Performance Based Melting in Spies In Disguise.

Achieving a performance-based, physics-defying, melting of a bronze bust was essential for maximum comedic timing in our film Spies In Disguise. With specific story-boarded facial gestures in mind, the directors wanted to convey a feeling, rather than a physical execution of melting metal. In addition to crafting a simulation based on pose to pose animation, the material of the bust had to evolve from bronze to copper. This required a non-linear, multi-departmental collaboration. Our solution allows fine control over the melt while keeping the believability of a substance phase change. It also maintains high-resolution details of the model, preserving our curvature-based procedural animated texture, which carries across a temporally incoherent topology. In our case, signal passes generated from both the materials and the simulation were needed to assemble all the rendered layers and integrate the effect into the scene. Our method allows for quick iteration and is intuitive to implement. We demonstrate our approach by categorizing them into departments: Animation, Effects and Look Development, for clarity.