When it comes to creativity and innovation, the Walt Disney Company often leads the way. We spoke with Chuck Davis, Principal Technical Director at Creative Entertainment for Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, and he told us that the concept was actually born in Disneyland.

There are three singing statue busts in the Haunted Mansion, which debuted in 1969. Originally the illusion was done by projecting a head shot of the singer that was perfectly cut out to match the surface. Chuck tells us, “Disney pioneered the process of taking specific imagery that is designed to highlight or augment or work with the surface that it’s projected onto. Walt Disney Imagineering has been working on this for a long time.”

Both men say they the key to the process is the Hippotizer (link is external) from Green Hippo). This is the processor that seams the images together and software that allows for the creation of 2D images laid over large 3D objects.

Chuck Davis says that there are three ways to think about the process, “We can just project on the object like it’s a flat screen. We put textures and things on there. Second, using the Hippo itself to do shrink wrap, we can take a 2D image, project it onto the model detail and then we can start moving it around.”

Additionally, he says they can add barriers within the animation to make objects appear to follow the building’s exterior. “There’s a scene in the show where balloons start popping up. They are flying in the air and they bounce off the contours. They bounce off a ramp, bounce off the veranda and one hits a little bit of the turret and then flies off into the air.” Davis continues, “The third thing we can do, that people are most amazed by, is that we can animate in 3D on a 3D and it looks like the building is doing something that it can’t do. It looks like it’s getting squashed or blown up or flipping over or doing crazy things. We play with your eye and trick you into believing that these crazy things are happening.”

Erik Koehler designs the systems and he says that the greatest limitation they face is the size of the images and the speed of their processors, “The size of that file is the tricky part. You can’t go too big because then it becomes too burdensome on the video server to playback live.”