Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/110653
n n n n CG Animation The benefit of this methodology was an increase in speed and productivity in building the first round of models with the exact look the artist wanted for the characters. Upon testing, if there were problem areas, the modelers could focus just on those sections. After the rigging was completed, the artists then added the feathers, a task that presented its own set of challenges. The feathers themselves were created using a plug-in called mbFeathersTools, created by Michael Buettner. This plug-in for Softmage i makes use of the multi-thread Interactive Creation Environment (ICE) platform within Softimage. Here, it allowed the artists to populate the characters with feathers, groom and style the feathers for each bird, and then tweak the rotation, size, and position for the specific needs of each shot. "The animation of the characters had to be carefully checked and tweaked to remove extreme deformations and creases for reducing the popping and flipping of feathers," says Buckland. "We point-cached the motion of both the character mesh and the feathers to prevent unwanted inconsistencies during the rendering process." Moreover, once the feathers were added to a character, it made that character model too "heavy," or CPU-intensive, for the group to be 24 Triggerfish artists modeled and rigged the characters in Autodesk's Softimage, and used tools such as Pixologic's ZBrush and Adobe's Photoshop for texturing, creating rich, vibrant scenes like the one at top. Bottom, from left to right, shows the scene's progression. able to animate interactively. As a result, the animators had to fly blind when animating since the rigs did not include any of the body feathers. "This initially caused a few problems whereby the animators did not allow for the extra thickness that the feathers brought to the birds' bodies," Buckland says. "The schedule was so tight, in some cases we sort of skipped steps and just bullheadedly ploughed on, and that caused real headaches later on," relates Thornley. Feathers also created a challenge for the lighting and rendering teams, which had to devise methods for optimizing the multiple layers of semitransparent feathers. This was especially true for the background characters. had to populate the world of Zambezia with leaves, since the main location was a huge baobab tree. The team modeled and textured a variety of different leaves in Softimage, then placed them on the tree branches procedurally using ICE. Because the film was being produced in 3D stereoscopy, the team discovered that the stereo process exposed a number of the compositional cheats that would normally be used by the layout team. Therefore, the artists were forced to populate the scenes with more leaves as well as other elements much deeper into the set than they had planned in order to maintain the impression of depth in the composition of each shot. Tree of Life Up, Up and Away Depending on a character's distance from the camera, the animators reduced the number of feathers on each bird, as well as the number of polygons that made each feather. For very distant birds, the characters were rendered nude, or simply put, without any feathers at all; instead, the artist used a texture map that created the impression of a coat of feathers. In addition to feathers, the Triggerfish team Beyond the use of feathers, creating a movie around birds resulted in another interesting challenge for the filmmakers: generating larger environments to cover the vast bird's-eye view of the characters. Buckland says, "Having a falcon as the main character gave us a great vantage point to show off the incredible African landscapes as he flies on his journey to the fantastical bird January/February 2013 CGW0113-Zambezi2pfin.indd 24 1/31/13 6:32 PM