10. Snow Animation Was More Complicated Than You Think
Snow was, to say the least, quite an important part of the film, and animators paid attention to every detail when it came to the creation of snow in the world of Arendelle. Wanting to generate believable scenery shots, Disney artists were lectured by CalTech professor Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht on the details of ice and snow formation. From this, the effects team created a snowflake generator to create 2,000 unique snowflake shapes for the film, and they developed ideas on how to build Elsas palace in the manner of ice formation, by branching and plating. The complexity of Elsas palace sequence required 30 hours to render each frame not too bad, until you consider that 4,000 computers rendered one frame at a time. Going even further than that, the team created a whole new software called Matterhorn to have heavy, deep snow interact believably with the characters, which was difficult because of snows not-solid-but-not-liquid quality. If you ever thought Frozen was a frivolous matter, think again: the level of advanced mathematics used to capture all of snows effects from forming footprints to creating snowballs in an organic fashion was staggering. But even all this technology cant completely drive 2D drawings into obsolescence: animators used 2D artwork for certain sequences that couldnt be done otherwise, including Elsas magic and snow sculptures.
Canadian student. Spends probably an unhealthy amount of time enthusing over musicals, unpopular TV shows, and Harry Potter. Main life goal: to become fluent in Elvish.
