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Tweak Software

Tweak Software originated as the Research and Development division of Tweak Films, an award-winning visual effects company with a tradition of advanced technology development. Tweak is located in San Francisco, California.

 

Tweak's team has a long history of developing cutting edge VFX technology including: the first particle system (Dynamation) which led to breakthrough effects in films such as Twister; ILM's first generation rigid body dynamics, cloth systems and creature modeling tools which made Star Wars: Episode One possible and ILM's facial motion capture technology. Tweak has built on this experience to develop unique next-generation tools for water, dynamics, particles and procedural effects that have made possible projects such as the water in The Day After Tomorrow and the collapse of the Barad Dur Tower in the Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King.

Jim Hourihan - Founder, Director of R&D

Jim has created or contributed to a long list of commercial and proprietary software tools for visual effects and animation.

Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Achievement:

  • 2001 To John Anderson, Jim Hourihan, Cary Phillips and Sebastian Marino for the development of the ILM Creature Dynamics System. "This system makes hair, clothing, skin, flesh and muscle simulation both directable and integrated within a character animation and rigging environment."
  • 1996 To JIM HOURIHAN for the primary design and development of the interactive language-based control of particle systems as embodied in the Dynamation software package . "Dynamation is used to create a wide variety of computer generated effects such as tornadoes, flames, sparks, snow and clouds in motion pictures."

 Tweak Films/Tweak Software: 2001-Present:

  • C4 - Tweak's unified dynamics platform including rigid-body dynamics, fluid dynamics, and particle simulation. First used on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, to simulate the collapse of the Barad Dur Tower, also used for the tidal wave sequence in The Day After Tomorrow.
  • Crack - Tweak's procedural geometry cracking software, also first used for the tower collapse in the Lord of the Rings
  • GTO - Tweak's open source storage file format for computer graphics

 Industrial Light and Magic, principal Engineer 1996-2001:

  • Zeno - Co-architect of ILM's next generation platform for animation and visual effects
  • Isculpt - Principal engineer for ILM's creature modeling software
  • Rigid Body Dynamics - Principal engineer for ILM's rigid physics simulation tool, first developed for droid dynamics in Star Wars: Episode I. It was later refined for use on projects including the Galaxy Quest rock monster, and the massive destruction and mayhem in Pearl Harbor
  • Creature Dynamics - Contributing engineer for soft-body, cloth, hair, skin dynamics system first developed for Star Wars: Episode I
  • Choreographer - Contributing engineer for multiple creature animation choreography software developed for Star Wars: Episode I
  • Caricature - Contributing Engineer for ILM's facial animation software system

Wavefront, TDI, Alias, Santa Barbara Studios 1992-1996

  • Dynamation - The first commercial particle system, subsequently incorporated into Maya

Seth Rosenthal - Founder, President

Seth Rosenthal joined Tweak  after 7 years at Industrial Light and Magic where he supervised a team that made innovative contributions to visual effects film-making--including many  projects that introduced new  technology under the pressure of first unit photography for directors such as Stephen Spielberg, Michael Bay, and Ang Lee. He supervised projects including:

  • Motion capture (The Day After Tomorrow, Star Wars episodes I and II, The Mummy),
  • Real-time virtual set integration with first unit photography  (Artificial Intelligence: AI),
  • Multi-camera photography for 3D reconstruction (Lemony Snicket, Minority Report, Pearl Harbor), and
  • Photogrammetric set reconstruction and high dynamic range photography (Hulk).

Seth co-invented ILM's patented facial motion capture process and supervised facial capture on the then secret Brother Termite test for James Cameron. He also supervised facial capture for ongoing internal development including the Hugo test and the Marianne test which demonstrated that high-resolution facial motion capture could be recovered using hand held cameras on a freely moving actor. Many of the techniques and procedures that Seth helped create have become a standard part of ILM's pipeline for creating digital doubles, measuring scenes and sets for geometry and lighting, and image-based motion capture and match-animation.

 

Alan Trombla - Director of Product Development


Alan has worked at all levels and aspects of visual effects and digital animation production.  From writing software to managing
large engineering teams; from lighting shots to leading CG productions.

Digital Domain, Lead Technology Architect, Special Projects 2008

  • Planning for digital shorts, features, and games production, emphasizing greater interactivity through use of graphics hardware.
  • TEDIT - An RV-based editing interface for browsing hundreds of mocap reference clips and building cuts and cut sequences from them.

Lucasfilm Animation, Technology Development Lead 2007

  • Recruited and managed the Animation Tools Group, responsible for maintaining and extending local Clone Wars production technology, including asset managemnt, animation and lighting reviews, editorial and screening management.
  • Designed a pipeline for a possible digital feature.
  • Designed and developed an archival storage system.

Industrial Light and Magic, Research and Development 2004-2006

  • Zenviro - Designer and Principal Engineer for ILM's standard matte-painting tool, providing layered and animated texturing and access to the standard lighting and rendering pipeline.
  • Lux - Designer and Principal Engineer for ILM's third-generation zeno-based lighting tool.  First used on "War of the Worlds".
  • Zeno - Contributor to zeno core design, including relationship inheritance and overriding, arbitrary relationship storage, and simplified top-level scenes.
  • 3D Stereo - Designer and Principal Engineer the Chicken Little 3D stereo rerendering pipeline.

Through all his adventures in CG tools development, Alan has emphasized user relations and education above all.  In recognition of this attitude, he was named 2004 ILM Trainer of the Year.

Industrial Light and Magic, Commercial and Feature Production 2000-2003

  • CG Artist or CG Lead on 22 commercial or feature productions.
  • 20,000-member video-element crowd (Gaterade commercial)
  • Cloth staining pipeline (Pirates I)
  • HDR "tonemapping" for tracking dark shots (Pirates I)
  • Multi-projection blending pipeline for scanned geometry (Dreamcatcher)
  • Custom shaders and comp effects: x-ray, crushed velvet, fur, claymation, vinyl records, forest fire, ET's glowing finger.

Industrial Light and Magic, Research and Development 1996-1999

  • MeshGen- Developed multi-resolution and dynamically-paged terrain geometry system for Star Wars I "Pod Race" sequence.
  • Irender - Principal engineer for ILM's second-generation lighting  tool.  First used on "Galaxy Quest".