HARNESSINGOFFSHORE WIND OFFSHORE WINDS INNOVATION CREATING

UK’s offshore wind industry: one turbines and foundations tend that delivers at the upper end of to be provided by international government projections and suppliers. provides 15GW of capacity by Siemens recently announced 2020, and one that delivers the its decision to invest £160 million THE IMPOSSIBLE 8GW expected at the lower end in wind turbine production and of the government’s estimates. installation facilities in Yorkshire. Using the so-called input- Its port partner, Associated British output model analysis, the report Ports, is investing a further £150 concluded that its “accelerated million in the Green Port Hull growth” path would see 15GW development. The investment deployed, while providing £6.7 will boost the UK’s offshore wind billion of gross added value to industry and will create up to the UK economy in 2020, creating 1,000 jobs directly, with additional 34,000 direct jobs and supporting jobs during construction and 150,000 jobs across the wider indirectly in the supply chain. economy. The expansion would These are early days for represent a step change for the offshore wind turbines. The industry, given that it currently variations in foundation design employs around 5,000 people show that, for all the lessons that directly, supports 20,000 jobs in can be drawn from the offshore total and contributes around oil and gas industry, there are Schematic of Energy Technologies Institute’s tension leg floating platform currently undergoing front end engineering design studies. It has the £1bn a year to the UK economy. plenty of opportunities for potential to achieve £85/MWh or lower © ETI However, the scaling up of improving the designs. This is a the industry envisaged by the young industry with only 10 years MANY CHALLENGES have on the support structures – report is dependent upon the of operations and maintenance flaws may yet emerge. For UK capturing a greater share of experience. It is thus not even REMAIN example, serious problems arose the supply chain for offshore close to decommissioning. The challenges in developing with the recent discovery of faults wind farms and cutting the However, the research base support structures for offshore in the grout connection used technology costs. The report and financial impetus are turbines are many and complex. between the wind turbine and acknowledges that currently accelerating. With energy security Soil mechanics, installation the monopile. The designers had only about 40% of the lifetime an ever-important consideration, logistics, power engineering, underestimated the impact of costs of operational UK offshore and with onshore developments aerodynamics and many other lateral movement in the wind farms will be spent due to have their subsidies cut at disciplines need to come structures. A costly remedy was domestically, as most large the general election, it does seem together. Once again, the to change the cylindrical sleeve components are imported. The that offshore wind farms will be Director Alfonso Cuarón (centre foreground) talks with the cameraman while Sandra Bullock is prepared for a take. This was one of only two sets built for the film with the other surroundings being computer generated offshore wind sector can draw on to a conical one. The upward- UK is increasingly competitive in at the forefront of renewable the experiences of oil and gas tapering joint introduced a the provision of cables, electrical energy generation in coming operators, but foundations for downward force to bring the systems, installation services, and decades. wind turbines will also bring new grouted surfaces in firmer contact operations and maintenance, For more information about challenges. and prevent slippage. but the big ticket items such as PISA see tinyurl.com/lxaatq2 The 3D space thriller Gravity dominated this year’s Academy Awards, winning in Decades of data from the oil Subsequent monopile structures seven categories. Although the film features live action footage of the actors, with the and gas industry bolster now include this design change. Independent journalist Dr Trevor Loveday talked to Andrew Scott, developers’ confidence in the use Programme Manager Offshore Wind at the Energy Technologies exception of the actors’ faces, computers were used to create just about everything else of computational modelling to FINANCIAL FUTURE Institute and Kim Ahle, Head of Offshore Technology at DONG that is on the screen. The company that won that award is one of several in the UK that drive designs to the The Offshore Renewable Energy Energy. He used material from the 2014 Rankine Lecture by demonstration stage. But there is Catapult report, Generating Energy Professor Guy Houlsby FREng – see tinyurl.com/oqzf8w7 Professor lead the way in providing visual special effects for film. little experience of the novel and Prosperity, assessed two Byron Byrne, Associate Professor of Civil Engineering at Oxford effects that wind turbines might development scenarios for the University reviewed and revised the article.

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The VFX industry is estimated to generate over £200 million a year in LIGHTING GRAVITY the UK. This commercial and artistic success is cited as one reason for the recent increase in state support for the UK’s film industry, raising tax relief rates and lowering spend thresholds Initial previs: prepared as early animated version of the film

Pre-light: a more advanced version of previs VFX artists use a method known as ray tracing to which has simulate the path of photons around a scene and to been lit by the cinematographer ‘illuminate’ their animations. Ray tracing generates an with the CGI Film makers have used special decade. Their successes have (CGI) that are used to create VFX now use the kind of tools once image by tracing the path of light through pixels in an lighting team effects (SFX) since the early days included five of the last six and are making greater use of available only to big studios. image plane and simulates what happens when the of cinema. SFX have provided productions to win VFX Academy these images because they offer For their part, big studios light interacts with virtual objects. substitutes for actions and events or Bafta awards. greater flexibility in telling a have also begun to release more Ray tracing is used for generating visual realism but that are impossible, or too The VFX industry is estimated story. CGI images are wholly open-source software that has requires significant computation time. This makes ray expensive, to stage. Over the to generate over £200 million a tracing best suited for applications where the image can created within a computer, helped the whole industry to Live action: years, the technology of SFX has year in the UK. This commercial while VFX are video special improve its skills and allowed be rendered (translating mathematical approximations only Sandra moved from building, and and artistic success is cited as one of 3D objects into finalised visual representation) slowly Bullock’s face effects rendered by a computer smaller UK firms to adapt these is saved from destroying, scale models to reason for the recent increase in on real or computer-generated programs into more capable ahead of time. The technique can simulate a wide this shot; the computer-generated visual state support for the UK’s film variety of optical effects, such as reflection and other objects images. CGI can enhance sets, tools. One way to improve are props used effects (VFX) like those that industry, raising tax relief rates tailor costumes, create special industry packages has been to refraction, scattering, and chromatic aberrations. for live action contributed to the success of and lowering spend thresholds effects and conjure the illusion build software that works across The film Gravity was unusual in that almost every reference Gravity in this year’s Oscars. (the minimum amount of the of casts of extras. a range of applications by frame was animated in the computer before shooting The film industry in the UK film’s budget that has to be spent For the film Gravity, VFX creating ‘plug-ins’, so that creative began. The filmmakers then planned how to light the has a long history of producing in the UK). were not just part of the post- artists can carry out tasks more shooting of the real actors according to the details of the memorable special and visual To achieve such success, the production process but integral quickly and can combine CGI, rather than the other way around. effects, from Hammer horror films SFX firms have had to develop to the planning, storyboarding different simulation tools for one The filmmakers needed to change the light on the Live action and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A with face software tools and computer and shooting of the film, an sequence. actor’s face to give a more realistic impression that they Space Odyssey through to the conformed systems to enable them to aspect of ‘virtual production’ Part of the increasing realism were spinning through space. For example, spinning into CGI: early Harry Potter series, which began people on earth would have shown blood rushing to the rendering has produce ever more realistic where the movie and the world of CGI is down to the ability of fused the live filming in 2000. Spurred on by face which doesn’t happen in zero gravity. images. Some of these processes it portrays are put together computers and software to footage with the Potter phenomenon, the UK’s Framestore helped develop a 10m3 box lined with CGI suit and have been refinements of how inside a computer. handle greater numbers of what environment VFX industry has established a nearly 200 panels – each lined with more than 4,000 different software packages work One significant advance in the industry calls ‘assets’ – dominant position in VFX LEDs – to recreate the light from the computer’s ‘virtual together and how to manage SFX technology has been the computer models of characters, through innovations in computer set’. This allowed the filmmakers to hold the actors inside data transfer. Other progress has development of industry- objects or entire film sets – in animation. involved bringing innovative new the box and to alter the light scheme around them. standard software packages. ever-finer detail. CGI artists build There are three companies in approaches to computer A camera on a robotic arm then moved according to the Software tools from companies these assets in computer particular – the Moving Picture simulation. shots as described by the computer animation. such as Autodesk and The animations as assemblies of Completed Company (MPC), Double This also allowed the filmmakers to alter the lighting picture: Negative (DNeg) and Framestore, Foundry, a hugely successful polygons. Film assets that once everything has scheme in real time without having to physically change been finessed which was responsible for most THE ROLE OF VFX VFX software developer also comprised a few thousand the lighting array. They could then use this new lighting to a photo real of the work on Gravity – that have Filmmakers want ever-greater based in the UK, have to a polygons now consist of millions standard scheme to make corresponding adjustments to the All images worked on many of the most detail and realism from the degree democratised the VFX of polygons – see Game On animation in post-production. © Frameworks effects-heavy films of the past computer-generated images process. Even small firms can (Ingenia 43).

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algorithms) that has been used to wave for the The Voyage of the company MPC has taken another model without having to redo DATA PROCESSING model things like biological cells Dawn Treader, while Double approach to making its creations the entire destruction simulation. The quality of CGI has improved and atmospheric pollution. This Negative (DNeg) created a wall explode or shatter onscreen. They Instead, Kali alters the tetrahedral dramatically over the past combines modelling of individual of flame for Harry Potter and the have developed a new tool version of the object to match decade, in no small part thanks to particles, which works for waves Half-Blood Prince. named Kali, after the Hindu any design changes in the the creativity of artists and the and other fine close-up effects, goddess of destruction. This original model and changes the skills of software developers. while modelling the entire fluid program is based on the finite destruction simulation Arguably, the biggest challenge as a volume within a grid is better DESTROYING ASSETS VFX artists don’t just use element method (FEM), another accordingly. The software then for VFX teams has been for large expanses. simulations to create assets, they technique used throughout applies the simulation developing creative engineering Once VFX artists are happy can also destroy them. The engineering to analyse the instructions to the original model solutions that enable them to with the movement, they then challenge for firms is to select and structures of objects and and the object appears to blow handle the sheer volume of work apply tools to give a realistic develop the right tools to do this. buildings and calculate how they apart on the screen – see Kali. they are now expected to appearance in terms of colour, On Gravity, for example, the deform under different forces. VFX artists can add detail to process. VFX firms need to know shading and texture. This turns Framestore team tested several The principle of FEM is to simulations without having to how complex the required the data about each particle into solutions before it found an divide an object into many redesign the rendered model. modelling and rendering an instruction for the computer approach that was fast and smaller shapes that can be This has proved useful when processes will be so that they can to render it in a certain way, flexible enough to deform and separately modelled in order to blowing apart large and complex produce the most realistic effects based on information about the then shatter its extremely detailed approximate how the whole models that need to go through within the time and computing fluids’ real-world characteristics, model of the International Space structure behaves. In order to multiple design changes. In the power available. such as intensity or reflectivity. Station. The artists finally settled apply this idea in the most 2011 film Sucker Punch, MPC Some sequences can take This process, called ‘look on a rigid body dynamics (RBD) efficient way, Kali creates a used Kali to destroy a Japanese- days to simulate and can use development’, can be particularly system using open-source secondary representation of the style pagoda with approximately gigabytes of data storage space. challenging when creating software. This turned the model CGI object from tetrahedral 10.7 million external and 11 FLIP-solvers have become physically rare or impossible into a group of rigid, inter- shapes and simulates how that million internal faces, with each popular partly because they effects. For example, when the connected components, held would explode by modelling the pillar of the building further require the computer to evaluate Framestore team wanted to together by a single mesh so that constituent pieces – rather than divided into up to one million simulations fewer times per frame produce fire in zero gravity, it it would appear to bend and breaking up the original model tetrahedra. MPC later used Kali than purely particle-based found very few reference points deform before it broke apart. into lots of new sections. for the explosive spacecraft techniques. VFX producers also to draw from. The artists were Instead of employing this This enables animators to collision in Prometheus, Ridley need to manage storing data The animation process called previsualization (previs), shown in the top two frames here, is a way that filmmakers limited to watching a YouTube plan scenes as a step beyond illustrated storyboards. It is unusual for an entire film to be ‘prevised’, but with Gravity RBD-based technique, the make changes to the original Scott’s Alien ‘prequel’. with enough elements to an animated version of the movie was created before shooting, containing everything but the actors © Framestore video of a match being lit in space and then working with special effects artists to shoot COMPUTER POWER meticulous work by filling in the heat, combustion, convection, footage of flames hitting a drag and gravity. A simulation run The Framestore modellers who frames between those points. metallic ceiling. worked on Gravity built 2,200 Today, computer simulation then models how the particles When it came to creating the computer models, including a can model almost exactly how move frame-by-frame – their simulation, the graphic artists representation of the each muscle or strand of hair velocity, direction and density – turned off the parameters for International Space Station, from moves and deforms in the real so the artists can see the overall buoyancy, gravity and drag, but 100 million polygons. The world, or how the millions of motion of the fluid represented this resulted in a sequence that animator moved each model a particles that make up water or by a mesh across the particles. had very low detail and was small amount at a time within a fire flow and interact. By building Surfaces can be particularly almost dull. The team then had to virtual set. Unlike traditional and adapting the software that difficult to get right because of alter and enhance the simulation stop-motion animation, where carries out these simulations, and the change in density of particles. to find a balance between realism models must be positioned for by developing tools to translate Water may go from liquid to and what would look exciting to every frame of the film, the the resulting data into computer- foam to air, but it usually has a an audience. computer can reduce the artists’ generated images, VFX relatively consistent surface, The ability to produce some workload by filling in most of the companies can create multiple whereas a plume of smoke has of the most impressive shots of movement. The animator is still layers of additional detail that can different densities along its edges. this kind – integrating simulation making all the creative decisions. be added on to their basic A common technique used software with design tools to They have to decide on the animated models. To create fire, by many fluid simulation create effects that are both direction of the movement, the for example, the artists define the programs is fluid-implicit particle physically impossible and visually force, the position they want the 3D volume of the flame and the (FLIP) solving. This is a subset of believable – has enhanced the model to end up in and how fast number of particles that computational fluid dynamics (a reputation of British firms in this Artists at Double Negative created this disintegration effect on a shield (the dome in the background) by running a hand-painted cracking pattern through it will move. The computer takes comprise it. They can then way of calculating the movement business. Framestore, for example, a piece of software called Houdini Mantra. This generated textures to project onto the shield’s surface, which were then used to drive particle and cloth out some of the laborious, manipulate parameters such as of fluids using numerical produced a 60-foot never-ending simulations on the shield’s surface to give the effect of a fiery edge, and a concussive shock-wave effect drove particles off the surface © DNeg

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VFX firms are turning to specialised graphics processing units (GPUs). GPUs can simultaneously solve thousands of relatively simple equations, while central processing units can handle a small number of much more complex problems

accurately describe the animated production: some KALI simulation without taking up estimates put it at 80%, with the too much disk space or added dimension of recording processing time. and integrating live footage of Most simulations have to be actors’ faces, meaning that nearly solved frame by frame because every frame of the entire film is the behaviour of a particle or computer-generated to some other object in one frame extent. depends on its previous actions To cope with this rapid and those of the others around it. increase, VFX firms have To create slow motion shots of wood being splintered, burnt and destroyed in the film Sucker Punch, MPC developed the Kali software that could configure In an attempt to reduce this data developed and refined their bendable surfaces. The company’s technical directors then defined precise properties for each material so the surfaces would break in a very realistic way. Fractured tetrahedral meshes, showing how a single mesh can be created processing load, VFX firms are software to streamline the Metal would shear and bend, while wood planks would bend, crack and fracture into thousands of splinters © MPC with different material properties and specific interior structure. In this case, an unbreakable rabbit is embedded in a breakable sphere © MPC turning to specialised graphics workflow, to manage data processing units (GPUs). GPUs transfer between their different while the animators continue to manual fashion. A key challenge concentrate in specific patterns in this area, but some believe Kali is a piece of software that simulates how objects break apart can simultaneously solve packages more efficiently and to finalise their animations. will be to further automate this or need to generate rainbow artists may have to take details to in order to create animation sequences of destruction in films. It thousands of relatively simple further optimise their use of process and improve software effects. the level at which the human eye uses the finite element method (FEM), a numerical technique that equations, while central servers, which today can number interfaces to make them more Perversely, despite the stops noticing improvements can model and visualise structures. Engineers use FEM to explore CHALLENGES REMAIN continuing improvements in before extra computing power processing units can handle a thousands. VFX’s successes have been hard- intuitive and interactive. This will what happens at the boundary of a shape when that shape is hardware, software and system makes a real impact. Running the small number of much more Other innovations allow earned. It requires a different allow artists to produce lifelike deformed by specified forces. With its origins in aerospace and architecture, the increasing simulations that bring VFX to life complex problems. As with teams of artists to work on skillset for directors to images more quickly and rely complexity of simulations means can actually take far longer than civil engineering, FEM is now employed throughout engineering almost every aspect of VFX work, different aspects of an asset at choreograph scenes using increasingly on the system to that the time it takes to render watching the movie itself! to analyse how objects and buildings respond to stress. there has to be a balance the same time, often in different computer graphics compared to animate their work. animations has actually gone up, So the ultimate prize for VFX In the context of visual effects, FEM is generally used to model between using time to increase locations around the world, the way they would conventional VFX companies also need to rather than down. Any time saved firms will be when computing elastic and plastic deformation in solid objects on the screen. The the accuracy of the model and rather than designing and live action shots. With a film like continue to push the capabilities by technological improvements resources have been sufficiently physics of elastic deformation considers a piece of matter to be a giving artists more chances to animating each element in Gravity, the resulting film is made, of their simulation engines to has gone back into increasing the developed to enable directors to continuous block of material that can deform at any and every run simulations to improve the sequence. For example, at MPC, in essence, three times: once in match the behaviours of real- quality of the imagery. More use play back and review their work one of the infinite points within it. appearance of the final sequence. an asset management system has pre-production, then during the world systems more precisely and of GPUs may offer a breakthrough in real time. The laws that govern how this deformation occurs are based As VFX have become more been developed to enable shoot and, finally, in post- with higher fidelity. They also on a set of differential equations that can be difficult or impossible popular with filmmakers, in-progress assets to be production. The realism that need to increase the simulation to solve exactly. FEM creates an approximation of a continuous replacing aspects of live developed by various results from doing it well, though, speed so that artists are not left Stephen Harris, senior reporter with The Engineer, wrote this solid by breaking it up into a finite number of simple connected photography, special effects and departments at the same time to means that more films are calling waiting for days to see the final article. He talked to Richard Graham, VFX Project Manager, and pieces, each of which represents a volume of material. These scale models, both the number enable a parallel workflow. This upon VFX. result. Martin Preston, Head of Research and Development, Framestore; simple pieces are chosen to be easy to work with mathematically. of sequences that need effects allows animators to start creating To maintain their position, UK Another key area with room Hannes Ricklefs, Head of Software (UK), and Ben Cole, Head of In VFX, the elements are usually tetrahedra, the simplest linear and the amount of work done on movements of characters once firms must continue to find ways for improvement is the modeling Software (Vancouver), Moving Picture Company; Jeff Clifford, representation of a solid. The software uses FEM to calculate each sequence have shot up, the initial rigs and geometry have to produce more realistic of light. Although well developed, R&D Manager, Double Negative; Nick Manning, Industry and stress and strain across the different elements, determining how from around 600 to 800 edits for been made available. The animations in ever-increasing this has yet to take full account Field Marketing Manager, Autodesk Media & Entertainment; much deformation there should be. The software can also use a typical film to around 1,200 to resulting geometry caches can volumes. The industry still relies what happens of when curved Darren Cosker, lecturer in computer science at University of Bath this stress and strain information to calculate where the material is 1,500. A film like Gravity is, in be forwarded to the lighting heavily on the artistic input of surfaces reflect or refract beams and Royal Society Industry Fellow likely to fracture. effect, almost an entirely department for block lighting, animators, often in painstaking of light and when the rays

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