Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/663385
m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 6 c g w 1 3 render times. But, I like geometry. I like to have faces and polygons reacting with light. Any time you have geometry, you get more realistic light play. You can't sim- ulate light that well with maps." To alleviate the burden of high sampling rates with raytracing, MPC collaborated with Pixar and Disney on de-noising tools. "Raytracing is the way to go forward because it gives you the obvious realism everyone seeks, but it demands that everyone raise their game," Valdez says. "The lighting department has to be more physical in their setups. Lookdev people need to create more robust surfaces that work in all lighting cases. Asset people have to provide more realistic objects." To groom and move the animals' fur, the team used and updated MPC's seasoned custom Furtility tool. "We had new levels of inter- action between fur and water," Valdez says. "In the lazy river sequence, Mowgli rides down a river on Baloo's belly. So we had to work out how to make the bridge between water and fur simulation." T H E J U N G L E The lazy river sequence was one of many environments the crew at MPC needed to create for this largely bluescreen film. "Filling up the screen for 90 minutes with the bulk of the frame is intimidating," Valdez says. "This movie is somewhere between an animated feature and an Avatar type of movie. The environments team had proba- bly the single most complicated contribution to the film." To populate the environment with rocks, ground, and vegeta- tion, Environments Supervisor Audrey Ferrara led crews in Lon- don and Bangalore that grew to 120 artists – modelers, texture artists, lookdev artists, environ- ment artists, and technical ani- mators. These artists created 58 different sets and 224 subsets for the film. "We had the wolf den and its subsets; peace rock where all the animals drink water and Shere Khan shows up; the home jungle where the wolves and Mowgli train, run, and play; the lazy river with Mowgli and Baloo; Kaa's jungle, which is big and scary; and more," Ferrara says. "At the beginning of the show, I wasn't exactly terrified, but I thought, oh my God, how will we build these massive jungles with flowers and vege- tation everywhere? At different times of days. In different seasons. In stereo." They started in India. Glass and his art department created rules for the vegetation based on species growing in India, and provided reference material. Working from that, Ferrara planned photo shoots. "I learned where in India we could find the species the art department wanted," Ferrara says. "Then I scheduled three photo sessions in different seasons. We had people go to 43 locations all over India. They shot 20 tb of photographs. From those, we could do photogram- metry and start to build our sets. We built 1,200 assets, more or less, for this show." Although Ferrara was initially worried about building the veg- etation, she and the team dis- covered that sets with rock for- mations were more challenging. "You can hide imperfections in the chaos of a jungle," she says. "Your eye looks at it as a whole. But with a big rock formation, you analyze the information. Rocks were unforgivable." For rocks, the team typically used photogrammetry for the structure and photos for the textures. The more complex MPC UPDATED ITS CUSTOM FURTILITY TOOL TO MANAGE THE INTERACTION BETWEEN CG FUR AND WATER, AND RAYTRACED THE VEGETATION, FUR, AND WATER WITH RENDERMAN RIS.