Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/759864
n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 6 c g w 1 1 for collisions with the hair in various condi- tions – wind, underwater, wet, and so forth. "The shot artists might deviate from the settings, but the settings gave us a good, consistent look for the characters," Thyng says. CLOTH AND FEATHERS The same engine, a fabric solver, moved the characters' costumes and the birds' feathers. The clothes had to move and look right in wind and water, so each costume had three versions: a base version, an underwater version, and a wet, out-of-water version. "We had lots of layered costumes," Thyng says. "And our main character wears tapa cloth over a grass skirt. We wanted the simulation to happen within one solve. Our costumes were probably the most compli- cated we've ever done. But, our in-house cloth simulator, called Fabric, is very stable and handles collisions very well." For the grass skirt, Technical Direc- tor Timothy Richards counted the grass strands in each section of the skirt to develop a size ratio for the sometimes thin, sometimes thick strands. "Grass skirts are made of strips," Thyng explains. "So he built little strips – cylinders – and we treated each strip as a piece of cloth for the simulation. It was pretty cool." Fabric also handled feathers for the shape-shier Maui's transformation into a giant hawk, and for the little chicken HeiHei. "We broke the hawk's feathers into types and created geometry that animators could see for the long feathers and the down," Thyng says. "Then we used deforming ge- ometry solutions and XGen again with the new primitive-type curve bundle to grow primitives off primitives. The cloth solve would work with geometry, curve bundles, or standard primitives based on the type of feather. We tweaked Fabric to make it more stable for the deforming surface. Then we scaled the stuff for the large hawk, to do the little chicken." THE CHARACTER OF WATER Water, which forms the environment for much of the film as Moana navigates her way through the story, was a special chal- lenge. With hundreds of shots in the offing, the Moana effects teams concentrated on making art directing and simulating water easier. "We had to build a whole new pipeline," Driskill says. "We had probably 1,000 water shots. We wanted to raise the bar artisti- cally. And we wanted to make the system faster and easier to use." We see Moana and Maui on a boat in a calm, open ocean. We see Moana interact- ing with the water. We see the water lapping the shore. We see big waves and small. To design the camera view for the shots, layout artists used tools that let them place a boat in a rough approximation of buoyant water. The boat would float and would react to wind speed as the artists dialed in various parameters. "In a lot of shots, the water wasn't more important than a ground plane would be on land," Driskill says. "It was ever present but not part of the action. So, we built an au- tomated wake pipeline. These shots could pass through to lighting without the effects department doing anything by hand." Oen, though, the water did something more fantastic. "The ocean is Moana's friend," Driskill says. "It interacts with her and with Maui." Says Director Musker, "We wanted to do things in animation that we couldn't do in a live-action film. One thing was making the ocean a character. People in Polynesia talk about the ocean as if it is alive." For example, to show the relationship between Moana and the ocean, in a scene reminiscent of the famous water crea- ture (Pseudopod) shot from The Abyss, a column of water reaches up and out, and seems to communicate with Moana. West explains how the effects team worked with animation on that shot and others in which the water acted as a character. "We created a sock-puppet-like rig that the animators used," West says. "Then we took that rig and turned it into a simulation or simulated over it. Working with character animation to create these characters was a huge deal." When the water performs through animation in those types of shots, the team used Side Effects' Houdini. For shoreline and giant hawk, and for the little chicken HeiHei. a boat in a rough approximation of buoyant water. The boat would float and would The 16-year-old star of Moana is voiced by Ha- waiian singer-actor Auli'i Cravalho, also a teenag- er. Moana, the character, is adventurous, strong, compassionate, tenacious – and in search of her true self. Bill Schwab led the character design for the film. Chad Stubblefield was modeling supervisor. Neysa Bové handled costume design. Hyrum Osmond and Amy Lawson Smeed were heads of animation. "What was great is that Bill Schwab stayed with the show for the entire movie," Smeed says. "We had 90 animators on the show, straight out of Zootopia. They would try to figure out acting performances. As we did animation tests, we could show them to him and he would do draw- overs on the characters to make sure they kept their sense of appeal and design. One of our philosophies is that we wanted to collaborate more with all the departments." Moana's traditional costume provided interesting challenges for the effects department, which needed to simulate layers that included a grass skirt. Moana