Sending 300 monsters to college

Abstract

classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author. Monsters University started its background characters project early with the knowledge that the production would require a wide range of monsters to fill a vibrant University campus. A high amount of variation in shape, texture, shading and groom was necessary to create believable crowds. Additionally, a number of these monsters were selected and upgraded for featured roles next to main characters. In this talk we provide a production oriented account of our experience in creating 300 monsters. Figure 1: Various monster families based on different master body types c Disney / Pixar. All rights reserved. The background monsters were based on original characters from Monsters Inc. as well as new designs. A neutralized geometry was specified for each different body type while considering all shape variations. The shared topology had to be simple and cleanly aligned to guarantee extreme deformations. Through the use of a layered and reference-based rig structure, the variants were able to inherit the rigging information from their master model. This required all variants to have the same topology. To enable the variation of the different shapes, additional deformers on top of our base rigs were required. In some cases we also extended our master rig to be topology-independent to handle certain groups of characters that had extreme shape differences. Additional pipeline tools were implemented to export the shaped geometry back into the shading environment to enable shading on the actual shape of the character. This process was required during the production to update shapes without loosing existing shading work. The Art department fully specified the look for each character. The designers chose between 4 surface styles: dry, wet, soft-toy, and hairy. Only two colors were used per monster and the pattern vocabulary was large stripes and spots. To add variation, the monsters had parts like horns and spikes, and accessories like glasses, hats and backpacks. Our approach was to hit 80% of the look quickly and then iterate on the final 20% in the context of the character's importance. To that end we built a pipeline based around re-use and variation. Setting up a new monster, updating shading …