20 Things You Didn’t Know About Beauty and the Beast

Ballroom scene from Beauty and the Beast (Image via Disney)

6. Beauty and the Beast was the second Disney film to use CAPS software

CAPS, which stands for Computer Animation Production System, was a proprietary software program developed by Disney. It was a digital ink and paint system designed to replace the mind-numbing and expensive process of transferring and painting animation cels by hand.

CAPS also allowed for animators to use more ambitious and complex shots in their work. The cameras used by the CAPS system gave animators far more leeway in how they could complete shots and allowed for innovative camera movements that were never before seen in animated films.

CAPS was used piecemeal in a few projects. The first usage of the system showed Mickey Mouse standing on Epcot’s Spaceship Earth for certain Disney title sequences. The rainbow sequence at the end of The Little Mermaid used CAPs for the first time in a feature film. The first Disney film to use CAPS entirely was The Rescuers Down Under, the 1990 sequel to the 1977 film The Rescuers. Disney was initially reluctant to discuss the system, fearing that audiences would be disillusioned once they learned that computers were involved in the “magic”.

Thanks to CAPS, we got a far more expansive ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast than we could have had with traditional animation. An earlier sequence in the film would have used CAPS in a forest, but animators couldn’t quite get a series of tree branches to look correctly menacing.

CAPS was largely retired after Disney’s merger with Pixar. Since then, the animation studios there have employed more advanced programs such as the Toon Boom Harmony software.