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C G W Ja n u a r y / Fe b ru a r y 2 014 ■ 27 Reptile Run Understandably, keyframe animation was used to make the prehistoric characters move, whether trotting, running, or walking. The crew devised the animation rigs in Autodesk's Softimage XSI, which enabled them to quickly define the char- acters and setups, along with variations of the rigs that were propagated across an entire species. Animators spent the time early on defining motion cycles, so the first stage of animation involved assigning and adapting the cycles leading up to a shot and defining the animation path. Key to the animation was a new muscle system, dubbed Steroid, which enabled the team to push the results beyond what they had achieved in the past. "Muscle systems are dif- ficult. Some companies often go back to a traditional blend- shapes approach to mimic muscles," says Blasset. "Typically, it is difficult to get stable results out of a muscle system without a lot of shot-based tweaking." Rigging Supervisor Raffaele Fragapane and R&D Lead Aloys Baillet came up with the brand-new system, which properly managed individual muscles and bones, and provided inter- action with the outer skin and internal fat. The process was completely transparent to animators and did not require shot- specific adjustments. "The bulk of our cast is very muscular, and you have to be able to see the ribs poking out when they breathe and read the effects of the skin sliding on top of bulging muscles," Blasset says. "We had to put a lot of surface detailing on our creatures, but it was equality important to deform them realistically." The animators could load a shot, and the rendering system would implement the muscle tool. The animators could then quickly see the results – what the muscles were doing in relation to the motion – and refine the motion easily. For rendering, the studio used Pixar's RenderMan and Animal Logic's proprietary Maya-to-RenderMan software called MayaMan. According to Blasset, a typical final animation ren- der for this project took approximately 100 hours per frame. Lighting Supervisor Max Liani and Associate CG Supervisor Steve Agland revisited the studio's lighting and shading pipeline with a physically plausible lighting and shading approach. "From the ground up, it provided a photorealistic look and showed all the detail we created on the characters," Blasset says. To ensure that the CG characters blended seamlessly into the plates, the team captured HDRI images on set for just about every shot and implemented those into the physically plausible lighting and shading pipeline. "That gave us a very solid base for lighting the characters right out of the box, and gave us a very realistic view of what the characters should look like and gave the lighters more time to focus on the artistry, " says Reichelt. On set, the filmmakers mostly used natural lighting. "Often 'out of the box' was the most realistic but not always the pret- tiest. Usually we spend all our time trying to make things look real, so this gave us the time to get the reality first and more time getting it to look good," adds Reichelt. The crew also captured survey data, collecting points to determine where the cameras and lights were on set. Cretaceous Environments Reichelt estimates that approximately two-thirds of the backgrounds in Walking with Dinosaurs are live action; nearly a quarter are all-CG, while the rest comprise both CG and live action. Filming involved three separate shoots, with the initial one occurring in June 2011 in Alaska, with a follow-up there in October 2011. The main filming was done in New Zealand from February to July 2012. The all-CG backgrounds, which entail a few hundred shots, encompass three different sequences, including the show- down in the forest between Patchi and his brother at dusk and later at night. Another sets the scene when the herd must cross a frozen lake surrounded by mountains. In the sequence, the herd is separated into two different groups and then reforms after the beasts cross the lake. It is about the chang- ing of the guard and how the hero manages to reach his full potential. When they meet up again at the end of the lake, all hell breaks loose. "The decision to use CG for the ice and ice breaking, as opposed to a real location, had more to do with the complexity of the interaction between the dinosaurs and the environments," says Blasset. According to Nightingale, the dinosaurs had to interact with the ground, so the CG artists created the computer-generated ice. "This was the most effective way for us to get our dino- saurs to interact and fight, ensuring that their fall through the ice looked and felt realistic in keeping up with the dramatic pace of the movie," he says. All the CG locations were derived from actual locales, and the showdown scene is based on a site in Primrose, Alaska, ■ ANIMAL LOGIC USED a procedural approach to add scales to the reptiles through its proprietary Reptile system.