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m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 6 c g w 1 5 our monkeys had quick direction changes that didn't lend themselves to human performances. With Apes, we could capture a performance in camera on set during live action, so the director could cra the performance and it was a good jumping-off point for animators. For this film, the animators spent more time exploring and craing the performances and assem- bling components into a cohesive piece." That process was espe- cially intense for a sequence in King Louie's throne room during which as many as 30 monkeys took part in a song and dance routine. "They were jumping around and bouncing," Miller explains. "So, we had a lot of complex keyframe work. Jon Favreau wanted a sense of progression; he wanted us to whip up a frenzy, to continue ratcheting up the action as the song goes on. We tried to do motion cap- ture, but the complexity of the motion was more suited to keyframe." In fact, originally the sequence had been planned without a song and dance component, and with King Louie taking a harsher tone. "It was leaning toward too dark and menacing," Miller says. "And the test audiences missed the song. Because it was added later, we didn't have any refer- ence from Favreau. We had reference of Walken reading lines in the sound booth, but it was a big shi from dark and menacing to song and dance. We preserved the facial expressions we had as much as we could, and animated our way through it. It was a bit of work, but it was fun." T E M P L E The filmmakers shot Mowgli [Neel Sethi] on the blue- screen stage in a set dressed to match the throne room designed by Glass, but the song and dance sequence was, for the most part, entirely CG. A handful of ran- dom plates were salvaged for Mowgli elements, while a digital-double Mowgli was used to help fill it out. The entire temple behind the set, inside and out, was CG. "Our Reference Photog- rapher Matt Mueller went to seven different temples in India and shot tens of thousands of photographs of buildings and the monkeys there," Miller says. "That real- ly helped us understand the construction and the weath- ering geometrically and texturally. We worked those details into the structure." Because King Louie's temple would be destroyed, modelers considered the building's demise as they constructed the complex system of passages and tun- nels within the temple, as well as the overall geometry. "We used a lot of modu- lar pieces," Miller says. "We might assemble hero stone blocks into a column, for example. Sometimes we had a shell piece that the effects team would fracture. But the collapse needed to be art-directed, and we never knew where the stress would cause fractures and how the forms would collapse until we got into it." When King Louie or other characters caused destruc- tion by pushing on areas of the building, animators blocked in large forms to in- dicate timing and direction. Otherwise, the effects team started the action and, by using a rigid-body dynamics solver, would collapse the temple according to the laws of physics. "Postdestruction, we might swap out pieces when the result of geometry from the rigid-body dynamics was simpler than we wanted," Miller says. "We wanted to be sure we were looking at detailed pieces of ruins." The reason Favreau would turn to Weta Digital for a sequence involving apes and requiring detailed environ- mental work is obvious. Yet, it was more interesting for the crew of artists and animators than they might have expected. "Animating the monkeys was time-consuming," Miller says. "But, it was fun to have that control and to explore ideas and changes as we went. It was exciting; a grow- ing process for everyone." – BARBARA ROBERTSON leaves, on the ground, and MPC's Furtility tool grew moss and grass. "We could place the moss on the trunks, and it would grow toward the north of the scene, just like in real life," Ferrara says. The team occasionally used 2.5D cards in the background, but only the very far back- ground, and then, seldom. "Most oen, we used brute force," Ferrara says. "This is stereo, so everything had to be perfect and make sense in the space. We sculpted every blade of grass and modeled every sin- gle polygon in the scene. When Shere Khan jumps on Mowgli, every single blade of grass in that shot was modeled." The technical animators on the team managed the interac- tion between the characters and elements in the environment. "Almost every plant had a rig for the techanim team to simu- late wind, rain, and fire," Ferrara says, "and then we had fancier rigs for trees and branches the actor and the characters touched and interacted with. Character interaction required a big collaboration between animators and environment artists to make sure everything