Computer Graphics World

arms toward the carrot. Presto commands Alec to stay, and then magically pulls the rabbit by its ears out of the top hat. He holds the carrot in front of Alec's face. Alec pre- pares to take a bite, but Presto yanks the car- rot away. e rabbit will have its revenge. On the wall behind the table, a show bill advertises "Presto and his Hat of 40 Fath- oms." Near Alec's cage is a sign that reads "Feed Rabbit." " e dressing room was a little set all by itself," says Harley Jessup, production designer. "It started as a broom closet be- cause Presto was at the bottom of a billing, but as the story progressed, the dressing room got larger. We added cues that told about Presto's self-importance and how the poor rabbit was just a prop." You can see a bouquet of fl owers in the background and congratulatory posters on the wall. Grease paint, makeup jars, and tonics appropriate for a 1912 performer spill across the dress- ing table. Jessup had a more complicated task once Presto moved onto the stage. ere, the hungry rabbit takes charge, creating wild hat tricks of its own in front of an elegantly dressed audience—at the hapless magician's expense. e theater is huge. In one shot, Presto hangs 150 feet above the stage fl oor. And then falls. Set builders created the theater and dressing room by modeling the entire 3D space and props in Autodesk's Maya, and then moving the scene into Pixar's propri- etary Menv software. "We defi nitely dress to camera, but the space allowed the layout team to move the camera in unexpected ways," Jessup says. To help speed the production, the team borrowed props from Ratatouille, which Jessup also designed. For example, the proscenium arch in the theater is from the dining room in Gusteau's restaurant. e fan in the dressing room is from Skinner's offi ce, and the dressing table is a modifi - cation of Skinner's desk. e door to the dressing room is from the bathroom just off the kitchen in Ratatouille. The Curtain Opens Presto himself, in fact, looks a little like the lawyer in Ratatouille. "He's thinner and more delicate," Jessup says. "We reworked him. But, he bears a resemblance." And, a close observer might think the audience members were customers from Gusteau's restaurant who stopped at home on the way to the the- ater to change their costumes and hairstyles. Like the designers, supervising techni- cal director Tony Apodaca leaned on Ra- tatouille for the production pipeline. "We thought, 'Hmmmm, we have a rodent and a tall, lanky human,'" Apodaca says. "Now which show has similar technology that we might borrow?" e crew built new char- acters; they didn't deform Ratatouille char- acters. But, they used the same pipeline for hair grooming and simulation. e model- ers sculpted in Maya, and riggers worked in Pixar's Gipetto. "We used rigs already in development as starting points," Apodaca says. "But we added a lot to the facial deformation to get extreme poses." Like Looney Tunes char- acters, Alec can reach three times his body length. So, riggers carefully added the ap- propriate amount of mesh topology to keep the mesh from breaking and to have every deformation produce smooth shapes. To cover Alec's skin with fur, hair groom- ers used Pixar's Gopher software, a set of Pixar RenderMan, Menv, and Maya plug- ins that work together. Texture maps and UV maps attached to geometry in Maya moved through Pixar's Slim to Render- Man, which grew hair based on parameters set in Maya for guide hairs by using maps that determined density, color, waviness, thickness, and so forth. "It's similar to [Joe Alter's] Shave and a Haircut," Apodaca says, "but we need to have our own to be compatible with our animation system." e unique grooming techniques devel- oped for Alec concentrated on producing feathering of the fur on the skin next to the nose, keeping the hair out of its eyes, and making sure there was no bare skin when Alec stretches its arms. "We did all that by carefully painting the maps and knowing that if extreme animation was happening, we'd need more fl esh in particular parts," Apodaca says. For Presto, the interesting technical chal- lenge was in the cloth simulation. Tailoring artist Christine Waggoner designed Presto's tuxedo and costumes for the 2500 people in the audience. "Our cloth pipeline uses 2D pattern-making," Apodaca says. "We laid everything out the way a tuxedo would be tailored to his body. en, we made sure the inter-cloth collisions were set up properly for the coat over the vest over the pants, so they could move around and not poke through each other. at was great for a while." Apodaca explains that unlike Rata- The posters on the wall of Presto's dressing room emphasize how much he thinks of his hat and how little he considers his rabbit. Tacked to the bottom of one poster is a tiny hand-lettered note that reads, "Feed Rabbit." But, don't feel too sorry for Alec. He's a magician, too. February 2009 23 CG Short Films ■ ■ ■ ■

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