“Fabricating Stop Motion Creatures Using CG Grooms” by Henrie
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Fabricating Stop Motion Creatures Using CG Grooms
Session/Category Title:
- Crossing Dimensions: Virtual Productions and Characters
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Moderator(s):
Abstract:
Creating animatable stop-motion puppets with fur presents unique technical and artistic challenges, particularly when producing dozens of creatures with distinct looks, from fluffy bunnies to mangy coyotes. For LAIKA’s “Wildwood”, we developed an innovative hybrid approach, integrating CG grooming techniques with traditional fabrication to enhance efficiency, scalability, and artistic control. Look development began in the art department before transitioning to Puppet Fabrication, where artisans meticulously applied thousands of laser-cut and hand-cut fur strips to maquettes. However, achieving consistent and easily adjustable grooms required a digital pipeline. Utilizing Houdini, we developed a set of custom tools to streamline fur placement and optimize grooms for both practical and digital assets. For short-haired creatures, like horses, traditional CG grooming methods generated over 600K guide curves, which were converted into diamond-shaped polygonal tubes to enhance anisotropic sheen. The resulting geometry was printed in wax to create a mold. Long-haired creatures, such as coyotes, utilized a strip-based grooming system, where CG-generated strips were seamlessly integrated into the puppet fabrication process, maintaining natural deformation properties without silicone stretching artifacts. The digital integration phase focused on optimizing high-fidelity 3D prints—often exceeding 17 million polygons—into production-ready assets. A novel displacement baking pipeline determined which fur strips remained as geometry and which details were baked onto a low-resolution cage. This WYSIWYG approach ensured fidelity across practical and digital assets, enabling seamless hybrid animation. By blending CG grooming with traditional stop-motion techniques, LAIKA scaled puppet fabrication to an unprecedented level while preserving the tactile realism of “Wildwood”. This workflow not only enhanced efficiency but also reinforced a cohesive aesthetic, bridging the gap between physical and digital worlds in stop-motion filmmaking.
