Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/259450
CG & LIVE ACTION 26 ■ CGW Ja n u a r y / Fe b ru a r y 2 014 "Paleontologists helped us work out how all the characters would move. Fossilized footprints provided the speed at which they could travel," says Emmanuel Blasset, CG supervisor. "The [scientific] information was not just about fossilized bones and skeleton reconstruction, but also provided insights to surface detailing, such as the use of feathers or scales, as well as animalistic behaviors based on migration paths and so forth. The most up-to-date paleontological research was the starting point for designing each creature on the film." Digital Dinos In addition to Patchi, his brother and rival Scowler, and their herd of Pachyrhinosaurs, the film features a number of other species, including the large duck-billed Edmontosaurus, the small lizard-like Parksosaur, the smaller-yet Hesperonychus, the bird-like Alexomis, the T. rex-on-steroids Gorgosaurus, the feathered Troodon, the webbed-wing Quetzalcoatlus, and more. The species in the film vary greatly in size, shape, and look, presenting a challenge for the Animal Logic crew. In all, there are at least a dozen main species – 10 of which are scaled and two feathered – as well as many variations of those species. "We wanted to transport audiences back to a real world, to meet dinosaurs that truly existed, and to immerse audiences in that world," Nightingale says. "For a big motion-picture expe- rience, it's also vital to have a strong and emotionally engag- ing story. So we used what we knew about Late Cretaceous Alaskan dinosaurs as inspiration for a fictional, character-driven story that would entertain families." Directing the Animal Logic animation team was Marenghi (Alice in Wonderland, Minority Report ), who was one of the original animators who worked on the television series. The modelers began with Krentz's initial Pixologic ZBrush sculpts, then extracted the topology and did the final tweaks in Auto- desk's Maya. Each model contains an average of 70,000 to 100,000 polygons – that is, before scales were added. Millions of scales. Animal Logic developed a number of tools that helped push the bound- ary of reality in the film. The artists used a procedural- rather than textural- based approach to the scales. Instead of painting them on or modeling them individually, they opted for a technique that was similar to what they used to create fur and feathers, "where we use a lot of maps to describe the kind of scale in different areas of the body in terms of shape, size, profile," explains Blasset. To this end, the studio developed a scale system, called Reptile, under the supervision of Look Development Super visor Jean Pascal Leblanc and R&D Lead Daniel Heckenberg. The main surfacing challenge for the prehistoric cast re- sulted from the scale-based characters. "Commonly in movies, dinosaurs have leathery skin because it is simple to texture. When the leather stretches, you accept the stretching as part of the surface. The paleontologists said they were tired of seeing leathery-based characters and wanted more reptilian, scale-based surfaces," says Blasset. "But the challenge with reptile-like surfaces is that you have to model, surface, and deform each scale separately to the skin lodged in between, since you need to be able to stretch and compress the skin rather than [stretch] the scales." As a result, the artists produced a very subtle effect for the area between the scales. The results are front and center in one shot, an extreme close-up, where audiences can see the ripple of the compression due to the stretching of the skin as the beast blinks. Just how many scales are there on a character? "To extract the maximum level of detail in the render, you are talking about hundreds of millions of polygons on each character. We stopped counting scales after a million," says Blasset. "If you look at a character full frame, individual scales can be distinguishable. But with all the deformation around main articulations, skin folds, mouth, and eyes, tiny scales had to be introduced as well – we are well into the millions." The artists made subtle tweaks here and there, particularly with patterns and color that helped define the texture maps laid on top of the scales and on the skin. "We dealt with many specific markings to distinguish the main cast. When you deal with a lot of characters and species on screen, you need to be able to recognize one character from another, from a storytelling standpoint," says Blasset. "A lot of time was spent designing and surfacing, giving each character individual mark- ings and [a unique] palette." Variations were also made to the Pachyrhinosaurs' horns and frills. In fact, the hero Patchi has a unique marking – a bite hole on his frill – that was introduced early as a story-driven element, so he can be picked out of the crowd easily in large-herd scenes. ■ THE ARTISTS WORKED with paleontologists to create realistic and scientifically accurate models.