Peter Upson's shows off DreamWorks Animation's visualizaiton system.
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How DreamWorks created a visualization system to prototype scenes in 'Dragon 2'

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

One of the coolest new tools for making animated movies is a visualization system that shows you what an animated shot would look like in real-time — before a film animator goes through the expensive process of creating a fully animated scene.

I had a chance to view one of these systems in a visit to the Redwood City, Calif., campus of DreamWorks Animation, which used the rig to make How to Train Your Dragon 2, the big summer movie that has generated more than $300 million in worldwide box office revenues. Its real value is in giving a film director an idea of what a scene will look like before he commits the resources to create the scene.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.