Making The Landscapes For "The Good Dinosaur"

A very nice and detailed article on what it took to make the natural landscapes for the upcoming "The Good Dinosaur". They went as far as downloading the US Geological Survey data to help them with the scenary.

Enter the U.S. Geological Survey, which posts incredible amounts of topographical data to its website—including the height above sea level of all of the land features, and lots of satellite images. So Munier and his team tried downloading a lot of the USGS data and putting it into their computer, and then using that to “render” the real-life landscape. And it worked: They were able to take a classic Ansel Adams photograph of the Grand Tetons and duplicate it pretty closely using their computer-generated landscape. And with this data, they could point a digital “camera” anywhere, in a 360-degree rotation, and get an image.

“We ended up downloading over 65,000 square miles of USGS data,” said Munier. This “gave us the sense of scope for [Arlo’s] journey in the film.”

This is definitely a must-see movie.

Zz.