The red-feathered hero of “The Angry Birds Movie 3” looks reassuringly familiar, but DNEG Animation had to rebuild much of it to bring the series back to theaters. While the studio reconstructed Red’s fur, facial rigging, and expressions, it also developed a system that allowed character effects to run automatically for approximately 75% of the film’s footage.
“It’s similar in its selection,” VFX supervisor Patrick Harboun said at the View Conference in Turin on Friday.
The new Paramount film, directed by John Rice, reunites Red and Silver, voiced by Jason Sudeikis’ Rachel Bloom, as they navigate parenthood as well as their latest adventures. DNEG is taking over animation duties from the Sony Pictures Animation productions behind the first two films.
The technical era was not simple at all. In fact, it was not possible to transfer the special maintenance, hardware and surfacing tools used in previous models to DNEG’s pipeline. “We had to start with this. The plucked chicken version of Red,” Harboun joked, displaying a nude digital model. Even the underlying geometry had to be reworked before the team could recreate the feathers.
As a result, radical change was deliberately avoided. Red’s fur has become slightly softer, while his eyes and beak have gained a harder, more toy-like finish. “When an intellectual property becomes popular, it kind of belongs to the fans, and we have to respect that,” Harboun said. “We can’t add our own spin just to make our mark.”
The studio examined previous films frame by frame. “We analyzed past films to find the unwritten rules of animation,” he explained. Animators cataloged the angles of Red’s beak, the geometry of his squinted eyes, and the boundaries beyond which a strained expression no longer felt like Red. The lessons have become a style guide and a reusable library of facial expressions.
There was more room for experimentation with more than 20 new characters, including Red and Silver’s children: aspiring athlete Glider, voiced by Walker Scobell; grumpy June, played by Emma Myers; and baby Olly, voiced by Psalm West. The family also has a pet spider named Fuzzy, voiced by James Austin Johnson. “The goal was to make a spider that even an arachnophobe would love,” Harboun said.
Olly has posed a unique technical challenge because his glasses effectively serve as moving eyes, complete with moving eyelids and eyebrows. DNEG’s solution, nicknamed “Pancake Eyes”, involved copying and flattening parts of the doll’s facial hardware behind the lenses, then repairing the curvature and allowing the expressions to respond to the character’s exaggerated squishing and stretching motion.
The biggest efficiency gains were achieved through a performance effects process that built on DNEG’s previous work for “The Garfield Movie.” Once a character’s animation was approved, the system automatically simulated selected effects on fur, feathers, and deformation, creating a preview and identifying shots that required special artist attention. As the team encountered new problems, they developed reusable templates for each character.
“This is human learning, not machine learning,” Harboun emphasized, emphasizing that artists maintain these patterns. Early in production, about 25% of shots could make it through the automated process; In later stages, this figure increased to 75%. “This allows many artists to do heroic work,” he explained. The percentage applies to rendering character effects, not to shots completed with animation or without an artist.
Other inventions included a secondary, normally invisible layer of fur that appeared when characters yawned and prevented bald patches, and one-click tools for making rope, straw, and props that animators could craft independently without repeatedly calling in other departments.
Production designer Jeanie Chang’s saturated tropical palette posed another challenge. Light references were painted directly onto design images so that they could match artists’ intended compositions, but characters of different colors still required individual lighting adjustments within the same scene. “In any case, Red must always be red,” Harboun said.
The film also expands Bird Island with Pigtropolis, a city populated by pig residents. Harboun explained that the opening sequence was changed from night to day later in production. He encouraged viewers to seek out the 3D version when the film was released on December 23: “I’m not usually a fan of 3D, but I really recommend checking out the 3D version.”
According to Harboun, such innovations only work when they reinforce what audiences already know. Characters may have been recast and workflows re-engineered, but their familiar identities remain essential.