“The Prince of Egypt: The Read Sea” by DreamWorks Animation
Conference:
- SIGGRAPH 1999 More animation videos from SIGGRAPH 1999:
Title:
- The Prince of Egypt: The Read Sea
Company / Institution / Agency:
- DreamWorks Animation
Description:
In the “Red Sea” sequence from The Prince of Egypt, Rameses’ army approaches in the distance, threatening to destroy the newly freed Hebrews. As a pillar of fire keeps the army tem-porarily at bay, Moses raises his staff to part the Red Sea. Water majestically erupts around him, opening up a passage to freedom for his people. The ground-breaking and seamless combination of computer-generated elements with hand-drawn images makes this one of the most spectacular and powerful scenes of the film.
Large-scale crashing waves are as difficult to animate in CG as they are to draw or shoot. The goal in this sequence was to convey the scale of this effect while maintaining the style of the traditionally animated film. The water surface was created with hand-choreographed procedural controls developed in Houdini software. A brush stroke was the base texture for the sprite particle system that created the RenderMan texture for the surface of the water.
Drawn images were used in the shaders, 3D sets, and particle systems to create a large-scale detailed environment with a drawn stylization. Chalice and Animo software were used for compositing. Softimage and proprietary crowd-behavior software were used for the thousands of extras. Subtle blowing mist, tidepools, morphs, and water rivulets were used to keep the background paintings alive and integrated with the animated CG water.
