The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the U. of I. is helping produce movie magic with cinematic scientific visualization.
NCSA visualization still from the IMAX film “A Beautiful Planet” – approaching the Kepler-186 system with its five exoplanets and one seen in transit.
The Advanced Visualization Laboratory at NCSA recently worked on “A Beautiful Planet,” the latest 3-D space documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Toni Myers and IMAX Entertainment, made in cooperation with NASA, which premiered in New York City on April 16.
AVL, led by director Donna Cox, helped produce the opening and closing scenes of “A Beautiful Planet.” Cox, a professor of art and design, served as visualization producer and designer on the NCSA scenes of the film. AVL previously worked with Myers and the IMAX team to create scientific visualizations for the award-winning IMAX documentary “Hubble 3D” from Warner Bros. Pictures and IMAX Entertainment (2010).
AVL has a long history of producing cinematic scientific visualizations for full-dome planetarium shows, television documentaries, feature film and IMAX documentary films.
“A Beautiful Planet” is a 46-minute documentary film that gives moviegoers a never-before-seen glimpse of Earth from space and provides an increased understanding of our planet and galaxy. In cooperation with NASA, the movie captures footage filmed by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
The AVL team produced 6 minutes and 20 seconds of visualization, including two dramatic astrophysical voyages: the opening journey into the Milky Way galaxy to the location of our sun and the closing scene, a flight from the International Space Station to the Earth-like exoplanet K-186f, nearly 500 light years away from Earth.
“There’s no place like Earth, and the movie tries to capture that truth,” Cox said. “We used a virtual camera, advanced computing and scientific data to provide a unique voyage to a planetary system in our galaxy far away. NCSA’s AVL focuses on scientific accuracy while cinematically presenting data.”
The AVL team that worked on the film includes: Kalina Borkiewicz, visualization development; AJ Christensen, visualization design and effects; Stuart Levy, visualization and astronomy; and Robert Patterson, visualization designer and camera.
AVL welcomed the IMAX production team – Judy Carroll, co-producer; Hugh Murray, stereographer; and Myers, producer and director – to NCSA on two occasions, along with astronomer Frank Summers from the Space Telescope Science Institute, to develop the concept and treatment for NCSA’s contribution to the film. The team used AVL’s 4096-pixel 3-D stereo virtual environment and visualization software to collaboratively design the scenes for the IMAX screen. Then they employed their advanced computing environment to develop and refine the 4096×2880 resolution IMAX 3-D scenes. In the end, AVL delivered more than 9,000 stereoscopic image pairs for the film.
“It was a great collaboration,” Patterson said. “NCSA was able to provide the IMAX audience with immersive 3-D visualization journeys using a host of scientific data to help viewers understand our place in the Milky Way galaxy.”
The film will be shown to the public exclusively in IMAX and IMAX 3-D theaters beginning April 29.
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