On Aladdin I was responsible for leading the environment / hard surface (including props, costumes, sets,…etc. ) modelling team. The main challenge on that show was to create the Cave of Wonders with all the rocks and cliffs as well as the gigantic treasure.

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To replicate the Cave of Wonder rock structure a lot of various techniques were used from fully procedural (Houdini) to hand sculpted as well as scan kitbashing with remeshing.
I’ve also established some Houdini simulation setups for the team to add secondary boulders and debris or to create dry lava floor. In addition after the different workflows were established for the various rock types I’ve also made some tools for the modellers to improve their workflow and productivity and to be able to send back the data generated into ILM’s in house software (Zeno) and keeping a full instance approach.

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For the treasure aspect we used mainly Houdini to dress it using RBD. Once all the different pieces of the “treasure kit” have been modelled we’ve dressed all the big elements by hand and then we ran simulations with a setup I made to let fall tons of coins, gems and small pieces in order to create those big piles of gold.  After getting the desired result all the data were send back to Zeno using similar tools mentioned above.

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Additionally I was also in charge of leading the team for creating costumes for characters, props and sets. Most of the time scans were provided. We used a traditional Subdivision Modelling/Retopo workflow with scan details reprojection and after that an extra details pass in Zbrush was made.