the tech behind the bunny

built up from more Than 25 years in vfx and animation, animal logic’s bespoke Toolset was essential in realising key attributes of Peter rabbit’s cg animals 1. fur

Peter’s fur was handled with Animal Logic’s Alfro tool, a grooming application that had been developed over several productions including Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’hoole and Walking with Dinosaurs 3D. The tool is built inside the studio’s proprietary procedural animation and simulation engine known as ALF, where a feather creation pipeline, Quill, also resides.

2. clothing

Each rabbit wears a distinctively coloured jacket, and many other animals also sport clothing in the film. For this, Animal Logic relied on its Weave toolset. It works by overlapping curves and displacement shaders to represent a particular piece of clothing. Artists follow the shape of a sewing pattern during modelling that is effectively ‘stitched’ together to form the final article.

3. rendering

First developed at Animal Logic to render a couple of scenes in The Lego Movie, the studio’s proprietary path trace renderer Glimpse was significantly updated for subsequent Lego movies and other visual effects films. For Peter Rabbit, in particular, it was adapted to meet Alfro fur and hair needs and to accommodate scenes where scores of CG characters would appear altogether.