When I worked at the BBC Visual Effects department in the 90's and we could see the growing impact CG was going to have on traditional effects techniques, especially miniature VFX stuff such as Red Dwarf, I and a colleague of mine Mike Tucker, began to do exactly what Knoll talked about on Friday. i.e making up virtual widgets ( or greeblies if you are Stateside) with which we could detail CG versions of Dr Who or Red Dwarf ships etc. In the end the work began to get grabbed by smaller cheaper outfits so we never got to really develop our traditionally informed approach to CG.
Nice to see that the top guys at ILM have looked at the work on this forum and elsewhere and arrived at similar conclusions. Mind you, they probably look at the part maps and think we are all nuts for doing it, but hey...
