ABSTRACT At first the basics of animatronics is discussed in this report, followed by the difference between animation and animatronics.

Making of animatronic creatures is discussed in depth. Application of this technology has been highlighted in popular movies like Avatar and Jurassic park.

INTRODUCTION TO ANIMATRONICS
Animatronics is the use of electronics and robotics in mechanised puppets to simulate life. Animatronics are mainly used in moviemaking, but also in theme parks and other forms of entertainment. Its main advantageis that to CGI and stop motion it is not a simulation of reality, but are physical objects moving in real time in front of the camera. The technology behind animatronics has become more advanced and sophisticated over the years, making the puppets even more realistic and lifelike. Animatronics for film and television productions are used to perform action on camera in situations where the action involves creatures that do not exist, the action is too risky or costly to use real actors or animals, or the action could never be obtained with a living person or animal. The application of animatronics today includes computer controlled as well as radio and manually controlled devices. The actuation of specific movements can be obtained with electric motors, pneumatic cylinders, hydraulic cylinders and cable driven mechanisms. The type of mechanism employed is dictated by the character parameters, specific movement requirements and the project constraints. The technology has advanced to the point that animatronic puppets can be made unnoticeable from their living counterparts.

What's the Difference Between Animation & Animatronics?

Primarily, the difference is that animatronics involves real physical objects, while most animation only involves representations of real objects in 2D and 3D. Exceptions to this can include stop-motion and sand glass animation, which involve an animator manipulating real objects on film to capture the animations.

History
Animatronics was developed by Walt Disney in the early sixties. Essentially, an animatronic puppet is a figure that is animated by means of electromechanical devices. Early examples were found at the 1964 World Fair in the New York Hall of Presidents and Disney Land. In the Hall of Presidents, Lincoln, with all the gestures of a statesman, gave the Gettysburgs address. Body language and facial motions were matched to perfection with the recorded speech. The abbreviated term originally coined by the Walt Disney as Audio Animatronics which is used to describe the mechanized characters, can be actually seen in the various forms as far back as Leonardo Da Vincis Automata Lion, which is theoretically built to the present lilies to King of the France during one of his visits,and has now been developed as the career which may be require combined talent in the Mechanical Engineering , Casting/Sculpting, Control Technologies, Electrical/Electronic, Radio Control, Airbrushing. Long before digital effects had appeared, animatronics were making the cinematic history.
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Creature Creation
Building the various components used in the animatronic device usually takes the longest time. There are four main categories that the work splits into, with development happening simultaneously across the categories. Mechanicalengineers design and build the mechanical system, which includes everything from basic gears to sophisticated hydraulics. Another group develops the electronic control systems needed to operate the animatronic device. Typically starting from scratch and creating their own custom circuit boards, these engineers are essentially building giant remote-controlled toys. Almost all of the movement will be manipulated by specialized remote-control systems known as telemetry devices. All of the electronic and mechanical components need something to attach to and control, and the skin must have a frame to maintain its shape. This is done by building a plastic and steel frame. To increase the realism, realistic fiber is used. The "skin" is often made from foam rubber, which is a very light, spongy rubber that is made by mixing air with liquid latex rubber and then curing (hardening) it. While there are other compounds, such as silicone and urethane that are stronger and last longer, foam rubber is used because it is much easier to work with. The solution is poured into each mold and allowed to cure. As mentioned earlier, parts of the frame are embedded with the foam rubber at certain points. To further strengthen the skin, a piece of fabric is cut to size and embedded in the foam rubber after it is poured into the mold. Once cured, each piece of skin is pulled from its mold.

Audio-Animatronics
Audio-Animatronics is the registered trademark for a form of robotics created by Walt Disney Imagineering for shows and attractions at Disney theme parks, and subsequently expanded on and used by other companies. The robots move and make noise, generally in speech or song. An Audio-Animatronic is different from android-type robots in that it uses prerecorded movements and sounds, rather than processing external stimuli and responding to them. In 2009, Disney switched to an updated version of the technology called Autonomatronics. Perhaps the most impressive of the early Audio-Animatronics efforts was The Enchanted Tiki Room, which opened in 1963 at Disneyland. It was (and is) a room full of tropical creatures with eye and facial actions synchronized to a musical score entirely by electromechanical means. The "cast" of the musical revue uses tones recorded on tape to vibrate a metal reed
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that closes a circuit to trigger a relay, which sends a pulse of electricity to a mechanism that causes a pneumatic valve to move a part of the figure's body. The movements of the attraction's birds, flowers, and Tiki idols are triggered by sound, hence the audio prefix. Figures' movements have a neutral natural resting position that the limb or part returns to when there is no electric pulse present. Other than this, the animation is a digital system, with only on/off moves, such as an open or closed eye. Other early examples were the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln exhibit presented at the State of Illinois Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair.

Technology
Pneumatic muscles were not powerful enough to move larger objects, like an artificial human arm, so hydraulicswere used for large figures. On/off movement would cause an arm to be either up over the artificial man's head (on switch), or down (off switch), but no movement in between. To create realistic in-between movement in large figures, an analog system was used. This gave the figure's limbs and parts a full range of in-between motion, rather than only two positions. The digital system was used with small pneumatic moving limbs (eyelids, beaks, fingers), and the analog system was used for large hydraulic human or animal moving limbs (arms, heads). To permit a high degree of freedom, the control cylinders resemble typical miniature pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders, but mount the back of the cylinder on a ball joint and threaded rod. This ball joint permits the cylinders to float freely inside the frame, such as when the wrist joint rotates and flexes. Disney's technology is not infallible however; the oil-filled cylinders do occasionally drip or leak. It is sometimes necessary to do makeup touch-up work, or to strip the clothing off a figure due to leaking fluids inside. Because each individual cylinder requires its own control/data channel, the original AudioAnimatronic figures were relatively simple in design to reduce the number of necessary channels. With modern digital computers and vast data storage, the number of channels is virtually unlimited.

Compliance
Compliance is a new technology that allows faster, more realistic movements without sacrificing control. In the older figures, a fast limb movement would cause the entire figure to shake in an unnatural way. The Imagineers thus had to program slower movements, sacrificing speed in order to gain control. This was frustrating for the animators, who, in many cases, wanted faster movements. Compliance improves this situation by allowing limbs to continue past the points where they are programmed to stop; they then return quickly to the
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"intended" position, much as real organic body parts do. The various elements also slow to a stop at their various positions, instead of using the immediate stops that caused the unwanted shaking. This absorbs shock, much like the shock absorbers on a car or the natural shock absorption in a living body.

Cosmetics
The skin of an Audio-Animatronic is made from silicone rubber. Over time, the flexing causes the paint to loosen and fall off, so occasional makeup work and repainting is required. The wig on each human AA is made from natural human hair for the highest degree of realism, but using real hair creates its own problems, since the changing humidity and constant rapid motions of the moving AA carriage hardware throughout the day cause the hair to slowly lose its styling, requiring touch-ups before each day's showing.

THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND AVATAR (MOVIE)

James Cameron's Avatar is now officially the top grossing movie of all time eclipsing Titanic (also by James Cameron). Probably the main reason of its huge success is the use of innovative filmmaking technology like its development of 3D viewing and stereoscopic filmmaking with cameras that were specially designed for the movie's production. It's amazing that Cameron wrote the script for the film more than 15 years ago, but the technology available at that moment was very limited to portray his vision of the film, a major cause of the long delay of its release. I've seen Avatar in 3D and I must say that it's the best movie since Star Wars. If you are like me who are curious to know how this stunning movie was made, here a quick look at some of the technology behind this masterpiece:

* Linux's silent but important role

Weta Digital, the visual effects company that gave life to the flora and fauna on Pandora, uses Linux and other Linux-based software to achieve all those cutting edge graphics. It utilizes one of the world's largest Linux clusters (ranked #193 amongst the top 500 supercomputers) for film rendering, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) as their OS. The CGI are created using 64-bit Linux-based software for painting textures and 3D modeling.

* Building the stage

There were more than 90 cameras (configured in a grid) that hang around the perimeter of a sound stage. Later on, a computer replaces the studio walls, the floor and the ceiling with digitally rendered three-dimensional environments and structures.
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* The 3-D Fusion Camera System

The 3-D Fusion Camera System uses two high-definition cameras in a single camera body to create depth perception. The line of sight of the lenses can be adjusted so that they can be angled closer together to focus on nearby objects, or farther apart for those in the distance, just as your eyes do.

* The virtual camera

Cameron made use of his very own virtual camera system, a new way of directing motioncapture filmmaking. According to him, "It's like a big, powerful game engine. The system displays an augmented reality on a monitor, placing the actor's virtual counterparts into their digital surroundings in real time, allowing the director to adjust and direct scenes just as if shooting live action.

* Motion-capture
They use a motion-capture stage (dubbed as "The Volume") six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full performance capture. Actors wore individually made skull-caps fitted with a tiny camera placed in front of the actors' faces. The information gathered from their facial expressions and eyes is then transmitted to computers. According to Cameron, the method made it possible for the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors' physical performances to their digital counterparts.

* The Visual effects

Creating the virtual world of Pandora required over a petabyte of digital storage (Transformers "Revenge of the Fallen" needed about 140 terabytes). The final footage for Avatar occupied 17.28 gigabytes of storage per minute. To help finish preparing the special effects sequences on time, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) was brought in, working alongside Weta Digital to create the battle sequences.

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ANIMATRONICS IN JURASSIC PARK (MOVIE) Concept Drawings

The first step in creating the dinosaurs for the JP films is to design the 'look' of the animals on paper. The artists at Stan Winston's studio spend many hours sketching and making changes as the dinosaurs concepts begin to take shape. Eventually, the artist creates a detailed illustration of the creature. In the case of Spinosaurus, SWS went from preliminary sketch to final design in about three weeks. Steven Speilberg observes and critics them along the way to make sure that they're scientifically accurate, and the team even employ the help of Jack Horner, one of the worlds leading Paleontologists. Once the designs are complete, colours is then added to enchance the drawings and provide the required reference for the painting of the maquettes. Out of all the colour renderings available for each dinosaur, only one of these will be used for the final model.

Sculptures
As well as resin, foam castings are made of the maquettes which are cut into many segments and numbered. These segments (which resemble slices of bread) are then put onto a projector and enlarged to full size onto sheets of wood. The wood will then be cut out (reduced by several inches to allow for clay) and hooked onto a sculpting armature, the structure looks very much like those little wooden dinosaur kits available in many model and toy shops. Hardware cloth is layered over the structure to form a rigid skin upon which the clay is placed. Sculpting on this scale can take a very long time as with the T-Rex, which took a team of 10 artists 8 weeks to complete. An oil-based clay is used nowadays as water-based clay is simply too messy, and has to be covered every night to prevent it from drying out. The full-sized T-Rex sculpt took an amazing three thousand pounds of clay, which formed a thick layer on the outer structure. Nowadays, alternative methods have been used in creating life-size sculptures which have proven to be faster and far easier. One of these use recent advances in computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) that allow them to automate a significant part of this process. The maquette is taken to Cyber F/X, where it is scanned by a 3-D digitizer. This is nothing like a normal computer scanner. There are a variety of methods used in 3-D digitizers, but the one that was used for Spinosaurus is called laser scanning. Laser scanning takes precise measurements of the maquette by bouncing beams of laser light off its surface. As the laser scanner moves around the maquette, it sends over 15,000 beams per second. The reflected light from the beams is picked up by high-resolution cameras
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positioned on either side of the laser. These cameras create an image of the slice (cross section) of the object that the laser is scanning. A custom computer system collects the cross sections and combines them to create a perfect, seamless computer model of the maquette. Cyber F/X then used the computer model to mill the life-size model of the Spinosaurus from polyurethane foam. This very rigid foam is cut to the correct shape through a proprietary process called CNC-Sculpting. This process, developed by Cyber F/X, takes the data from the full-scale computer model and divides the model into manageable chunks. The data for each chunk is then sent to the foam-sculpting machine, where a life-size section of the dinosaur is created by whittling away pieces of foam from a large, solid block using tiny spinning blades. Once all the sections are done, the SWS team assembles the pieces like a giant 3-D jigsaw puzzle. This creates a very basic full-sized model. A lot of work still needs to be done and it is handled by a team of sculptors at Stan Winston Studio. They hand-carve the foam to add all the incredible details that make it seem real.

Molding & Casting

A set of molds are made of the full-sized sculpture. The molds are made from an epoxy that is very durable and has strong bonding characteristics. Once the components of the animatronic are ready, much of the frame work is test fitted inside the molds before the foam rubber skin is cast. In conjunction with this step is the fabrication of the foam-running core, which is created by lining the inside of the mold with precise layers of clay to represent the skin thickness. When the clay lay-up is completed, the surface of the clay is fibreglassed to create the foam-running core. After the clay is cleaned out, the foam-running core is bolted into the mold and creates a negative space between the foam-running core and detailed surface of the mold. When filled with foam rubber, this negative space becomes the skin.

Painting
When it comes to painting the dinosaurs for Jurassic Park, reference is often taken from nature to achieve maximum realism. One example of this is the 'Velociraptor' eyes shown in the image below. Delicate vein patterns are applied to each eye-ball by hand, which will later be coated with a translucent resin to add dimension and a gloss effect. The colour schemes that had been finalized on the earlier maquettes are used at this stage to provide reference for the painting of the foam rubber skins which will later cover the full size animatronics. The skin is mostly "painted" before it is attached to the frame. Stan Winston Studio does not use actual paint, though. Instead, a specially formulated mixture that is akin to rubber cement is used. Tints are added to the mixture to get the correct color. Rosengrant says that they use
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this mixture in place of traditional paint because it bonds more strongly with the foam rubber and stretches with it as the animatronic moves.

CONCLUSION
Animatronics is the use of electronics and robotics in mechanised puppets to simulate life. Animatronics is mainly used in theme parks, restaurants and movies for entertainment. Animatronics has been replaced by a newer and a more convenient technology like animations. Though animatronics has been used to the maximum extent in recent movies as discussed previously, making movie experience more realistic and convincing.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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<http://www.junauza.com/2010/01/technology-behind-avatar-movie.html> 16/2/2012

<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/visual-effects/4339455> 18/2/2012

<http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/animatronic1.htm> 24/2/2012

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animatronics> 24/2/2012

<http://www.youtube.com/topic/LazS-sDXOFQ/animatronics>

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