10.12.06
Royal Palm Hotel Collapse
The newly built Royal Palm Hotel in Guam collapsed in 1993 after an earthquake hit the island. The investigation revealed that the contractor had left significant amounts of reinforcing steel out of the concrete structure of hotel. These animations helped the jury visualize the hotel before it collapsed and taught them the proper way to install reinforcing steel. We produced these animations between 1999 and 2001 using LightWave and Maya software.
As is our usual practice in this podcast series, the video we’ve built for you consists of excerpts from the original animations, with our own new explanatory voiceover. We do this because the animations used in trial are often quite long — sometimes hours — and usually have no audio track to tell you what’s going on. When they’re presented in court, of course, these animations are accompanied by the live testimony of an expert witness. We also think that you might find some explanation useful in understanding the animations and their significance both to the trial and to the history of animation in court.
