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CGI n n n n peacock fan his spectacular tail only as a one- off special move, but as soon as everyone saw how good it looked, it became impossible to resist. “Animators had multiple levels of con- trol,” Parkinson says. “They could move in- dividual feathers, but in general, they used a higher level of control that’s spline-based, to hit specific shapes to fan and bend the feath- ers; we define the shapes based on particular controls. The big problem, as with all feathers, was the interpenetration. We have multiple layers of feathers that we needed to keep apart. We achieved that in the rigging.” The crew used some of the same techniques developed for Crane to feather the rest of the villain’s body, but placed more complicated procedural feathers on his neck and “hands.” “The peacock uses his feathers as fingers, so we added complexity to the rig to keep those feathers out of each other’s way,” Parkinson says. “We had developed software for the first Panda movie that treats hairs like individual NURBS surfaces, which is what keeps them apart. So, when the peacock bends his neck and the feath- ers splay out, they don’t interpenetrate. On top of that, we have a shader that creates the indi- vidual hairs. When you look at the feathers, you see that they have individual barbs, which adds complexity to the character.” Also adding complexity is the lordly pea- cock’s robe, a second challenge. “We didn’t want to cheat,” Parkinson says. “We wanted him to wear a single outfit when he’s standing regal and kung fu like, and when his action starts.” In the classic kung fu pose, the peacock folds his wings and poses like a monk, with his hands in his sleeves and with the sleeves to- gether. When his tail is down, the robe forms a train-like shape. “This huge train sticks to his tail and be- comes part of his shape,” Parkinson says. “But if he spins round, it flies out and off the tail. We thought of having him change into an easier outfit, but our character effects department created a complex set of controls on the robe so it follows him and also can flow and accentuate his motion. It was the hardest cloth we had to do, but it really works with the animation.” To simulate the cloth, the effects artists used Qualoth, a Maya plug-in from FXGear. They would first look at an out-of-the-box simula- tion based on the underlying performance, and then tweak and mold the cloth to achieve a more artistic look. “Qualoth is the base, but we built a lot of controls on top that the character effects animators used,” Parkinson says. “They would even get to the point of shaping the cloth by hand using individual deformers.” As with Lord Shen, all the characters were dressed with simulated cloth to layer the stylized performances with realistic motion. “The simu- lated cloth adds a sense of gravity,” Parkinson says. “If you have a fantastical world without the sense of gravity, you don’t get as much impact from the action sequences. The challenge is to get movement with a sense of weight with cloth that sticks with the character.” Armies of Wolves One of the biggest differences between the first and second film is the kind of action that takes place. In Kung Fu Panda, the fighting was mainly one on one. In the sequel, Po and the Furious Five fight Lord Shen’s army of wolves. In fact, early in the film, during one of the first sequences in which we see Po in action, he and the Furious Five battle a pack of wolves, and in doing so, develop an important story point. “We have maybe 20 or 30 wolves on screen, piling on Po and the Furious Five, who fight together in a balletic way,” Guendoen says. “We wanted to show Po is still in training but living his dream. We wanted to be sure the au- dience witnessed Po as part of the Furious Five (I guess Furious Six now). We had to hit that story point. So, it was very challenging.” Not as challenging, though, as the final bat- tle in which Po and the Furious Five fight an army of wolves riding in boats. “It took hours to plan it,” Guendoen says. “All those sketches I did. I had to plan that after a wolf was hit and flew out of camera, we could re-use him as an- other wolf coming in. Like a loop. Otherwise, is about the juxtaposition of one shot to the next, and the ability to do that with stereo made the film fun to work on. We used the contrast from shot to shot to create visceral impact.” For example, during the battle, the stereo artists might set the camera at the Happy Ratio, then as an explosion bursts on screen, reduce the volume to 75 percent, 25 percent, five per- cent, and then pop it back to 100 percent in the next shot. “Moving the volume around in space changes the feeling,” O’Beirne says. “I like to think of it as air. If you’re [taking a pic- ture] in Montana, you open the lens to get more space in the shot. It’s the same with stereo. You can take more and more air out of a shot, and then, suddenly, add it back in. In our movie, depending on the story, we’d rest the stereo for a while in flat space, then go into deep sequences, and then flat, deep, flat, deep to create contrast. It’s very effective.” O’Beirne and his crew used this technique in one of his favorite sequences, and one of the most emotional in the film. O’Beirne calls it the “truth sequence.” It starts with Po floating in a river. “When a soothsayer finds Po and takes him to a village, we reduce the stereo to middle range,” O’Beirne says. “There, Po is standing in the rain in an old, destroyed panda village, and memories flood in. We make sure his eyes are perfectly set on the screen so the audience connects with him. He catches a raindrop and starts to do an amazing water-drop kung fu move. As he does that, the shot dissolves into 2D artwork, traditional animation of nightmare scenes from his past, and we go deep. When we have positive images from his childhood, we make the 2D a bit flatter. Within this one sequence, we have a gamut of techniques and stereo settings. And, Ramon did fantastic lighting, green and then neutral, and then flashbacks with white and red, and very graphic. It’s an incredible sequence.” To move the flat artwork, the traditional animation that plays out Po’s memories, the stereo artists layered sheer surfaces in Adobe’s After Effects and angled the artwork toward the viewer to create a feeling of depth. “It’s like looking down the edge of a wall,” O’Beirne says. “I’m excited to see how audi- ences respond.” The crew pushed the stereo artistry even further for the IMAX version of the film. “We wanted the stereo to be great for the general audience, but we thought the IMAX audience wanted an even bigger experience, so we looked at moments where we could push things farther back and make them bigger,” O’Beirne says. “We’ll know we’ve done our job well if little kids reach up to touch the elements.” –Barbara Robertson May 2011 11