MARI'S Monster Capabilities
Released in cinemas and on giant screens around the world, Flying Monsters 3D is a groundbreaking feature documentary from Atlantic Productions that features leading naturalist Sir David Attenborough as he sets out to uncover the truth about pterosaurs.
As big as a giraffe, with wingspans of up to 40 feet - equal to that of a modern day jet plane - how these enigmatic vertebrates defied gravity to take to the prehistoric skies is one of paleontology’s enduring mysteries and the central question of this documentary.
The creation of the film’s CGI was led by the visual effects studio ZOO who worked in collaboration with a group of companies to bring together the expertise required. Swedish visual effects and animation studio, Fido Films, created key assets to help unravel the terrific marvel of pterosaur flight; creating creatures, cliffs and vegetation.
Fido Film's Chief Executive, Fredrik Limsater, and their Look Development and Lighting TD, Peter Aversten, explain how they used MARI to bring the prehistoric giant flying Darwinoptuerus to life.
Limsater begins, “When we started pre-production on this project we knew that we would need to work in 3D on high-resolution textures and multiple UV-sets. Our current tools weren’t up to scratch so we looked at different solutions - we found MARI”
Aversten continues, “I sketched the initial concepts for the Darwinoptuerus after consulting with the show’s world leading paleontologists. When we were happy, I brought those sketches into MARI with the initial projections from the base texture. We also used reference textures such as elephant hide, eagle feathers and raccoon fur to give us inspiration for the different parts of the creatures.” Limaster adds “It was an odd mix of inspirational sources.”
“We approached the painting in layers using painted imagery and some of our favorite brushes with a base color scheme and different blending modes for skin detail. My favourite brushes for this project were the gecko, rhino and vascular blended with different channels and overlays to brake up the dark and uniform textures on the Darwin creature.”
Fido made different maps for subsurface colour, albedo colour and specular colour, adding different spec map fades from Renderman. They sculpted broad displacement maps and painted high-resolution maps in MARI for super fine wrinkles and skin. These various maps where then layered together to give the final result. Fido then applied this successful approach to Tapejaras and Anchiornis.
Limsater continues, “Now when we’re working on animated assets on multiple UV-sets we can work on much higher resolutions at a much faster pace. MARI is an essential part of our future look development pipeline. Its integration with KATANA and NUKE means soon we’ll be able to do texturing, lighting, rendering and compositing in one easy workflow.”
