>

Cloth improvement was another consideration, especially given the importance of Ken's wardrobe, so Pixar utilized a new modeling and simulation system. "For us, it was about doing more without hampering the director and the story department," Quaroni notes. "We wanted to be able to build every cloth garment that we like. We created a completely new system that made the creation of cloth as friendly as creating anything else. Before Up, cloth was about tailoring. You built the actual cloth pieces as flat elements. You have to put all the stitching, you have to connect it together and then relax it over the body to make it realistic. And that was a very time consuming process.

"So for the new system we actually built a 3D model in place so we don't have to do all the cutting and original panels. And then the modeler figures out how to take it and unfold it back out to then prepare the actual cloth for simulation because the simulator really has to know where the stitches are or where the areas are with more or less thickness, so that he can do more realistic simulation. We did a lot of development to assist the modeling people. And today we have a lot more people that can use cloth. Our goal was to have every modeler (30 or 40 people) to do cloth. As long as they have a good eye for proportions in 3D, the system will do the rest."

Of course, the other noticeable improvement was with the human characters, especially Andy, who is now 17, his mother and Bonnie, a new kid with her own collection of marvelous toys.

"Lee wanted to definitely improve the quality of our humans, so we did a lot of work with the modeling, rigging and shading of our humans," Quaroni adds. " For us, what's really important is to hit certain expressions, emotional moments."

Even Unkrich admits that humans were a weak part of the first two Toy Story films and that there had to be a tidal shift in Toy Story 3. "I knew that if we were going to tell this story and end the film the way we were planning on ending it, they had to be great," Unkrich adds. "You had to see the souls behind the eyes. And they needed to be appealing and the performances needed to be subtle and nuanced."

Not surprisingly, Andy was a long process. "We rebuilt young Andy for the golden age sequence," Quaroni admits. "We couldn't stand the old Andy -- but we figured the audience would understand. You might not realize this but every model we build is perfectly symmetric. It's much easier to build one side and reflect everything to do the work once. And then as soon as the model is loaded into the system, we apply certain animation controls to break it up so you never see a face, even when in the rest pose, is perfectly matching. That's a big struggle when sculpting Big Baby or Andy."

Unkrich says they talked a long time about how to make the final scene work between the humans so that it would be believable and stirring. "What you see in the film is the end result of an enormous amount of work on the part of designers, modelers, animators, lighters, all across the board," Unkrich reflects.

"It closes the circle nicely," Quaroni observes.

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN & VFXWorld.