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F E A T U R E 28 cgw | e d i t i o n 4 , 2 0 1 8 on top of a T-shirt, and a leather jacket over that. "We ran a simulation and then art directed her long, flowing brown hair," says Komorowski of this fearless driver whose hair oen blows in the wind. On the gross side of the scale is Double Dan (Alfred Molina), a grouchy, slug-like shiy sort of guy so named because of a conjoined little twin brother, named Little Dan, tucked into the folds of his neck. Double Dan is the proprietor of the Dark Net's apothecary, where he whips up various viruses. Far from a subtle character, Double Dan's animation does, in fact, have a subtleness, which adds to his intimidation factor. In Zootopia, the crew used a lot of muscle simulation to really sell the scale of the larger animals. Here, they applied that technology to Double Dan, giving him jiggle as he moves. "His little brother is right there on his neck, which presented us with even more of a challenge," says Komorowski. The basic sculpts for these and the other main characters were created in Pixologic's ZBrush, and then the models were ported over to Maya, where they were rigged and simu- lated using mostly proprietary tools written inside of Maya. The animators employed a newer, faster rigging system on this film, called Parade, enabling the animators to scrub back and forth to a nearly real-time result. The models were textured using the studio's Paint 3D and Adobe's Photoshop. Hyperion, again, was used for the shaders. Using the Hyperion renderer devised for Big Hero 6, the artists were able to make colors in this film more vibrant. "It's a level of sophistication we just didn't have on the first Ralph, and we really wanted to plus them in this world," says Komorowski. With Hyperion, the subsurface shading models were changed to a path-traced subsurface shader, presenting some surprising results. On the first Ralph, the subsurface solution tended to wash out fine detail, so the artists would amp up those shapes to get them to read better once the subsurface was applied. "When we used the path-traced subsurfacing, suddenly all those details were standing out. Ralph looked a bit like a Neanderthal, and we had to tone back some of that detail," says Komorowski. Netizens & Net Users Another fun and interesting character is KnowsMore, an outdated, clunky digital academic running the search bar. A search engine personified, he was inspired by the 1950s/'60s style of animation that is simplis- tic yet elegant. Like the other characters, he was created in Maya, but his cartoony eyes and the reflection in his glasses were craed in Meander, in-house soware first used in the short "Paperman." In fact, the Internet is filled with these native avatars called Neti- zens, who call the Internet "home." Netizens are colorful bits of characters of various sizes and shapes branded to their website – sort of ghosts in the machine that perform actions on the Internet. Mostly they look cartoony, and their actions are more fluid than the Net Users'. "They're meant to be digitally constructed. Their skin has a su- per-so silicon feel. Their hair is a bit metallic, and if you look at their specular highlights, you'll see little circuit board types of textures," says Komorowski. Some Netizens, though, like Shank, Yesss, and Double Dan, have larger roles in the film, and are extremely detailed. In addition, there are Net Users, mechani- cal representations of us inside the Internet. Non-natives, Net Users do not show a lot of emotion; they have iconic expressions that kind of snap or pop from one extreme to another. They have limited, somewhat robotic body motion (with their heads lead- ing the action, as if directed by a computer mouse). They have block-shaped heads and are rather uniform in size. But everything else about them – from their clothes to their hairstyles – are unique from all the other Net Users, thanks to a mix-and-match creation system that included facial sculpts and so forth for the most variety possible. The animators then used a crowd rig for these characters, which is not as robust as the rig used for the main characters, but rather a simplified version of the standard rig. To account for some deviation in body type, a system called Refitters used the base simulation setup to retrofit the clothing to different shapes by using specific landmarks on the bodies, saving all the rigging and simu- lation procedures. The artists just clean it up. …But Who's Counting? Disney Animation is known for pushing the state of the art in technology and creativity. And Ralph Breaks the Internet is no exception. In this case, though, the challenge did not rest with a unique, singular advance- ment; rather, it was about expanding the scale and scope of previous advancements. In Frozen, all the characters were simulat- ed. In Big Hero 6, the team wrote a new shader. In Zootopia, they dealt with massive scales of crowds and hair, and on Moana, they tackled wind in the hair and water. Without any of those steps, Ralph Breaks the Internet would not have been possible. Or, it would have been "less" in every way: fewer buildings, fewer characters, painted backdrops, static signs…. Petti sums up the work perfectly: "Every- thing here was just more." Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of CGW. THE TRENDSETTER YESSS IS CONSTANTLY CHANGING HAIRSTYLES AND CLOTHING.