5/7/2015 The secrets behind Disney's latest Oscarwinning animation | Animation | Creative Bloq

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The secrets behind Disney's latest Oscar-winning animation

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Roy Conli and Andy Hendrickson explain how Big Hero 6 madeit to the big screen.

The production’s digital environment of San Fransokyo features 250,000 trees

There's a shot early in Big Hero 6 which might make you wide-eyed with admiration. Itshows San Fransokyo: a sprawling city of reflective surfaces and varied light sources – acityscape created by a fusion of animation, production design and visual effects.

 "From a visual standpoint, the first thing we want to create is a world," says Roy Conli,producer of Big Hero 6. "Co-director Don Hall was looking to live action for a cuttingpattern and he wanted that heightened reality that you can get with animation." Theimages on display certainly place the viewer right at the centre of that ride.

Seeing the light

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The concept art for San Fransokyo shows the task faced by the animators and softwaredevelopers

For this action-packed adventure the Disney team has faithfully replicated the quality oflight around San Francisco's Bay Area, and in achieving this level of realism, thefantastical premise of the movie has a believable place to start from. "Animation is adistillation of reality. San Fransokyo is Tokyo laid over San Francisco," says Roy.

"The crew knew they needed to understand the light of San Francisco." Certainly, theplay of light throughout the film, on the surfaces of buildings, on characters and onlandscapes, is stunning. And to achieve this effect, the filmmakers deployed the newproduction renderer Hyperion as the next step in ray-traced global illumination.”

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The complications of bringing the story to screen led to the creation of the new light-rendering software, Hyperion

"In service of the story, we had to build the world: millions and millions of objects. Wehad to build the entire city – it is quite complete," says CTO Andy Hendrickson. "Thatlevel of geometry necessitates the technology of global illumination.

"We took a look at the landscape of the GI renders and we decided we needed a newapproach. We asked 'How do we stream a scene through rendering?' " Dealing with theseissues in turn prompted the development of what would eventually be new software WaltDisney Animation Studios (WDAS) would call Hyperion.

The challenge of the story created a reason to change our techniques

"The challenge of the story created a reason to change our techniques," says Andy."That’s the crucible where Hyperion was born. We only started building this tool twoyears ago. It'll be used on all our future films."

Andy describes Hyperion software as a global illumination toolkit that "traces lightenergy through a scene". The renderer computes a way to organise the illusion oflightrays and to control what they do when those rays strike a surface.

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Concept art for Big Hero 6 reveals the complexity of light Hyperion was developed torender

Hyperion, then, is the perfect solution to a film with a photorealistic aesthetic in whichthe environments are dense with geometry. The software collates all similar ray bouncestogether and only once these rays are organised does it then shade the ray hits.

Hyperion enabled the artists to put energy into scenes in more physically based ways,bringing the physics of the real world into the interaction of the tools. Andy describesHyperion as the latest in a range of "artist-friendly toolkits" that WDAS has developed.

A focus on aesthetics

The team worked hard with Hyperion to get all the images to render noise-free

The newly developed tool undoubtedly helped production designer Paul Felix, one of thepeople tasked with creating the environments that gave context to the characters, andwho Roy asserts is "a master of light".

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There's a fantastically kinetic and moody night-time chase sequence through the streetsof San Fransokyo that evokes a real sense of film history, notably of film noir andthrillers.

The environments created with Hyperion added context to the unique characters

"When you have these more real ways of lighting you can explore the language ofcinema," says Andy. For most scenes the team would rough out initial light positions(light emanating from street furniture, signs and so on) and then develop it from that

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initial design."

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In rendering the nuances of light, Hyperion reduces time that would otherwise be spentby artists hand-tweaking such consistencies. Hyperion takes care of a lot of the drudgeryto make a scene look plausible. "Our artists can then play with nuance," says Andy. "It'sright that your folks focus on the artistry and not the maths or mechanics."

Disney's unique character designs make the familiar appear new

The future of animation toolsets is to bring more physical-world process into the work

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A team of around 400 people worked on Big Hero 6 and key to the overall aesthetic of themovie has been the application of the conventions and sensibilities of live-actioncinematography within the animated world. "We’re able to talk in terms ofcinematography," says Andy.

A merge of live-action cinematography and animation created the Oscar winning world

"It's very blurry now between animation and live action. The lighting, the speculardispersion are all faithful to reality. We did a lot of work with training and putting our

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crew on lighting classes."

"The first images we made in Hyperion were so compelling. Hyperion also allows us topark an image, review it and refine it."

Along with the new production renderer Hyperion, Big Hero 6 used the studio's newlydeveloped Parade software which allowed for animation playback at 24fps. Parade worksby analysing forwards and backwards around the frame being animated.

Characters and places

Baymax's design had to be kept simple

Veteran Disney animator Mark Henn guided the animation aesthetic on Big Hero 6. Roysays that Mark was there to make sure the team weren’t over-animating, and with thesuperhero character of Baymax, this was a vital. Baymax had to be simple.

"Animation works best in silence, in allowing an animated film to breathe," Roy explains."For Baymax we focused on un-animation: the idea that a simple character allows theaudience to read in an emotional state. By being as sparse as possible, the audience fills

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in the gaps."

Animation works best in silence, in allowing an animated film to breathe

Throughout the film the skyscrapers of San Fransokyo are particularly striking. They areused in dynamic car chases and as portals to other dimensions. To do the skyscrapersjustice, the production team built a massive virtual skydome for the world.

Roy notes that you could combine the terabytes generated for Tangled, Wreck-It Ralphand Frozen and place them into the world of Big Hero 6 and still have room left over. At amore modest level, the film also astounds with its illusion of translucency. You have onlyto look at the scenes in which the adorable character Baymax features to see the skill.

The Big Hero 6 team celebrating their Oscar for Best Animation

Disney’s Big Hero 6[3] is out now.

Words: James Clarke[4]

James Clarke is a writer and a director/scriptwriter/producer. This article first appeared in 3D

World[5] issue 192.

Like this? Try these

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1. javascript:void(0);

2. https://creative.adobe.com/plans?sdid=KRSOE

3. http://%E2%80%A8www.disney.co.uk/big-hero-6

4. http://www.bit.ly/192-james

5. http://www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/design/3dworld-magazine-subscription/

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