to this point,’ or ‘We need a crane shot here and then we’ll push in on the dolly.’”
The camera blocking was first laid out using physical models and then in the computer with animatics—computer models of scene elements, including characters, that allowed the filmmakers to build a scene in the computer in 3D.
One of the innovations that Zimmerman and his team came up with was the “Sharkcam,” which essentially placed a virtual camera on the head of a shark to give the audience a shark’s-eye view as he swims through the city.
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