Fascinating quest for an animation company's CG expression in the shadow of Precure's ED dance transition

The Toei Animation Production Headquarters Digital Imaging Division, who sent out the "Precure" which is causing a major whirlwash for children, told the world how the PreCure Ending Dance has evolved.

History of the PreCure Series Ending Dance

The venue was filled with overcrowding that represents the momentum of PreCure.



I am doing CG producer at the Toei Animation Production Headquarters Digital Imaging Department, Yokoo. Next to being Premature Ending Director of PreCure, Miyamoto, next to it is Nakatani who is watching the rig around from the early Fresh Pretty Cure. Today, I would like to tell you about everything about the pre - cure ending dance under the title of this three - person transition of the pre - cure ending dance.


First of all, it is an introduction of Toei Animation Digital Imaging Department. As a production record, "ONE PIECE 3D Straw Chase"Or"Ashura"If it is a live-action system, this February released"Hayabusa far reaching return", Kamen Rider series and others. And now it is the high-end type of Saint Warrior who I am making as the main on our side.


I am pretty cure in that, but I make ending dance from CG 4 years ago from Fresh Pretty Cure.


It is the process of making ending dance. First of all, it was a concept, but there was a thing called "what is the favorite image of children" from the producer at the time, and the title was "fresh" so we took a questionnaire to children by saying something new. Then, the keyword called dance came out, the concept became a dance.

In the past, there was a time when I was dancing in paintings in the Precure series, but there was a part that has a high hurdle, such as drawing in full scale choreography, drawing limitation, schedule, drawing according to the rhythm of songs when drawing Let's try trying CG expression. At that time, Mr. Bandai had a dance using the CG model in the card game, but let's try it even at our company looking at it.

Although we say it is an animation company, there was what we can do by switching pencil to CG. I tried hard on how far I could show the full-scale choreography dance with characters full CG.


There were some rules in the process of making ending dance. First of all, there was a great deal of work for children. Not a high quality with adult eyes, but a work that children enjoy seeing to the last. In order to have parents watch it together and enjoy it, I decided to reduce the night scene. After that, I first thought that making a dance with capture - makes the choreography simple.

Next dance is easy to remember. There is a theme that children have to remember dance, and it is told constantly from the producer that children can not learn dance unless the whole body of the character is fitted on the screen, you can see the toes As soon as I could not see the movements of the fingers, I became NG. There is a difficult hurdle, and following such rules, there are memories that have had a lot of hardships, since it makes monotonous because it can not make a close picture with just drawing. Regarding this, I put a background behind screens from the smile series being broadcast now, put a motion of choreography there, and devised it so that those who are looking at can also enjoy it.


Including fresh heartcatch, sweets, present smile pretty cure and theater work, I have made 8 pieces in the past, but initially I got coaching from the company and I was making ending dance. However, from the late stage of Fresh, the competition of contests within the department to raise the motivation of the staff, the background image design is made by the digital image department subjectively making adjustments to what has been raised from the staff It began to go on. There was a history that CG was able to do such a thing to the company which had still strong anime system.


Now, please see Precure 's ending dance digest.

[HD] Fresh Pretty Cure! 【ED】 Non Telop Version You make me happy! - YouTube


Heart Catch Pretty Cure! ED - YouTube


Suite Pretty Cure ED - YouTube


Smile PreCure! ED "Yeah! Yeah! Ye!" - YouTube


So I became pretty much hungry, but for the last 4 years, I have one place I think that this was good as I was making images. That means that I made the picture in 90 seconds format and made it surely in the latter half of the term. I wonder if this was a pretty big point. When I made the ending of the first term of Fresh Pretty Cure I remember that there was a lot of hardships including character making, but after that the same songs will do the same thing but the same kind of video I was able to make it possible to make it. However, since we are not interested in it, we set goals each time and clear it. For example, in the previous work, the hair did not shake so much, or because the shooting was bad, try to improve it. Twice a year in summer and winter, 90 seconds every time is the best environment to challenge new things as both period and image scale.


Then, I think that Miyamoto will talk about what kind of feelings the image was made.


It is Miyamoto who served as the director at the pre-cure ending.


We have accumulated know-how from the first generation and also devised to make the routine and deliver quality more about this work, so I will let you explain the concrete explanation.


There are 28 character models that we have in house. In the past it was T pose, it is now A pose or specifications are slightly changed, but since it is in an environment where you can always see it as a library inside the company, it is also possible for newcomers to study.


It is a story called speculation that anticipates large-scale projects. The image on the upper left is a smile pretty cure five character model, but we build the skin, eyeball and mouth of everyone in the same topology. In order to judge characters in large quantities, it is to transplant setup or to build data by using UVs. Please look at the image on the bottom right. The model on the left is pretty high mesh, it is a real character of other projects. And, the right becomes a model of PreCure, but by making the UV layout completely identical, we are able to compare data compatibility.



Next, I am committed to look development that anticipated the final. Usually, the director or director checks in the state of modeling A pose or T pause, and then it is the flow of animation, but I have time to R & amp; D himself one by one in the past one or two weeks So I put a connection on my own based on the modeled data and made 3 tests in the state of temporary gone. I think that I was able to leave the project to those who were not familiar with CG with confidence by suggesting that the director etc. actually looked at their facial expression and ultimately would aim for this point.

We believe that doing such a look suggestion before brought to mass production, such as bone disposition and washout of rig structure etc, was very effective. I will move on to a story about rigging. I will take turns talking to Nakaya.


It is Nakaya of chief rigging.


We will divide the rigging at PreCure into four themes.


First of all, although it is a format of specifications, there are also specifications in the model, but first I will create instructions like how to put rigs in my hair and allocate work to workers accordingly.

Next, it is script based rigging, but it might be wonderful if it is possible to script all bones and weight adjustment, but there is a problem of adjustment for each character, because it can not go that way, Using the support tool for rigging, manual creation of bones and weight adjustment. The sample on the left is a sample of the script, but I use this to blend the bones and weights that I made until then and build a rig.


Body setup incorporating muscle expression, but before smile, in order to express the auxiliary bones used to prevent screws when twisting the wrist or upper arm and the angular feel of the joints when elbow, knee bent There was an apparent problem (red circle) that muscular expressions such as collapse and bulging of the muscles at the time of bending were not done at all.


To improve it, Smile introduced a body setup incorporating muscle expression. I think the muscle expression surrounded by red circles is improved compared to the previous one.


It's all constructed on a joint basis, and all of the collapsing and bulging when bending the elbow are composed of Drivenki. The left is all joints used for the body. The right part is the setting part of the driven key.

Why would you say if you used a joint. The fact that the processing speed was realistic, and our work was a lot of animation, so the joints were easier to express more exaggeratedly.


I will talk about the quality improvement of the shaking objects of the ending dance. Heart catch For the first time in the first term, we introduced simplified dynamics using in-house plug-ins for hair and skirt rigs. However, in simple dynamics, it is troublesome to make movements such as fine shaking, so it was created with a position to make it easy. So, there was an opinion that calculation was changed every time the animator manipulated the rig in response to the retake and it was difficult to respond to the retake.

Based on that, we updated it as pre-dynamics in which the dynamics are calculated upstream of the rig in the latter half of the heart catch.


In the suite, all movements other than facials were implemented with a motion builder. It is a completely different attempt from now.

In the heart catch only the hair and the skirt were shaking, but with this mechanism, all the swinging objects such as chest ribbons and earrings started to move. However, there was a weak point in this mechanism that the movement of the joint became larger as going to the tip of the hair. So I fixed it to animator. Even though I was a suite, I was responsible for rigs and animation when I was a suite, so I bounced back to myself (laugh)


And with the latest smile, it was possible to implement with MAYA the same thing as the mechanism shaking with the motion builder that was doing in the suite by the internal plug - in. So, on the MAYA all the shaking objects except hair and skirts started to move. In addition, at this time, the function of delay and bounce was carried, and further quality improvement was attempted.

Then, it is a summary of the story so far. That's all about rigging.


Continue to talk about motion capture -.


In fresh and heart catch, I asked the outside studio for shooting. At that time I did not have any knowledge of capture - so I learned the flow and method of photography at this opportunity. After that, since the environment of motion capture - was settled at Toei Digital Center, we were able to borrow equipment from our suite and shoot with our staff. 24 cameras are used, and the area of ​​the shooting area is basically 6 m × 6 m except for All Star.


There was also a change in the formation at All Star, so we had to shoot six people at the same time. So we are doing it in 11 m × 7 m.

In the suite, we narrowed it down to 3 m × 3.5 m (bottom photo) and tried to capture the entire joint of the finger. I used the after finger feature in motion builder, but it did not reproduce accurate poses and it ended up in the end.

It is a red skirt worn by a dancer in the image, but it was an annual event at PreCure Dance and many of the pretty cure skirts spread outside, so if Pretty Cure's hand dances normally, it will pass through the skirt had. In order to prevent it, I asked the dancer to be conscious of having a skirt.


In smile, I tried again to capture fingers. Just putting points on all joints like a sweet, it takes time and effort to process, so in smile, one point is attached between the first joint and the second joint of the thumb, forefinger, little finger and total 6 points total I shot in. The middle and third fingers copied movements from index finger and little finger, respectively, so that the second joint and third joint copied and moved the movement of the first joint. However, since I only took three points in the first place, I could not say the movement was perfect, and it was handcrafted like a suite. However, since this industry is growing daily rapidly every day, I would like to positively incorporate new technologies once it is announced.


I'm going to talk about animation from now on, but I will perform demonstrations in Maya including rigs.


It is a character of PreCure. In pose A who stretched my fingertip, I adopted a pose suitable for rig rather than relaxing pose.


Although it is muscle expression, usually human being's arm is often visualized as being slightly shorter than half the length at the stage of bending about 160 degrees, and the width is also often crushed with sharpness There is. We solved it by placing double joints.



As for facials, I made quality improvement of facial expression thoroughly. Up to now, PreCure has introduced a blend shape base, but since we have rigs which can be operated in detail according to the blend shape, it is possible for animators to express close to modeling. By including animation - a mechanism to adjust face and hair, etc, it became possible to express more animated style.




As for our workflow, we will move animation on Motion Builder after the animator receives the grade data that has come up with motion capture as our workflow. Because human movement is the limit of joints, we can not do animation-like motivating movements, so we used a function called time-work of motion dancer to make dancer movements snappy .


Furthermore, we are reproducing screen cuts introduced from this time and movements of characters with motion removed with limited. In real animation, even if it is a 24 FPS movie, I draw a picture in two frames, but in order to express it, I use an after effect for animation attached with full comma to actually move a frame I express it by pulling out. By doing so, I made it possible to make animation that feels as comfortable as possible.


Finally it is a finish. I will tell you about the composite. The strength of the line was introduced from this time. The one on the left does not have the strength of the line, the other on the right is the one with strength. I think that the hair is particularly easy to understand, but the line of the ego also becomes narrower from the egg and becomes thicker and thinner toward the cheeks.

As an actual technique, prepare a grayscale mask map in the lower left, where hair is mapped, black spots become thinner and white spots become thicker. If you make the line too thick, the line will penetrate, so we have adjusted it over time.


In the early ending of Smile, there are two Nuke roughly divided. Although it is possible to add a rich gradation using a light mask, there is also a case that the child can not empathize if it becomes like a different person from the character that was looking at before CM, and the first half I did it at Nuke near the line. I will try dramatic after that late part, I challenged such expressions. Actually, I put out various materials in the lower right, I make it by synthesizing with composite.


It is a ripple of water. I am making ripples of water at Maya, but this time I actually refer to the character which is a prop for which ripples come out once without the time to R & amp; D water ripples. In a scene where you dance with five characters being referenced, we referenced hundreds of props of ripples and performed a skill that the animators got timed to match with timing. I was pretty disgusted from the animator I was in charge of, but it turned out that it was a nice picture as a result, so please forgive me (laugh). The finishing is over with this.


Smile PreCure, broadcast every Sunday morning at 8:30, so please have a look.


Also on October 27 theatrical version "Movie Smile PreCure! Everyone in the picture book chig hug!"Is also refraining from publication. Nice to meet you.


The official movie site is here.

Movie Smile PreCure! Everyone in the picture book chig hug!