Eric Froemling, Tolga Goktekin, Darwyn Peachey
May 2007
In Pixar's Ratatouille, a key story point involves a rat being swept through the sewers of Paris, plummeting down waterfalls and along steeply sloping tunnels, through a series of high-speed S- bends which cause the torrent of water to bank up sharply on each turn. Bringing the director's vision of this wild and perilous rapids sequence to the screen required us to use a wide variety of water effects techniques to give the appearance of rushing water, spray, foam and bubbles. One of the greatest challenges was to pull these diverse techniques together into a seamless sequence.
Available as Pixar Technical Memo #07-03
Patrick Coleman, Eric Froemling
May 2007
In Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille, the creation of believable cooking environments with all their complexity has been an important element in presenting a rich world that helps draw the audience into the story. Part of that complexity arises in the preparation of food before cooking. To create complex animations of food in preparation, we designed a system that uses an animated cutting object, such as a knife, to procedurally model, simulate, deform, and prepare for shading various geometric food models as they are sliced, chopped, peeled, or otherwise broken apart. The motion of a knife (or other object) is analyzed relative to the food model to determine a sequence of cutting operations that will remodel the object as a collection of pieces. As each new piece is created, it is added to a physical simulation to generate believable response motion. We transfer surface shading parameterizations and scalar fields to resulting faces that correspond to surfaces on the original object, and we generate additional scalar fields to assist users in shading new internal surface faces. This approach to creating chopping effects entirely dependent on an animated knife allows animators to focus on character performance without needing to consider the complex modeling and motion associated with chopping.
Available as Pixar Technical Memo #07-13