Research and Development of new artistic tools for Disney Animation.
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Crowd’s Look Workflow’s
As the ‘Lead’ for Human Crowd’s Look Development for “Wish” (Nov. 2023) and “Strange World” (Nov. 2022), significantly improved and defined the human crowd’s Look workflow for both shot composition and Asset creation. This workflow was needed for the simultaneous creation and control of the Art Directed Look of thousands of human crowd characters. Created automation (often using the internal ‘seExpr’ scripting language), created Python scripts, and defined a system that generally improved Crowd shot creation, editing efficiency, and consistency while adding functionality to allow more control over shot compositions. The Look shader variation was controlled dynamically by any department (especially the crowd sim team) using “primvar Attribute’s” set on the geo.
Vehicle Crowd Look Workflow for “Big Hero 6”. 500 procedurally created vehicle Look variants using a single ‘universal’ shader that could be dynamically modified using ‘primVar Attributes’ that were distributed onto each vehicle. The simulation controlled ‘primVar’ attributes included; color, logos/stickers/stripes, license plates, dirt amount, and lights illumination.
Grooming
Volumetric Hair Grooming Workflow. Developed a new geo based grooming work flow at Disney Animation. This workflow progressed and evolved over a couple of earlier projects starting in 2006 and then was fully integrated as the standard workflow, for the film ‘Tangled’ in 2009. It revolutionized Hair Grooming at Disney Animation. Enabling quicker approval of more accurate grooms, faster and more accurate animation, more symbiotic connection with the Hair Simulation tools, and a generally easier to understand final groom product. This workflow evolved into a proprietary tool called ‘Tonic’ during ‘Frozen’, and continues to be the preferred grooming workflow to this day at Disney Animation and Pixar.
Hair Shader Development
On the development team that created the first Path Traced Fur Shader at Disney animation for ‘Zootopia’. While developing the Look of the ‘Nick the Fox’ character, we explored what was needed to push our fur shader to the next level of realism. I worked closely with Matt Jen-Yuan Chiang (software developer) for many months exploring different ideas for how to simplify the physically based challenges of real animal fur while staying true to the physics of how light passes through it.
Artist on the development team that created the first Physically Based Human Hair Shader at Disney Animation for ‘Tangled’. The Goal was to be physically accurate, yet artist friendly. We added controls that allowed us to adjust and polish the look of the hair within physically based logic. (You can see the final results here on Flynn Ryder)
Various R&D
“Wreck It Ralph 2” Race Environments - Racing Environments present challenges of massive ground coverage that demand innovation across the board. Optimization is key, because of the large amount of data.
“Moana” R&D - Using Houdini, explored a workflow for ‘art directed’, shape specific, Volumetric Cloud workflow.
Vector Dispacement Stamps For Cloth Seams Using Geo (cloth pattern) Edge Curves for Placement. This creates high detail, complex seams, while using a low poly count cloth mesh. This is effective for reducing simulation geo complexity (faster sim’s), while still allowing complex sculptural detail in the clothing seams. An automated process that can use seamstress edges (created using Marvelous Designer or similar cloth creation software) to automate the placement of the complex, vector displacement seams. I created this workflow to solve the problem of needing heavy mesh poly count when complex seam detail was needed (specifically for ‘giant’ characters that are standing next to small characters).
“Moana” Maui Island Environment (150 shots with a wide range of coverage, Procedural Texture and Shader Workflow (procedurally creating textures was key).
Nicelander characters workflow for “Wreck-It-Ralph” - Flat, minimalist, Look and Shader Development. I scripted shaders (modules parameters etc. (using proprietary shader API), to work on all characters simultaneously for flexibility and speed while we were doing shader R&D during the production (allowing us to not hold back production during shader dev).
Painterly Human Test - created tools and workflow to give the illusion that a human CG animated three dimensional character was hand painted.