Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/759864
14 cgw n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 6 signer and sent them to the directors for approv- als. The directors took a leap of faith to approve them out of context." The effects couldn't react with a character or the environment, but they could be placed, moved, and sometimes scaled. "Animators could re-time them and move them – steam vents, splashes, things like that," West explains. "These were real effects. Any Te Kā shot would have doz- ens of smoke plumes, and many would be foundation effects. Layout artists could look at a library of 20 splashes and pick one. Charac- ter animators used them, as well. During the Kakamora attack, the animators placed little squibs every time the arrow hit a desk. The effects worked in the scene. They worked in the render." MAGICAL EFFECTS In addition to hair, cloth, and water effects, there were other types of visual effects throughout the film. "We had a lot of bread-and-butter environ- mental effects," Driskill says, citing two. "Feet had to interact with the sand or it looks wrong. We also had lava." For both these effects, the team re-purposed the snow pipeline from the 2013 feature Fro- zen into a sand pipeline, and by giving the particles material properties that made them act in a viscous manner, created Te Kā's lava. There were also magical effects. During some scenes, Moana sees bioluminescence that helps tell the story. "In one shot, the bioluminescence is on placid water, and in another, we needed it to look like it's in more active water," West says. "We used a rig to generate the swirl. Gravity doesn't affect the mag- ical particles as it would in the real world, but they needed to look like they would in real water." Another magical effect produced the opposite kind of image, an ash cloud. "That was a collaboration between the effects and the look departments," West says. "We used a particle simulation in Houdini. Both the ash cloud and the bioluminescence needed to be effects based on a rig that various artists could pick up and use, and both were magical. But one was a huge swirl of ash, and the other was beautiful and life-affirming." With any animated film, but perhaps espe- cially one as large as this, the attention tends to fall largely on the directors, the voice actors, the designers, and the animators. But the team that makes the impossible possible deserves much of the credit, too. "We kept facing challenge aer challenge, but we pushed ourselves to make something beautiful to put on the screen," Driskill says. And so they did. The journey from Big Hero 6 to Polynesia sent Moana's visual effects team into unexplored tech- nical and artistic realms, resulting in unforgettable images that could not have been accomplished a few short years ago. It's no surprise that many are calling Moana Disney's most beautiful CG film thus far. Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW. MAUI'S VARIOUS TATTOOS SOMETIMES COME TO LIFE THROUGH 2D ANIMATION. signer and sent them to the directors for approv als. The directors took a leap of faith to approve them out of context." The effects couldn't react with a character or the environment, but they could be placed, moved, and sometimes scaled. "Animators could re-time them and move them – steam vents, splashes, things like that," West explains. "These were real effects. Any Te Kā shot would have doz ens of smoke plumes, and many would be foundation effects. Layout artists could look at a library of 20 splashes and pick one. Charac ter animators used them, as well. During the Kakamora attack, the animators placed little squibs every time the arrow hit a desk. The effects worked in the scene. They worked in the render." In addition to hair, cloth, and water effects, there were other types of visual effects throughout the film. "We had a lot of bread-and-butter environ mental effects," Driskill says, citing two. "Feet had to interact with the sand or it looks wrong. We also had lava." For both these effects, the team re-purposed the snow pipeline from the 2013 feature zen Te Kā's lava. There were also magical effects. During some scenes, Moana sees bioluminescence that helps tell the story. HEIHEI