“Artistic Rendering of Feathers for Animated Films” by Xie, Burian, Harbeck and Kwa
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Artistic Rendering of Feathers for Animated Films
Session/Category Title: Pushing Production Data
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
Feathered creatures have become prevalent in our films since Kung Fu Panda, where we first developed a proprietary feather modeling, animation and rendering system for Crane. Since then, we have had Fifi the goose in Shrek Forever After, and now Lord Shen, the majestic white peacock in Kung Fu Panda 2. To enable maximum artist efficiency in different departments, we have found it’s important to separate styling and rendering of feathers from modeling, grooming and lamination, so that different artists can iterate over their part of the feather system without requiring significant changes or rebuilds to other parts of the setup. In this talk, we focus on the feather plugins that enable our surfacing artists to style and vary the microstructure of individual feathers across different parts of a bird or across many birds, we also talk about some features developed to enhance the final rendering and lighting of feathers.
