Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1192296
w i n t e r 2 0 1 9 c g w 9 Anna's hairstyle, however, changed from the signature double braids to a compli- cated braid with her hair hanging curly and loose below the nape of her neck. Just as the cloth and hair sims became faster, so, too were the Autodesk Maya animation rigs, including the facial rigs, giving animators more opportunity to iterate. Since this is a musical, the animators strived on getting the body mechanics of the singing accurate – all the little breaths and intakes – as well as the facial expressions. Thus, more controls were added, enabling animators to regulate the way the characters breathe, the different muscles that would engage not only in the face, but also in the neck and torso. "A lot of detail goes into every breath on this film," says Suroveic. Because the crew already had built a particularly complex rig for Olaf that allowed him to rearrange himself, very little change was made to it. As for Sven, advancements in how the artists groomed and shaded fur, as well as simulated it, were applied. Gale Gale from the Enchanted Forest was one of the film's most unique characters. "It was one of the first characters the directors asked me to work on, and my first question was, how do you draw wind?" recalls Bill Schwab, art director for characters. "How do you draw something that isn't there?" Formless, Gale's presence in a scene is announced by the impact it has on other objects in the scene, such as movement of leaves, debris, sticks, and so on. As a result, early planning was required for each scene. "We realized very quickly that Gale would be a very collaborative character, a multi-discipline, multi-department effort," says Trent Correy, animation supervisor. "We'd be working with effects, tech anim, character animation, rigging, environments, lighting…everyone." However, typically the workflows had some of these departments way upstream or downstream from anima- tion, a situation that had to be remedied so they could work collaboratively on scenes involving Gale. A new in-house tool called Swoop was developed to give artists the ability to animate the path and the timing of the wind spirit. Animators could work with these paths directly in Maya, or they could record the path and timing with the set using VR. "There were tools to basically get onto a VR capture stage and block out a path for the wind to travel around. That would then drive the rig, helping visualize both the speed of Gale, the size of Gale's effect, and any noise or turbulence that it would provide as it's passing by, such as airflow and current," explains Suroveic. "From there, effects and tech anim would iterate in terms of how much environmental debris Gale should pick up and move along with it, whether that's leaves, flowers, or seedling pods." The result was then passed along the pipeline so other departments could start working on the scenes. Another option was to use hand anima- tion to determine the amount of leaves and debris Gale picks up, attached to the path sketched out as a guideline for effects to then simulate any extra debris added to Gale's path. "We wanted to make sure you couldn't tell which leaves were hand key- framed and which came from effects," says Ramos. "It had to be seamless." The group could also track Gale's movement through a scene without those environmental factors. "We could tell where Gale was at any given time based on how the other characters were moving," Suroveic says of the work by tech anim. Eth Gi Another interesting set of characters from the Enchanted Forest are the Earth Giants. Representing the earth spirits, they are asymmetrical, massive in scale, and made of stone, so they were extremely heavy and difficult to move around. "In addition, we had to make these characters feel like they were actually moving and breathing," says Tony Smeed, head of animation. Instead, Wayne Unten, animation super- visor for the Giants, and Chris Pedersen, rig- ging supervisor, devised a way for the rocks to slide around, rather than bend, thereby preserving their stone-like structure. As Sur- oveic explains, the models were segmented into multiple plates of geometry, then it was a matter of making sure those plates were colliding and sliding with each other. The Nokk A water spirit inspired by old Nordic myths, the Nokk is a warrior creature, a protector of the Dark Sea. It is literally a horse made out of water. Like Gale, the Nokk required a long development time with multiple disci- plines working together: tech anim, effects, and then lighting. The most collaborative sections of the Nokk were the tail and mane, which especially described the water ele- ment of the horse. A WATER SPIRIT, THE NOKK REQUIRED A LONG DEVELOPMENT PERIOD. THE EARTH GIANTS ARE MASSIVE AND MADE OF STONE, THUS HARD TO ANIMATE.