More work than most people think actually. . . :)
Stuart was brought to life with the use of Maya and a LOT of talent.
Sketches and maquettes were made, and the maquettes were 3D scanned
and brought into Maya. About 200 Nurbs patches later, Stuart had a
frame work.
A ton of work was put into the skeleton system that drives Stuarts
moves and expressions as well. ( Especially since mice don't
normally exhibit these types of visual emotions. The modelers had to
get a little creative here :)
The Fur on Stuart alone is staggering. There are nearly 500,000
individual hairs on his head and hands alone. This was achieved with
a lot of custom code being written for Renderman ( high dollar
render / shader system ) and a lot of patience for the animators who
had to place the 1,000 or so key or guide hairs.
His clothing was also modeled and simulated with the Maya Cloth
simulator system. For most shots with Stuart, he is actually
rendered and composited in several passes to keep the animators from
having to redo an entire scene if an adjustment was needed.
I can't begin to imagine just how much work went into the character,
but I can assure you it was quite a bit. :)
As far as getting a 3D version of Des going. . . . I still have never
seen an accurate model sheet of the Des character that I've been
begging for. . . even went so far as to ask for a commission on the
piece, but never received a reply from either Des or Jim. *sigh*
Without an accurate reference model, I am unable to begin playing
with the idea. ( front, side profiles are ideal, top would be icing
on the cake )
I DO have the technological capability of producing the character in
3D, ( go find my Yahoo profile ) but need something to start from. :)
Nudge, nudge, hint, hint, wink, wink. . . . . .
-Nehumanuscrede
--- In SkunkworksAMA_at_y..., Scrapper Black Dragon <scrapperbd_at_y...>
wrote:
> Thinking of animation, I saw Stuart Little 2 over the
> weekend. It was a freebie doubling with Spiderman - figured
> since I'd paid to see one, may as well see the other.
> Besides, I enjoy (don't we all?) a well done kids show
> occasionally!
>
> The movie itself was okay; more of a kid flick, but what do
> you expect. The part that WAS interesting from SAMA
> perspectives is the level of animation of the anthro
> characters. I spent a fair amount of time scrutinising the
> furries and noticed the detail, movement and animation is
> VERY good. I kept thinking about how cool the sisters (and
> Des!) would look if they were done to this animation level!
> It would be a lot of work; I don't know how long Stuart
> Little 2 took to make, but we could have the animated
> characters interacting with humans (Jim could play
> himself?) that would look really cool. Though it may be
> demanding to get the pink bits up to a standard Jim is
> statisfied with... ;-)
>
> Scrapper, Black Dragon, here's hoping!
>
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Received on Tue Dec 03 2002 - 13:54:25 CST