Every once in a while when a new movie with mind-blowing special effects opens, a nondescript office at NASA Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will mysteriously empty of employees during matinee hours. Before an investigation is launched into these workers’ whereabouts—say, around last year’s opening of Star Wars: Episode III-Revenge of the Sith’’—understand that they are not blowing off work. The absentee employees are animators, NASA staffers and contractors who use the same software Pixar Animation Studios uses to tell stories about talking cars to instead tell stories about the Earth. They just want to see what their counterparts in Hollywood have been up to. In their case it’s about craft, not cinematic delight, said Horace Mitchell, project manager at the space centre’s scientific visualisation studio. Mitchell is a NASA employee, but the studio is staffed primarily by animators working for Global Science & Technology Inc, a government contractor in Greenbelt. The company uses the Hollywood software, including Pixar’s RenderMan and Autodesk Inc’s Maya, to translate complicated data into animated movies that illustrate what is happening in and around Earth.Hollywood uses the software to spin inspiring stories about love and courage and friendship, while the animators in Greenbelt are often telling stories about bad things happening in the atmosphere, such as last year’s hurricane season. In their chilling short film 27 Storms: Arlene to Zeta,’ set to Vincenzo Bellini’s eerie music, viewers can watch the ocean heat up, fuelling one storm after another—thanks to the same Pixar software used in the upcoming Charlotte’s Web. NASA oceanographer Gene Carl Feldman frequently collaborates with the Global Science studio. He studies the ocean from space. “Visualisation is that link between the flood of data coming down from space and the ability of the human mind to interpret it,’’ he said. “Better than most other groups in the world, they are able to take this fire hose of data coming down and turn it into images that allows the public to see the data in ways their brains can interpret and study.’’ The Hollywoodisation of NASA data is in part the result of Pixar’s success in creating real-life worlds from fantasy stories. People have come to expect that even the most fantastical of ideas can look and feel exceedingly real. “They don’t expect to see crudity,’’ said Mitchell. They expect to see sophistication because they see it everywhere. In order for us to tell the story, we have to be sophisticated about telling stories and we have to use sophisticated technology to tell them.’’ Global Science, a private company that employs about 250 people, is definitely not a movie studio. It was founded in 1991 by Chieh-san Cheng, a former employee of an aerospace and technology company with advanced degrees in technical management and meteorology. Global Science provides services in applied science and research, geospatial standards, engineering services, and information technology. Like their Hollywood counterparts, the Global Science animators typically refer to their finished products as releases, but the scripts are composed of data and the script writers are some of the world’s most brilliant scientists. The creative process generally works like this: A scientist or a public affairs officer will ask the animators to illustrate a concept or data set. It can be as simple as ocean temperatures or as complicated as a collection of satellite images. A discussion with the scientific team and public affairs officer ensues over the best way to illustrate the data, and the animators get to work. If Cheng, chief executive of Global Science, has his way, he will use the software to better explain the human body to doctors. “What we could do is use movie techniques to give the doctor and medical staff more dynamic and accurate images to make a diagnosis,’’ he said. (Michael S. Rosenwald )
