The film is based on Philip Pullman's trilogy "His Dark
Materials," and is set in a parallel world in which witches rule the northern
skies, ice bears talk and act as brave warriors, and humans are entwined with
animal spirits. The movie focuses on the adventures of a young girl who embarks
on a journey from school in Oxford to the magical heart of the frozen top of
the world. Her companion through some of her adventures is lorek Byrnison, a
gigantic, armored polar bear.
Framestore CFC spent over 15 months working on the film's
bears and the environments in which they appear. BodyPaint 3D (www.maxon.net) was used extensively throughout
the creation process to paint texture maps for the bears, Ragnar, the guard
bears, their armor, props, digital doubles and environments.
"BodyPaint 3D was particularly useful when painting the
complex organic shapes of lorek's rusted beaten metal armor," notes Daren
Horley, CFC's lead texture paint supervisor. Having the ability to load a scene
that contained multiple file formats with texture maps also proved invaluable
in order to instantly view the pieces of armor and how they related to each
other. "The interlocking forms had rubbed parts of shiny metal in the
overlapping areas, which needed to be accurately painted. BodyPaint 3D enabled
us to do this."
While many of the environments were visualized through matte
paintings, some were created using rendered, texture painted geometry in
BodyPaint 3D, including the environments of Ragnar's palace, and the bear fight
arena.