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n n n n CGI ed rocks and shadows to block the light and further keep the colors from mixing. “It was not natural at all,” Walvoord says. “But it kept our design quality.” So, when the lighting team saw red fire over blue water in Kung Fu Panda 2, they knew they would need to correct the same problem. “It took a lot of handwork,” Walvoord points out. “There is so much action, such quick cutting, such strong colors between red and blue, and it’s very dark. It was the worst-case scenario for trying to light a sequence so the audience could follow and understand the action. We had hun- dreds of wolves fighting and hero characters running, so visually there was a lot going on in a frame. It took artistry, not technology.” The lighting crew decided that real-world physics aside, everything in the foreground would have higher contrast than the back- ground. Also, they would use the torches as key lights and turn the moonlight into fill light. “We always have a single direction of light,” Walvoord says. “Even when there are two lights in a scene, one is dominant. So the torches intercept the light and make it change color.” Walvoord uses the example of Po standing outside on a stone floor: Warm sunlight hit- ting the floor bounces an orange color into the panda’s shadow, and that color mixes with light from the blue sky. “The warm orange and cool blue bleed together and neutralize,” Wal- voord says. “Lots of people brag about using color bleeding, and it’s a gorgeous look. But, it fights the graphic design part of the world we are trying to create.” So, to keep the richness that bouncing light contributes to a scene, they found a way to shift the color. The light still bounces, but it bounces with the color they choose. With this technique, the light in the scene with Po on the stone floor would be strongly warm out- side his shadow and strongly cool where the sun doesn’t shine. “We have a warm side and a cool side separated by a shadow,” Walvoord says. “It’s a clean graphic read. If we do that too much, though, it doesn’t look right with the world. So, we light the scene until it fights our design principles, and then we nudge it as the contrasting emotions in this sequence was the stereo 3D team, which devised artistic ways to use stereoscopy, even for flashbacks created with 2D artwork (see “Deep Emo- tion,” pg. 10). Fighting choreographer Guen- doen helped create these traditional animation dream/nightmare sequences in which Po dis- covers his past and the audience learns more about Po. But, it isn’t the only technique used to expand our understanding of Po and for Po to learn more about himself. “We take Po out of his comfort zone,” Yuh- Nelson says, “across China, to a challenging place for him, a large metropolis by ancient Chinese standards.” To build the city, the team experimented Because Po leaves the comfort of the Peaceful Valley and ventures into a visually complex city, modelers at DreamWorks built 12 city blocks with various surfaces that they could position in various ways. are the dominant light and the moon is the bounce light. That’s not exactly how it would work in real life, but we tried to find a basis in what a camera would do and skewed it for our stylized world.” There were other rules for the film, as well. The lighters always maintained what Wal- voord calls “hue identity” by increasing satu- ration when hue values decreased. “The rule is, ‘Never let your darks get dirty,’” he says, adding, “keeping the colors clean is something painters do intuitively.” A third rule also brought painting principles into play. “We use global illumination, just like everyone, but we have little hooks so that right before the light bounces back out, we can nudge it somewhere else,” Walvoord says. “We 14 May 2011 little as possible.” For one of the most emotional scenes in the film, the artists kept the lighting completely cool. “It’s a sequence when Po remembers what happens to his family and how he got to be where he is,” Walvoord says. “It’s an over- cast, rainy, gray, foggy scene. We lit it blah. If you look closely, it’s still the Panda world, but there is a lot less detail. We’re always looking for ways to drive points home with contrast, and this is a point in the movie where all the saturation backs off. It feels like one of those cold, rainy days when you just don’t go any- where. It provides a calm springboard for the 2D flashbacks, which are saturated, violent, and emotionally intense.” Working with the lighting team to heighten with procedural modeling techniques and then decided to create 12 city blocks, some in a poor to modest style and some in a more af- fluent architectural style. “We physically mod- eled the entire city and created the different looks with surfacing,” Parkinson says. “We could position and orient the blocks in various ways so you wouldn’t see the repetition.” In town, a population of new characters also added visual complexity. “In addition to our geese, pigs, and rabbits, we now have sheep and antelope,” Parkinson says. “So we had to create animation cycles for five differ- ent species that act in different ways. The an- telopes are tall and the sheep are round and fluffy with an amazing wool bib that we put on them. They’re cool characters. Having so many species adds complexity to the crowds and makes our city a bustling metropolis.” For the environment around the city, though, the artists created matte paintings. Production designer Ramone Zibach de- signed the Panda universe for the first film, and his vision carried into the sequel. “He took the best of design principles from 2D, the quick, simple reads, the simplicity, and moved them into 3D,” Walvoord explains. “Po’s black reads simply and elegantly against the sky, but when you turn the lights on him, he has gorgeous fur detail, with all the richness of a 3D world.” For the director, the crew, and the millions of fans who kicked the first film into an Oscar- nominated box-office hit, it’s a world happily revisited. “I didn’t sign on just to be a director,” Yuh-Nelson says. “I wanted to keep going in the world in whatever capacity I could. It was fun to have had the op- portunity to do that.” n Barbara Robertson is an award- winning writer and a contributing editor for . Use your smart- phone to access related videos. Computer Graphics W orld