I. Introduction
The Incredibles is a 2004 Superhero computer animation film produced by Pixar and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was based on comic books and spy films from the director Brad Bird’s childhood. It tells the story of a superhero family forced to hide within society and try to blend in. Led by an altruistic father, they end up in a battle with the antagonist of the story, Syndrome, who appears at first as Mr. Incredible’s number one fan. The overall theme of the movie revolves around unity and family as being the two most important things in life, something that speaks true too me and makes this movie worthwhile to write about.
The animation of The Incredibles was Brad Bird’s comeback after the unsuccessful project, and he brought the same team in his new work. What is very compelling about this animation is the amount of details that went into designing the characters and adding the effects of their super powers; the most astonishing ones are the stretching powers of Mrs. Incredible, the rapid movement of Dash’s legs, and Frozone’s ability to manipulate the water molecules in the air. The Incredibles is the first Pixar movie to concentrate on human characters. Their development was made with the use of such classic program complexes as Maya, Shake and After Effects, but Brad Bird and his crew had to solve a lot of more specific problems connected with their animation. For instance, the new technology called “subsurface scattering” was used to add depth and realism to the skin and to such effects as fire, water, air, smoke etc., and the special engine added realism to hair and clothes of the characters, such as the animation of Violet’s hair. Many animators had gone from animating in 2D to animating in 3D to ensure this project’s realization.
This research paper aims to discuss and to analyze the animation technologies of The Incredibles and the effects their added to the whole movie.
II. The Bone and Muscle Calculations and the Squash-and-Stretch System
Kerlow writes, “Two aspects of The Incredibles represent significant departures from the topic and style of earlier Pixar movies: the human characters are central to the storyline and they are animated with considerable squash-and-stretch” (Kerlow). Moreover, the creators of The Incredibles carefully layered the squash-and-stretch system and the previous stage of the bone and muscle calculations and, thus, got an opportunity to get real-time feedback. The process started with the bone and muscle calculations of the character’s position in a specific shot. Next, the software determined and statistically analyzed changes of the character’s skin and placed them in the model with the possibility of their further use as blend shapes. With the finishing of the basic animation, the animators were able to look at it through the model without the necessity to analyze the bone and muscle calculations. Next, the animators applied to the model the squash-and-stretch system, and it allowed them visualizing the animation in real-time. The combination of the two stages significantly eased the animation process and decreased its time.
III. Frame Speed
One more advantage of the combination of the two techniques was the increase of the frame speed. According to Kerlow, without keeping the changes in the model, the animation plays back at 8-10 frames per second, but in The Incredibles, it is about 24 frames per second (Kerlow). The creators of the movie achieved it with geometry decimation. They simplified about the quarter of the full geometry. Each of the characters had a full geometry version and a decimated geometry version. The decimation mostly referred to the body geometry, and the face geometry answered the full model. Decimated models had the same functions as full models but had less overhead deformation hierarchies. The animators widely used decimated models in the shot animation, but the final rendering was made with the full geometry.
IV. Facial Animation
Facial animation of the characters follows the classical Pixar pattern based on the control of all parts of the face. The animation team used a lot of deformers and connected them with macro-controllers. At the same time, they did not use blending shapes. In The Incredibles, the facial animation system underwent some changes. The animators improved the squash-and-stretch controlling and the visualization of eyebrows and their spline-based control and added the opportunity to make cartoony facial distortions.
V. Referencing
In The Incredibles, the animators first used the standard rig structure for modeling all characters. It significantly simplified the whole animation process and decreased its time. Furthermore, the cooperation speed between the members of the animation team became much faster; it became easier to share facial emotions and poses of the characters. However, some characters still continued to have multiple rigs, such as Jack-Jack who transformed into a monster and the stretch of Elastigirl, and the animators created some special rigs for complex distortions. At the same time, the standard rigs were created to answer classical squash-and-stretch articulation.
VI. Subsurface Scattering
The technology of subsurface scattering (SSS), or subsurface light transport (SSLT), is an effect that provides “realistic rendering of translucent materials such as skin, flesh, fat, fruits, milk, marble, and many others” (“Translucency and Subsurface Scattering”). It creates such effects as inner color bleeding and the diffusion of light at the junction with shadows and, thus, increases the realism of the objects. The majority of materials that are used in real-time computer graphics take into consideration only the interaction between light and object surfaces. The majority of realistic materials, however, are a bit translucent. In reality, light passes through the material surface, where it is partially absorbed, reflected, and scattered. Consequently, a certain part of light goes out of the material but with the other intensity, in the other place, and at the other angle. Krishnaswamy and Baranovski exemplify this feature analyzing reflective characteristics of the skin. According to their studies, skin directly reflects only about 5-6% of light, and the rest of light undergoes subsurface scattering; furthermore, the darker is skin, the less amount of light it reflects (Krishnaswamy and Baranovski 337).
The computer technology of subsurface scattering is based on the simulation of light emission in semi-transparent solid bodies. It describes the mechanism by which light penetrates the translucent body through its surface and scatters within the body repeatedly reflecting from the body particles in random directions and at different angles. As the result, light emerges from the object in the egress point that is different from the ingress one. Translucent materials are naturally absorptive, and the more light travels through the material, the more light the material will absorb. One can achieve subsurface scattering simulation on the basis of the distance, which the light has traveled through the material.
There are several rendering techniques of subsurface scattering. The first of them is based on the use of depth maps. Its key idea is the calculation of the distance that the light travels inside the material and the further calculation of the light scattering. The scene is rendered from the light’s viewpoint with the keep of the distance between the light and the texture. Next, this image is projected back onto the scene with the use of standard projective texture mapping. As Green writes, “In the rendering pass, given a point to be shaded, we can look up into this texture to obtain the distance from the light at the point the ray entered the surface” (Green). This value is subtracted from the distance between the light and the egress point, and we get the required distance. Another technique is a simple scattering approximation that is based on wrap lighting and on modification the diffuse function. According to Green, “the lighting wraps around the object beyond the point where it would normally become dark” (Green). As the result, the contrast of the diffuse lighting becomes lower, and it allows establishing the required amount of lighting. One more rendering technique of subsurface scattering is texture-space diffusion. Green states, “one of the most obvious visual signs of subsurface scattering is a general blurring of the effects of lighting” (Green). Instead of changing the diffuse function, texture-space diffusion allows more precise diffusion modeling by simulating the diffusion in texture space. We can make it using a vertex program with the UV texture coordinates functioning as the screen position of the vertex (Green).
As it was mentioned above, The Incredibles is the first Pixar animated movie with the use of subsurface scattering that opposed the previous CG techniques. However, in The Incredibles, the technology of subsurface scattering goes beyond than just the modeling of human skin. For example, one can consider the scene with the transformations of baby Jack-Jack. One of his transformations reminds about the goo, and the technology of subsurface scattering was also used to create the goo’s texture.
VII. The “Goo” Technology and the “Deformer”
Another problem the creators of The Incredibles had to solve to make the movie more realistic was the movement of muscles. When real people move, their muscles change shape, which is especially visible among muscular guys like Mr. Incredible, Bob Parr. However, adjusting Mr. Incredible’s muscles every time he moved was a too complicated task that required a lot of time, and the animators were forced to look for the other solution. As the result, they invented the new “goo” technology that changed not the skin but the whole skeleton of the character. As Palk writes, the “goo” provided “high-quality simulation of the interaction between muscle, fat, and skin” (Palk 245). Furthermore, the new technology gave the animators more control over the character than before. The Pixar Character Supervisor Bill Wise says, “With Bob, we really concentrated on achieving a high level of complexity in body motion. Once we were able to rig his movements, we were able to use that same articulating skeleton for the other characters -- with some changes, of course” (Arkoff 4).
Despite the common geometric model for all characters, the Incredibles had the other challenging family member except Bob – Elastigirl, Helen Parr. Due to her superpower, Helen had to be able to perform various stretches and to change her shape, and the animation crew wrote the program called a “deformer” that, as Arkoff write, was “the most complex rig they [the animators] had ever made” (Arkoff 4). Using her power, Elastigirl should have to remain feminine and elegant, the same as in her human form. For achieving this purpose, Character Articulation Artist Mark Therrell made two rigs, one of which was normal, and the other one was a ‘snake’ with Elastigirl’s geometry. The normal rig was divided into parts with control points. When the animators wanted Helen to stretch, they just switched normal rig to the snake one using the tabs in the necessary points; for instance, her arm could stretch and take something located far for the normal person. Another strategy was used when Helen turned into a parachute. Therrell states that in this case, the curve deformer was placed into the other dimension, and the curves were replaced by flat surfaces and with “a little gingerbread man-style of surface that moved with the normal Helen skeleton” (“Inside the Incredibles”).
VIII. Hair
One more detail that made the characters closer to reality is hair. The Incredibles contains different hairstyles of various lengths from Helen’s short coif to Violet’s long locks. If Helen’s haircut did not bring to the animators a lot of problems, the opposite was with the Violet’s hair. The real long and non-coiffured hair move together with the movements of its owner, and the same should have been with Violet. As Arkoff writes, there were no animations similar to Violet’s hair before (Arkoff 4). During the film, Violet had five different hairstyles, and each of them could be modified according to environmental conditions that she experienced, such as wind, zero gravity, and rain. To modeling hair, the animators used the same engine as in Monsters, Inc. (“Inside the Incredibles”). It was created by David Baraff, Andrew Witkin, and Michael Kass and updated for the requirements of The Incredibles. Wise said that hair were an important part of the image of the characters, for instance, Bob often run his fingers through his hair and Violet used her hair to hide (“Inside the Incredibles”). According to his words, one of the most complicated for the simulation scenes was the one with Helen who tucked Violet’s hair behind her year. The viewers saw this scene as the manifestation of motherly love, but the animators had to solve a lot of problems to make it.
The main improvements of the engine referred to the evolvement of the core simulation and the development of external and internal forces with the concentration on the keep of coherent movements. Furthermore, the animators added to it different parameter and targeting adjustments. One more problem was lighting hair; the realism of the animation required the dependence between the hair shadows and the ambient light. However, one could achieve it only with full density that was impossible with translucent shadows of the characters if only the scene was not very graphic. To solve the problem, the animators regulated the hair shadows with the use of extra full light.
IX. Clothes
Clothing simulation used the same mechanism as hair simulation. Brad Bird wanted the characters not just to have great clothing but also to look like their clothes were made from the real fabric. The animation team “baked” clothes into the geometric model of the characters, especially in the case of tight super costumes. The mechanism allowed automatic modeling of the clothing movement in dependence with the poses of the characters and motion patterns. As the result, characters’ clothes became much more closer the reality as well as the whole movie.
X. Shadows
The important part of the movie’s realism is the realism of the shadows and their softness and translucence. In order to achieve them, the animators used ambient occlusion. Furthermore, they used contact shadows to exclude the impact of the light’s direction. The decision if the contact shadows should be implemented into the model or computed separately was made by the lighting artists in any specific case. As Supervising Technical Director Rick Sayre says, “If Helen and Bob are facing each other, the contact shadows are computed, [and] if the shadow is caused by a picture frame on the wall, we can bake it” (“Inside the Incredibles”). Furthermore, one should mention the use of shadows in facial expressions of the characters. The Incredibles had a bit theatrical lighting inspired by live action movies and film noir (“Inside the Incredibles”). For instance, the scenes with the only one eye of the character had harsh and strong characters, and the lighting helped to accentuate or decrease characters’ graphic forms. The heroic and dark scenes usually had the emphasized shadows, and domestic scenes had the softer ones. Brad Bird mentions that the whole movie had about 180 light scenes, and Director of Photography Janet Lucroy notes that lighting did not highlighted the characters but was used to make The Incredibles more realistic (“Inside the Incredibles”).
Illumination Engineer Daniel McCoy developed the technology to “approximate final renderings quickly enough for the crew to see the lighting effects interactively” (“Inside the Incredibles”). The technology had a set of basic lighting parameters for each of the materials, for example, for the skin or for the costume fabric. At the same time, the developed technology was able to change the lighting parameters if the source of the light was moved. However, it did not take into account the technology of subsurface scattering. As the result, the animation crew forced to use the same ideas as for clothes and muscles to make the process rapid and offline. The process received information from the statistical analysis.
XI. The Environments
The animators also created new technologies for modeling the environments of the movie. Janet Lucroy shot digital video of such real-world elements as fire, light patterns, and tree shadows, and used it as the basis for the animation adapting the filmed elements with the virtual lighting. Lucroy exemplifies the executed work with leaves moving in the wind,
“We used these actual leaf shadows everywhere, from the jungle as a supplement to the foliage already there to the kitchen in the Parr’s home, to indicate trees outside the window. I also photographed a range of light patterns at different times of the day in different situations to be incorporated into the lighting design – light filtering through translucent curtains, bouncing off reflective surfaces onto walls, etc. Using this approach of sampling from the world around me, I was able to add richness and complexity to our computer-generated lighting in a relatively straightforward manner” (Vaz 9).
The improvements in the making of the movie’s setting required a lot of work, as the action took place in a lot of places including the home, the city, and the island. As the result, the environments of The Incredibles became closer to reality and brilliantly highlighted the new progressive design of the characters.
XI. Conclusion
As Buttler and Joschko write, The Incredibles is the bright example of technical mastery and aesthetic engagement. It was the movie that brought significant developments to classic Pixar projects and combined 2D and 3D technologies. The major improvements of The Incredibles referred to the adding realistic features both to the design of the characters and to the environments. The animation crew used a lot of new technologies, for instance, subsurface scattering, the “deformer,” the “goo” technology, and the modeling of the environments on the basis of the real video, and significantly improved the old ones, for example, the squash-and-stretch technologies and the technologies used for the design of Elastigirl’s clothes and Violet’s hair. Special rigs and engines were used for the animation of superpowers and for the creation of the shadows. The Incredibles was the technological breakthrough that paved the way to such Pixar masterpieces as WALL-E, Brave, and Inside Out.
Works Cited
Arkoff, Vicky. “Ultimate Guide to ‘The Incredibles’.” How Stuff Works. How Stuff Works, 9 Nov 2006. Web. Accessed 22 Jul 2016.
Buttler, Matthew, and Joschko, Lucie. “Final Fantasy or The Incredibles: Ultra-realistic animation, aesthetic engagement and the uncanny valley.” Animation Studies Online Journal – Animated Dialogues 3 (2007): 55-63. PDF.
Creative Bloq Staff. “Inside the Incredibles.” Creative Bloq. Creative Bloq Staff, 1 Mar 2005. Web. Accessed 22 Jul 2016.
Green, Simon. “Chapter 16: Real-Time Approximations to Subsurface Scattering.” Developer Zone. Developer Zone, n. d. Web. Accessed 22 Jul 2016.
Kerlow, Isaac W. “Creative Human Character Animation: 'The Incredibles' vs. 'The Polar Express'.” Animation World Network. AWN, 29 Nov 2004. Web. Accessed 22 Jul 2016.
Krishnaswamy, Aravind, and Gladimir V. G. Baranovski. “A Biophysically-based Spectral Model of Light Interaction with Human Skin.” Computer Graphic Forum 23.3 (2004): 331-240. PDF.
Palk, Karen. To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2015. Print.
The Incredibles. Dir. Brad Bird. Walt Disney Pictures & Pixar Animated Studios, 2004. Computer-animated film.
“Translucency and Subsurface Scattering.” Renderman.pixar.com. Pixar’s Renderman, n. d. Web. Accessed 22 Jul 2016.
Vaz, Mark Cotta. The Art of The Incredibles. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books, 2015. Print.
