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Simulating Wind Effects on Cloth and Hair in Disney's Frozen
Describes wind field rigs and simulation integration developed for Frozen, capturing cloth and hair interaction with arctic environmental wind conditions.
Abstract
This paper describes the techniques used by the Character Simulation team to capture wind interaction with the cloth and hair simulations in Disney's Frozen. The approach combined an improved lift and drag model, switching from linear Stokes' drag to quadratic forces suitable for high Reynolds number fluids like air, with new SeExpr-based authoring tools for crafting and visualizing wind fields. Windicator and gust rigs gave directors and animators a way to plan wind performance and continuity before cloth and hair were simulated. Together these tools let artists author physically plausible wind behavior while hitting the desired art direction across Layout, Technical Animation and Effects.
How to read this
- Category
- Production talk / pipeline paper: wind authoring and simulation for cloth and hair
- Contributions
- An improved aerodynamic force model, switching from linear Stokes' drag to quadratic forces suited to high Reynolds number air
- SeExpr-based authoring tools for crafting and visualizing wind fields
- Windicator and gust rigs that let directors and animators plan wind performance and continuity before simulation
- Context
- A production-tech effort on Frozen that follows Disney's earlier character-simulation work, notably 'Simulating Rapunzel's Hair in Disney's Tangled', extending environmental forcing of cloth and hair to arctic wind conditions.Builds on: Simulating Rapunzel's Hair in Disney's Tangled
- Correctness
- Aimed at physically plausible behavior that still hits art direction across Layout, Technical Animation and Effects, so it is studio practice tuned for a single film rather than a peer-reviewed general method; readers should treat the quadratic drag model and rigs as production-proven choices, not validated against ground-truth aerodynamics.
- Clarity
- Accessible as a workflow description; a first pass conveys the tooling idea, a second pass helps if you want the lift and drag formulation.
- How to read it
- Read for the authoring workflow and the drag model change first; focus on how Windicator and gust rigs slot into the pipeline, and only do a second pass for the force model if you plan to reimplement it.
Builds on
Built upon by
Nothing yet.
Related work
- Scriptable Character FX Solution 2019 / DigiPro
- Choreography of Hair and Cloth in Disney's Moana 2 2025 / SIGGRAPH
- Art-Directed Costumes at Pixar: Design, Tailoring, and Simulation in Production 2018 / SIGGRAPH Asia Courses
- Anisotropic Elastoplasticity for Cloth, Knit and Hair Frictional Contact 2017 / TOG
Keywords
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