Surf's Up

Sony's matte painters used MAXON's CINEMA 4D in the creation of lush environments such as the island, where the big surfing competition takes place, and Cody's home of Shiverpool, Antarctica.

Mike Yazijian, senior texture artist, and the other talented texture artists who worked on the film, used MAXON's BodyPaint 3D to make textures for everything from detailed penguin feathers and grains of sand to entire beach scenes, including the textures of the surf shacks that dotted the beach.

There were a few tricky things to navigate. "Our main challenge was working with large, heavy environments," observes Yazijian.

One of the biggest hurdles the texture artists faced while working with the large-scale environments, Yazijian recalls, was "trying to match the look of the 2D production paintings and keep that same rich, organic, painterly look of the 3D models."

The polygon count for CINEMA 4D scenes, for example, ranged from a few thousand polygons to more than a million for all of the objects in the environment. Scene sizes were equally large and wide-ranging, going from 30 megabytes to 150 megabytes or more and the total texture project size for environments or characters went from 500 megabytes to more than 1 gigabyte.

In all, it took about two years to do all the texture painting for the film, says Yazijian. BodyPaint 3D played an enormous role in that process, allowing the artists to do things like work in a Linux environment, incorporate large amounts of data, and load hundreds of texture maps without a hitch.

"And the 3D painting tools are great," Yazijian says, adding, "I also like the resolution-independent projection export tool, the ability to customize bitmap brushes with various effects, [the ability to save] keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to easily enable and disable 3D paint on multiple models. Those features are must haves for any individual who is serious about texture painting."

Info
www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/surfsup

About Sony Pictures Imageworks
Sony Pictures Imageworks Inc. is an Academy Award®-winning, state-of-the-art visual effects and character animation company dedicated to the art and artistry of digital production and character creation. The company has been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with Oscars® for its work on Spider-Man™ 2 and the CG animated short film The ChubbChubbs!, as well as nominations for Superman Returns, Monster House, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Spider-Man™, Hollow Man, Stuart Little and Starship Troopers. Imageworks continues to raise the level in the visual effects and character animation industry, becoming a major force by providing leading edge technology to its world-class artists. Imageworks is a division of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment, which oversees the digital production and online entertainment assets of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

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