![]() Sony Imageworks utilized a special live-action camera to build in the kind of realistic camera movements found in traditional documentaries. To do this, Williams explained, the animators designed a system where they programmed the animation of the many penguins in the film and then turned to their live-action camera, an ancient Sony camera-bought off eBay, no less-that was somewhat like what surfing documentarians would have used a decade or so ago. And that meant simulating the kind of slight movements that come when a cameraperson is working with a hand-held camera on location. There, James Williams, Imageworks' head of layout, explained and demonstrated how live-action had been incorporated.Īs I mentioned above, the purpose of doing so was to make the texture feel like a documentary. I had to go back and look again in appreciation of the thoughtfulness behind it.Īnother important element in the making of Surf's Up, then, was the incorporation of the live-action camera, something that might not be entirely intuitive in a fully animated movie.Īfter leaving the screening room and saying goodbye to Bredow, Brannon, Buck and Jenkins, I was taken to Imageworks' layout room, a single room a couple of stories below where, it turns out, the filmmakers shot much of the film. But then I realized that that was intentionally placed there. At first, it had escaped my attention because it is such a realistic detail that your eye doesn't quite pick up on it. That's why, when I was watching Surf's Up, I noticed during one surfing scene that there were a couple of drops of water on the lens. And that meant a slightly rougher edge to the texture, including a slightly shaky camera, as well as water on the lens and other such artifacts that wouldn't show up in a normal movie, but which are unavoidable in documentaries. The point, then, was to make the film feel very much like a documentary. ![]() One of the reasons for that is that Surf's Up, as mentioned above, is fashioned as a surfing documentary, focused on Cody, the main character, a young provincial penguin longing to join the glamorous world of pro surfing. "We made sure the water had all the (right) properties using different photo techniques," he added: "reflection, refraction, and the specular highlights that bloom the right color, and the surface foam on the surface of the water." Then it's time to add the proper lighting effects, a combination of many different techniques, Bredow explained. "Basically, we use millions of interfering water ripples to create the wave texture." "We simulate thousands of water ripples interacting with each other to simulate the texture," he said. ![]() Then, once the wave animation is created, it's time to add the water texture to it.įor that, Bredow said, his team takes a smooth plane that doesn't look at all like water, and adds many different levels of "noise." Sony Imageworksīredow said that the basic system for creating waves involves modeling each one from flat water to swell to rolling over to crashing down, and then blending through all those shapes into a single, animated effect. The vertical rings are used by the animators to pull the various sections of the waves forward. Imageworks designed a wave animation control system that was used to create realistic wave motion and evolution.
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