Disney has given us many animated movies that showed how much work and dedication each animator provides to each project. It is no wonder why each new animated film seems to have more realistic-looking elements and aspects today. These advancements in animation make you think of the technology and software behind each successful movie.
What animation software do Walt Disney Studios use? Recent characters are mostly modeled and rigged using Autodesk Maya. Disney also uses Pixologic Zbrush for sculpting and Houdini for effects. Pixar’s Presto is the leading animation software, and Disney’s Hyperion is used to render the final shot.
Other proprietary software developed during each project, like the Meander Animation Tool and the Hyperion Renderer. Read on to understand better how each software is used and what each software brings into the animation table. I also included a section of Disney-developed software at the end as a bonus.
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Autodesk Maya
One of the most popular 3D animation software suites in the market, Autodesk Maya, has been used in countless Disney films to create low-resolution models, later developed into the famous Disney characters we love.
First released back in 1998 by Alias Wavefront and was then later acquired by Autodesk in 2006. Recent characters of Disney Animation Studios have been modeled, rigged, and sometimes animated using this software. Many animators are praising the intuitiveness and versatility of this software.
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Animated movies such as “Moana,” “Frozen II,” and “Wreck-It Ralph” are among the films that used Maya to create and animate their characters.
Pixologic ZBrush
Together with Maya, ZBrush is used to sculpt and create more complex characters in a computer environment. Low-resolution models can be made here too, before letting Maya add more details. But since ZBrush lets Disney animators work on a virtual-clay in real-time, the process of adding more dimension and details if the artist wants to.
Disney animators used this software to create better-looking characters that are believable because of the detail that this animation software can impart to the character. Movies such as “Big Hero 6,” and “Tangled” all used ZBrush to create their characters.
Houdini
Most visual effects in the recent Disney animated films are done using this software. When creating water, fire, and lightning effects, Houdini is the go-to software for Disney animators. It allows for easy collaboration between different artists and is very flexible with its node-based process.
Houdini can save each special effect and iterates those in the future without really affecting the master copy. Built-in tools allow for an easier workflow and better particle simulation for stunning visual effects.
Houdini played a vital role in animating the ocean and the lava of “Te ka” in the Disney animated movie “Moana.”
Pixar’s Presto
Not much is known about this software because it is proprietary software of Pixar Animation Studio. There is no doubt that this is a powerful animation software that Pixar developed to cater to its needs.
Developed by Pixar to work together with Maya, it is no wonder why Disney would use this animation software extensively. The software can animate characters, create scene layout, rig models, and many more. The previz given six years ago during the Nvidia GTC conference is already enough to showcase how powerful this animation software is.
Disney Hyperion
Before Hyperion, Disney Animation Studios used Pixar’s RenderMan to render all their computer graphics. But because of the growing demand, Hyperion was created. It allows the artist to render scenes faster and with fewer distortions and color changes.
Hyperion is a ray-traced global illumination renderer that traces and shades rays in large batches. It first sorts each collection for geometric coherence during scene traversal, then sorts ray hits for texture coherence during shading. This process produces cleaner and more detailed scenes in the end.
Thanks to the movie “Big Hero 6,” that Hyperion was created, and since then, it is the rendering software that Disney Animation Studios use.
Other Software
Like what I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this article, I’ve included this section where a list of tools and other animation software that Disney developed through time to make sure that they meet their artist’s needs.
Meander Animation Tool
This tool started its journey to being an animation tool for Disney Studios back in 2010. The animation team’s growing need for better and faster workflow created an opportunity for Meander to be created. According to Disney Animation’s, Meander is a hybrid between a raster and vector drawing system. This means that artists get the high pen or brush customization, responsive drawing, and immediate fast player of a raster drawing system and the stroke editability, image scaling, and stroke inbetweening of a vector drawing system.
The main goal of Meander is to allow artists to have unhindered artistic expression and perform as smoothly as a pen and paper.
Quicksilver And Beast For Realistic Hair
In the movie “Moana,” the creators wanted to give their character’s hair simulation an upgrade. It is at this moment “Quicksilver” came into play. This brand new hair system allowed each character to have realistic, dynamic, and believable locks that respond to water, wind, and movements.
In “Frozen 2,” another hair system is developed called “Beast” because the characters in this movie have a lot more individual hair to animate and maintain. From the little girl’s hair in “Frozen” to the future Queen of Arendelle in “Frozen 2”, Anna’s hair underwent a transformation that showed maturity and change. The software allowed animators to simulate more hairs per frame and at a faster rate compared to Quicksilver.
Swoop For Elements Animation
If you have watched the “Frozen 2” animated movie, then you have seen how each element is given life. Usually, earth elements such as wind, water, and fire are part of the visual effects and not the character animation. But in this movie, the same elements are your characters. In “Moana” Houdini was used to give the ocean some personality but here in “Frozen 2” a new software was developed called “Swoop” to animate these character elements.
The elements were given names in this movie – the wind was called “Gale”, then there was the “Earth Giants” and of course the most difficult to animate of the three is the water horse named “Nokk”. Swoop allowed artists to make sure that each element character behaves like the way it’s supposed to in the movie.
Tonic For Hair Grooming
Built originally for the movie “Frozen,” Tonic allows artists to create hair simulations by following the coarse-to-fine workflow. It gave the artists the freedom to build something coarse in the beginning, edit it the way they want to and then subdivide to add finer details. It allowed for a faster workflow and a better handle of the hair grooming for each character. Moana benefitted from this hair grooming tool, as well as the other films that came after Frozen.
iGroom And Disney’sDisney’s XGen For Fur Grooming
We’ve talked about hair a lot in the past sections, so let’s move on to fur this time. The movie “Zootopia” presented Disney Animation Studio the chance to develop their in-house fur grooming tools. Some of the movie characters need to look fuzzy or furry but still believable and not too animated. Both iGroom and XGen played a big part in providing fur for the characters in the movie.
iGroom is a quick and intuitive grooming brush-based tool that animators use to brush out the direction of the characters’ fur, control the length, and curve the coat. XGen, on the other hand, allows artists to generate large amounts of geometric shapes on any surface, which enables artists to create tons of fur in a short amount of time.
Matterhorn For Snow Simulation
Developed to create snow effects in “Frozen”, Matterhorn employs the Material Point Method to simulate large amounts of snow that interact with the environment and the characters. It allowed artists the power to create highly complex visual effects that would have been impossible to create by hand. This software is used to create the snow blizzards you see in the movie and all the falling snow scenes. Matterhorn made sure that the snow reacts the way normal snow would if the blizzard or the snowfall happens in the real world.
Splash For Water Simulation
Splash is a fluid APIC solver that allows animators and artists to simulate water believably in the animated movie “Moana. The solver took all the physics of water and applied it into the water simulation in an artistic way but remained in the realm of possibility. Remember that the water or the ocean in this movie has some personality and interacts with the other characters. The proprietary software allowed the sea to become a character in the film without deviating from what normal ocean water would look like and how it would behave if the scene were real.
Conclusion
So there you have it, you now have an idea of what animation software Disney Animation Studio uses for their many animated films, plus the tools and other in-house software that were developed to meet the needs of the artists and animators in the team. It’s for sure that Disney will continue to create and innovate better technology with each upcoming project they have.