Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1399888
22 cgw j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 1 3D with a Twist Luca Fun Facts CAMEO – Director Enrico Casarosa pro- vides the voice of the winning card player in Portorosso who shouts "Scopa!" He is also the fisherman in the boat who yells to a speeding boat, "What's wrong with you, Stupido!" GETTING IN SHAPE – Artists gave Giulia a distinct look, embracing triangle shape language—particularly in her hair and pants. ON THE BALL – The iconic yellow, red, and blue Pixar ball can be spotted on a rooop as the Portorosso Cup bike race gets underway. PIECE OF PIE – Keep an eye out for the Pizza Planet truck in the form of a Piaggio Ape parked on a street in Portorosso. A WHALE OF A TALE – There is a poster for Walt Disney's "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," which opened in December 1954, at the cinema in Portorosso. TICKET TO RIDE – The number on the train is 94608, which is the zip code of Pixar's hometown of Emeryville. All ABOARD – Pixar's signature A113, the number on a CalArts classroom where many filmmakers studied, appears on a train ticket seen in the film. THAT'S AMORE – "Luca" director Enrico Casarosa was inspired in part by Italian films of the 1950s, including "La Strada" and "Roman Holiday," among others. Pixar-created posters for both appear in the film. surface and that of the splashes — and married those two worlds together. While Pixar has tackled water before, for this film the artists used a different system than they did on Finding Dory, requiring a good deal of back-and-forth work with the RenderMan team to figure out a way to seamlessly blend at render time the procedural stylized ocean that is mostly seen on-screen with the simulated areas of splashes by the characters. Artists needed control over the sculp- tural shapes that would be injected into their splash simulations. To this end, Pixar reworked some of its tools, giving individual artist control over certain bands of frequen- cy in the water sims by allowing them to dial the high-frequency detail up or down. "It was about challenging what our own preconceptions were about how we would approach that work and using the tools we had in a slightly new way to push into that more simplified, stylized, almost storybook look," says Reisch. Most of the effects work, including the cartoon water splashes, was done using SideFX's Houdini, with the Houdini FLIP sim- ulator at the core. The ocean, meanwhile, was shaded with RenderMan and OSL, then rendered in Foundry's Katana. Custom nodes were used to generate the initial spectrum of ocean waves. Over the Land and Under the Sea It's clear that Luca, with its unique style, is somewhat atypical for Pixar. Then again, what really is "typical" for a studio that is constantly pushing new boundaries? A phrase we oen hear in the film is "Silen- cio, Bruno," a phrase turned by Alberto (and then by Luca) as a way of ignoring that little voice that tells you, "No, you can't," and holds you back. Thank goodness Casarosa and the Pixar team hushed that little voice when creating this very special film. Grazie. Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of CGW. In human form, the characters have fun, graphic mouth shapes. The boys are obsessed with Vespas, even trying to build one themselves.