“A Versatile Skin Material for “The Good Dinosaur””
Conference:
Type:
Entry Number: 77
Title:
- A Versatile Skin Material for “The Good Dinosaur”
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
The major challenge to character shading on The Good Dinosaur is variation and scale. We have numerous Dinosaur species, each with multiple members, each member with varying skin properties on different regions of their bodies, depending on the age and character personalities. Also, the ultra realistic environments and stylized characters dictated the need for intricately designed details to bring them together. We knew the dinos were going to interact with characters of a much smaller scale (namely humans). We would not be able to paint this complex detail, given our time and multi-scale constraints.
The skin details were not modeled because our shader is more art directable, flexible, and efficient. Our shader is also easy to prototype for all species and variants, and gives artists the freedom to mix and match the specific qualities as needed per character.
Synthesizing the signals and not the painted texture itself was the key since it allowed us to decouple all the different qualities, and gave us control over adding them in or fading them out independently. Our shader with texture synthesis determined the overall color passes needed and the detail and specific variations of each character. It consists of a small patch of the cells and encapsulated many signals that were used in the shader to vary color, illumination, displacement, textural components and detail. We were able to layer what is needed to shade individual variants. This layered approach allowed us the artistic freedom to create complex characters that shared painted components, while textures synthesis allowed us to create variations in materials quickly.
In the following sections, we describe the process (Fig. 2) for creating our shader.
Keyword(s):
- shading
- layering
- texturing
- global skin materials
- cell exemplar
- texture synthesis
- artistic freedom
- pattern detail
- procedural artistic integration
- material versatility
- variants
- aging
