Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1062194
www.postmagazine.com 23 POST DECEMBER 2018 THE GRINCH any hair behavioral issues early in the process. "We also developed a way to dynamically instance and animate objects within the fur systems, allowing us to simulate snow getting mixed with the characters' hair and fur," says Chauffard. In addition to the main characters, there are crowds of Whos created with a mix-and-match modeling system to generate a wide variety of looks. Then, once the crowd was distributed and the animation cycles randomized, the group focused on specific areas of the crowd and updated those with specific keyframe animation to create secondary storylines occurring in the background. Extreme Environments There are essentially two big locations in the film: Mt. Crumpet/Grinch's cave and Whoville, but with- in those locales, particularly Whoville, are many smaller but more intricate indoor and outdoor sets. So, it comes as no surprise that most ambitious part of the film involved the creation of Whoville, which the artists transformed from line drawings of a handful of snow-covered houses into a bright- ly-colored, three-dimensional city with teetering, swerving buildings of Seussian style. The Whos are welcoming and warm, so their town needed to reflect this in the shapes and textures of their homes, shops, and vehicles, says Mosier. Thus, the artists embraced a warm, saturated, bright, happy color palette. In fact, Whoville is in direct contrast aesthetically to the Grinch's icy cave on the very angular and lonely Mt. Crumpit. Using Maya, ZBrush, Foundry's Mari and Allegorithmic's Substance Painter, the artists built an entire 3D model of the city that the camera could move through without limitation, making sure the layout followed real-world logic. "We know every location — where Cindy-Lou's house is compared to the town square, compared to the entrance to the city and the Who Foods Market," Cheney says. "If you wanted to, you could actually build a real-life Whoville and it would make sense as a town." Within the city lies the imaginative world of Dr. Seuss, which is very specific, organic and uneven, making the fabrication of the designs rather difficult to standardize, says Chauffard. "Each house and store have a specific shape, which was never straight, and that influenced every sub-element, such as win- dows, balconies and doors," he says. Nevertheless, the crew managed to build a library of elements that they could slightly reshape and adapt to dress the different buildings. Once the buildings were assem- bled, the artists could procedurally regenerate the textures to fit the new shapes they had created. Staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown, at the warm lighted windows below in their town. For he knew every Who down in Whoville beneath, was busy now, hanging a mistle- toe wreath. Whoville is not solely as a Christmas town; it is a village that just happens to do Christmas in a big way. As for the artists, they, too, had to decorate the virtual city and embrace the season. For this, they developed a tool that enabled them to grab geom- etry from a prebuilt library and snap it automatically on the houses and shops, before tweaking it by hand. As Chauffard notes, the garland bulbs were proce- durally generated along curves and volumes. Every bulb carried specific attributes that enabled the artists to drive their color and intensity so they could art-direct their look until late in the process and feed them with complex animation if necessary. "We care- fully fine-tuned the rendering and animation of those lights, as they were essential in the evocation of the Christmas spirit through the film," he adds. The other main environment is Grinch's cave, no longer a dark, lonely space, but rather a multi-level lair with big, inviting rooms and packed with hi-tech The Grinch's trusted companion Max. The tale was updated for new audiences, yet maintains the essence of the classic.