The Iloura VFX team is extremely proud to have been involved with this project, which from conception was eagerly anticipated by a global fan base of millions.

"Working with Iloura on Where The Wild Things Are has been a great pleasure. I can honestly say that they have gone beyond the call of duty when it came to really exploring the creative issues involved in what can only be described as a unique pipeline. Technically, Iloura were able to bring innovative solutions to the table and creatively they were able to crack the performance of the characters very early on in the piece. We all felt that Iloura had set the tone of what we were looking for, better than anyone could've and were instrumental in creating the visual foundation that we relied upon to get this one".
Daniel Jeanette, Director of Animation, Where The Wild Things Are

"Iloura's involvement began with the shoot, prevising scenes and helping to develop the original character animation pipeline. As we were involved in the project early on we were able to engage with the puppets in a direct and tactile way, which gave us insights into the technical requirements of the animation process. This process would have been more difficult to complete had we not been on set.  We have a very gifted team at iloura".
Ineke Majoor, Head of VFX, Iloura

Project Overview

By the time the film production team landed in Melbourne the Wild Things character pipeline had already gone through a round of testing in order to understand the feasibility of using man sized puppets (created by the Henson's creature shop), to gain the performance that the director wanted.

While the size and shapes; the look and feel of the bodies of the puppets worked well achieving subtleties in the facial performance was a challenge. Animatronics were initially considered, but the mechanics literally made the puppet heads too heavy for the actors and limited their physical movements and performance. This limitation changed the premise from one of investing in the facial performance of the practical puppet's to one of producing facial performance via 3D animation in post production.

As the production started filming, Iloura set up a research and development (R&D) team on location to assist in the pre-visualisation, pre-comping of shots and also to test and implement the 3D pipeline that up until then had been more conceptual than practical. The model generation, 3D tracking and animation pipeline was rigorously tested during this phase.

Tracking markers were placed on the puppet heads for 3d tracking purposes in post. Rigged 3D models of the heads were created which were tracked onto the puppet heads, and these models were then animated for the character performance. Fur detail was taken from the live action plates which were projected back onto the 3D models giving the final renders all the in-camera fur and lighting cues helping the CG elements fit believably within the shot frame.

Initially the animation was to be generated via motion capture using 'glove-hand' animation techniques performed by traditional puppeteers. While an attractive option for capturing performance quickly, as the production progressed into post, the pipeline changed in favour of keyframe animation which proved superior in gaining the subtlety of performance required.

During testing it became apparent that tracking had to be absolutely correct in order for the 3D face models to be seated accurately and seamlessly into the plate as the performance demanded. The character heads were often very large in frame and although the tracking markers were in place this did not always result in an accurate track of the face. The Iloura team devised a simple method of tracking the facial mesh into the scene in order to test the accuracy of the track quickly and objectively.

Having accurate 3D models for the characters was essential in order to make this technique work. While the sculpts were initially scanned, the 3d models needed to be revised as the practical models were recreated post scans to make them lighter for the actors.

This meant the team needed to re-establish the accuracy of the 3D models to fit the newly created puppet heads used on set. To assure accuracy and maximize control Iloura placed hundreds of tracking points on the puppets and shot high definition turntable sequences. From this they were able to construct an accurate point cloud of the model using the tracked data.

The film production initially assigned different characters to different vendors.

Iloura was assigned to performance of Alexander - the goat character. Over time the team's responsibility grew to include performance of Judith as well. Director, Spike Jonze and Animation Director, Daniel Jeanette, were very specific in their request to view work in progress shots presented at a very high quality. This meant streamlining our animation pipeline so that we were able to deliver rendered and comped shots for each animation review. For this we developed a plugin for maya which enabled us to get realtime feedback on the plate projection. This was also a huge aid to the animators who
were able to see a close approximation of the final result whilst working.

Once the animation was approved the shot was given over to the fur, rendering and compositing part of the pipeline. It was one thing to get the facial performance tracking accurately within the plate, but it was another to have the performance blend into the plate seamlessly.

While, projecting live action textures onto a reference object that is then deformed in 3D is an established workflow, the amount of deformation you can apply is limited as it can easily look stretched or distorted.

Iloura developed a hair projection technique where the deformation resulted in fragmentation of the plate rather than stretching - which is a much less apparent artifact in the case of these characters where the facial features were so large.

It was the task of the compositors to ensure that all the artifacts and the solutions to the artifacts were blended seamlessly into the final rendered frame. Our rendered output enabled 3D UV based masks and corrections to be generated and applied to the 2D plate within the compositing package. This saved significant re-rendering for the 3d department.

Iloura delivered around 40 character shots before the project was delivered into hiatus in order for the studio to address some story issues. Although the project was ultimately finished in the UK, some of our final shots and much of our R&D were used in the post pipeline for the film.

Iloura's team on this project comprised of around 30 artists working during this initial post-production phase, comprising animators, compositors, tracking artists and generalist/lighting artists.

Our R&D team during production:

Ineke Majoor - Head of VFX - Film
Avi Goodman  - Lead Character TD
Paul Buckley  - Lead FX animator/tracking supervisor
Grant Adam - Lead TD
Alan Fairlie - Lead compositor
Matt Omond - Compositor