When I first saw Finding Nemo, I found that Piksa's underwater computer animation was so beautiful and shocking that it looked like a photo. Animator Dylan Brown said: "All animals are made by imitating underwater animals. Anyone who watches movies will say: sea water and marine animals are as beautiful as photos. "
Brown added: "When Piksa Animation Studio developed this project, its goal was to make Finding Nemo as real as a photo.
We have done a lot of photo authenticity tests in the early stage, and the technical team has determined some elements that can make the sea look more real. So, you see black spots like fog at the bottom of the sea, and some particles like small dust float on the water. "
"You see gorgeous lights shining on the bottom of the sea, and pictures of bundles of lights and sea light. All these individual elements are hand-made by the staff in the software. They tested four ocean scenes, including two ocean scenes and two underwater scenes, to see if they could build a real ocean script again. All the people who worked for it showed us their works: we couldn't tell the difference between the reconstructed script and the original script. (What the computer does is too similar to the real script) "
"We know we can make a Jacques Coustau documentary, but we don't want that. We hope it has a comic style and looks interesting, that is, like comics in the real world. We don't want to fool the audience and make them feel in the real world. We want to give the audience a feeling of being at the bottom of the sea. "
Although Brown claims that the underwater background is a virtual device that looks credible, on the one hand, he insists that they have created a magical underwater world, and the patterns on the trademark are surreal. They use coral and other materials to make equipment with wonderful shapes, and then give it light and rich colors. In the movie, the audience sees more lights and colors than those in the actual ocean. For example, the dim blue light at the bottom of the sea appears in blue in the movie. In real life, objects will become more and more gray and difficult to identify with distance, but in movies, the sea water is saturated (even if the objects are far away, they can still be identified).
Understand water
For the staff in Piksa, the most important issue is to learn to communicate with each other in action, texture and details. Why? Because these movements, textures and details are difficult to express in English. In other words, some new words must be "developed" for normal communication. Oren Jacobs, the technical director, believes that they have mastered some words that can be used to describe the subtle differences in the seabed reaction.
After solving the problem of creating real sea water, what the art department needs to solve is: how to look at the water in a certain scene? Jacob said: This matter is not easy to handle, which makes the staff very uneasy, so they guide the production from an aesthetic point of view. It was a challenge that lasted until the last shot.
Piksa invited a scientist to give his staff a lecture on waves, inflation and other sports. In addition, he also made a talk about
In 2000, several employees were sent to Hawaii to study seawater and observe underwater creatures. Finally, they submitted an information script about the trip, which was about various situations on the sea surface and seabed. Jacob recalled the working conversation at that time: Remember, when I saw the sea water on the boat on Thursday afternoon, I hoped the sea water in the movie would be like that! Or do you want it to look more like Wednesday or Friday? They later found that the information obtained after the investigation was much more useful than what they said orally. For example, the effect of making waves is much better than that of making waves "
Everyone must learn and deal with the problem of seawater. Animators must also master the surge and expansion of the sea and study the speed of water flow. Mastering the movement of seawater helps them to make seawater animation correctly. Photographers need to know what effect it is to shoot seawater on the seabed, and lighting experts need to know how far a person can see on the seabed. Therefore, it may not be necessary to place lights at a distance of 100 or 200 feet, because you can't see anything at all.
For Brown, how to correctly animate the fish swimming in the sea is very interesting. Before making this animation,
Brown and seven members went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where a scientist stayed with them for a day. They saw many different kinds of fish in the storeroom of the shop (just on display) and fed them carefully. "We find it very interesting, which is a rare learning experience for us."
Adam Summers, a philosophy professor from Berkeley, came to the company, became their fish researcher and fished the employees.
The continuing teaching of the class. He explained why fish are like this or that, and what fish are thinking. He said that the body movements of the blue pond king fish were very strange. Although it swims up and down, its tail hardly moves. Brown also noticed this in the glass jar, but he didn't understand why.
Brown made Dolly's animation according to his instruction. This is a very useful "lesson": everyone can understand the difference between movies and reality. After the initial animation screening, executive film producer john lasseter asked Brown why Dolly didn't move her tail often.
Everyone has a general understanding of fish swimming: fish can wag their tails and flap their fins. So if you do the fish's action in an unconventional way, it can make people feel that the action is not credible. When lasseter saw Dolly swim very fast without wagging her tail, he thought it only guaranteed the physical state of the species, but it gave people an unreal feeling. Finally, Brown recreated and added the animation of fish tail shaking. He obtained a patent for invention.
How do you make a fish move?
One of the big challenges in film making is: how to make a fish have the rich expressions of actors? Brown said it was difficult because they didn't have similar production experience. It turns out that what they do is the role of two legs and two arms. Although the principles of animation, communication and so on are the same, after all, these are fish without hands and feet. I know how to make a person look sad or happy, but I don't know how to make a fish look happy or sad when moving. It's really not easy to figure out these things.
How to do the action of fin? If I raise my hand underwater, my body will move backwards. If a fish spins around somewhere, should its body stay there all the time? Maybe not. We must find the balance point for the fish to swim correctly and make its swimming action look real.
They spent a lot of time studying Bambi( 1942) because there are many gods, people and animals in it. Disney insists on nature and truth. Piksa knew that they had to make fish with human action characteristics, and of course, they had to rely on their tails, just like the stars in The Incredible Mr. Hatbell (1964).
In order to make the fish move vividly, Piksa must be creative. The expression of fish in Finding Nemo is very rich. In the process of description, they gave the fish a humanized expression. In fact, the expression of fish is not so eye-catching. Real fish don't have such flexible lips, only a hard film.
Fish's body is more real. In order to make the fish look what they want, they decided to use a lot of body language. When they use the fin as an arm to express their feelings, they try to insert the movement of the fin at an appropriate time to ensure that the fish is moving naturally.
One of the most important moments for Brown was when Dolly said goodbye to Marin, which really tested our animators because we wanted to make the scene full of emotion. "The voices and recitations came from albert brooks and ellen degeneres, and their voices set off the mood at that time. Three people, Ginny Santos, Dave Devan and Mark Walsh, work for it. This is a key scene, very cute and sincere animation. It turns out that we can make wonderful animations. "
Brown believes that the scene is so well made that the audience may not notice the beauty and perfection of animation and action. He said that the producer's goal is to make his skills known to the public in the form of creation. Let the audience be attracted by the movie scenes, leave a deep impression on the characters, and get entertainment from appreciation.
A more difficult shot
Making animation of 77,000 jellyfish is a great challenge for technicians and artists. Every jellyfish swims and swings in the water, and its body shape changes accordingly. It is not easy to synthesize each frame, because it is not easy to match their movements and shapes with continuous shots. In the past, Piksa played a lot of roles, and in continuous shooting, their movements and appearance changes cooperated well. Now, they must deal with the problem of changing shapes.
"To create a matching shot, you must manually create key elements. In order not to confuse the audience, they made 1200 jellyfish and placed them in the foreground or middle of the scene to ensure the sense of reality. Brown said that the producer did it three or four times before setting the location. It's too difficult to do. "
Program animation (computer-created action) uses jellyfish, and each animal has three parts: the crown can float on the water; Tentacles are spiny parts hanging outside the crown; The arm looks like a curtain, falling from the middle of the crown (the arm can put the prey in the mouth), and the crown is sometimes manual, and the computer will automatically remove the objects hanging from the crown.
In order to create computer-controlled movements, they must manually animate the basic shapes, and then technicians can use the basic shapes to create three-dimensional controls, which can be used to adjust the movements to obtain an ideal casual and natural appearance. The technical team can control the speed, quantity and offset. By adjusting the time and the pulse frequency of different animals, we can give the environment a casual and natural feeling. Brown is glad that they can create a real feeling without activating 77,000 jellyfish.
Program animation is also used to make animations of corals moving back and forth with the surge of water waves. 95% of anemones' movements are programmed. The movement of anemones is very similar to that of Suri's hair in Monster Company, but the center of gravity is reversed. The new special effect is called buoyancy.
The hardest blow
Brown's proudest job is the development of fish. He thinks the characters, birds, crabs and other creatures they created are all very good. The most difficult skill is to make water realistic, that is to say, water is the most difficult task in computer graphics and images. In the whale story, there is always a water column, which is good. I don't know whether the effect needs further improvement, but we are quite satisfied with the current results. We have to make many elements and do a lot of work, which is a challenge that must be conquered. & lt/P & gt；
Jacob said that Piksa often trains their producers to use technical tools so that they can control all animation parameters. When shooting the most difficult scenes, many experts in this field were called together to solve various problems. Martin Ruan's practical work in dealing with whale swatter. Jacob said that Nguyen spent almost a year filming the most difficult scene (the most difficult job) in the movie.
When Jacob first saw the story version of the film, he didn't know whether they could successfully shoot those scenes. When Martin put his
When the test results were shown to him, he couldn't help admiring "it's quite gorgeous"! For Jacob, this is the most meaningful moment, because he knows that they have mastered the most difficult method of making lenses.
In an unforgettable scene, the whale lifted its tongue and spat thousands of gallons of water into the air, with its baleen still in its mouth. Water splashed everywhere, and then it fell again, forming a "pool" at the bottom of the whale's mouth. Jacob said that it is difficult to make the whale spitting scene look more natural: it is difficult to simulate, guide, control and generate the required data. They think the special effect of splashing water is the most important one.
Other important moments
There are many difficult shots that need special water treatment. He was particularly interested in a plot created by Eric Schmidt a few weeks before the production ended.
Satisfied, feel particularly proud. In this plot, a group of fish gradually return to the water. The camera lens needs to be transferred from water to water. When he watched the lens with those who helped adjust it, they were surprised by the superb quality. This is really an amazing shot.
During the production process, there were many moments that made Jacob feel sad. One of the scenes is about a bag of water dripping on the dentist's plate. Two years ago, Ken Lao and Bill Reeves showed Jacob their test scripts for the first time, showing that they can accurately simulate the animation of water. In fact, they have been working hard for this project for several months. Jacob said: I can't forget that day-they showed us other works that I couldn't travel at all. They did a good job!
For Jabob, the most exciting and satisfying moment was in the first half of 2003, when they first showed their complete works at the ShoWest exhibition in Las Vegas. The audience did not question their works, but were immersed in the plot.