Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1011494
e d i t i o n 3 , 2 0 1 8 | c g w 4 1 J U R A S S I C E V O L U T I O N : 2 0 1 5 size can move that fast." Large quadrupeds, such as hippos and rhinos, gave anima- tors a sense of movement for the four-legged Stegosaurus and Parasaurolophus. Before the scariest part of the film, two young boys travel in a gyro- sphere, a clever glass bubble, through a "dinosaur valley" populated with these peace- able animals. "Colin wanted to show how wondrous it would be to be in this valley surrounded by these majestic animals," McIntosh says. "So we referenced herding animals of the Serengeti using groups that would naturally hang out and move together. Colin said, 'Great, but could you put a [Stegosaurus] in there?' So we built the choreography based on the dinosaurs he was interested in seeing." D I N O M I G H T Although the filmmakers want- ed the look of the dinosaurs to harken back to the previous films, they also wanted the crea- tures "plussed." New technology and another decade or two of experience gave the artists tools and techniques to do that and much more. "Obviously, compared to 20 years ago, things have advanced dramatically," Alexander says. "And we deployed everything, including a new muscle firing system that we developed at the beginning of this show. Before, we used shapes to build muscles that did what we need- ed and had a system that dialed between the muscles. Now we use a biomechanical calculation that determines the muscle shape and timing when it fires." The animators start the pro- cess, and then the new muscle firing system takes over. "It took quite a while to build the detail underneath the skin," Alexander says. "Because we were using the muscles to slide the skin over, we needed to have the right firing. You see the muscles flexing and firing at the right moment. And when the muscle flexes, it maintains volume and protrudes. That's new for us; we didn't have volume preservation before." To make the dinosaurs look believable, modelers created asymmetrical animals rather than building one side in CG and mirroring the other. "We also covered them with scars, nicks, and cuts to give them some history," McIntosh says. "They had been there for years. They didn't just show up to be filmed." Perhaps remembering the sequence he had animated for the previous film in which he had dinosaurs fight to the death without injury, when McIntosh created concept art for these dinosaurs, he drew them quite injured. "I may have gone overboard," McIntosh says. "I finally got to do damage, so I covered them in scars. When I showed the art to Colin, he said this was a scary action-adventure movie, not a horror film, and wanted the kids to enjoy it. So, I had to pull back." As the muscles move, the skin slides overtop realisti- cally. That causes the texture maps, heavily scarred or not, to stretch as well. And not always appropriately or aesthetical- ly. A new texture stretching technique was employed and resulted in a paper that the ILM team will present at SIGGRAPH. "The technique lets us define areas of the texture that aren't supposed to stretch on a shot-by-shot basis," Alexander says. "We re-parameterize the texture space according to the deformation of the 3D mesh. It's a complicated process." For rendering the creatures, the team used Pixar's Render- Man, with Chaos Group's V-Ray helping with the glass gyroscope and the Jurassic World environ- ment. Lighting artists used The Foundry's Katana. "Ultimately, everyone agreed that we liked our RenderMan look and it was more comfort- able," Alexander says. "Everyone kind of felt that it was better for our organic creatures. Technical- ly, you can make arguments for other renderers, but we have a deep knowledge of RenderMan and like the look." W O R K I N G R E L A T I O N S H I P S All the visual effects shots went through ILM, with work hap- pening in three of that studio's four locations. Artists in San Francisco built all the assets and created the environments, MOTION-CAPTURED DATA HELPED ANIMATORS GIVE THE RAPTORS PERSONALITY.