Software behind ‘Big Hero 6’ pushes limits
It’s the latest salvo in a technological arms race among animation houses We wanted to make sure we could get the air and light of San Francisco. I lived there years ago as a student, and I just remember the skies.”
Big Hero 6 has been a critical and commercial hit for Walt Disney Animation Studios, winning an Oscar and taking in more than $500 million (Dh1.8 billion) at the box office.
But the more important number may be the 39,000 hours Disney Animation spent developing the computer program that made the movie possible.
The software, called Hyperion, simulates the physics of light, which can make animated films more lifelike or give them an otherworldly look.
It’s the latest salvo in a technological arms race among animation houses. One of Disney’s rivals, DreamWorks Animation, had a research and development group of about 120 people as of last year — among them nearly a dozen former employees of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
Disney Animation’s sister company, Pixar, has long been a trailblazer, producing the first feature-length computer-animated film, 1995’s Toy Story.
But Hyperion could transform animation. “It’s a major step for them,” said Dan Sarto, cofounder and publisher of Animation World Network. “They are only as good as the tools they allow their artists to use.”
Computer-animated films are big business: In most years, a
Roy Conli|
handful rank among the top 10 US box office hits. They can also generate toys, clothes and other products that can produce big profits.
Disney Animation’s grossed more than $1 billion and has bolstered profits for several business units of the studio’s parent, Burbank-based Walt Disney.
New tool
Such huge hits are rare. But in Hyperion, Disney Animation has a powerful new tool.
The software — named for the Silver Lake street that was home to the first headquarters of Walt Disney Studios — was created to solve a problem. Disney Animation executives felt that none of the existing programs available to the company was advanced enough to create the world that the Big Hero 6 filmmakers had envisioned.
The movie, released in November and directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams, centres on a robot (Baymax) and a robotics prodigy (Hiro) who form a superhero group and take on a masked villain in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo. The metropolis, a mash-up of San Francisco and Tokyo, is situated on a shimmering bay and teems with towering skyscrapers and pulsing neon lights.
“We wanted to make sure we could get the air and light of San Francisco,” said Big Hero 6 producer Roy Conli. “I lived there years ago as a student, and I just remember the skies.”
The film’s animation drew praise from reviewers, and several aerial sequences — including a memorable twilight flying scene — are filled with eye-catchingly realistic uses of light. Without Hyperion, the movie would not have looked as lush and could not have delivered on the vision of the directors, said Disney Animation’s chief technology officer, Andy Hendrickson.
The decision to create Hyperion was not without risk. Programmers were still coding it when Big Hero 6 went into production, and they completed it only in July 2014, a few months before the movie went into postproduction. Had the software not performed as Disney Animation hoped, production of Big Hero 6 could have been imperilled.
“This was a big risk,” Sarto said. “But it will pay off for them. A tool like this allows them to spend more time art directing how the film is going to look.”