BC Business
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From Victoria, software developer Edwin Braun engineers the collapse of California. Behind a sliding glass door in his tiny basement office at Vancouver Island Technology Park, Edwin Braun surveys the total annihilation of Los Angeles with all the twisted enthusiasm of a comic book villain destroying the world from a distant underground lair.
Behind a sliding glass door in his tiny basement office at Vancouver Island Technology Park, Edwin Braun surveys the total annihilation of Los Angeles with all the twisted enthusiasm of a comic book villain destroying the world from a distant underground lair.
Palm-lined boulevards undulate like ocean waves from the force of a powerful earthquake. The Santa Monica Freeway buckles and collapses. A cement truck skids across four lanes of traffic and bursts into flames. Vehicles fall like rain from imploding parkades. Skyscrapers tumble to the ground in explosions of broken glass and twisted steel. Finally, a massive chasm rends the earth and swallows the city whole as the entire state of California begins to slide into the Pacific Ocean.
One of the most disturbing and realistic disaster sequences ever put on film, it’s a scene from 2012, the latest apocalyptic vision from Roland Emmerich, director of such blockbusters as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. And it wouldn’t have been possible without VolumeBreaker, a time-saving piece of software developed by Braun’s company, Cebas Visual Technology Inc. “It makes me proud. It’s amazing to see it, especially if you know how the other companies’ software works,” says Braun, a native of Germany who is in the midst of moving his company to Victoria. “For special effects, I must say this is a real milestone.”
One of several Cebas products used in 2012, VolumeBreaker allows computer animators to make digital images look like they’re exploding. The program manages everything from the size of the debris to the light, shadows and background needed to fill in empty space as objects disintegrate. There’s even what Braun describes as a “real-world physics engine” that mimics the way objects react in an explosion.
“It was so much work, especially making the software work for all the crazy ideas they had,” says the Cebas CEO. “When the people in the cinema see the L.A. sequence, it lasts four or five minutes, but we worked on it for about 18 months.”
Born and raised in Germany, Braun founded Cebas 20 years ago when the software revolution was in its infancy. Video game programmers were among the first to use Cebas technology, in high-profile video games such as Tomb Raider, Need for Speed and Command and Conquer 3. In recent years, the company has racked up an impressive list of movie credits as well, including Lost in Space, Black Hawk Down, Spider-Man 3, Star Trek: Nemesis and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
The move to Victoria was prompted by two main factors: the need to operate in the same time zone as California, where the majority of his customers are located, and a deep aversion to raising his family in the United States. “Victoria was about as close as you can get to the States without being in the States,” Braun says, adding that “Canada’s social system is a little more European.”
On the side table near Braun’s work station sits a hefty tome entitled Industrial Light and Magic: Into the Digital Realm; it’s a testament to his lifelong fascination with movie special effects that began when he saw the original version of Godzilla as a child.
“Godzilla had a really big impression on me. They just had Japanese actors in rubber suits stomping on little plastic houses,” he recalls. “I knew it was fake, but I loved it anyway.”