Threshold Digital Research Labs has been described as a "next generation Pixar." They're hooking up with IBM to create CG films that can be produced at the same speed as a traditional film and at roughly half the cost of past CG features. Or at least that's their claim, and IBM is buying it. Literally.
Their new film "Food Fight" is about what happens in a grocery store after hours. It features 138 main characters and 6,254 secondary characters—which looks like everybody that's on the shelves. "Millimeter" calls it "one of the most complex digitally animated feature films ever produced." Besides the investment, partnering and prestiege aspects of the union, IBM is going to use Threshold to promote its "on-demand computing" idea where you pay for additional computational power like a utility rather than buying new hardware and software for your desktop. Something like shopping at a grocery store.
As the "NY Times" reports, Threshold has just:
...created a 3-D movie that not only gives the illusion of a world in front of you, but all around...in the same way that Dolby Digital 5.1-channel audio gives listeners a sense that they are enveloped by voices and effects: it's surround sound for the eyes. The technique is being used in a seven-and-a-half-minute film that is part of "Star Trek: Borg Invasion 4D,'' a 22-minute attraction at [the Las Vegas Hilton].
The film's conceit is that the humanlike Borgs are trying to capture the space station that the attraction's audience is ostensibly visiting. As the station's crew fights back, viewers find themselves in the middle of the action. The floor of the theater moves, seat cushions inflate and deflate to simulate acceleration and impact, and at one point a mist of water is sprayed in viewers' faces. The film combines 10 actors with 130 computer-generated figures. To shoot the live action, Threshold used two high-definition video cameras mounted next to each other. To change the sense of depth, the cameras' distances were varied. [...]
To reduce eyestrain, the company shot each scene so that both the foreground and the background were in focus. The filmmakers could then create parallel planes of action, allowing viewers to scan the frame to discover unconnected activities going on throughout the ship. Because everything is always in focus, the production company had to imbue each element with rich detail, whether it was part of a ship or one of the many computer-generated characters talking to colleagues on catwalks or riding elevators seemingly hundreds of yards away. [...]
To create the overhead action, Mr. Johnsen and his colleagues wrote an algorithm that would put the computer-generated animation in proper perspective. While the ceiling screen is at a 90-degree angle to the vertical wall, a spaceship passing overhead would need to appear to spread out as it passed above and then receded in the distance. [...] 
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