Living

MOVIE MAGIC WORKS WONDERS IN SCIENCE 

Gareth Cook, Globe Staff
06/02/2001

The Boston Globe

THIRD A.1 (Copyright 2001) 

   The quivering mass looked like a Hollywood monster, with nebulous
arms thrusting forward, pulling it along as it searched the landscape
for its next victim. But the creature was real, a solitary mouse cell
seen under magnification and brought to life using the same tools
behind the special effects in the movies "Shrek" and "Pearl Harbor."
   This animated sequence, shown at a recent conference at MIT's Whitehead
Institute, was created using a microscope that gathers pictures of a living
cell at different depths, from top to bottom. Researchers then combined
these pictures in a computer, instructing it to render an image of what the
cell would look like, lit up in three dimensions.
   Then, by gathering information as the cell moved, the scientists used
software to create a digital movie, using the same process a filmmaker
would use to make a scene such as the animated character Shrek fleeing a
dragon.
   From archeology to meteorology, from astronomy to paleontology,
scientists are finding that the technology behind the special effects of
these two newly opened summer films is opening new worlds. Computer
animation techniques long used by Hollywood to conjure up green ogres and
Japanese Zero fighter planes are being adapted by researchers as powerful
tools for making sense of gathering thunderstorms or imploding clusters of
stars.
   The software allows them to visual ize the ways in which complex changes
occur over time and to spot patterns they wouldn't be able to see any other
way. It is money from Hollywood and the video gaming industry that has
driven the technology forward, researchers say, in much the same way that
NASA programs have spurred advances in lightweight materials and
freeze-dried foods.
   "The effort to make those awe-inspiring shots is like a mini space
program each summer," said Paul Debevec, executive producer of graphics
research at the Institute for Creative Technologies, a new virtual reality
research lab at the University of Southern California.
   At the heart of these efforts are what computer scientists call
"rendering" software, computer programs that take a three- dimensional
model of a scene, complete with colors and textures for each object, and
calculate how the scene would appear from a certain angle, given the light
sources. Creating a realistic final product has proven exceptionally
difficult because light can take long, complicated paths, creating subtle
effects to which the human eye is finely attuned.
   To render a simple glass of water, for example, the software must
calculate the shadows thrown by each of the light sources, as well as the
highlights reflected on the rim of the glass and the water, and also the
way that water shows a warped image of everything behind it. Even that
would result in an artificial-looking scene, Debevec said, because
everything in a room reflects light from everything else, creating a
pleasing ambient light which is fiendishly hard to simulate.
   As movies and video game makers have pushed the technology, however,
computer animation has improved from a crude special- effects device to a
way to create sophisticated characters. Also, computers have become adept
at creating good images quickly from a flood of data, precisely what
scientists have been looking for.
   "Whatever they use, we would need exactly the same thing," said Paul
Matsudaira, a professor of biology and bioengineering at MIT who created
the digital movie of the cell moving.
   The human mind is far better equipped to interpret an image than it is a
long string of numbers. And so, as modern science creates a flood of data,
computer graphics has become a vital tool for scientists, according to
Felice Frankel, an MIT research scientist who is organizing a National
Science Foundation-sponsored conference later this month on the growing
importance of images in science.
   At the National Center for Atmospheric Research, computer simulations of
storms, forest fires, turbulence, and other phenomena kick out about half a
terabyte of data, 50 times the size of the 10- gigabyte hard drive in a new
PC, every day. Just to look at such "ridiculous amounts of data" takes a
powerful machine that can convert tables of numbers into a massive cyclone
off the Asian coast, said Don Middleton, who leads NCAR's visualization
program.
   Researchers can then virtually fly around inside the storm, exploring
the areas that might reveal insights into its operation. At NCAR and at
many other sites around the world, investigators use special goggles and
giant screens that make the images appear to float in front of them in
three dimensions. Some companies make virtual reality rooms with 3-D
screens on all four walls and the floor, said Ian Curington, the director
of technical marketing for AVS, a Waltham company that makes high-end
imaging software.
   Recently, Curington said, he went to a demonstration where he stood
inside a room, wearing goggles, and suddenly found himself standing in a
scene that sounds like something out of the movie "The Matrix": floating
above a virtual cityscape, watching as the computer tracked how wind would
whip around the skyscrapers.
   "This kind of immersive mode will become ubiquitous," he said.
   Scientists aren't just changing how they look at information; they are
finding new ways to get information. Scansite, a Novato, Calif.- based
company, has provided digital scans of three-dimensional objects for
special effects in "Star Wars" movies, "The Mummy," "Men In Black" and
other films. Scansite recently teamed up with the Smithsonian National
Museum of Natural History to scan the skeleton of the museum's triceratops.
   Using this digital replica, the researchers were able to determine how
much the unwieldy bones could have moved at each joint. From this, they
were able to figure out how the beast would have stood, walked, and ran.
   "These advanced computer systems are going to totally change the way we
figure out how dinosaurs really worked," said Ralph E. Chapman, a
paleontologist at the museum.
   Chapman said that having digital versions of the bones was a huge
advantage because he could send the files to researchers who wanted to
study the bones and they could look at the files using 3-D rendering
software, make any measurements they were interested in, or even make an
exact physical copy of it.
   The same technology could be used by archeologists, art historians, and
others, making ancient treasures far easier to study.
   "We will be able to create whole lost worlds," said Lisa Federici, CEO
of Scansite.
   Researchers said they hoped that the stunning new images would help the
public understand scientists' enthusiasm. Frankel said: "That's what draws
scientists to science in the first place - beauty."
   A free talk on special effects and science wil be held at MIT's Kresge
Auditorium on June 14 at 8:30 p.m. More information is available at
web.mit.edu/i-m/. Gareth Cook can be reached by e-mail at cook@globe.com.
   SIDEBAR: INSIDE A CYCLONE GLOBE STAFF GRAPHIC /JOAN McLAUGHLIN PLEASE
REFER TO MICROFILM FOR GRAPH DATA  Caption: 1. NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL
HISTORY 2. Computer animation techniques such as those used in "Shrek" are
being adapted for research. / DREAMWORKS PICTURES  Copyright (C) 2000 Dow
Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.