Consolidating the set

Once all the elements in the scene had been created, they were optimized into reference files. Separate files were created for the near bank, grass, far bank, river, matte painting and sky. Within the files there were further sub-divisible elements. For example, the near bank could be controlled through a “nearBank” character that allowed elements to be switched on and off. This was tremendously helpful in making the animation scenes as light and interactive as possible. Animators needed only to pull in those elements that were crucial for the animation of the shot, and any other elements that appeared in frame could be pulled in at render time.

The set was controlled by a character node that allowed individual areas to be switched on and off
as required. Elements such as trees, boulders, grass and reeds could also be controlled.

We spent a good deal of time getting the scene optimized for animation. The heaviest elements were the various grasses, but fortunately these could be added during the render and so didn't interfere with the animation. Even so, the scenes did prove to be quite heavy spurred Judd Simantov to develop a whole Perl and MEL script driven scene reference manager that will allow us in future greater control of sets, their proxies and where elements are added in the production pipeline.