Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/225858
.com ©2013 TURKEY'S FILM, LLC. COURTESY REEL FX AND RELATIVITY MEDIA. But the work in Free Birds was made easier and the results spot on, thanks to a proprietary feathering system called Avian. Free Birds, directed by Jimmy Hayward, tells the tale of two turkeys from different backgrounds – Reggie is a brainy free-range bird with a smooth silhouette and rough groom, while Jake is a rather large, factory-raised bird with more genetically infused brawn than brains. Both travel back in time to change the course of history so that their species is no longer the "guest of honor" during Thanksgiving. "The first challenge was to make sure the audience would want to look at these birds for the length of a feature film. They had to be appealing, likable, and expressive, says Hayward. "So, we veered away from reality " when it came to character designs, but we went for realistic textures as much as possible. " Keeping Reggie, Jake, and the flocks in fine feather was done with Avian, developed at Reel FX by TDs Harry Michalakeas and Tymon Pitts, along with Monika Sawyer, fur and feather supervisor. Sawyer had worked with Hayward on Horton Hears a Who! in a similar capacity with a fur system, and was brought onto the production to oversee the grooming process. The proprietary system enabled the artists to generate feathers of all sizes and shapes, and then groom the birds, viewing the results in real time within the Autodesk Maya viewport prior to rendering. According to Pitts, the crew needed a good recipe, a system that was complex but could be used by the artists. "That was one of our goals, to make it artist-friendly, so you didn't have to be a programmer to use it, he says. Yet, " the system had to be robust in order to handle the film's nearly 100 characters that were created by a handful of artists. "We pulled people from different backgrounds, such as lighting, and they all used it, Pitts adds, noting that the " artists were trained and up and running in approximately three weeks, not three months, as can be the case with other fur and feather systems. "We wanted it to be easy to use, and to do that, we needed control over the whole system, adds Pitts, "that's " why we developed our own [tool]. " Avian took approximately a year to develop, and many of VIDEOS: Go to "Extras" in the November/December 2013 issue box ■ TOP LEFT: REGGIE'S FINAL FUR GROOM contains over 30 different feather clubs and nearly 6.2 million hairs. Top right: Aim Mesh geometry was applied to each feather groom and used later by rigging as a hook-up for the relax deformer technology. the features were devised on the fly, so to speak, as the need arose. During development, Michalakeas, Pitts, and Sawyer did a tremendous amount of physical and theoretical research, including examining a real turkey wing for the lay of the feathers and studying numerous SIGGRAPH papers, such as one from 1992 on retopologizing polygons that helped formulate the feather placement process (Greg Turk's "Re-Tiling Polygonal Surfaces, 1992). "We looked at " what others had done, how Weta did some of the feathers for The Lord of the Rings movies and what Blue Sky did for Rio. Monika was one of the fur artists who worked on Rio, so we were able to draw on her experience from that, as well, says Pitts. "We got different ideas from many " sources and came up with our own ideas, too; and, in the end, it resulted in a pretty good system, in my opinion. " Feathering Process Reggie served as the hero model, and the resulting technical development was used to drive the other turkeys. Because Jake's features are more defined than Reggie's, he required some further development. Once the models were made in Maya, they were sent to grooming, where the group carved the models into various sections (body, arms, head, and so forth), and added feather nodes on each section. Jake, for instance, had 10 to 12 different node systems on his main body that gave him his distinct look with extensive pecs and glutes, while Reggie's body had just one system for his skinnier frame. The wing feathers were placed in distinct rows, prompting development of a growth curve system. For the rest of the body, though, the feathers were placed procedurally, so they appear random – "evenly spaced random, Pitts says. " The artists used Avian to produce the contour feathers, which they applied to the body. There were flight feathers as well, driven by a NURBS surface that the animation C G W N ove mb e r / D e c e mb e r 2 013 ■ 41