The press event was held at the Museum Del Cinema Gianni Comenci, translated to English as The National Museum of the Cinema. As can be expected, much of the museum is focused on Italian film history and has numerous events held in it yearly. The Museum is only open to the public three days a week.

We were given a little behind the scene tour of how the movie Over the Hedge was produced. Since a very large amount of 3D production is involved, production is naturally dependant on a computer. Because of this, it might be thought that the PC has replaced the traditional and rather humble original method of using a pen and paper, however, this is not the case. The appearance of the finished 3D product is still initially in the hands of artists who are armed with paper and pencils.

Personality of the 3D animation is dependant on the voice of the person who is acting the character. Because of this, while the 3D animation is still in its early stages of production, the voices of the actors have already been recorded. Using the actor’s voice and tone as a reference, designers create the character’s facial expressions in coordination with them.

Designers begin by creating a Rough Stand-in model and Animation Proxy model. These are usually made with a small amount of polygons in order to allow for more detail to be added later.

After the Rough Stand-in and Animation Proxy have been designed, the programmers add more detail and color to the model and proceed to render more fluid and coherent movements.

Once fixed, all of the above models are used to create the final High Resolution Render which is to be used in the finished product. But this is just one object in an enormous scene where there can be a much larger amount of present objects, all of which require the same detail to design. All of this is done in order to satisfy a more demanding public. So what part does AMD play in all of this? That is what we aim to tell you next.