Chop It Up

This technical memo describes an animation system for procedurally modeling and simulating the chopping of food in 3 sentences or less: The system uses the motion of an animated cutting object like a knife to determine a sequence of cuts to remodel a food object into pieces, adds the new pieces to a physics simulation, and transfers properties like shading and textures to generate realistic chopping animations entirely from the knife motion.

Uploaded by

joyossarian

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

0% found this document useful (0 votes)

62 views

Chop It Up

Uploaded by

joyossarian

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 1

Chop It Up!

Animation–Driven Modeling, Simulation, and Shading in the Kitchen

Patrick Coleman and Eric Froemling
Pixar Technical Memo #07-13 Pixar Animation Studios

1 Animated Chopping to real knives, we constrain them to the knife’s transformation for a
small and randomly distributed length of time.
In Disney Pixar’s Ratatouille, the creation of believable cooking We render our models as creased subdivision surfaces [DeRose
environments with all their complexity has been an important ele- et al. 1998]. After labeling faces as members of internal or external
ment in presenting a rich world that helps draw the audience into sets using a pair of distance metrics, we crease edges that partition
the story. Part of that complexity arises in the preparation of food the sets as well internal edges that result from multiple cuts at dif-
before cooking. To create complex animations of food in prepa- ferent angles. To shade the cut model, we use the internal/external
ration, we designed a system that uses an animated cutting object, labels to blend between the shader of the original model and a user–
such as a knife, to procedurally model, simulate, deform, and pre- provided internal shader. External scalar fields, surface parameteri-
pare for shading various geometric food models as they are sliced, zations, and texture space coordinates are copied from the original
chopped, peeled, or otherwise broken apart. The motion of a knife model, and we apply interpolated values to the new external vertices
(or other object) is analyzed relative to the food model to determine created by the cut. We apply scalar fields representative of surface
a sequence of cutting operations that will remodel the object as a distance and centroid distance to the internal vertices, similar to the
collection of pieces. As each new piece is created, it is added to underlying parameterization of Owada et al. [2004], although we
a physical simulation to generate believable response motion. We use the scalar fields to create procedural shaders (Figure 1, right).
transfer surface shading parameterizations and scalar fields to re-
sulting faces that correspond to surfaces on the original object, and
we generate additional scalar fields to assist users in shading new
internal surface faces. This approach to creating chopping effects
entirely dependent on an animated knife allows animators to focus
on character performance without needing to consider the complex
modeling and motion associated with chopping.

Figure 1: A chopped model undergoes simulation (left). Shading

2 Algorithms of a sliced model using procedurally generated scalar fields (right).
(c) Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
We determine a sequence of cuts by locating the extrema of a
knife’s motion relative to a user–provided cutting direction, most
often downward. We convert the motion of each slice into a geomet-
ric representation—the slicing surface—with which we break the 3 Discussion
model into smaller pieces by way of polygonal Boolean operations.
To incorporate pre–existing food model animation into the slicing We have used our chopping system for the production of a number
surface, we trace the knife motion in the food object’s potentially– of shots in Ratatouille that required the chopping, slicing, and peel-
changing object space and transform this to a world space represen- ing of food models. As the nature of film production requires us
tation at the time the cut is applied. This also allows us to create cuts to provide user control over any aspect of shape, motion, and shad-
for food models that are animated relative to a static cutting object, ing, we have decoupled the stages of the chopping system. This,
such as a grater or a slicer. From the moment of cutting, a phys- along with our integration into the Maya animation package, allows
ical simulator controls of the motion of the new pieces (Figure 1, artists to alter the resulting shapes or to blend the simulation with
left). Users can apply nonlinear deformations or other procedural keyframe animation. We typically apply the model cutting indepen-
motions both before and after the cut. This allows for the layering dently of simulation, although running them together allows us to
of effects such as bending or peeling over the simulation. create chopping motions with repeated cutting interactions. While
To simulate the chopped pieces, we use a rigid body simulation our chopping system is focused on the cutting of food, we believe
library that constrains velocities to resolve collisions1 . We also our approach and overall design are applicable to the creation of
experimented with analytic collision resolution; the complexity of more general complex breaking motions from simple interactions.
the simulation and unrealistic interactions commonly present in the
original animation cause implausibly large response forces and im-
practical increases in computation time. For further optimization, References
we only simulate the dynamics of chopped pieces from the moment
they are cut until they come to a stable rest. When users require spe-
cific control over the initial response to a cut, they can disable the D E ROSE , T., K ASS , M., AND T RUONG , T. 1998. Subdivision
use of the cutting object as a collider in favor of instantaneous trans- Surfaces in Character Animation. In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH
lational and rotational impulses. We apply these in the coordinate 1998, ACM Press, New York, 85–94.
frame of the cutting object to produce consistent response motions OWADA , S., N IELSEN , F., O KABE , M., AND I GARASHI , T. 2004.
as orientations change. To model the adhesion of small food pieces Volumetric Illustration: Designing 3D Models with Internal Tex-
tures. ACM Trans. Graph. 23, 3, 322–328.
1 Open Dynamics Engine. http://www.ode.org