“Bringing Life to the Communiverse: Procedural Look Development in Pixar’s Elio” by Burrows, Kohut, Murphy, Chang, Elwood, et al. …
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Bringing Life to the Communiverse: Procedural Look Development in Pixar’s Elio
Session/Category Title:
- No Shade, High Energy Lighting and Shading
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Moderator(s):
Abstract:
In Pixar’s Elio (2025), Elio visits the Communiverse, a protopian space station populated by various species from throughout the universe. To convey a vivacious city inhabited by a diverse population, a small team of environment artists amplified the traditional pipeline with procedural techniques used in unique ways to develop a vast quantity of various biomes of alien terrains and architectures that pulsed with their own internal energy. The four biomes — aquatic, frozen, verdant and hot desert — represent the various home planet ecosystems of the residents of the Communiverse and need to visually reflect these distinctions. Constantly in motion, the Communiverse is a machine suffused with energy. To quickly and efficiently convey this, we use unique combinations of simple procedural shading and modeling techniques including new applications of time-based shading to create cycles of visual motion. We use novel applications of — and improvements on — existing texturing, parallax mapping and ray marching techniques. Procedural modeling and dressing efficiently add visual complexity and scale.
