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j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 1 c g w 2 9 3D with a Twist the staff to work efficiently from home. As production gained momentum, the Jellyfish crew expanded to nearly 350 artists as work commenced at the end of this past February. Of course, this does not include development time at DreamWorks. Never- theless, it is interesting to note that it took over four years to complete the first Spirit feature at DreamWorks — at a time when tools were far less efficient and hardware much slower. A Hybrid World Time frames, tools, and aesthetics cer- tainly have evolved since the first feature was released, as evident by the unique aesthetic of the original film and then the "mixed" look of the TV series — the latter a style that Jellyfish took to a feature level in Untamed. In Untamed, all the imagery in the foreground and midground of the shots were craed in 3D — and, according to Dodd, everything created in 3D contained hand-painted textures. "Everything was based from a shading point of view on how real the materials needed to look," explains Dodd. "But everything that sat beneath that was very painterly and had the artist's hand behind every single texture you see on the screen. And then, in the backgrounds, the dis- tant part of the shots, were digital matte paintings, so there were 2D drawings for the skies, mountains, and so forth." The environments, in fact, contain a deli- cate mixture of realism and artistry. However, some 3D elements for clouds were sometimes added to those back- ground shots, particularly when the camera was traveling over large distances or when the group wanted a slightly different look. The art direction of using 3D elements off in the distance was something that Paul Duncan, production designer, really wanted to explore, says Dodd, so the group utilized 3D matte painting whenever possible. As noted earlier, DreamWorks drove the design and story, handing over artwork — "absolutely beautiful designs," says Dodd — elevations of characters, props, and assets that fit within the environments, as well as key art of what each sequence would be, such as the time of day, which really set the tone for what each sequence should look like, including the characters and environ- ments. Jellyfish would then go on to model those assets, translating 2D drawings into 3D maquettes. Sometimes DreamWorks would supply those 3D art models as well. "Our amazing modeling team then brought all these characters off the 2D page and into the 3D world," says Dodd. Character Creation The film features a number of characters, with six hero characters in all: three girls and three horses. The girls had long, flowing hair and beautiful period clothing, while the horses had manes and tails that blew in the wind. The 3D modeling and animation was accomplished in Autodesk's Maya, as was the lighting. Rendering was done through Maya with Arnold, and compositing through Foundry's Nuke. SideFX's Houdini handled all the simulation, particularly for the cloth and hair, as well as the 3D effects. Meanwhile, the artists built the clothing assets in Mar- velous Designer, and utilized Foundry's Mari and other key soware for the textures. In fact, some pipeline tweaks were required to integrate Houdini at the scale needed for all the VFX work. Some further changes were made to enable the group to automate and see first simulations on the hair, manes, and tails in a more timely manner so they could get approval much faster. "That was one of the key markers for us being able to speed up and fit the whole project in the small production window we had," says Dodd. In Dodd's opinion, the most technically challenging work involved the hair and fur. "We did not underestimate it going into the show, and we knew that the speed at which we had to deliver it would become a big focus for us," he says. "We had to learn the differences in the sims from when a horse is galloping compared to when it is at rest. Or when taking a turn, what happens to the tail." Foreground and midground imagery is 3D; the backgrounds mostly 2D.