Kowalski’s Dream tells the story of a romantic dreamer reflecting on life, after awaking in post-coital bliss next to their lover. The Dreamer observes how everything can look different when the sun appears from beyond the horizon, how it brings the shadows on the wall twitching to life, and how it sparkles in rapidly running streams. This Dreamer doesn’t worry about where they will eat or sleep, or what the day will bring. They’ll sail with the wind, knowing that the sun will rise afresh and bright each morning.

The Virtual Magic storyboard called for the use of lighting as a dramatic storytelling device. Camera work would also be key to exploring the virtual world inhabited by the Dreamer. RenderDrive helped Virtual Magic to explore the virtual film set in a natural way – experimenting with lighting set-ups, surface finishes, and camera moves and effects.

“The use of RenderDrive – with it’s super quick ray traced rendering – allowed us to work faster, rapidly rendering the same shot with different set-ups, comparing results and choosing the best,” said Daniel Zdunczyk, Director of Virtual Magic. “Also, RenderDrive’s flexibility in materials and texture settings, and it’s amazing capability to reproduce glass, water and other reflecting elements, was crucial in allowing us to create the mood and visual style we wanted.”

RenderDrive reproduces the physical attributes of the real world, so that lighting, materials, and camera all behave correctly. This has led to RenderDrive’s widespread adoption within the architectural and product design industries – but can also have a major impact on filmmaking and animation production workflow. The ability to light film sets in a “real world” manner and have the computer lighting behave in a natural way allows a filmmaker to work more intuitively within the virtual world. With traditional software-based rendering tools, the process of previewing these film sets is slow. In contrast, RenderDrive’s hardware-accelerated parallel ray tracing calculations and it’s unique full-frame ray traced previewing capability allows rapid testing and evaluation of lighting set ups.

“RenderDrive perfectly simulates the natural sunlight which we used in most of the scenes,” commented Zdunczyk. “It’s speed of calculation and natural results allowed us to work faster and concentrate on using lighting as a dramatic device within the story. We used the camera as a storytelling device in the same way, just as a cinematographer would on a live film set. We could set up and try out shots with complex moves and pull focus effects, and RenderDrive would preview the results so quickly.”

“Even with a small team and just one RenderDrive system we were able to exactly plan the whole production,” adds Zdunczyk. “We concentrated on one scene each day – starting with animation and ending the day by rendering that scene. This was important for us because we could see how the production was moving forwards and not have to wait weeks for the final effect.”

“ART VPS 3D rendering solutions are known for their highly realistic virtual photographs and animations within the CAD industry,” said Craig Wareham, VP Marketing at ART VPS. “However, this film shows how our physically-based 3D algorithms and powerful parallel ray tracing hardware platform can be used to greatly enhance the production workflow and the final visual look of an animated film.”

Kowalski’s Dream is now being distributed to Polish theatres and submitted to animation festivals worldwide. The band Kowalski will also be featuring the film during their 2004 tour.

More information on Kowalski’s Dream is available at: www.kowalski.virtualmagic.com.pl