Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1192296
w i n t e r 2 0 1 9 c g w 1 1 visit," says David Womersley, art director of environments. Next, the artists had to ensure that im- agery appearing in the background in Frozen would stand up in close-ups in Frozen 2, leading to renovations and resurfacing of the models to bring them up to the current tech- nological levels. "Our tools are so much better now than they were for the original. There's so many more options to add little details that give it a richness," says Sean Jenkins, head of environments. In addition to giving Arendelle a paint job and changing all the hues on the buildings to reflect the new fall season, the artists also decked out the town with ban- ners, bunting, wreathes, and so forth. Enchted Ft A forest can be very complex to create – particularly one that looks natural, has a sense of place and history, and also lives in the Frozen-style language. The designers began this daunting task by taking their cue from Sleeping Beauty's Eyvind Earle, who created sculptural deep spaces among myr- iad plants, and then layered the verticalities over top for that film. "We grabbed this idea and built our forest in a way that's stylized, that feels organic," explains Keene. Although the studio has used vegetation tools in the past for movies like Zootopia, it needed to build the Frozen 2 environments at a larger scale with more complexity; they also had to be art-directable and efficient. To this end, the group worked with soware engineers to determine what improvements were needed to their existing tools and what new tools were required in order to build the forest and enable the required interactions and effects. When it came to constructing the forest, the artists created it in stages, building so- called vignette groupings, then they added other islands to that until they built out the world. "That way you have a sense of design that's consistent, and you feel it all the way through the forest," Keene says. As Womersley notes, trees can be tricky – they can look beautiful from one side, but if turned just a few degrees, they might not look so good. To avoid this issue, the design- ers worked with the modelers to make sure the islands looked amazing from every angle. In all, a dozen to 20 islands were craed. Before creating the groupings, though, artists acted as botanists, researching the appropriate trees and flora they would use. Artistic controls enabled the team to create a gradation of color across the trees; the leaves themselves were instanced to lighten the scene. In all, the artists grew 50 to 100 unique trees, which numbered in the hundreds for some scenes, and in the thousands and tens of thousands in the larger forested areas. "The one thing about the Scandinavian re- gion is that fall is not only in the trees, but also on the ground. The ground cover turns brilliant colors," Keene points out. "We had color ev- erywhere, and then we had to organize it and get our characters to read over it [in scenes]." Not only did the artists have to generate all the ground cover and vegetation, but they also had to account for ambient motion and ground interaction of the characters kicking up leaves, as well as the leaves swirling around in the wind, and how that interacted with the trees themselves. "It's easy to place leaves on the ground, but to have the leaves move around realistically and not have them go through things or pop around and look fake, that was the difficult part," says Tad Miller, technical supervisor of environments. When the trees had to bend or shi based on action, effects would step in and make the vegetation move accordingly, while ani- mation created the character performance. "[Effects] had controls, almost like char- acter rigs, on the trees, causing the tree to bend, flex, and so forth, and then they fed that back into the environment for the shot," Miller explains. "They took the static data from the environment, ran it through a sim- ulation that moved the trees, branches, and leaves, then they sent that information back into the environment as an animation." This was done using custom and off-the-shelf tools, such as Houdini and Maya. The artists also inserted large outcrop- pings of rock formations, common to the area, throughout, creating groves, like they did for the trees, using procedural tech- niques. "We were hand-placing tens of thou- sands of trees, bushes, and saplings, not to mention all the rocks and ground cover," says Jenkins. Larger rocks, particularly those on which characters climb, were individu- ally craed, and artists used a whole other suite of tools to populate these assets into the environment. These include: Bonsai for vegetation modeling; Droplet to paint and interactively scale and reposition vegetation; Aurora as the processing engine; XGen to procedurally grow rocks, leaves, and such; and Hyperion for rendering. To add atmosphere and push back some of the environmental objects, the artists added layers of mist, which is a naturally occurring element in such a forest, but in this film, it is a conceit that is narratively import- ant. Lighting also played a big role in adding a magical feel, as was the way in which the camera was placed. "It's really a combination of artistry across modeling, look dev, effects, lighting, and animation," Miller adds. Dk Sea Unlike the water in Moana, which was calm and clear, the water in Frozen 2 is dark and turbulent. When creating the Dark Sea, the group wanted it to feel mysterious, but also dangerous and treacherous. And since the environment is pretty much all water, effects EFFECTS AND ANIMATION WORKED CLOSELY FOR THIS SCENE: ANIMATION PERFORMED ELSA, WHILE EFFECTS HANDLED THE WATER SIMS, INCLUDING THE GIANT WAVE.