This is Andy from 1995's "Toy Story." Showing off a 3D-animated human was a groundbreaking
achievement at the time, but he clearly lacks details
when compared to someone like Dash from 2018's "Incredibles 2." His freckles are way more prominent, his long hair is less stiff, and his expressions are more noticeable. Humans have always been a
challenging obstacle for Pixar, and getting from 1995's Andy to where we are today
took its animators years and countless simulations
to master all the elements that make up a person: hair, skin, [Mr. Incredible grunting] muscles, and movement. [Carl groaning] When Pixar embarked on its
first feature-length film, it still had work to do to figure out how to make 3D-animated human characters. When animators tried, some of their digital
models came out stiff, so they came up with some creative solutions where they could. Lighting was one clever way
to hide those imperfections, shrouding human characters in darkness, like in this scene at Pizza Planet. But in order to avoid
showing bodies completely, they staged many shots so you
could only see feet and hands, like this shot of Andy's
mom walking in the room. Creating a variety of different people of all shapes and sizes, and especially the clothes
that they would wear, was especially time consuming. So instead of customizing
every individual, they Frankensteined it, copying body parts from some humans and creating new humans
out of those parts, while changing little bits and pieces of their physical appearance. But even in that first feature film, they did have an early breakthrough. Animators needed to distinguish between the look of the toys and
the look of the humans. One way to do this was through movement. Head animator Pete Docter
observed, for example, that Woody was floppy and loose. Therefore, he would
have quicker movements. On the other hand, humans
were bigger and heavier, meaning they had to slow
their movements down. 1997 "Geri's Game" was
the first Pixar project to feature a human character as its lead. This four-and-a-half-minute short was basically an experiment. One of the most prominent features to focus on for Geri was his skin. Human skin needs to be smooth. Prior to "Geri's Game," human
models were built in patches. Skin sometimes came out
looking more plastic. This is where math came to the rescue. Enter the subdivision technique, which is when an animator
subdivides a hard-edged shape enough times that it becomes
a soft and smooth surface. Thanks to subdivision, Geri's
hand looks much smoother, like a human hand should. This method has been used
on every Pixar movie since, smoothing out everything from
humans to bugs to buildings. That work allowed Andy and the
rest of the human characters to spend less time in the shadows in 1999's "Toy Story 2." Another tool that pulled
humans out of the shadows was a RenderMan shader. This let animators paint on details to the basic character renderings like pores, veins, and blotches. There is no better example of this advance than toy collector Al. You can see the skin
imperfections on his face and even a 5 o'clock shadow. And this shader tool would
be used all the time. It's how they made sure Mamá Coco had such distinct facial details compared to other characters in "Coco," but we didn't see that until 2017. At the precipice of the new millennium, Pixar was inching closer
to giving animated humans even more screen time. [television crashes] Boo: Uh-oh. [Mike and Sulley screaming] Narrator: There were still
a few hoops to jump through, which you can see in
2001's "Monsters, Inc." One of the biggest issues
with human characters continued to be their clothes. Boo, the movie's only human character, wears a big flowy shirt. Prior to "Monsters, Inc.,"
characters wore clothes that moved automatically with them. A new simulator called Fizt enabled them to animate Boo and her shirt separately. Look at how much more natural the movement of Boo's shirt looks compared to Sid's sister's shirt in this moment from "Toy Story," where the shirt barely moves as she does. And while Fizt allowed
for both better clothing and all the fur you see on Sulley, it couldn't do everything. Director Pete Docter wanted
to give Boo long hair, but to do that, the animators
would have had to animate in pieces instead of in one block. So to save them the trouble,
they gave her pigtails instead, which were easier to manage. Now that Pixar could create
skin and make clothes move, it was time to make a feature-length movie entirely populated by human characters in the form of 2004's "The Incredibles." One of the first tasks? Conquering long hair. Director Brad Bird insisted
Violet have the long hair that Boo didn't have. Animators already had to deal
with a lot of hair collisions on a normal head of hair, so you can imagine how much
they dealt with it for Violet, especially with how many
different situations she finds herself in and all the times she plays with her hair. The team developed a
core simulation engine that handled all the
collisions caused by long hair while keeping it moving and flowing, as well as the tools that
gave animators more control over the placement and
velocity of her hair. Figuring out how to properly
animate and then render Violet's signature hair
took six months of work, but Violet wasn't the only
character pushing the way Pixar physically builds humans. Mr. Incredible is all muscle, and none of Pixar's human
characters resembled him. For that reason, animators
used a software called Goo, which allows the skin to react to moving and sliding muscles, making a character's movement
look a lot more natural. While many of the developments created for the making of "The Incredibles" were specific for certain characters, the studio wasn't done perfecting
the look of human skin. See, human skin is actually
somewhat transparent. Some light needs to go through
the skin, scatter around, and then reflect back. If the skin looks too
solid and no light gets in, it won't look natural. So animators used subsurface
scattering to render skin. With subsurface scattering applied, skin no longer just looked
like a rigid surface. They actually found
inspiration for the skin in an unlikely place. The tools used to make
the "Finding Nemo" fish look translucent were
used to scatter light off the skin of humans here. But with these advancements,
the studio never forgot that the skin couldn't look too realistic, despite the capabilities that the shader and the subsurface scattering now allowed. If a human were to look too real, then they would enter into the realm of the disturbing uncanny valley. So while details like follicles and pores could have been added, they
were purposely left out. Pixar has been able to
build convincing humans that don't follow all the
basic rules of human anatomy throughout the years. For example, Carl
Fredricksen from 2009's "Up." His head was deliberately designed to have massive, boxy proportions, and instead of adding
every tiny skin detail, they focused on the most defining wrinkles in an old man's face. Skin and bone aren't the only
things that make up a human. Pixar constantly strived to
make humans more expressive. By the time "Ratatouille"
was in the works, Pixar would have 150 controls
just on a character's face. These controls allowed for
the varying movement speeds between toys and humans in "Toy Story" and got even more
sophisticated over the years, granting animators the
ability to slow down and minimize the movements
of an elderly character like Carl in "Up." Control points also allow
for the complex expressions of a character like Chef Skinner, as well as more subtle
and varied body motions, like Linguini's slapstick movements. Meanwhile, Violet's long hair
paved the way for Colette, who had 176,030 hairs on her head. Advanced simulations had to be applied to make sure strands would
not merge into each other. Despite the sophistication
of Colette's hair, Pixar still had hair challenges, specifically mastering curly hair. According to Pixar's chief
technology officer, Steve May, curly hair needs to be soft while still holding a curly shape. So in 2009, simulation
supervisor Claudia Chung and her team developed a new simulator called Taz for 2012's "Brave," which built Merida's
hair as coil-like locks to imitate the movement
of real curly hair. But the curls would completely unwind, so the animators added
invisible core springs underneath them, allowing the locks to move with more control. The better Pixar's animators
got at creating humans, the easier it was for them to
play around with their form and literally deconstruct them. 2017's "Coco" features a
cast of skeleton characters that were based on humans. Animators were able to use the same rigs they would use for humans
covered in flesh and muscle, but with some changes, as
the bones needed to move in ways that you wouldn't normally see in human characters. For one, the skeletons were
able to detach their bones, so the rigs were altered
to allow for this. A tool called Kingpin made
the bones appear looser by adding jiggle to them,
which you can see here. Pixar then put all the
skin and muscle back on for "Incredibles 2," a sequel 14 years in the making. Even with all the
strides made back in 2004 with the first "Incredibles," there was still so much
more that Brad Bird and the animation team
wanted to improve on. When the first movie came out, they didn't have the ability
to get every single detail from the original clay
sculpts of the characters. Now they could. Just look at the difference
between Jack-Jack in the two movies. This is partially because
for the first time ever, Pixar was able to base
the characters' eyes off real human eyes. Sure, the eyes are still
bigger and more stylized than normal, but just
look at this shot of Dash. The eyes are less circular and more of an oval when opened wide. Meanwhile, creating and
rendering Violet's long hair was easier now than it was in 2004, and even more free-flowing here. And speaking of hair, there were further hair breakthroughs. In the past, animators
would only be able to work with scant guide strands of hairs, just guessing what the
finalized hair would look like. That would have made it
tough to animate Elastigirl on her motorcycle as her
hair flows in the wind, or Violet blow-drying her hair. But now, animators had full access to what these characters'
hair would look like at every stage of
production before rendering, allowing them to sculpt better hairstyles and even catch mistakes early on. Another subtle difference between the two "Incredibles" movies: in "Incredibles 2," the city streets are more heavily populated. According to producer
Nicole Paradis Grindle, Bird thought the urban backdrops looked too sparse during major moments. Crowds are hard, as you
have to animate, simulate, and render a lot of individual people. So the crowds team actually started using some motion capture. It was used in "Coco" on
some background skeletons and made way for better filming of background humans in "Incredibles 2." You can really see just how
far human animation had come by the time "Toy Story 4" rolled around just by looking in the background. Bonnie's kindergarten class
is more fully realized than the dark Pizza Planet
or even Andy's birthday party from the first movie. You can see characters with long hair, and even in this shot
from a toy's perspective, all the human faces are clearly seen. And they continued to
successfully experiment with motion capture in order to populate the film's carnival scenes. What difference does mo-cap make? Well, according to "Toy Story
4" crowds lead Neil Helm, this technology can make
human background characters more convincing and detailed. Crowd characters tend to
run on looping cycles. Mo-cap lets filmmakers capture much longer clips of background characters carrying out distinct actions. From subdivision surfaces to hair-bending simulations to breakthroughs in cloth
and realistic crowds, mastering the elements of human beings allowed Pixar to populate its worlds and expand the kinds of
stories it was able to tell. And, most importantly, animators know when to give characters enough
detail that they seem human, but enough exaggeration in their form that they're still part
of an animated universe. Pixar's next chance to show us all the hard work it
does on human characters: the upcoming "Soul." Ian Phillips: Hi! Thanks
so much for watching. If you'd like to see more
videos just like this one, remember to hit the subscribe button. What other aspects of
Pixar's animation process do you wanna learn more about? Let us know in the comments.
