Nothing in computer animation remains static; there is always new ground to break. On “Shark Tale,” the lighting became one facet of the production in which the filmmakers pushed the edge of the envelope, especially in the application of global illumination. Global illumination is a way of achieving more natural atmospheric lighting taking into account the relationship of any light source with the surfaces and objects in a given space.
Doug Cooper expounds, “We’ve taken huge leaps forward in what we’re able to accomplish aesthetically—the level of detail…the quality of lighting and shading. We used global illumination to get that rich lighting quality, not just in special scenes, but throughout the film. The artistic controls we developed allowed us to sculpt and shape the lighting in a way that is more stylistic than realistic.”
One form of global illumination used was the bounce shader. Simply put, the bounce shader gauges where and how light will bounce from surface to surface—whether animate or inanimate—so the visual effects team could generate natural light and shadows. Lighting the undersea environment meant also dealing with other complications, including what is referred to as underwater caustics—those wavy, rippling light patterns that are cast onto surfaces—and the subtle but ever-present haze that even clear water has, which obscures and tints everything in the distance.
Before the lighting and effects teams could employ global illumination to achieve the desired lighting, they needed to learn exactly what that would mean in film terms. To that end, the groups underwent a series of training classes with world-class cinematographers where they learned about lighting design on live-action sets. “I think you’ll see the results of that training shining through when you see the lighting work that was done on ‘Shark Tale,’” Cooper says.
Another recent lighting breakthrough, called subsurface scattering, is more applicable to organic objects. Skin, being porous, is permeated by light, which then refracts and re-emerges. Subsurface scattering mimics that effect in the computer, lending a natural glow to the characters’ skin, or scales, as the case may be.
Fish, however, have an iridescence that required more than subsurface scattering to accomplish. The surfacing department, led by Wesley Burian, took layers of color and light and composited them together to create a shiny, scaly, multi-colored surface that Healy notes, “gives the fish a jewel-like luminescence.”
The surfacing and effects teams layered Lola with as much sparkle as shine because she had to be utterly mesmerizing to a guy like Oscar. Nevertheless, Burian says that, once again, it was the jellyfish that presented the biggest problems. “They were the hardest characters to make look translucent,” he remarks. “I studied a lot of jellyfish references and, obviously, they’re almost not visible when you see them in real life. But the directors wanted Bernie and Ernie to look bright and appealing. We had to come up with specific shading to make their heads appear gelatinous, but still look like there was stuff inside.”
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