Two animation giants teamed up to create the short film, “Meerkat’, Weta Digital and Epic Games. Weta Digital has made its mark in animation with fur in The Planet of the Apes films. Epic Games is a leading video game and software developer of Unreal Engine, a rendering software. Let’s take a look how these two CGI veteran teamed-up to fine tune Unreal Engine’s advancement in strand-based technology in making “Meerkat”.
How did Weta Digital Create the Meerkat? Weta Digital used off-the-shelf tools as opposed to their usual proprietary tools in making “Meerkat”. Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4.26 release was used for real-time hair and fur rendering. Autodesk Maya was used for animation of the meerkat and the eagle. And Peregrine Labs’ Yeti for fur grooming.
We’ll see how Weta Digital’s “test case” changed the animation workflow with Unreal Engine 4.26 release. The different software used in making Meerkat will be discussed and how the Weta Digital Special Projects Team used them in parallel in creating the short film. With how the real-time hair and fur rendering was used in Meerkat, it would be exciting to see how this will change animation in film.
Who is Weta Digital and Epic Games: A Background and Their Place in the World of Animation
Weta Digital is not new to the world of CG hair and fur. The visual effects company is a multi-Oscar winner for films like King Kong and The Planet of the Apes franchise. All of these films were created using Weta’s proprietary software. Epic Games is a video game and software company that developed Unreal Engine. Unreal Engine originally is a game engine but is now a leading real-time 3D creation tool used by creators across different industries.
The Making of Meerkat: How Weta Digital Used Unreal Engine in Making the Short Film
Weta Digital wanted to explore linear storytelling using real-time tools. Come in Epic Games with the new Unreal Engine 4.26 release with its promise of real-time Hair and Fur on the characters. This is a deviation to Weta Digital’s tested non-linear workflow or post animation for fur and hair. The workflow was also one of the test cases that Weta Digital wanted to check using Unreal Engine, how will real-time animation have an impact in the existing non-linear storytelling workflow.
Image courtesy of Unreal Engine
Weta Digital explored to use off-the-shelf tools rather than their trusted proprietary tools used in their past blockbuster films. Autodesk Maya was used to prepare the character models as well as their animation. The Special Projects Group of Weta Digital used Peregrine Labs’ Yeti in preparing the fur grooming then uploaded in Unreal Engine for rendering. The new features of Unreal Engine 4.26 were also exploited in the making of Meerkat like the real-time rendering of Hair and Fur, Live Link feature to interlink with Maya for animation and Quixel Megascans was used for background and rocky environment.
Testing Unreal Engine with a Trusted Character
The Special Projects Group of Weta Digital is composed of a small team of digital artists that worked closely in parallel with Epic Games for testing of the initial Unreal Engine 4.26 first release in 2019. The objective was actually to test animation workflows and not make a film out of it. They wanted to see how nonlinear workflow will fit or change using real-time animation tools. They used Caesar and Maurice’s fur grooms from The Planet of the Apes then uploaded it in Unreal Engine. The team was impressed with the results hence they decided to test Hair and Fur further by creating new characters.
The Making of Meerkat and the Eagle
Molly and the eagle foe were created and the short film, Meerkat, was the final product. Applying the same dedication to realism, Weta Digital team visited the Wellington Zoo to get references for the meerkat and martial eagle. They studied the meerkat’s growth patterns and skin pigmentation as well as the movement of both animals to be used as patterns for the short film.
The story was developed the traditional way, using storyboards. Each scene was described with the character and how it is interacting with the environment. This step was beneficial even in linear storytelling as this helps both the animator and lighting team with the visualization and actualization.
Weta Digital Special Projects Group modeled the meerkat and the eagle in Autodesk Maya. Animators had to work on various poses of both characters and test it under different lighting situations. In this step they had to test each strand of fur and feather for every movement.
Artists were utilizing Maya and Unreal Engine hand in hand. A fur-less character in Maya on one side and the rendered Molly in Unreal Engine on one side. Each animation in Maya is rendered with hair and fur in Unreal Engine using Live Link. This way there is real-time feedback between animation, story, and lighting. Cutting the to and from between animators and post-processing team in the nonlinear workflow.
All the animation was done by Ludo Chailloleau, one of Weta’s most talented animators who had previously been supervising sequences on films like Battle Angel.
To add in achieving a realistic fur, shading and lighting must be carefully done that it would be physically correct. A good thing in Unreal Engine is their shading system is almost similar to Weta Digital’s proprietary shading system, hence there were no major adjustments to the workflow. Understanding the scene’s context is the key to achieve realism, which is something the Special Projects Group is trained for. You take a look at the character, you look at the animation then the context of the scene then you groom that into the engine.
This process and with the use of Unreal Engine’s Lightmass feature for ambient occlusion, they were able to achieve a realistic burrow where Molly hid from the eagle. The lighting inside the burrow, the bounces of the light on the meerkat and the backlit of the eagle’s feather showed a compelling scene that made you feel the fear in that scene.
The final piece was rendered in Unreal Engine’s Sequencer, a nonlinear editor for the last-minute animation changes. Movie Render Queue was used for rendering of the final frames. Quality was not compromised as Movie Render Queue used high-quality frames with high-resolution images rendered slower than real-time to achieve a film rendered in both 1920×1080 and 4K that are equally of great quality.
Molly – The Meerkat
Image courtesy of Unreal Engine
The initial fur grooming specifications of Molly were hand-drawn in Yeti with around 7,000 to 8,000 strands of hair then imported to Unreal Engine. It was exported from Yeti as an Alembic file, which is an open and interchangeable computer graphics format. A format that was a product of Sony Pictures ImageWorks and Industrial Light and Magic
The initial import to Unreal Engine was successful and the artists were just as surprised. Artists were initially skeptical due to the new factors like if they can really use a film asset in real-time. They also used a full-dense groom fur which was what they usually use in Weta Digital then uploaded to the engine. The total fur count of Molly was a 400k fur strand groom.
The Eagle
Image courtesy of Unreal Engine
The team encountered challenges in the eagle’s wings as it is a complex animation when flying and hovering, add to it that it was a daylight scene, meaning the feathers will be in full focus against the light. The feathers were made one by one based on the spine of each of the feathers. The artists then correlate the geometry to each strand. Then the geometry was used as part of the skeletal mesh and then bonded to each spine as part of the rig.
Unreal Engine rendered each rig using projection of the barbs on the feather. Lastly the rig was adjusted to simulate feather movements. In the end, the team used 3.7M strands groom to create the feather shape
How a Test Case Changed the World of Animation
Image courtesy of Unreal Engine
In this collaboration, Weta Digital made an important innovation in animation. Animators and lighters can work more in parallel. There is no longer a need to wait for animators to finish before applying hair and fur or before doing shading and lighting. This results in an easier workflow in animation without sacrificing the characters or the story.
Advancement in strand based technology that was used in Unreal Engine 4.26 release allows for more creativity to produce off the bat characters. With Unreal Engine 4.26, even small time and beginner animators can achieve realism with less work.
Meerkat is a good introduction to making short films using Unreal Engine. Weta Digital and Epic Games released the Meerkat demo project to the public for free. You can download the project in Unreal Engine 4.26 release and it includes all the Maya files, final textures, cameras and audios.
Here’s how to to use the Meerkat demo:
- Open Epic Games Launcher
- Click Unreal Engine then Learn Tab
- Click Engine Feature Samples, put Meerkat Demo in the search bar and choose Free
- Choose Create Project to start a new project
- Open Unreal Editor. Now you can play with the demo file to animate, edit the scenes, lighting and other settings.
- When done, don’t forget to click Movie Render Queue to render the final piece.
Conclusion
Weta Digital is an example of a company pushing boundaries and not letting the norms define them. With their expertise in animation and having proprietary animation tools, their move to collaborate with Epic Games and fine tune Unreal Engine 4.26 release showed that off-the-shelf tools can be used to produce equally stunning animated films. The Meerkat short film is an incredible validation that animation is a continuously evolving industry that even masters like Weta Digital can still find new ways to do old tricks and attain the same if not greater results. And with the help of a powerful tool like Unreal Engine 4.26, ultimately it will boil down to dedication, skill and artistry to create astonishing works.