The story of the fur program
 

Nordisk Film is the oldest still existing film production company in the world. 

The company was opend around 1912, and still resides at that same location. Back then film was considered a gimmick, just like a circus, so when Nordisk Film first opened, we shared the location with a circus (Circus unknown) that circus had a Polar bear that could do a balanced walk a huge globe. 

 

As the public got to know Nordisk, they associated us with the Polarbear, and the bear on the globe became our company logo. 

When we needed a new animation of the bear for cinema openings (yes, we own cinemas too) we decided to make a full 3D animation of a bear walking the north pole ice-cap. 

In this production we needed to do realistically looking fur, and we started Nordisk Film Research & Development with one simple purpose: Do the fur rendering for the polar bear. 
 
 
 
Why a new program, what’s the alternatives?
Softimage with Mental Ray has the possibilitiy to do fur rendering, but we think that you need more control, and faster rendering. The FurDesigner allows you to create a realistic number of hairs, while still keeping rendering times very low. 

To do a good animal styling, you need total control of the fur in the styling fase, much more control, and much more parameters then what you need for a normal rendering. 

We defined the following specifications for the program: 

  • Total control of the fur
  • Texture mapping of all parameters
  • Interactive update of all parameters, as you change them
  • Totally interactive in design and very fast rendering
  • Total intergration with Softimage|3D
  • Support for all kinds of animation and deformation.
  • Easy to use (if possible, but not a priority)
  • Finish the whole thing in 35 days
We met most of the demands. The software was ready to render the polar bear in 60 days, but the user interface was crude and not satisfying. Today it’s alot better, faster and uses less memory.