Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Luckily for us, Brian Brill, Paltrows forensic ski animator, has thrown us a bone.
Could Brill have animated the rest of herski-lessday?
Yeah, I definitely could have, he said.
That wouldve been a lot more fun.
I thought I was never really gonna do anything with the computer-science degree.
Its only typing in capital letters.
They needed somebody who would be an accident-investigation person, and I wound up kind of falling into that.
But for ski patrollers, theyre outside in the snow most of the day.
Your hands are frozen and the maps look bad, so I started applying my degree.
It just made it easier, and it made it look a little more professional.
Then I started learning about the field of GIS, which is geographic information systems basically computerized choreography.
When was this?These were the days before Google Earth.
Lawyers started coming up and going, Hey, you know, Ive got a case.
I really just want to help educate the jury.
This accident happened, and this is a really nice way to show it.
I would incorporate that as the foundation for the backdrop.
The coolest thing about it is that technology is getting better all the time.
The first is the data collection and getting the scene.
Ive got this 3-D laser scanner …
What does the 3-D scanner do?Its the coolest tool.
It does it like 11 million times in five minutes.
It creates a three-dimensional model thats accurate down to millimeters.
And then youve got that 3-D model.
What I love about this is you cant argue about it its just the data.
And we made sure to visit the site, you know?
It wouldve been great if we were able to be there that day.
I hope they put some bamboo up and block it off.
We attempt to do everything that we possibly can.
And then wed get a bunch of notes and then wed change it.
So there were a number of different iterations for this.
They reached out to me, but then nothing happened for a year or two.
Thats like half a billion data points.
I had no opinion.
I actually skied it.
What was it like?Its just a very simple green run.
Its a perfect trail to take your children and your boyfriends children to go down.
Theres nothing wrong with the trail at all.
Im not a skier.
So Im trying to imagine in my brainwhat an intermediate skier like Paltrowwould think about this hill.
Is this run challenging at all?Oh, no, no, no, no.
Its an easy run?Its a very simple run.
Thats part of what we wanted to show people.
And Mr. Ramons description hes saying that the tips kind of spread out.
And that actually wouldve captured Ms. Paltrow.
And theres no way that she wouldve been able to go forward from there.
We tried hundreds of different setups and possibilities.
What if this foot was over there?
What if this is over there?
There is not one way that we can [make it work].
What programs do you use?
Well, its not like that.
It doesnt look as polished on my side before rendering.
Its kind of like everythings been wrapped with graph paper in a way.
Did you ever playThe Simsat all?No, but now you make me think that I should!
Our computer setups are pretty extensive.
We have a room of computers that we call a render farm.
That data and information is brought into a program called Scene by a company called Faro.
Once that data is processed, we incorporate that data into the GIS software.
Then well take all of that GIS data and then well bring it into a program called 3ds Max.
And then we can start animating characters and choosing the virtual camera locations.
Does that sound too pretentious?
But for this, you should probably be able to be deposed and explain the accuracy of everything.
Our animations are different than the coolIron Mananimations.
I just thought Ms. Paltrow would see this and go, No, no, no, no.
Well, shes actually known for not remembering the movies shes in.
She doesnt even remember appearing inIron Man.[Laughs.
]Thats really funny.
Im just glad she wasnt unhappy with the animation.
Were there any little Easter eggs in the animations?Unfortunately, no.
But no doing this for litigation purposes takes some of the fun out of it.
Could you have modeled what Gwyneth Paltrows half-day loss of skiing looked like with your software?
That wouldve been a lot more fun.
That gives me something to think about.
Thank you very much for that.
Oh, wait I almost forgot!
I wanted to know how much something like this costs.Oh, I dont know.
]I think we have a bad connection!
