Technicolor Fur Simulation

Best-in-industry fur for visual effects

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Project

Technicolor had built a reputation for its fur visual effects and wanted to maintain that advantage by creating a modern toolchain with significant new functionality, faster artist workflows, and a more maintainable codebase.

DigitalFish engineers, embedded within Technicolor R&D, worked closely with Technicolor and MPC Film production to design and build a new system, including new groom and simulation features, novel algorithms, and workflow enhancements needed for lead characters. New capabilities include: interpolating varied groom styles, fast solving of fur contact and collisions, and intuitive animator controls that layer on top of simulation results. The system also delivers critical performance and memory optimizations over the legacy system required for today’s most-demanding feature work. This overhaul of Technicolor’s proprietary fur system provides the capability and expandability to keep Technicolor ahead of the industry.

Technicolor’s MPC Film applied the new system throughout Disney’s 2024 film, Mufasa: The Lion King.

Client

Technicolor / MPC Film

DigitalFish Contributors

Marco Romeo
Carlos Monteagudo
Hristo Arabadzhiyski
Julia Visser
Leonardo Bruni
Alessandro Nardini
Lucas Ferry
Hector Jimenez
Neil Okamoto
Camille Cellucci
Jen Luk
Ocean Qiu
Gilbert Aragon

 “Each character was brought to life with incredibly detailed fur and realistic textures. Creating lifelike fur was a significant challenge…, but the in-house grooming system, Loma, helped achieve photorealism in each character’s appearance.”

—MPC Film