Disney's BOLT rolls onto new ground with Rhino character rigging.
CGSociety :: Production Focus
27 November 2008, by Renee Dunlop
Disney’s latest film BOLT, is a product of changes that are not flashes in the pan. With John Lasseter as Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation as well as Pixar, the Disney culture and even the facility has evolved in some very auspicious ways. Walls were knocked down, figuratively as well as physically. Anything that didn’t hold up the roof was pulled out, and offices were opened to light as well as ideas. Artists were encouraged to explore the boundaries of creativity. And in the case of a hamster in a ball, Rhino, Bolt’s ardent fan, patent pending technology and a Disney animators’ voice-over career was born.
While some painful changes had to be made such as replacing the original director, Chris Sanders, with directors Chris Williams and Byron Howard, the outcome is positive. “Chris Williams and Byron Howard have this beautiful heart,” said John Lasseter. “These are sweet guys. They are very funny, both of them, but they are very sweet, and we knew that would come out in this film. One of the things that happened on Bolt was the directors and story crew started working as a creative team, like this studio has never seen before. And they really became a tight solid group. They trusted each other, worked together, were very honest to each other, and were dedicated to the same thing.”
While Bolt was Disney’s first film to be released in stereoscopic 3D from the outset, introducing several patent pending technologies in painterly effects and rigging, Lasseter sticks to his mantra. “It was all about the story. Our humor comes from the personality of the characters, like Rhino, one of the funniest characters we’ve had. He’s just so honest, and that kind of thing is just so brilliant.”
John Lasseter, CCO of Disney Animation and Pixar.
RIGGING THE RHINO
Rolling through the dappled sunshine is Rhino, the little hamster whose ebullient animation curves rarely ‘flat-lined’. The chubby ball of energy was an intersection nightmare weighted down by too many controls. That was until the animation team redesigned the rig. Currently referred to as PSD’s, (Pose Space Deformers), the corrective shape controllers were based on the distance of the mesh vs. the internal joint rotations. These tools made the animation possible, but they couldn’t have been so successful without the team enthusiasm needed to solve the problem.
Initially, Rhino’s rigging was like any other character, but as the story and characters evolved the added alterations became unruly. According to Animation Supervisor Clay Kaytic, “the original rig was designed as a quadruped, which worked great. You could run Rhino around all over the place and it looked fantastic. But when you stood him up, you were fighting so much geometry crunching, it was really restrictive from an animation standpoint.“
