The Lion King in 3D made a huge splash in theaters the last 2 weeks, showing that the Disney classics still hold our attention and that classic Cell animation still holds a special place in our hearts. Of course, the original Lion King wasn’t in 3D so converting it was a large affair taking the talent of hundreds of animators, and FXGuide has the details of how.
One of the other things we developed was an intelligent depth painting tool that would allow the artist to give little gray scale hints at different points of the character. They could put a little dab of gray of varying values at different points on the character and they would begin to blend to form a depth map that strikingly begins to look like the character as you add more locations.
