Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1011494
e d i t i o n 3 , 2 0 1 8 | c g w 7 into the tunnel wall, creating a volume effect with sparks added on top. For the tire smoke, the team used a di- vide-and-conquer technique similar to that used for previous films – for example, the river in The Good Dinosaur. To achieve the look of a continuous smoke cloud as the train moved, they used a clustered simula- tion, for which they ran independent simula- tions on different computers. To add sparks, Baadkar started with a static train, simulated sparks moving in the opposite direction, and then put the moving train back into the shot. For the glass breaking, Scheepers realized that it was hard to see the effect because the scene moved quickly, so he broke the physics; he added larger shards and reduced the motion blur. As Elastigirl races aer the train, we see a big city in the background. CITYSCAPE "From a sets perspective, the city is terrify- ing," says sets supervisor Nathan Fariss. "We have to build, arrange, age, weather, and treat the buildings in a way that makes them feel normal. You know inherently when it's wrong. But, we decided to not be afraid. We decided to build a real 3D city with suburbs, manufacturing districts, an old town." One goal was to give the director flexibility. "Brad had been away for a while, so at the beginning of the show we had a long break- fast, brunch, lunch, dinner," says production designer Ralph Eggleston. "I told him what's going on at Pixar now, the new technology we have, and how we wanted to work. It boiled down to a simple idea: 'Brad, tell your story. We'll make it happen. Let's not waste time figuring out whether we can or can't. Let's just say we can.'" To link this film with the previous one, they worked backward from the original. "We can cheat, but we have to account for it," says Eggleston. "We intentionally withheld what we can do technically now until the moment where the Underminer goes underground. Then we show what we can do now." Action scenes start with layout artists and set dressers working together to deter- mine how long a street should be and what it should contain. "Because we're using ray casting [Ren- derMan RIS], we want to be sure that if we JACK-JACK AT TACK Although Jack-Jack appeared in The Incredibles, director Brad Bird wanted a soer, fleshier baby for Incredibles 2. "All the Parrs have basic geometric shapes," says supervising animator Tony Fucile. "Bob is an upside-down U. Helen is a heart. Dash is a square. Violet is a circle. Jack-Jack is a circle with a hair horn. That's easy to draw but hard to do in CG." For reference, the team looked at babies, including Fucile's son Eli, who voices Jack- Jack. They looked for ways they could use new technology to change the original sculpt and create a soer character. For example, "We rounded and thickened Jack-Jack's gums, made his eye-nose-mouth area tighter and sweeter," Fucile says. "And he's three months older, so we added a couple teeth." Audiences might not notice the difference, but they will notice Jack-Jack's new superpowers: pyrokinesis, invisibility, laser vision, levitation, the ability to hang out on ceilings and walls, multiplication, phasing that gives him the ability to move through closed doors, projecting bolts of electricity, telekinesis, teleportation, transforming into heavy metal or goo, and turning into a demon baby. "We used the opportunity to keep everything rooted in the original look, but bring it into modern technology," says effects supervisor Bill Watral. "We can have so many more details. One of our biggest challenges with Jack-Jack was maintaining the look of the baby, whether he's turning to goo or on fire. Nobody wants to see a burning baby." Effects technical artist Jason Johnston had the task of creating the fire effect. "We went back to look at what was done in 2004, when Violet drops the baby into the bathtub, and we decided to redesign the look," Johnston says. "Jack-Jack's role would be bigger. He'd have more screen time. We'd need to read his animation. And, the technology can do more." The artists decided that Jack-Jack needed to be the source of the fire, not be on fire. There would be no smoke or embers because that conveys the idea that something is on fire, although anything he lights on fire could have them. Then, they looked for sources of fire that burn but don't look like they're on fire, and vice versa. For the first test, they created fire with a transparent center, which looked interesting but didn't feel right. They made the fire more orange and gave Jack-Jack glowing eyes. They tried changing the color of Jack-Jack's skin, but he looked like a red devil baby. They allowed the flames to be more apparent. Then, they placed moving flames over Jack-Jack's skin and gave him glowing eyes, which they liked. But, they continued experimenting. "We added a new fire simulation over his body that we could affect without affect- ing the underlying simulation," Johnston says. Creating a final frame oen involved 12 steps, starting with a base fire simulation, Jack-Jack renders, body-only fire simulations, Jack-Jack masks made with blurred renders, and various combinations and blends with glows and orange eyes. "By having fire in different layers, we could control the effects per shot," Johnston says. To first put Jack-Jack on fire in front of Bird took the artists nearly a month. Aer that, Bird could have Jack-Jack on fire whenever he wanted.