To accelerate the production process, the Dave School chose NVIDIA Quadro® graphics boards. Modeling and rendering for Tofu was done with LightWave 3D and compositing was done with Digital Fusion, both OpenGL applications that make heavy use of the NVIDIA graphics board.

NVIDIA Quadro graphics allowed the students to display large amounts of geometry and textures in real time and to create the lighting for the scenes in LightWave. "Without the real-time rendering power of Quadro graphics," says Tofu creator and producer William Vaughan, "the students would have had to resort to producing final renders instead of real-time intermediates. The time consumed would have made the three-month production schedule impossible."

The final scene, in particular, was a technical challenge. The scene begins in a dining room and features all five major characters in the film. The camera pulls out into another room and then out the window, showing the house, a graveyard, and hundreds of trees. Constructed with some four million polygons, the scene couldn’t have been produced without NVIDIA Quadro graphics.

The End Result

The result is a professional, high-quality animated short that is funny and engaging. To help the Tofu character reach a wider audience, the creators are seeking to turn him into the star of a television series. The students leave the project with valuable, real-world production experience and compelling footage for their reels. The Dave School has a history of successfully placing artists in studios like Lightstorm, Zoic, and Digital Domain. And those who’ve worked on Tofu have a truly impressive student project to claim as their own as they seek out positions in the industry.

More Information at www.nvidia.com and www.tofutheveganzombie.com - Video Courtesy of Dave School