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www.postmagazine.com 22 POST JULY/AUG 2019 summer movies Houdini to create a simulation that was effectively digital spiders infused with AI that built curves to form a web. As for the dust, the artists physically covered the ground with little curves of dust and chunks of debris to give it a texture, as opposed to simply adding a shading layer of dust over objects. "A group from effects made sure there was always particles subtly floating in the air," says Moyer. "So everywhere you looked in the mall, you feel a sense of age." Fun at the Carnival Just across the street from the antiques mall, which is static and old, is a dynamic, bright, color- ful pop-up carnival. Again, the team visited county fairs and the like to get a sense of how the rides move. They also people-watched and discovered toy-size spaces, particularly underneath the rides and games. The simulation department rigged and animat- ed the rides with controls to move appropriately. Then, within Houdini, the lighters created a half dozen to a dozen different light cycles per ride that the director or production designer could choose from for each sequence, depending whether they wanted a calmer or more active look. In terms of lighting, "there are no cheats," Cooley notes. "During the day, carnivals are kind of gross, but at nighttime when they're all lit up, they're stunning and beautiful." Thus, lights were important. Cooley does not recall how many thou- sands of lights were used in the environment, "but they all work, they all blink, they all form patterns." When constructing the carnival, as well as the other locales in the film, the modelers added lightbulbs and included metadata that contained wattage and lumens information, which was then integrated into the lighting system and the render- er. As a result, all the lights illuminated automati- cally. "In the antiques mall, we just had to turn the lights on or off, but we had to animate them at the carnival," says Reeves. "But the carnival lighting benefitted from that upfront infrastructure we built into each lightbulb. Once we had everything built and assembled, it made things a lot easier to get those scenes up and running." And like all the film's environments, the carnival set had to work on a both a human and toy scale. Character Updates The film has many returning characters, from Buzz and Woody, to Hamm, Jesse, Rex, Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, the child Bonnie, and others. There is even an appearance by Tin Toy, the star of Pixar's 1988 short. Among the newcomers are daredevil Duke Caboom, the villain Gabby Gabby, her ventril- oquist dummy henchmen, and the comedic duo of stuffed prizes, Ducky and Bunny. And, making her reappearance is Bo Peep. Even though the overall design of the returning cast did not change, they again were reworked to take advantage of current technology. "It's not be- cause we want to art-direct them any differently. In fact, we want Woody to look like Woody. We don't want to change him," says Reeves. "But, this is nine years after the last Toy Story, and that version of Woody wouldn't work with our software that's run- ning today or in our renderer. So we had to rebuild him and the others." For the film, the toys were aged slightly to reflect the passage of time since the last film, with subtle scratches on the hard-surface toys and fuzz on the cloth toys. While the geometry stayed pretty much the same, the shading was overhauled to an unprece- dented level of detail to where tiny scratches are visible on Woody's face and little pieces of fuzz can be seen on his vest. "With the new renderer and denoiser, the details hold up," says Moyer. Artists also added subsurface and fine detail to Woody's exposed skin, making it look more plastic-like. The lighting and character departments also added subsurface and higher illumination to Buzz (and most of the plastic toys) to make him more translucent. Buzz also has some subtle glow and illumination coming from his buttons, thanks to the new renderer. "Buzz's helmet has always been a reflection cheat to ensure that the reflection didn't cover his face, and with the new renderer, his hel- met is fully refractive," Moyer says. For Bo, the changes are more significant. "The last time we saw her was in Toy Story 2. She's always been porcelain, but until now, we never had the technology to make her really look like porcelain," says Cooley. "We spent a lot of time re- searching porcelain, how it's affected by light, how The carnival scenes feature thousands of realistic lights that were animated in Houdini.