Simulating rivers in the good dinosaur

ABSTRACT

Pixar's The Good Dinosaur is a journey through nature, with the environment and all its perils playing a major role alongside Arlo and Spot. The river they travel along is both an obstacle and a guide, and serves as a key storytelling tool -- the film's yellow brick road.

Because the rivers were so prominent, a linear department workflow was impractical; for the layout department to design shots they needed a reliable representation of the river, such that the features they designed the shot towards would stay consistent throughout the rest of the pipeline. In order to achieve this, a sequence-based workflow was adopted, where the river acted the same as any asset in the set. In the end, sections of river as long as a half mile were simulated in order to give the film makers the necessary flexibility.

Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Computer graphics

    • Shape modeling

      • Volumetric models