Jun 16, 2023 09:00:00

How 'Spiderverse' evolved 3DCG animation

The animated movie '

Spider-Man: Spider-Verse ', in which Spider-Man from another world gathers together and plays an active role, reproduces the touch peculiar to American comics by hand-painting 3DCG animation, and there is a psychedelic production that matches the story. And innovative visuals are also characteristic. The online media Vox summarizes the movie about the strong influence that `` Spider Bath '', which uses a method different from conventional 3DCG animation, has had on animation.

How 'Spider-Verse' forced animation to evolve-YouTube


Many animation studios, including Pixar, often adopt a technique called 'photo surreal realistic'. This is a kind of photo surrealism style, in which the characters are modeled in a fairly cartoonish style, while the backgrounds and some movements are almost as realistic as they are in the real world. . For example, in the image below, you can see that Mr. Incredible 's clothes, which look like dolls, are made realistically to the fibers.

Also, in '

Toy Story 4 ', while toy characters play an active role, the background flickers and blurs out of focus, expressing a realistic appearance.

Pixar is a representative example of the “photo surrealistic” method, but other animation studios can also see 3DCG animation that looks so similar that the characteristics of each studio cannot be recognized.

On the other hand, the animation work shown in the image below is slightly different from Photo Surreal Realistic. In 'Spider

-Verse' produced by Sony Pictures, the lights not only brighten but also emphasize texture, and in 2021's ' The Mitchells and the Machines ' the trees in the background look out of focus. It looks like a polygon in the game instead of one, and in ``The Cat in Boots and the Nine Lives '' released in 2022, the expression of the hair is like fluff, and expressions that are far from real are adopted. I'm here. In this way, expressions that take animation away from reality and lead it in a new direction have become a trend in recent years.

According to Edward Vega, a video producer at Vox, creating beautiful animation with 3DCG requires a specialized artist who can perform special tasks such as rendering .

Rendering is the process of taking in information about

geometry , lighting, textures and camera position, representing shapes and coordinates, and performing a series of calculations to apply all that information to the final work. Most rendering engines are physics-based, so the rendering of lights, shadows, reflections, etc. will be calculated to simulate real-world physics.

Renderings can be found across Pixar's 2000s and latest works. For example, the following is a scene of Rex in Toy Story, but the texture of the toy reproduces the light and shadow realistically, making you think that it exists in reality.

Christos Obrenetov, CEO of

Lollipop Shader, which develops custom plug-ins for 3D rendering, said, ``Every time we had a meeting to produce animation, everyone came up with a look like Pixar. It was very high quality and was a box office success, so everyone wanted a 'Pixar look' look.'

According to Mr. Obrenetov, in the work '

Bolt ' released by Disney in 2008, it shows concept art that is different from the appearance of conventional 3DCG animation, and I felt that it might be stylized as a new challenge in the future. that's right. However, in the movie that was actually released, it looked the same as the conventional one. In this way, there are many cases where even works that seemed to take on new challenges at the time of concept art ended up with a style of physical rendering that was proven to be reliable, popular, and safe. It was said that there was.

Also, in addition to some short animations, in Disney's 2016 release

of Moana and the Legendary Sea , there were expressions that looked like the real world was deformed rather than being realistic based on physics. However, such a scene was drawn in 'Moana and the Legendary Sea' for only about 30 seconds of the 1 hour 43 minute movie.

Mr. Vega points out that studios have been unable to step into animation production using deformed expressions because they have relied on rendering methods for many years. But that state ended with the release of the 'Spiderverse' trailer in 2017, Vega said.

The production of 'Spider-Verse' includes cuts in 3DCG animation with simplified comic-like backgrounds and effects.

In addition, the camera blur expression and background depiction that occur in physics calculations are drawn in a stylized style as animation rather than realistic. Joshua Beveridge, who supervised the animation of '

Spider -Verse', said, 'I think the majority of people might not like what I've been working on for a year and a half, until the moment the teaser trailer comes out. It wasn't until the reaction to the first trailer spread that we came to work with a newfound confidence that we were on to something.'

The following images compare the new animation expression and the conventional physics-based rendering, the left is a stylized expression that was actually used in 'Spiderverse', and the right is a realistic physics-based depiction expression.

While realistic rendering involves computing data such as lights and cameras to output appearances, new animated renderings combine all data with custom data paths to fine-tune things like how light works within an image. It is being adjusted. By combining these, we have succeeded in expressing the real world as if it were deformed with a renderer that performs realistic expression based on physics.

For example, in 'Spider-Verse', instead of the out-of-focus background being blurry, the colors are washed out like a comic book misprint. In addition, comic-like expressions that cannot be seen in the real world are used, such as

moire -like dots appearing due to strong light, and parallel lines that look like they are drawn with a pen are used to express shadows.

In addition, as a non-photorealistic rendering method, we use expressions that are common in comics, such as lines that represent rapid movement and afterimages, and use it while varying the frame rate to make it look realistic. By keeping it far away, I bring the animation closer to the concept art.

'Spider-Verse' was such a big hit that it recorded the highest box office revenue in the history of Sony Pictures animation, but it is not even in the top 50 in the history of box office revenue rankings, and Disney and Pixar's works are still at the top. monopoly. Still, 'Spider-Verse' redefined the animation studio's visual goals, Vega said. In fact, in 'Mitchells and the Machine Rebellion' and 'Puss in Boots and the Nine Lives,' there are scenes that imitate comic cuts like 'Spider-Verse,' while the background depiction has its own purpose. The challenge of new expressions can be seen, such as giving unrealistic modeling with expression and expression.

``It's very interesting that non-photorealism allows animation to make the film special,'' Vega said.

The sequel to 'Spider Bath', ' Spider Bath: Across the Spider Bath ', will be released in Japan on June 16, 2023.

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE-Official Trailer #2 (HD)-YouTube