Digital film production and 3D animation has always required a tremendous amount of hardware and individual talent. That is why directors and advertising agencies usually outsource this kind of work to studios with the trained staff and rooms filled with specialized hardware to make complete these types of projects. Today, however, big time firms have to compete against highly-skilled, well-equipped, one-man shops, like Aaron Reid's Antigravity Studios.

Reid, 33, is one of a growing number of 3D entrepreneurs that are able to deliver top-quality design work with widely available workstation systems and software. "The industry has changed drastically, particularly with regard to what one artist can accomplish on their own with a single piece of hardware, " says Reid.

Reid studied liberal arts at the University of Wyoming, but after college got interested in computer 3D animation. "My interest was sparked when I saw the movie Jurassic Park." Reid says. "I decided then that I wanted to work in the film industry. I bought myself a new workstation, taught myself the software, and set out to create a demo reel." From there his interest in the film industry evolved to include storytelling, directing, shooting, and editing in addition to 3D effects.

He began his career in 1997 creating multimedia for TrainingLinks, an online training materials development company. He later worked as a flash animator for Digital Camera Network in Boulder, Colorado, while creating 3D visualizations for freelance clients. In 2000 he accepted a job at ARC Science Simulations doing visualizations and renderings of the Earth from space for clients like NASA, ILM, Method Studios, and The Challenger Center. In 2001, he left ARC to pursue his career as a freelance designer and 3D professional.

Antigravity Studios was formed in 2003 and now consists of Reid, three workstations (including an n800w notebook workstation), and a Panasonic MiniDV camera. Antigravity currently provides design, 3D modeling/animation, and full service video production from shooting to output for clients who require a mobile crew and a reasonable budget. Reid has also done work for firms like Escape Media and McGrew Consulting. In the future, Aaron would like to expand Antigravity's services to include music video and feature film production.

Reid's equipment has evolved over time as new models, and new technologies reach the market. He started out with a Dual 800 MHz Pentium III workstation with 512 MB RAM, an a SGI graphics system. It was cutting edge at the time, but it held just 180 MB of hard drive space; and that was with two drives! In time, Reid was able to upgrade to a Dual 2GHz AMD Athlon system with 1 GB RAM and the Nvidia Quadro 750XGL graphics solution. This system had a single, spacious 120 GB drive. The system he likes and uses most these days, however, is the one he can take with him.

Digital Film Production To Go

Reid's primary system is a HP Evo N800w mobile workstation. "I purchased the n800w primarily to work remotely and then complete the more serious 3D work on the dual processor machine, but I was quickly surprised by how fast the n800w was," he says.

The Evo N800w ships with a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 M processor, 1 GB RAM, and a 60 GB hard drive. Most importantly for Reid's line of work the Evo comes with ATI's MOBILITY FireGL 9000 workstation graphics accelerator. The FireGL 9000 is designed specifically for 3D designers like Reid. The card itself has been designed and tested with the leading CAD and DCC software applications. It also comes with all the features you would expect in a desktop workstation, including dual monitor support, hardware accelerated anti-aliasing, overlay planes and more.

"I set up some render tests between my main desktop and the notebook in the first few days of owning it and the n800w put up respectable numbers," according to Reid. "I began keeping project files on the notebook and not transferring anything to the desktop because it would take longer to do it that way."

With the FireGL 9000 on-board, the Evo delivers superior image quality and stable OpenGL drivers for lightning fast 3D and 2D graphics acceleration. Reid says, "Now I have no problem working on video, film, or 3D projects on the notebook."

Running the leading design and graphics applications on the market, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, After Effects, Maya, and Avid Xpress Pro, Reid can do most of his work location. For operating systems, he uses a combination of Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Professional.

Although Reid stills spends the majority of his time in the office, the portability of the Evo n800w has made his workday a lot more interesting. "I tend to have the best time while out shooting with my camera and editing with the notebook," Reid says. "I love the dynamic of having all the gear I need with me, ready for anything."

Being mobile also enables Reid to tap new business opportunities. "I can't wait to fully explore more areas of 3D previsualization, animatics, and virtual set construction right on the set of a video or short film shoot." Reid says. "As long as the technology isn't a hindrance to the process, I can construct a methodology that is functional and helps to tell a story in the best way possible."

The Trickle-Down Effect

Even in his relatively short career, Reid has watched new technologies fundamentally transform the production industry. On the film side, pre-visualization has become a huge area that can streamline a production by getting exactly what the director wants to see into the 3D pipeline more effectively, according to Reid. Rendering times are coming down through GPU/CPU scaling. "All of these innovations tend to quickly trickle down to people like me, which is fantastic," Reid says. "With 3D, interactive hardware shading has done quite a bit to alleviate time consuming render tests for me, which was a bottleneck."

Compositing, color-correction, and editing performance have also been greatly improved with widespread adoption of Avid Adrenaline and Nitris hardware. "On the video side, I can take any of my projects and simply drop them onto a higher-end system like the Adrenaline or Nitris and start working," Reid says. "That was one of the main reasons I run Avid Xpress Pro on my notebook."

Another reason he runs Xpress Pro is because it supports the new Panasonic AGDVX100 24p camera. "This is a key piece of the equation for me," Reid says. "This camera has provided so much for so many people who want to shoot digitally on a budget and have the final product translate well into the film arena if they choose to go that route."

Reid saw the potential of digital filmmaking when he watched the film November at the Sundance Film Festival this year. The film was shot using the Panasonic DVX100 in MiniDV, but he says it could have easily been shot on HD and he wouldn't have known the difference. "The keys were great cinematography and the way it was brought up to HD, but here was a $3500 camera putting up world-class imagery," Reid says. "I purchased the same camera a year before, and now all I think about is creating imagery that comes out looking as good as November."

Of course, there are limits to being a one-man shop can do. There is some, very advanced rendering that is beyond Antigravity's purview. "Since 3D can be so time consuming, the paying projects tend to be ones that are fairly limited by budget or time constraints," Reid explains. "Since they know I am a one person-shop, the client tends to know that I'm not necessarily capable of turning around photo realistic characters fully animated in a short amount of time." Because of this, many of Antigravity's projects, for now, consist primarily of product visualizations and less time-sensitive animations

Although Reid treasures his independence, he acknowledges there might come a time, and soon, where it might have to expand his company. Reid is talking to an architect and a 3D artist about expanding into pre-visualization, virtual sets, and general modeling and animation. "I think the key for me right now is to slowly expand into an operation that is able to handle higher-end video or film projects. Reid says. "That might mean I hire a graphic designer to take the pressure off of me so I can focus on video and 3D projects."