Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1058642
F E A T U R E 26 cgw | e d i t i o n 4 , 2 0 1 8 wanted to keep that going with Ralph Breaks the Internet. The Internet is not only big, it's dense with characters and places to go. This is probably the most complex animated film we've ever made in terms of locations, characters, heavy design, and assets." Unlike the city in Zootopia, the Internet has a unique, layered pattern, wherein the streets are at different levels of verticali- ty, as are the buildings, constructed with building blocks. Interconnecting these densely-packed buildings are streets and pathways, along with billboards, signage, videos, and more jam-packed throughout, all made from 3D geometry "to give the camera flexibility and for the light bounces and reflections. "We needed to populate the buildings with crowds and vehicles, which is easier when it's all in 3D," notes Petti. The crew started out with a rough construction of a scene as a test. "The render never came back due to the sheer amount of geometry," Petti notes. So, a number of steps had to be taken. First, the crew needed an efficient way to construct the 3D buildings. Then, Disney Animation's in-house Hyperion renderer had to be reworked to make the rendering more efficient. In addition, the artists de- vised a new screen graphics pipeline for all the signage so they could be authored and organized efficiently. The buildings differed in size and material (glass, steel, concrete), with an average height comparable to the Empire State Building (1,250 feet). "We wanted to include really big buildings that towered over the Netizens," says Larry Wu, head of environments. "Each building represents a website – the bigger the building, the bigger the site. And these buildings have floaty parts to them that give them a sense of fluidity: The Internet is alive and changing." To build the virtual city, the artists used Autodesk's Maya for modeling, along with in-house tools for texturing, including Paint 3D for painting and proprietary soware for materials creation. Rendering was done us- ing Hyperion. Each building was constructed of various subparts that were mixed and matched, and reused, yet each structure still had to look unique. While Hyperion has in- stanced buildings before, all the little pieces and parts here presented a problem. "We were processing too much," Petti ex- plains, noting that at peak, they were render- ing equivalent to 1.9 million hours a day. "We had to rethink the entire instancing engine. So, instead of instancing a building, it would look at each piece inside and outside the building, and reuse that stored information." Meanwhile, the newly developed screen graphics pipeline enabled the artists to track the plethora of screens and videos that are beside, below, and on top of the buildings. The art department created the signs, while the animation department created the videos, all of which had to be organized in an intuitive way so they could be populate across the cityscape. While placement of the hundreds of thousands of buildings and screens was done procedurally, that only provided a starting point for the artists; everything still had to be art directed quickly and easily from that point forward. Popular Environments There are approximately 150 master sets in the film, unique environments including the arcade from the original Ralph, which had to be revamped to work with the updated Hyperion. Then, those sets had to be fleshed out into individual loca- tions within the Internet-scape. Different lighting styles help delineate among the many environments. "We also used film LUTs, which give the sense that you're using different film stock, bringing a more distinctive look to certain environments," says Petti. "For instance, the real world is a little more washed out, while the Slaughter Race environment has a really pushed look." Slaughter Race contains a unique film perspective, with cameras attached to the vehicle to make it feel like an actual car chase was being filmed. The crew also extended the camera lens system to be more physically based, removing the CG edge from the cam- era for more accurate depth of field, to better ground certain scenes like this one in reality. Another particularly interesting environ- ment is eBay, where there are endless cubes with items being auctioned off, including some Easter eggs such as Aladdin's lamp. The items appear as holograms, to indicate these objects are not physically present in the space, and each has its own unique signage, auctioneer, and a bidding counter. Ralph 2 contains a lot of holograms, for objects as well as signage and characters, resulting in a new hologram shader that allows rays to skip sets of geometry after light hits the outer surface and automat- ically finds the other side. An "edge glow" capability provided the necessary flexibility and user control for the effect. For BuzzzTube, animations were needed for all the screens. The crew even built the Deep Web, a dark, seedy sort of place at the depths of the Internet with characters whose faces are covered with hoodies and all sorts of viruses hanging around. But the one environment that is getting all the buzz is Oh My Disney, inspired by the actual website of the same name, where RALPH AND VANELLOPE LOOK OUT AT THE EXPANSIVENESS OF THE INTERNET.