(electronic piano music)

Hi, I'm Mike Seymour from fxguide.com for Wired.

Since the debut of Jurassic Park 20 years ago,

our understanding of dinosaurs has changed exponentially.

What was hinted at back then in terms of links to birds,

is now accepted scientific doctrine.

Now, literally half of all the dinosaurs we know about

have been discovered in the last 20 years.

So in 2012 for example,

that meant that they'll have been discovered

at a rate of about one a week.

If you jump to today,

the animation company, Animal Logic,

was tasked with producing a new breed

of more accurate dinosaurs

for the new Walking With Dinosaurs feature film.

Set in an epoch prehistoric kind of world,

this is a family film,

not a documentary,

but still the filmmakers insisted on not

anthropomorphizing the creatures

and making them as accurate as they possibly could.

This film is one of the first movies, for example,

to actually depict many of the dinosaur characters

with say a feathery coat,

such as the Tridon.

Animal Logic luckily had already developed

a complex feather system for Legends of the Guardians:

The Owls of Ga'Hoole.

Existing custom-feathered gremming toe is named Quill.

Animal Logic added to this two new pieces of technology

called steroid and reptile.

The first is a new muscle simulation system.

In the past,

the system had to work with various muscle groups,

each kind of triggered with various paces

or types of animation, like a walk or a run.

And that required a lot of tweaking

and adjustment per scene.

In this film, they're dealing

with some very muscular creatures,

like the Gorgosaurus.

So all the muscles needed to be controlled

by one system and not require kind of individual tweaking.

The second system is a procedure of scales

and physically plausible shading system

for the skin and texture of the animals.

It's called reptile.

This allows for complex procedural generation

avoiding having to hand paint and texture

thousands of scales per creature.

The new system allows for these rigid blocks

to sit on top of a movable skin layer

which expands and contracts under the scales.

It automatically provides a unique and rigid scale

to sort of sit down flat and not bend or warp

even though the skin underneath it does.

So, all of this helps place the animated characters

more accurately in their real-world environments.

And our understanding continues to change

at a surprising rate.

Ever since the film started production three years ago,

new facts have emerged that are now requiring us

to rethink what a dinosaur is

and especially what it looks like.

(dramatic music)

(dinosaur roars)

Well, don't forget to subscribe

for more behind-the-scenes action.

I'm Mike Seymour for Wired.