Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

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           This is a great topic and one I’m happy to research and write about. I’ve chosen to elaborate on the hair special effects of two films: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within from 2001, and Pixar’s Brave from 2012. I remember watching Final Fantasy for the first time and being amazed at the realism the film reached. I remember seeing Aki’s hair and noticing how greatly special effects had evolved: it was not a visual stylization of hair; it was a head full of real hair! Years later I had the same feeling when I watched Brave. Merida’s hair was so flowing and bouncy, and very believable. Clearly the innovation with Aki’s hair paved the way for Merida’s curly locks. However nailing her hair was now not only another visual effects problem overcome, it was absolutely critical because it also served as the very personification of her fiery, rebellious character. It seemed to me to be the actual main character of the film.

Final Fantasy I thought was a big film when it came out. Even though derived from a video game, it was one of the first animated films to reach a new level of photorealism. Groundbreaking as it was the first film that had human leads played by non-actors. I remember thinking the backgrounds were stunning and monumental, and the sound design being great, however, what made its presence solid was its heroine Aki, in particular her hair. Pondering back, hair has been a tough hurdle for visual effects artists because plainly there’s so much of it. Analyzing upon the history of hair in animated films, it’s easy to discern why a head full of hair was usually dealt with as one single shape. It takes a long time, energy, and rendering power to create a full head of hair.

Evidently, animators have been diligently working on techniques to smooth out the artistic process. Because in Final Fantasy the animators pushed for realism rather than stylization, Aki’s hair was unlike anything we had seen before. Being accustomed to the spiky and strandless hairs of early-generation films and video games, the flowing silky hair of the movie’s heroine – 60,000 strands -- was truly radical. Twenty percent of total production time was spent on realistic animating these 60,000 strands of hair. For the first time on the big screen a character’s hair could flip, whirl and refract light. To accomplish this, for every second of film, it took 36 hours of render time at 24 fps.

           On the other hand, Merida’s hair represented a once again new breakthrough in digital hair. Her long and curly style took many years to perfect, being much more complex than a straight style hair. Tight curls interacted with each other, and this required its own technological advances. Katherine Sarafian, a producer of Brave said that “the computer really likes right angles and straight lines; the computer hates anything organic and soft […] we then developed a whole new system to compute the motion of Merida’s hair.” To arrive at this challenge of making the hair look both rich in detail and natural, the Pixar engineers and artists had to create the hair with its own kind of physics and gravity. Each strand – 111,700 strands – was modeled individually.

To achieve the full head of curls, each strand was started as a spring in Maya. The Pixar team created many kinds of springs: short, long, thin, stretched, compressed, bouncy and stiff. In order to give Merida’s hair volume, the springs were entered on the computer in layers. The layers varied in length, size and flexibility of each curl. The challenge was to create springs that were stiff in order to hold their curls but also to make them soft in their movement. All this staying true to the character’s personality, personified in her wild hair.

The red color posed as another challenge because of its strong effects on light. Even with a computer-generated head of hair, there were times during production when the team needed to see a live Merida hair model. Famously, at one point the whole team had access to a Merida wig that sat permanently outside the animator’s offices so they could get submerged into her character.  

In comparison with Aki’s hair, in Brave, with even more challenges but with greater technological advances, for each second of film Merida’s hair took 8 minutes to render at 24 fps. It took almost three years to get the final look, and two months alone were spent on the scene where Merida removes her hood and the viewer sees the full volume of her hair.

Each film used the most up-to-date technology available at the time of its conception to achieve realistic results. Final Fantasy unmistakably paved the way for Pixar to create the rebellious locks of Merida. Even though cutting-edge at the time, and while still impressive today, Final Fantasy seems somewhat outdated in comparison with Brave’s pioneering new generation of hair strand technology. As an animation lover, I have to say that I must watch these sorts of films twice: the first time I’m focused on the story and the second time from a technical aspect to get fully submerged in their awesome visual effects.

Stop-Motion Character Animation

For this film I wanted to do a comedy involving my cat Otto. I first planned the wood armature's movements and edited in Premiere. Once I was happy with it I went ahead and re-shot each frame and filmed my cat eating a snack. I then played around with the timing and the overall composition in Premiere and added Otto's part at the end for a comedic climax.

Extra Credit: Walt Disney Museum

Extra Credit: Cinequest Film Festival

Outline for the Third Term Paper

                Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

I have chosen to compare the visual effects of hair from two films: Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) and Brave (2012).

 Final Fantasy

First film with human leads played by non-actors

Aki, the main character had CG photorealistic hair

First time a character’s hair could bounce, flip and refract light

20 % of production spent on time animating Aki’s 60,000 hair strands

1 second of film = 36 hours of render time

A huge leap forward in special effects

Film created using Maya

Still stiff in today’s standards

Brave

Merida’s hair symbolizes her character

Flowing, curly tangled mass of hair

New technology developed to enhance heroine’s hair

111,700 hair strands

1 second of film = 8 minutes of render time

Each strand animated in Maya

Film’s main focus was to use this hair technology

The breakthrough with Aki’s hair paved the way for Pixar to create the rebellious locks for Merida. Before Final Fantasy, viewers usually saw one-shape, spiky, strandless hair types. Both films used the most up-to-date technology available at the time of conception to realize realistic results. Even though groundbreaking at the time, Final Fantasy today seems somewhat outdated, while Brave pioneered a new generation of hair strand technology.

Character Animation

I just wanted to have fun with this project. I arrived home and it was time for the thrash to be thrown out. Right then I saw my little character. His name is Travis. Pressed for time and without a steady hand I put Travis to sleep.