And it all solidified when we were shown images and a teaser for Shrek 5 earlier in February 27 2025 where people complained and ranted about how Shrek himself looks different compared to how he last looked in Shrek Forever After back in 2010.
The left is original SGI IRIX Shrek (Later HP Opteron)
and the right is the modern Lenovo Threadripper Shrek.
It got to a point that animation fans demanded that DreamWorks go back to the original rigs used for the films…. 
"I don't care whether you switched to Lenovo Threadrippers KATZENBERG,
I WANT MY OLD SHREK BACK GAWD-DAMMIT!!!!"
Sorry Mr. William Stieg Fan on your Laptop but....
The probability of bringing back the older 2010 era Shrek rigs is entirely impossible, not because we don’t know if DreamWorks still has the old rigs but even if they do, the older rigs would not be compatible with the current version of Autodesk Maya without throwing up a bunch of .mel errors...
AND I REMIND YOU ALL THAT MAYA IS STILL THE INDUSTRY STANDARD REGARDLESS OF FLOW’s SUCCESS WITH THEIR USE OF BLENDER and the EEVEE renderer.
(I'm looking at you Blender Memes on FACEBOOK)
But I guess many an animation fan on Social Media does not care about the technological achievements of the movies, old and new, in favor of preferring a LOVE IT or HATE IT mentality on how they enjoy animation as a whole.
Buzz Lightyear representing the Director/Producer telling us how movies are made,
while the aliens represent the Audience who just want to enjoy.
I’m different and I often focus on the technological aspect of animation such as what software is used, what style of texturing the artist utilizes, and how many people are there for each unit of production.
I guess the reason for me having this mentality of preferring the technician's approach is because like some of you readers, I studied Animation in College.
So while I do agree Shrek looks worse for wear on his current rig, please understand that when there’s a huge gap between installments, there’s no way the older rigs are going to work on the newest software version, especially since DreamWorks has long since ditched their older Hewlett Packard AMD Opteron systems and have moved on to AMD’s newest Threadripper Pro Workstations as supplied by LENOVO.
And this trend of RIG or SOFTWARE rollback I'm seeing from CGI fans is forcing me to tell a cautionary tale of this happening during the time of production for TOY STORY 3 back in the late 2000s.
What happened was that since PIXAR changed their hardware from SGI RISC Architecture to the more malleable x86/x64 architecture(Though still running Linux) during production of THE INCREDIBLES sometime around the early 2000s and beyond, the older rigs could not be used anymore, 
The older files could still be used but only for re-rendering the movies for 3D, DVD, Blu-Ray, Ultra HD Blu-Ray, and 4K Streaming.
But the older rigs could not be used for the newest film because although the software could load the rigs properly, there was so much change to the software that the code does not work well with the new software in regards to textures and skeleton so the characters had to be rebuilt from Scratch using the newest tools available at the time.
And the reason nobody raised a stink about the difference of the models because the modelers looked at the older code and the older rigs and tweaked the newer code to make the transition work… 
With the slight change of lighting due to Pixar having used a Ray-Tracing algorithm in their RENDERMAN renderer since CARS in 2006.
But then Incredibles 2 was released in 2018….
Ok so people didn’t raise a stink about the change of Software but like I said, the characters had to have newer models due to the change of hardware and Software since 2002-2004.
But then I saw on Facebook in 2023 this post about somebody complaining about the change of rig and rendering used for Tony Rydinger and how he looks different compared to the 2004 film.
Apparently, the FACEBOOK user preferred TONY's 2004 plastic face and stiff turtleneck
instead of his newer 2018 Subsurface Scattered raytraced face with a realistic turtleneck.
It’s almost as if that guy who made the post just doesn’t give a crap about software or hardware compatibility and just thinks that everything in CG animation should be compatible from version to version even if the lighting had to change due to changes in Ray-Tracing, Texturing, and subsurface scattering.
I’m sorry but that doesn’t work that way.
Software changes as new code is introduced and the older code gets shafted.
So in retrospective, you have to understand that most rigs aren't going to be compatible one way or another, that and the fact that the older hardware used more slower CPU power compared to the Multicore systems we use nowadays but then again, these films are rendered using Renderfarms instead of the computers rendering by themselves.
And I know this because I had to render several scenes in my March 2022 Thesis CATTITUDE, all because my College's Renderfarms weren't functioning properly.... well they did but the network connection to the Renderfarms were on the fritz that March.
Anyway, I find it ironic that people are criticizing DREAMWORKS for changing their rigs but people are more receptive to PIXAR when it comes to their rigs.
But then again, PIXAR is having major issues now thanks to the dismissal of John Lasseter in 2017, Pete Doctor's rise to CEO status,
And the fact that the newer films are eschewing their classic rig modeling diversity for the Samey look and I noticed on Social media that people are not receptive to DOMEE SHI’s films, especially in the wake of the Box-Office failure of ELIO.
That and the fact that some people are still PISSED at Disney's decision to force Pixar into laying off staff, including GAYLE SUSSMAN which made people upset because Gayle was responsible for saving TOY STORY 2 from digital oblivion after some idiot ran a LINUX command to delete stuff off the server.
Yeah, that is a true story.
The whole kaboom about some random idiot who ran a Linux Delete Command and nearly killed the movie.
Fortunately, Susman was working from Home when she had to care for her newborn son back in the late 90s.
To a point she had backups in her SGI OCTANE WORKSTATION to work from in the event of that.
Well it was all for naught as the version that was rescued by Susman got deleted once again when Lasseter demanded that the film be a theatrical release and requested a complete rework of the film after coming back from Europe promoting A BUG'S LIFE.
If you want to read the entire story in full, here's an old 2012 article about the incident:
Update as of August 13 2025:
I've read that SHREK 5 has been delayed to June 30th 2027.
And I've read conflicting statements on whether it's a problem with the story which is MEME-centered or whether it's a problem with the rig that was used.
I don't know but I can tell it could be the Rigs used but as I've said, DREAMWORKS no longer uses AMD Opteron but instead uses AMD THREADRIPPER for their workstations so don't expect them to just reuse the original rigs even if you demand it and even if you think the textures should be updated on the older models. As I've said in the past, Software changes and what used to work on the older versions of software might not work well on the newer version due to the change of source code.
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