Fur, Snow, And Yeti Magic: Animating Abominable

DreamWorks Animation and Pearl Studio’s co-production Abominable, written and directed by Jill Culton and co-directed by Todd Wilderman, is about the bond between a teenage girl, Yi, and a young yeti she encounters in Shanghai. Together with her friends, Yi helps the creature – which they name Everest – return to its homeland.

For DreamWorks Animation, the film would not only involve creating and animating a large furry CG character, it would also require delivering many instances of magic and several large-scale FX sequences. 3D World dropped into the studio in Glendale, California to find out how it created Abominable’s VFX and animation.

A FURRY YETI

DreamWorks Animation is of course no stranger to furry creatures, but that did not always make the process of crafting Everest any easier, as Abominable visual effects supervisor Mark Edwards observes. “Having a 2,000-pound giant furry yeti is a technical challenge in itself, especially with the design we were trying to retain from character designer Nico Marlet. You have to worry about fur stretching, plus the characters are always hugging him, so there’s so much interaction.”

The fur was handled procedurally with SideFX’s Houdini and DreamWorks’ own proprietary tools. Interestingly, one of the more challenging aspects of the fur was the amount of ‘windy’ situations Everest found himself in, where the FX team would have to deal with movement in simulation. “Our head of character effects, Damon Riesberg, was counting the other day all of the different wind that we used,” recalls Edwards. “We have helicopters, we have boat wind, we have on-top-of-a-building wind, we have magic wind. Everything was a challenge for CFX (character FX) with all that fur.”

“Having a light breeze is actually a lot harder than a helicopter sort of pounding on Everest,” adds Edwards. “Because with the helicopter, you’re like, ‘Let’s just throw a whole bunch of force and noise, and it’s going to feel powerful.’ But a more subtle wind effect can make the fur seem too underwater and swimmer-ly.”

ANIMATING EVEREST