Incredible Environments: Building the World of Incredibles 2

Summary: From a clifftop mansion to the gritty streets of New Urbem, the environments of Incredibles 2 spanned multiple cities and many forms of transportation. Pixar’s Sets department was tasked with not only upgrading locations from the first film, but also creating multiple new dynamic urban environments, all while keeping the feel of the original. A procedural city system was built in City Engine, Houdini and Presto (Pixar’s core pipeline software) that allowed for production models to be ingested and distributed in a neighborhood-based pattern and then output to a render-efficient point-instancer format. All of these buildings, vehicles and props, required a more efficient way of shading. Using Flow, Pixar’s gpu-based path tracing shading tool, artists created USD-based libraries of physically plausible materials which could be assigned and re-used at modeling time. This allowed artists to quickly build cities at massive scales, with few colors tweaks in sequences and almost no paint work. Coordination with the Lighting department allowed models to come into Katana with light attach points and a structure that allows for script-based lighting setup. These techniques and many others allowed the Sets team to construct the huge world of Incredibles 2 in a short time frame.

Speaker(s):

Nathan Fariss, Pixar Animation Studios, United States of America
Nathan Fariss has spent the last 15 years in the feature film industry, the past ten of which were at Pixar. He was the Sets Supervisor on Incredibles 2, and the Set Dressing Lead on Finding Dory and Monsters University. His other credits include Coco, Inside Out, Toy Story 3, The Host (Korean), Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Sin City, and The Day After Tomorrow. His non-film clients include Disney, Saab, Wrigley, Motorola, Popular Mechanics, Fortune Magazine, and many others.

Chris Burrows, Pixar Animation Studios, United States of America
Chris Burrows has been in the animation and visual effects industry for 25 years, serving as a shading artist at Pixar since 2004. He was the Sets Shading Lead on "Incredibles 2", "Finding Dory", "Brave" and "Wall-e" and was the Supervising Technical Director on "The Blue Umbrella". Other credits include "Cars", "Robots", "Ice Age", "Fight Club", "Titan A.E.", "Star Trek: Insurrection" and numerous commercial clients. His first professional experience was with TDI Explore and he holds a Bachelor of Science from Skidmore College.