Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Modus FX Journeys into the Far Nor with Sarila

06/03/2013

May 31st, 2011

Montreal Facility Creating Canadas First Stereoscopic Animated Feature

Modus FX has embarked on an ambitious new stereoscopic 3D journey an 80-minute animated film called Sarila. Directed by Nancy Florence Savard, Sarila is a compelling coming-of-age story set amongst the Inuit people of the Arctic. Starring Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music, The Last Station), Genevive Bujold (Anne of the Thousand Days, The Trotsky), Rachelle Lefevre (Twilight, Barney's Version), Dustin Milligan (Beverly Hills 90210, Slither) and Natar Ungalaq (The Fast Runner) the production will be the first feature-length stereoscopic animated film created in Canada.

For director Savard, the film has been a labour of love for the past ten years. Sarila tells the story of three young Inuit who strike out on their own in order to save their clan from starvation, she said. This is an inspirational story, full of hope. It shows young people facing daunting challenges and, through the experience, taking control of their lives. Their world is exotic to us but their experience is universal.

Written by acclaimed childrens author Roger Harvey and Pierre Tremblay, an expert in Inuit culture, and adapted by Paul Risacher, the film uses authentic settings and indigenous mythology in order to capture the world of the Great White North.

The story draws on Inuit legends from different regions of the arctic, said Savard, but then it moves beyond those traditional archetypes to tell a new story.

Sarila invites the use of stereo 3D, explained Savard. The characters travel across the tundra, through snow storms, and meet strange, semi-mythical characters along the way. The immersive quality of the stereo 3D draws the audience into their odyssey.

Modus FX came on board as a investment partner late last year, and began working with the film's art director Philippe Arsenault Bussires in January to translate his water color concept art into 3D geometry that can be rendered stereoscopically. The result is an original, stylized aesthetic for stereo 3D.

In our VFX work we usually mimic reality, but with this project we are creating something different, said visual effects supervisor Eric Clment. Our goal is to capture the essence of the original concept art. We want to push the look of stereo 3D, instead of going in the photoreal direction that a lot of current animation is doing.

Working together with the art director, the texture team at Modus developed a technique for mixing colors with a custom brush in Photoshop. Surfaces, such as the characters clothing, for example, blend a watercolor look with photographic references to create the final result.

Modus currently has a team of 85 artists on the project, many of whom were involved in the facilitys recent March of the Dinosaurs project, a 90-minute animation for National Geographic and The History Channel, which was, coincidentally, also set in the Arctic. Sarila includes 950 shots, so the 15-month production schedule requires an efficient pipeline and relies on several key Modus-developed technologies.

Setting the Scene in the Arctic

The vast and desolate landscapes of the Arctic play an important role in the narrative and atmosphere of the story. Since the film is in stereo 3D, the process of creating these landscapes is more complex than with traditional matte painting. The old-school tricks of doing 2D cheats' in compositing, like doing a matte painting to extend the background those don't work in stereo, said Clment. You need to include the geometry with the images.

To solve the problem, the Modus team has developed a pipeline for creating 3D maps of matte paintings. The spatial coordinates for each landscape are built in Softimage XSI, allowing the team to create and render left and right eye cameras. The shots are then assembled in Nuke, again using custom tools developed at Modus. This way of building our 3D geometry is very effective for working out backgrounds, such as skies, explained Clment.

Another challenge for stereo 3D animations is the volume of data to be managed. Modus has developed a number of technologies for this, including the Modus FX SceneBuilder. This tool enables artists to load subsets of a scene, in order to work on one particular element without the overhead of the whole scene. The film includes 30 different environments, so the MFX SceneBuilder has become a critical tool in keeping our shot pipeline moving efficiently, noted Clment.

Modus has also turbocharged their infrastructure by implementing the new Arnold rendering system. It's amazingly fast in terms of motion blur, subsurfaces and other computationally-intensive processes, said Clment. This required creating a new compatible shader library, but the faster render times have easily justified the extra effort. We keep finding ways to get more out of our pipeline, he added the result is that our artists can focus on the art, and dont have to think about the technology.

Rigging Done Right

Sarila has a total of 35 talking characters, including people and animals, so rigging and lip-synching are another area where an efficient workflow is critical. We have bipeds, quadrupeds and birds to animate, said Clment, so we created a system that would allow our artists to rig their characters in different shots without having to start from scratch each time they started on a new scene.

The Modus FX AutoRigger, developed specially for Sarila, allows artists to generate biped and quadruped bones structures. With the MFX AutoRigger artists can apply movement patterns to their characters automatically and then manually adjust the movements for each shot. For example, for a sled pulled by five dogs, we want our animator to be able to start with the basic running movements and refine the work from there, explained Clment.

The film is bein
LINK: http://modusfx.com/news-press/modus-fx-journeys-into-the-far-north-wit...
See more stories from modus

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

22/06/2026

Behind the Mic: SportsCenters Lisa Cohn to Retire This June From ESPN as Longest-Tenured Anchor

Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...

22/06/2026

Cosm Appoints David Ho as Chief Legal Officer

Cosm has announced the appointment of David Ho as Chief Legal Officer, a newly created executive role reporting to President and CEO Jeb Terry. Ho will oversee ...

22/06/2026

Warner Bros. Discovery and AWS Announce AI-Powered Advertising Technology Platform

Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the developm...

22/06/2026

Daktronics Completes Audio Control System Upgrade at Petco Park for San Diego Padres

Daktronics has completed an audio control system upgrade at Petco Park in San Di...

22/06/2026

Accelerate Media Names John Willi President, Launches Accelerate Sports Network

Accelerate Media has named John Willi as President and announced the launch of the Accelerate Sports Network (ASN), a prep sports media and streaming platform c...

22/06/2026

AWSN to Air 3XBA Womens Basketball Tournament Live June 26-27

All Women's Sports Network (AWSN) and 3XBA (3 3 Basketball Association) have announced live television coverage of the annual 3XBA tournament on Friday, Jun...

22/06/2026

OWL AI Appoints Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer

OWL AI has announced the appointment of Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors. Prasad succeeds Josh Gwyther, who has served...

22/06/2026

CP Communications Provides RF Support for Inside the NBA at 2026 NBA Finals

CP Communications delivered RF video and audio support for TNT's Inside the NBA at the 2026 NBA Finals, providing main show coverage in San Antonio and ea...

22/06/2026

Polymarket and GRID Partner to Integrate Esports Data and Streaming into Trading Platform

Polymarket has announced a partnership with GRID, an official esports data platf...

22/06/2026

SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Metinteractive's Rachel Mele, Ken Cyr on Building Technology Backbones for Sports Venues

As sports venues continue to evolve into more video-centric, fan-engagement-driv...

22/06/2026

SVG All-Stars: Corbin Perkins, Chief Engineer, Victory+

As the regional sports production scene shifts toward streaming, this Texan helps lead the engineering behind Victory+'s growing live platform...

22/06/2026

Meet the 2026 Sundance Institute Documentary Edit Intensive Fellows

By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs the memories of your elders [are] a scaffolding for you to build your identity on - and t...

22/06/2026

Blade joins CEDAR Audio Icons line-up

New hyper-resolution analyser EQ revealed CEDAR Audio's all-new Icons plug-in series has just gained its newest member, Blade. Described by the compan...

22/06/2026

Sampleson release Aeronaut

Turn any live input into a cinematic soundscape Designed for use in the studio and on stage, Sampleson's latest creation is capable of taking any audio ...

22/06/2026

ADDAC System's new Four Strings Series

Adds guitar strings to Eurorack rigs ADDAC System are renowned for their weird and wonderful synth designs, and their line-up includes plenty of gear that&#...

22/06/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in to SBS coverage

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in ...

22/06/2026

NAGRA Venturi - Turning Piracy Intelligence into Measurable Business Impact

In our latest blog, Tim Pearson explores NAGRA Venturi, the new streaming security solution for the AI era from NAGRAVISION. Designed to aggregate and analyze ...

22/06/2026

Xumo Expands Contextual Targeting Capabilities Through Gracenote and IRIS.TV Integrations

Expanded integrations give advertisers access to distinct contextual signals acr...

22/06/2026

Greg Garmon Joins Imagine as Senior VP, Americas Video Sales

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Kaleidescape Breaks the 8K and 4:4:4 Barriers

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Xilica introduces Dynamic Voice Lift in new Designer

Xilica today announced the release of Dynamic Voice Lift, a new feature in Xilica Designer v4.12 that brings adaptive speech reinforcement to large meeting spac...

22/06/2026

Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, coming to Sky and NOW on 8 July

Monday 22 June 2026 Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide,...

22/06/2026

Eco Wave Power Turns Waves Into Watts With NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Digital Twins

The next era of AI will not be defined by compute alone. Its growth will be dete...

22/06/2026

NVIDIA Vera CPU Opens the Way for Agentic Scientific AI at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Mission, Vision and Veritas - new Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supercom...

22/06/2026

From Materials Simulation to Experimental Astronomy, New NVIDIA AI Software Unlocks Scientific Discoveries

At the ISC conference running in Hamburg this week, NVIDIA is introducing new so...

22/06/2026

NAIRR Science Program Reshapes Scientific Research, Powered by NVIDIA AI Infrastructure

For the past two years, the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Arti...

22/06/2026

At ISC, JUPITER Shows What Exascale Science Looks Like

JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer at Germany's Forschungszentrum J lich, runs on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 Inf...

21/06/2026

FIFAs Oscar Sanchez on World Cup Effort: Were Feeling Good and Where We Want to Be

To call the 2026 FIFA World Cup a big undertaking would be a big understatement....

21/06/2026

John Walden's Cubase Video Tutorials

New series now live on Udemy Regular SOS contributor and Cubase workshop columnist John Walden has just released a new Cubase video course that is now avail...

21/06/2026

Hotter Than a Hot Tub: The 45C Breakthrough to Cool AI's Biggest Machines

Hot tubs sit at about 38 to 40 degrees Celsius, warm enough that most people can only soak for about 15 minutes. NVIDIA's newest AI servers can run their co...

21/06/2026

Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame

Sunday 21 June 2026 Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame The Wargame first looks ZIP (2MB) Sky today confirms the commission of The Wargam...

20/06/2026

IK Multimedia introduce ReSing Doubling

New add-on creates doubles & vocal stacks IK Multimedia's latest ReSing add-on kits the innovative software out with the ability to automatically genera...

20/06/2026

What's Next for Apogee? Start Here.

What exactly is Apogee Control V3? Control V3 is a new mixer application that controls Apogee interfaces. The new hit feature is that V3 finally allows for...

19/06/2026

NBC Sports U.S. Open Coverage Fires Up 92 Cameras, Bunker cams

Split compound eases operational challenges at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club...

19/06/2026

ESPN's Men's College World Series Production Adds Onsite Studio, POVORA CapCams, Expanded Drone Coverage for Finale in Omaha

North Carolina, Oklahoma meet in the best-of-three Finals as ESPN leans into spe...

19/06/2026

Ninja AB from The Him DSP

Company launch comprehensive mix-comparison tool The Him DSP are a plug-in company founded by The Him, an EDM DJ and producer who has amassed over half a bi...

19/06/2026

Bitwig Studio 6.1 enters beta testing

Major Sampler upgrades introduced The latest version of Bitwig's DAW software has just entered public beta testing, and is available now for all users w...

19/06/2026

Akai Pro's MPC One & MPC Key 37 get G2 upgrade

Four times the power of their predecessors Akai Pro have just introduced upgraded versions of two of their popular standalone MPC systems, kitting them out ...

19/06/2026

Eurovision secures top four position as content distributor rankings hold steady in Poland

Data from May shows seasonal outdoor trends triggers lower viewing Warsaw, Pola...

19/06/2026

Bitfocus Buttons wins another top industry award

Buttons is best control system in the rAVe Best of Infocomm Awards 2026...

19/06/2026

Mavis Studio Makes iPad Production More Powerful

Mavis Studio Makes iPad Production More Powerful Brie Clayton June 19, 2026 0 Comments InfoComm update brings new NDI Preview, PTZ control, USB audio ...

19/06/2026

Immersive Studio Metaverse Stage Tackles Post with Blackmagic Design

Immersive Studio Metaverse Stage Tackles Post with Blackmagic Design Brie Clayton June 19, 2026 0 Comments New narrative projects rely on DaVinci Reso...

19/06/2026

How to Run the Original 1993 After Effects

How to Run the Original 1993 After Effects Graham Quince June 19, 2026 0 Comments How to the original After Effects v1 in an emulator, and you don'...

19/06/2026

IBC Show to Increase Focus on Networking, Startups

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

19/06/2026

Irdeto Taps Axel Gallant as CEO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

19/06/2026

SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible - Opening St...

SMPTE , the home of media professionals, technologists and engineers, has announced that its entire Standards catalog is now freely available to the global medi...