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WRATH OF THE TITANS: Jonathan Fawkner – VFX Supervisor – Framestore

By
Vincent Frei
-

Since its last interview on The Art of VFX, Jonathan Fawkner oversaw the effects of THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER and CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER. He explains now the many challenges on WRATH OF THE TITANS at Framestore.

How was the collaboration with director Jonathan Liebesman?
JL as we called him to distinguish him from JF (me) was fairly easy to work with. He had a pretty good idea about what he wanted to see and how he wanted it to look. He had established an aesthetic for the movie and he was always wanting it to look filthy, which of course we had anticipated so we had plenty of cg dirt and dust on hand to chuck into the mix. That would generally make him happy. But that aesthetic also affected shot selection and camera style which we were careful to try to replicate in our full 3d shots. He and the editor were generally happy to receive suggestion, during the shoot and in post which makes the whole process more collaborative.

How was the collaboration with Production VFX Supervisor Nick Davis?
This time around Nick Davis was 2nd unit director as well as VFX supervisor, so that brought a new perspective on things. He needed to rely more heavily on me for one thing in his absence, but it also meant he had a deep understanding of how the shots were conceived, and had more influence on the look and feel of the movie. He and Rhonda Gunner and the whole team were fun to work with and it felt like a really positive joint effort.

What have you done on this movie?
We were responsible for the sequence involving 3 cyclops that chase and fight with Perseus. We also took on the Labyrinth, involving a huge rock tower, a mechanical doorway, and the ever moving and collapsing interior.

How did you take all the on-set informations such as tracking, lights, topology, etc for the Cyclops sequence?
I relied hugely on Giles Harding the lead data wrangler. He was very thorough and understands how to take and present all the data you would need in a user friendly format. We surveyed the lights and camera for each slate. We took hdr light reference of all the light sources. We shot mirrored and matte spheres for each slate as well as shooting hdr light probes as well as material and texture reference. We also shot simultaneous sky condition hdrs from the top of our building which was not too far away from where the cyclops was shot, on the hour every hour, during the 2 weeks we were shooting the cyclops sequence. We also extensively lidar scanned in colour the locations.

How was simulated the Cyclops presence and interactions on-set?
We had some precanned behavioral animation which we were able to show to the cast and crew and we would then block out the beats with me on the end of 30’ pole and a tennis ball on the other. Old school. I would sometimes make it into shot to be removed later, but more often we shot without.

What references and indications did you received to design the Cyclops?
The cyclops were designed by Framestore Art department while in pre-prod and we had some clay sculpts from the production art department. But the feedback we got was taking it more and more towards a human, which in cg terms is a mixed blessing. It’s a tremendous challenge of course but also potentially a huge liability. But we were also asked to differentiate them with physically properties, meaning one was fit, the other fat, and the last needed to be their father so he needed to be aged.

How did you create them?
The cyclops were sculpted in Zbrush. They wore precious little clothing so we needed 3 anatomical humans which is quite an ask. Each muscle and it’s behaviour would be on show and in close up so there was really nowhere we could make economies.

Can you explain to us in detail the Cyclops rigging?
The cyclops was rigged in a number of different phases. Firstly we tried where possible to roll one rig onto the other two, but of course there are bespoke requirement for each one, so every update would usually have to replicated twice more. The body and face were handled by two different teams so they could be worked up along side each other, but the general principle was the same. We would rig until the animators broke it and generated he need for a bespoke shape which would then be modelled and worked back into the rig. For shot specific shapes we didn’t go back to rig at all and would back specific shapes onto the mesh giving us a granular approach to the level of detail required. After that we had a complex simulation procedure to generate fleshy jiggle and skin slide, made more complex by the nature of the 3 cyclops. Old cyclops and fat cyclops wobble in wholly different ways!

Can you tell us more about the mocap session for the Cyclops?
With a character that is so close to human as the cyclops mocap was for Nick and myself the only way forward. We have a state of the art mocap suite at Framestore which we were able to decamp to Shepperton for a week. We hired Martin Bayfield who, at nearly 7’ tall, was the closest thing we could get to a giant. He performed all three cyclops, and really brought three distinct performances. He threw himself around for a week and was really great and bringing energy and dynamism to the characters. We waited for the sequence to be cut, before tracking each shot and running the mocap live comped into the shots. We oriented the studio and placed trees and terrain in the mocap volume so that Martin could navigate the environment in the plates. We then sent 20 odd takes to the cutting room to make selects which could then sit in the cut. What we had in the can was essentially all we had so the cutting room treated the footage like any other rushes, and we had the sequence blocked in under a week. Then of course we had to clean up and finesse but it was a liberation to have that process locked down so early.

How did you manage the Cyclops faces?
These were all keyframed. The problem with facial capture is it’s great if your character has a face! Or at least one with 2 eyes. We took the view that the eye on a cyclops would require some creative work unlike what we could get from a facial performance capture. We constructed the eye in such a way as it could perform some of what two eyes would do. That is to say we through out symmetry and gave the eye more articulation. There was no need in the initial brief for the faces to do much otherwise so we shot reference of Martin Bayfield on the mocap stage to match to, but later in the day we got the call to animate the faces for dialogue. This meant a different and more complete rig especially for the mouth.

During the sequences, lots of trees are thrown and others exploded. Can you tell us more about the creation of those trees?
The exploding trees were houdini simulations of prebroken trees comped onto plate with practical dust and debris. This was then augmented with dust and smaller debris from Maya. The trick to wood is to get the bits to stick together rather than just topple, so we played with the glue parameters to try to get the pieces to adhere and splinter rather than just shatter.

Can you tell us more about the impressive tall tower?
This was a large scale modelling challenge. The real problem here was that it needed to rotate which meant the shadows would be constantly moving. There was no way round it but to model it. But the brief called for hundreds of doorways and entrances, built in the greek style out of the natural rock. It meant a kit of doorway elements stuck into a voxel sculpted tower until we had a monstrously huge poly count, but very accurate shadow play. We essentially matte painted a material onto it rather than attempting a texture, meaning we could be a little more liberal with our modelling style.

At a moment Hephaestus opens a magical door. Can you tell us more about it?
There were something like 200 pieces of stone in the door which were modeled and articulated. This was made to fit onto a greenscreen set piece which had some green moving parts. We were able to match the onset model and augmented the cg stones with a lot of smaller simulated rocks and dust. Key to it all was the ray traced global illumination that we employed across all the shots on WRATH. Really accurate shadows from the Hephaestus character and some judicious light placement, helped sell the shots.

How did you proceed to model and create a so huge and complex environment for the Labyrinth?
Stone by bloody stone. I would have loved to have matte painted the Labyrinth but it was constantly moving so it really did need to be built. We built a kit of stones and architectural elements that we used extensively to construct a number of various doorways. We could then vary them relatively procedurally but there was no doubt there was a huge amount of geometry. Too much for maya which made the scenes pretty unwieldy. We then proceeded to light the sequence as if it was a giant studio. We got advice from the gaffer on the movie, and using the Arnold renderer and realistic light position we were able to match the look that the DoP had achieved on the stage for the non moving parts of the labyrinth. Arnold also gave us atmospheric volume so the td’s were not relying on comp to fill in the blanks as far as the the environment was concerned. Light positions were critical but when you hit a sweet spot the shading really sold it. The other key to it was having a cg proxy for the greenscreen people. When I saw the cg characters respond to the cg light like the actors on the plate then I knew we would have a comp we could believe.

Can you tell us more about the impressive reforming Labyrinth process?
This became the last shot out of the door. It is long at 1000 odd frames and constituted the culmination of the processes we developed thus far. We were able to model the labyrinth almost like lego by this stage, mixing in bits of lidar scan, and we tried to find moments that would respond to the performance on the set from Sam Worthington. We then lit the shot through a moving gobo to give an ever changing light stage. Then it was down to the fx team to throw everything they had at it. We simulated the whole lot in houdini and proprietary fBounce. Each sim got resimmed for volume and you can imagine there was a long pipeline. This was then comped with hundreds of 2d elements and the whole while, it was in stereo.

How did you manage the renders for so many elements?
We just split it into layers. That sounds easy, but it ended up being a very well executed shot. The key was the working relationship between the artists on the shot. By collaborating we were able to get the renders through, relying in the end of course on a lot of comp and work from matte painters to add extra detail, but there is no getting around it, it was a monster shot.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
For me, the biggest challenge was the physical rendering that we employed. I was keen to push the plausibility of the lighting and in Arnold and Renderman we had two tools that could achieve it in production. Of course we needed to retool a lot of the shaders and methodologies that we have become reliant upon in our traditional Renderman pipeline, such that our skin and hair tools had to be rewritten so that we could ray trace them completely. We worked closely with the developers while these tools were in pre-release and it has meant a whole new approach for the lighting td’s certainly, but also for the whole crew as the repercussions of their work become more obvious in an unforgiving but wholly satisfying lighting environment.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?
No. I’m a good sleeper. I just didn’t get too much of it towards the end.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– Framestore: Dedicated page about WRATH OF THE TITANS on Framestore website.





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

BATTLESHIP: Grady Cofer – VFX Supervisor – ILM

By
Vincent Frei
-

Grady Cofer is working in VFX for over 15 years. He participated in many projects at Digiscope as an Flame artist such as VOLCANO, TITANIC or GODZILLA. He then joined ILM and worked on films like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy, STAR WARS EPISODE II and III as well as STAR TREK and AVATAR.

What is your background?
I have been working in the VFX industry for 15 years. My passion for filmmaking began when I saw STAR WARS as a young boy. Not only was I swept away by the imaginative story and fantastic imagery, but I became fascinated by the mechanics of how such imagery could be created. This fascination stuck with me through the years, as I gravitated towards anything having to do with computers and graphic design. I dabbled in various 3D applications, but my VFX career ultimately began when I became a Flame artist, compositing shots for movies like TITANIC and GODZILLA. Then joined Industrial Light & Magic, and worked on STAR WARS EPISODE 2 and EPISODE 3, THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN TRILOGY, STAR TREK, AVATAR and many others.

How was the collaboration with director Peter Berg?
I first heard that Peter Berg was planning to adapt BATTLESHIP for the screen back in 2009. I went to his office in Los Angeles to meet with him – intrigued but skeptical. When he walked in, he picked up a chair, set it down in the middle of the room, and proceeded to pitch the first thirty minutes of the movie. And I was hooked. That was the beginning of a three-year collaboration.

We knew that the scope of VFX in BATTLESHIP was going to be massive, and that a great deal of the movie was going to be created in post-production. My mission was to include Pete in every stage of the process, and to guide him through the long gestation times that accompany complicated FX work.

We at ILM were able to make many contributions to the film, from designing creatures and weapons to pitching story ideas, and Pete was always receptive. But the main vision was all Peter Berg. He is a creative madman — the ideas keep coming. The best thing I could do as his VFX supervisor was to listen to him, and then try to come up with new and interesting ways to bring his ideas to life.

What was his approach about the VFX?
Pete was cautious at first. Early in preproduction, on a scout of the battleship USS Missouri, he said he wanted to have a VFX meeting at the end of the day. We met dockside, with the Missouri looming beside us. He pointed at the ship and said: “That’s real. I get that. I feel that. Your effects have be just as real and powerful as that.”

BATTLESHIP is a mashup: one part classic naval warfare film, two parts blockbuster action/sci-fi. And this pairing of the familiar and the fantastic helps define our approach to the VFX, as we constantly strove to ground the sci-fi elements in reality, to make our work as “real and powerful” as it could be.

How did you split the work with VFX Supervisor Pablo Helman and you?
On location, I worked on first unit and Pablo worked on second. Back at ILM, Pablo and I divided the sequences categorically. For the most part, I supervised the water-work and battle sequences, while Pablo oversaw the creature work although there was some cross over.

How did you recreate the U.S. Navy and Japanese Naval ships?
Authenticity was Pete’s unequivocal mandate. One important aspect of that was filming on the open ocean. He wanted to capture actual naval ships at sea, and not just for visual effect reference, but to put real Navy Destroyers in this movie. Real aircraft carriers.

During the 2010 RIMPAC maritime exercises, we had unprecedented access to the fleet of gathered vessels – filming both from helicopter and a camera boat. I personally had the opportunity to embed with a camera crew on an Arleigh Burke class destroyer. On board, I filmed a number of ocean and ship plates, and captured live-action reference of firing weapons.

The Navy gave us access to a number of Destroyers, providing ILM’s modelers and painters the reference necessary to recreate the ships in great detail. The USS Missouri was comprehensively LIDAR scanned while it sat in dry-dock. The resulting point-cloud data captured precise imperfections, including the dents in the hull from a kamikaze attack.

Can you tell us more about the Hong Kong sequence?
During the invasion, one alien ship crashes down into Hong Kong, tearing through the Bank of China, and splashing into the channel. The sequence was carefully planned and prevized. Our film crew shot scenes in the crowded streets and on the Star Ferry, while an aerial unit captured plates of surrounding buildings and the Buddha statue.

Back in Los Angeles, production designer Neil Spisak created an interior greenscreen set of the office space. Special effects coordinator Burt Dalton devised a clever rig for ratcheting the desks and chairs across the room.

Did the falling tower of Transformers 3 helps you with the one in Hong Kong?
I enlisted the talented team at Scanline LA to execute the Hong Kong sequence. We concentrated on differentiating materials (metal, concrete, glass), and varying the physics of the destruction based on the characteristics of each material. Stephan Trojansky and his team added a number of creative details to their simulations (notice the trees breaking thru the atrium windows as the bank tower falls towards us).

How did you design and create the huge force shield?
The weather dome was an important narrative device to isolate the Navy and alien ships into a three-on-three battle (and thus pay homage to the boardgame). It’s design began in pre-production, with production designer Neil Spisak. His illustrators created concepts of a force field perimeter.

ILM’s art director, Aaron McBride, painted a progression of reference frames, representing the creation of the dome. Then Scanline LA created the effect, using fluid simulations to make the barrier organic.

The aliens launch intelligent, destructive spheres at Hawaii that lay waste to everything in their path. Can you tell us more about their rigging and animation challenges?
Pete had conceived of the Shredders very early on – unstoppable weapons that can be programmed to take out specific targets. Design-wise, they are like a series of chainsaw blades wrapped around a sphere. Pete wanted them to exhibit an incredible amount of speed and energy. The challenge was to imbue them with a bit of character. The riggers provided controls to telescope the shape out and in. Then each individual tooth could animate outwards to create more menacing silhouettes.

How was created the various big environments such as the military base or the freeway?
The helicopter-shredding sequence was filmed on location at the military base in Kaneohe Bay. Second unit had access to one helicopter, which was replicated. The entire environment was then photomodeled and recreated digitally for some of the virtual camera shots.

The freeway was first shot on location in Hawaii. Then a matching section of it was rebuilt in Baton Rouge, at Celtic Studios. The greenscreen set-piece was constructed to be shredded from one side to the other, with various cars being ratcheted in the air along the way.

Can you tell us more about the shooting process and the benefits of using ILM’s grey suits?
I believe that some of the most effective motion capture can happen during principal photography, on location, with all of the filmmaking ingredients: the director, the DP, the lighting, everything. The suits are part of ILM’s Imocap system, our patented on set tracking system for this kind of performance capture.

How did you manage the difficult task for the tracking?
For this show we were able to streamline the process — recording data from set using a single HD witness camera offset from the motion picture camera. When combined with production plates, the other data the system captures during the performance and the witness camera footage Imocap provides very accurate 3D spacial data.

How did you collaborate with the previz teams?
BATTLESHIP made extensive use of both previs and postvis. Two companies, Halon and The Third Floor, provided Peter Berg with impressively quick scene visualizations, allowing him to investigate creative ideas. For planning such a complex film shoot, with its plethora of complicated action set-pieces, pre-visualization was mandatory.

As ILM developed the assets, we would supply the previz companies with models and textures. And likewise they would send camera animation back to ILM as a starting point for some shots. They also supplied technical camera data prior to the shoot, to help inform the capture of VFX plates.

Can you tell us more about the design of the various aliens ships and armors?
Production Designer Neil Spisak and Art Director Aaron Haye led a group of illustrators, generating pages and pages of concept art. The alien ships, called Stingers, were inspired by water bugs, which have the ability to stand and maneuver on top of a water surface. It was crucial to the Director that the alien technology feel practical, instead of merely ornamental. And for everything, Pete wanted a sense of age, of history – so when we encounter this alien race, the tools, the armor, and especially the ships feel used and worn.

Back at ILM, we created different silhouettes for each Stinger, varying aspects of their weaponry, defenses, and propulsion. And we customized each ship with its own color and lighting. We noticed how our own Navy ships tend to be simplistic below, along the hull, and more complex on the top surfaces, with clusters of towers and radars and antennae. So for the alien ships we inverted that ratio, simplifying the top surfaces, and then clustering detail — hoses, ports, cargo doors — onto the underside.

Another feature of the ships is their “intelligent surface”. We hypothesized that the alien technology allowed for data and energy to travel along the outer surfaces of their ships. This helped bring the ships to life.

Have you developed new tools for the water?
BATTLESHIP presented a host of CG water challenges. Not only do the alien ships breech up out of the ocean, and leap around the ocean surface, but they are designed to constantly recycle water — pulling fluid up via hoses, and then cascading it back out though water ports. This constant flow of water becomes a major component of the Stinger’s character. Further, since many of the ships get sunk, the destruction had to be coupled with our water simulations, so that fractured pieces of an exploding ship had to splash down into the surrounding CG water.

It became clear early on that we were going to have to take it to the next level. So, in 2010 we started the ‘Battleship Water Project’ — and over the course of a year we reengineered how we tackle large-scale fluid simulation and rendering at ILM. Considering our system at the time had been honored with a Sci-Tech Award from the Academy just a couple of years earlier, we didn’t make the decision lightly.

Our goal was to fully represent the lifespan of a water droplet. So if we are recreating a cascade or waterfall, the water begins as a simmed mesh, with all of the appropriate collisions as it bounces along various surfaces. And then the streams begin to break-up into smaller clusters, and then into tiny droplets, and finally into mist. And along that evolution from dense water to mist, the particles become progressively more influenced by airfields.

The movie features a large number of explosions. How did you create these and were they full CG or did you used some real elements?
For explosive ship destruction, we watched hours of naval war footage, and collected videos of Navy sink exercises, where decommissioned ships are used for target practice. Our research indicated how diverse practical explosions and smoke could be. We strove to emulate that diversity in our FX work, layering fast, popping explosions with slower gas burns; mixing pyroclastic black smoke with diffuse white wisps. We relied heavily on ILM’s proprietary Plume high-speed simulation and rendering tool for generating these effects, and employed our new Cell method for combining multiple Plume simulations into one combined volume.

How did you create the impressive explosion (with its shockwave) shot inside the boat?
When a Regent peg lands on the deck of a Destroyer and detonates, its energy travels downward, and through the corridors of the ship. During preproduction, Pete challenged us to find an interesting sci-fi spin for this shot. We theorized that a peg weapon was under such extreme pressure, that its inflationary blast could create a zero-gravity bubble, pushing and warping everything as it expanded. The in-and-out motion came from referencing underwater explosions, which tend to collapse inwards from extreme pressure.

To achieve the effect, we designed a vertical corridor, where the far end of the hallway rested on the floor of a soundstage, and the rest of the hallway rose up to the stage’s ceiling. Three stunt men, in Navy uniforms, were pulled quickly on wires up past the camera. We enhanced the shot with CG energy and debris.

The climax features a super long continuous shot. Can you tell us more about its design and creation?
There are a number of complex scenes in BATTLESHIP, but the biggest, most complicated VFX shot in the movie is one we nicknamed the “You Sunk My Battleship” shot. We planned the convoluted film shoot over the course of a year. In pre-production, we designed a set-piece representing the middeck of a sinking Destroyer. It was constructed on a floating barge anchored off the coast of Hawaii. The shot follows the journey of the movie’s heroes, Hopper and Nagata, as they climb to the stern of a sinking ship, while about fifty sailors jump off into the ocean. The resulting shot, lasting almost three minutes, is one of the most complex in ILM’s history.

There are other VFX vendors on this show. How did you distribute the work among them?
Image Engine worked on some of the Thug sequences. Scanline LA destroyed Hong Kong, and provided the weather dome, and additional shots at sea. And The Embassy worked on many shredder sequences.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
When ILM began this project, we realized that with the current state of our toolset, we would never be able to simulate and render all of the water scenes — there simply wasn’t enough time. So it was crucial that the Battleship Water Project provide some game-changing technologies. One of these turned out to be multi-threading – simulations that once took four days, we could now turn around in hours.

How long have you worked on this film?
Three years.

How many shots have you done?
Over a thousand.

What was the size of your team?
Roughly 350 spread across a number of facilities.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– ILM: Official website of ILM.





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

FMX 2012 Report

By
Vincent Frei
-

From 8 to 11th Mai took place the FMX 2012 with an impressive selection of high quality conferences. This was an great opportunity to meet many artists interviewed here and also make beautiful meetings. A big thanks to the FMX staffs!

Here is my report of this edition:

// FMX DAY ONE

The Devil in the Details: Virtual Humans and Complexity
Dan Zelcs, Lead Rigger and Mathieu Assemat, Lead Technical Animator, MPC
Dan starts the presentation with a great reel of a full cg shot of HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE explaining the challenges of creating the hair and clothes. He then details the creation of the impressive shot in HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 where we can see in a full continuous shot the transformation of 6 characters into 6 Harry Potter. He explains the whole process of building full CG head an body showing some great footages. Mathieu then take the stage and speaks about the challenge of creating human parts and cloths for the Beast transformation in X-MEN FIRST CLASS. The shot was filmed but ends to be a full cg shot in order to be more dynamic.

More informations:
Interviews of Nicolas Aithadi for HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE and X-MEN FIRST CLASS.

Gollum to Tintin: Building Creatures at Weta
Wayne Stables, VFX Supervisor, Weta Digital
To begin the presentation, Wayne shows a impressive character reel and then talks about the importance of having a perfect skeleton before doing the next steps. He explains also the muscle importance for highly realistic characters but also for less real characters such as Tintin. He shows a lot of great materials for RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES and THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN. A funny fact, is that Wayne’s brother is a pathologist and that he often calls him to have his advice! To reach a realistic aspect, he talks about this use of face lifecast made on volunteers at Weta that will then gives the skin details and also the use of Mari.

More informations:
Interview of Dan Lemmon for RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.
Interview of Matt Aitken for THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN.

« Man, Chicks are just different » – DI and VFX Case Study
The Chimney Pot
The Chimney Pot team shows a really good showreel of the studio and then focus on their work for a driving sequence for a feature film. Explaining in details the way they prepared and created the background footages with the DoP collaboration. They also speaks about the keying challenges such as the rough edges, they moved on the creation of the cg rain and windshield. Finally the talks about the way their studio has expanded around Europe.

Creating the world of “John Carter”
Ken McGaugh, VFX Supervisor, Double Negative
Ken starts his presentation by showing a great proof of concept with Tars Tarkas. As Dneg haven’t made a lot of creature project at this time, the test reveals that they need to made major changes of pipeline and the work methodology to be able to handle the show needs. The anatomy of the Tarks with their four arms and their big size were quite a challenge and Ken shows to us how they approached it for the shooting process mainly for the interaction with other actors. That’s really helps to see the problem before the shooting and saves some production time. To simulate the size differences, they used many tricks like boxes, stilts and rough Tarks face on sticks. Ken shows to us some of the Tarks camp where the actors trains to move on stilts. The session ends by a shots compilation of creatures work on JOHN CARTER.

More informations:
Interview of Peter Chiang for JOHN CARTER.

Delivering “John Carter” to Mars and 3D Cinema Goers
Sue Rowe, VFX Supervisor, Cinesite
Sue explains the task of a VFX supervisor and its interaction with other departments. She focus on the way she can explain the content of greenscreen and also help the DoP to light the stages with some previs especially for the ships docks. Sue then talks in details about the main challenges faced by Cinesite on this show. It’s the biggest project to date for the studio. She talks about the photogrammetry to help to create the Mars environment based on the materials she takes during the principal photography in Utah. Cinesite has also handled some artistic concept like the wing of the flyer. Sue ends by explaining one of main challenges on this show, the Thern effect and how they used of Houdini for it.

More informations:
Interview of Sue Rowe for JOHN CARTER.

“Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings” cinematics – Technical Challenges
Platige Image
The Platige team starts by showing a cinematic collection of their work for THE WITCHER. They talks then about this new cinematic starting with a script and with the creation of a storyboard. After that they created a previs for the whole cinematic that will help to block the editing and allow to go on the mocap session. For this step, they recreated the stage with the boat dimension to help the actors. Many of them plays more than one character. They shows us great footages of the mocap session. After that they gives us an in-depth look on the cloth and destruction processes. They ends by showing an impressive “wheel of production” on a big poster.

More informations:
Interview of Platige Image team for THE WITCHER 2.

// FMX DAY TWO

The Visual Effects of “Bones”
Christian Cardona, VFX Supervisor, LOOK Effects
Christian presents the work of Look Effects on BONES and the big challenge of a short schedule and delivery date for a single episode. Only 10 days from script to final shot! And all that was managed by a team of 5 artists including Christian. Really impressive! One of his tips: going old school like shooting models and live elements for water interaction to avoid the fluid sim time consuming. He then details his work with the creation of a twister for a specific episode and how he helps the story by augmenting the footages by adding a wood wheel.

The Visual Effects of “Borgia”
Jonathan Weber, VFX Supervisor, RISE
After a brief presentation of Rise FX, Jonathan take place and explain in details the challenges of recreating Rome as it was at the Borgia time. Lots of elements and places were completely different like the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and the St. Peter place. One of the unusual challenge was the blue reflection on the set that affect too much the set after the despill process that turned the image almost in black and white. To deal with this, Rise needs to create unplanned parts of the sets and ends almost in some shots to recreate the whole set in CG. Rise also helps with previs for some specific shots. The presentation ends by a explaining the pipeline at Rise.

The Visual Effects of “Game of Thrones”
Juri Stannosek, VFX Supervisor and Thilo Ewers, Environment Supervisor, PIXOMONDO
Juri and Thilo presents their work on the second season of GAME OF THRONES. Only a part of it in fact due to broadcast matters. Again, the main challenge on this tv show was the huge amount of work to be done on such a short timeline. Juri explains with lot of details the creation of the Shadow creature and the huge challenge of his particular aspect. Thilo then explains the challenge to deliver more than 300 different environment with three new major locations. Finally Juri speaks about the dragons and even if the most impressive comes for the final season, their little dragons are quite impressive.

“Ghost Recon Alpha”: Creative synergy and non-linear production: the challenges of making a game-related movie
Nicolas Rey, Head of CG for Feature Films and Frédéric Groetschel, Executive Producer, Mikros Image
Fred Groetschel and Nicolas Rey explains the Mikros Image work on this Ghost Recon Alpha short film. The second live action feature by Ubisoft. Nicolas talks in details about the shooting process and the work on the various departments. We also have an in-depth presentation of the impressive location. Nicolas talks about shooting challenges such as managing the big changes of weather conditions and how they made some on-set interactions for the drone. One of the biggest un-planned challenge was the massive changes of design for the drone and the warhound after the shooting! Some live action shots have to be recreate in full CG!

// FMX DAY THREE

Montreal techno-creative ecosystem
Alexandre Renaud, Director, Corporate Services, Research and Development, CentreNAD
Alexandre Renaud explains the Montreal city and economy. Showing the main key players in the entertainment industry. Mainly focus on game development and the future of this specific economy.

Strategies and thoughts on film & game convergence: Virtual concept or reality?
Pierre Raymond, President & Head of Operations, Hybride
Pierre Reymond details the most important work done by Hybride on SPY KIDS serie, 300 and AVATAR with some impressive breakdown. And then speaks about fame and film convergence. And then speaks about game and film convergence. And explains in details the shooting of ASSASSIN CREED LINEAGE with a great idea, to project the building blueprint on the floor, that allows the team to shoot more than 40 shots per day! He also explain the asset exchange with Ubisoft and the way to put the city models directly from the game in Hybride pipeline.

More informations:
Interview of Daniel Leduc for AVATAR.

Looking into the past, present and future work of Modus FX : delivering digital effects for film, CGI animated features and creative imagery
Marc Bourbonnais, President and Co-founder, Modus FX
Marc presents the three main activities of Modus FX: digital effects, full CG feature and documentaries. He then explains the challenges of being a multi-projects facility and talks about the future plans of the studio. Marc also talks about the production challenges of the different production domains with the help of simple but efficient curve lines.

FMX Trailer “Globosome”
Sascha Geddert, Filmakademie
Interesting presentation about the creation of FMX trailer by its creator. He starts by explaining how he finds the idea and then creating some concepts. For each major parts such as concept, compositing or stereo aspect of his project, Sascha invites on stages his friends to explains their contributions.

The Visual Effects of The Avengers
Jeff White, VFX Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic and Guy Williams, VFX Supervisor, Weta Digital
Here comes the biggest and most anticipated conference, the Gloria 1 hall was at his full capacity.
Guy Williams explains the work methodology of Weta on this show by showing to us footages of each steps from previz to final shot. He start with a Captain America shot when he jumps out the Quintjet by explaining why it was better to have a full cg Captain America in order to control more the movement and dynamic. Guy then talks about the sequence of the Mountain top with Thor and Loki and then with the huge fight in the Forest between Thor, Iron Man and Captain America. For a specific shot in which Iron Man is pushing Thor face on a cliff, Guy shows some of mocap footages and lots of layers to reach the final result. Finally Guy explain the Helicarrier sequence and how they did the engine destruction and the use of the deep compositing.

Jeff White then comes on stage and talks about the Aliens and the Leviathans. Some unusal references where used for the Leviathan flesh such as sushi. He then explains in details how they created New York in CG by taking more than 260’000 HDR photos on a two months shooting! He shows also lots of props and vehicles to fill the streets. Then Jeff talks about Hulk and the great use of Green Steve, a impressive stand-in full of muscles painted in green. They also created an amazing cg version of Mark Rufalo with a impressive amounts of details.

More informations:
Interview of Jeff White for THE AVENGERS (coming soon).
Interview of Guy Williams for THE AVENGERS (coming soon).

// FMX DAY FOUR

Virtual Production at ILM and Lucasfilm: Reinventing the Creative Process
Steve Sullivan, Senior Technology Officer, Lucasfilm LTD and Michael Sanders, Digital Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic
Truly amazing in-depth looks on the virtual production development and tools made at ILM. The line between previz and final result are more and more tiny especially for broadcast projects such as clone war. All the process tend to be really lighter and less invasive on the shooting sets. The previz tools such as Zvis and Gwiz are really impressive.

“Battleship”: Not just a Board Game
Marshall Krasser, Compositing Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic
Marshall explains the new water simulation approach to meet the specific needs of the show. He shows great simulations video of many shots. He then details the major step such as animation, lighting and rendering for the stingers and aliens. And then speaks about Nuke compositing and the tools developed for the show. Damn the beauty pass looks really great! He mentioned also one of the biggest challenge on the show, tracking ocean water, one other challenge was the rotoscoping process for the Missouri shots with actors because the Missouri was still in pearl harbor docks! The presentation end with an in-depth looks at the huge continuous shot of the sinking ship that take more than a year to finish! And one funny quotes, it will have taken 23 years to render on a single computer!

More informations:
Interview of Grady Cofer for BATTLESHIP (coming soon).





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

THE WITCHER 2: Maciej Jackiewicz (Animation Director), Bartek Opatowiecki (Senior TD) et Lukasz Sobisz (FX TD) – Platige Image

By
Vincent Frei
-

New game cinematic on The Art of VFX with THE WITCHER 2. Maciej Jackiewicz (Animation Director), Bartek Opatowiecki (Senior TD) and Lukasz Sobisz (FX TD) of Platige Image explain in details the creation process for this animation.

MACIEJ JACKIEWICZ // Animation Director

How did Platige Image got involved on this game cinematic?
Platige has already a long history with WITCHER. We made cinematics for the first part of the game in 2006. The game turned out to be quite a success. Our Intro and Outro were also well received by the gamers community, so when we were asked to create intro for the WITCHER 2 we knew that we shouldn’t miss it.

How did you collaborate with director Tomek Baginski?
I’ve been working with Tomek for a few years on various projects almost desk by desk so this was nothing new. He has very good knowledge of 3d animation which helps a lot during production. He also leaves a lot of freedom to artists.

Have you created previs to help the director and to block the animation?
Yes, a previs was very important. It was created by Damian Nenow and his layout team and took about two months.
Animatic was based mostly on mocap and was a draft but quite complete version of the film – cameras and shots were fixed, lowpoly simulations of the destruction of the ship were also created a this stage. Whole slowmo sequence is synchronised to the music so final simulations and destructions had to exactly match the timing designed in layout. All that made the previs much more than just a help, it was a base for all the later work.
We didn’t want to loose any animation work done in the layout stage so all character animations from layout were exported from 3dsmax to motionbuilder for final animation. That was a bit tricky workflow but allowed precise transition between layout and animation.

Can you tell us more about the mocap process?
First, we analyzed and divided script into individual scenes and actions.
We didn’t create precise storyboard since we wanted to capture as much as possible of the action on stage and have freedom later in the layout.
With three actors and three stunts acting simultaneously it was directed almost like a live action shoot. We didn’t have as many actors as characters in the film though, so there was some “juggling” involved. For example, the actor who played King Demawend also played Fat Jester, one of the spectators and even Assassin climbing the ship.
We tried to help actors “feel” the invisible scenography on the set. Luckily, dimensions of the mocap area were similar to the actual size of the ship deck, which allowed us to mark invisible boundaries etc. We also built wooden ramps to simulate the tilted deck which was very helpful, especially during the final fight.

How was choreographed the final fight?
The fight was choreographed by Maciek Kwiatkowski and Tomek Baginski. Maciek played Assassin. He has great stunt skills and is a master in using medieval weapons.
Final fight was divided into 6 or 7 scenes. Most of them were planned ahead, some improvised on the set. We’ve recorded several versions and made final choices at the layout stage. We’ve produced over one hour of the mocap material so there was a lot to choose from.

How did you created the various characters?
Characters were designed in close cooperation with Cd Project RED.
Some of them were based on concepts or models from the game but most appear only in the intro.
The only exception was Assassin who is an important antagonist in the game. He had to look exactly as he’s portrayed there. With all other characters we had much more freedom.
What we tried with all of them was to give each character a distinct personality. We wanted them to feel as individuals even if they don’t live too long.

From technical point of view the creation process was quite traditional. Zbrush sculptures were a base for every model. We tried to use as much as possible of the game assets still each model had to be recreated for the animation purposes.

Some shots are shown in extreme slow motion. How did you manage those and especially on the animation side?
Mocap was a rough guide to these shots. Some animation was based on retimed mocap but most of the shots had to be animated from the scratch. Especially shots with rapid time changes needed to be hand animated. These shots were also a challenge for the cloth simulation.

The people frozen in the ice and the ice itself looks great. How did you do to have this render?
Ice environments were developed and rendered by Marcin Stepien. He spent a lot of of time searching for the final look. We had to keep reasonable render times so finally it’s all a clever combination of geometry and shaders plus lots of particles that were scattered on geometry to imitate ice crystals.
Raw renderings looked really good so we didn’t even have to use a single mattepaint in this film.

Can you tell us more about the water element?
Even though we are on a ship there is actually very little water in the film.
We cheated a little and we don’t really show the sinking of the ship or waves breaking on the board.
Most of the water outside ship is procedural displaced mesh rendered with mental ray. The only liquid simulation that was finally used was the magic liquid inside the ice bomb and blood.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?
I don’t recall any specific shot but we didn’t have much sleep on the last few weeks of production.
Simulations and renderings were polished until the last day. Personally I had all of the compositing work in my hands so I wasn’t bored too.

What do you keep from this experience?
This may be obvious but it’s never enough to remind that in a project like this team of talented and involved artists is a key element.

How long have you worked on this film?
That would be almost 9 months including all the preproduction and additional two trailers that were also created

How many shots have you done?
Over 100.

What was the size of your team?
Over 40 artists were involved. Core team was much smaller around ten artists

What are your softwares and pipeline at Platige Image?
We use a wide set of tools. WITCHER pipeline was based on 3dsmax – layout, rigging and pipeline tools, destruction simulations, rendering were all done in 3dsmax.
Additionally we used Motionbuilder for animation and Maya for cloth simulation. Now we are switching pipeline tools more towards Maya.

What is your next project?
Well, I’m involved in several smaller commercial projects right now. It’s a kind of change after almost one year spent on the cinematic.

What are the four movies that gives you the passion for the cinema?
I always enjoy quiet movies that don’t scream with vfx and remind what’s the most important in cinema too many to mention I guess.
On the other hand I’ve just swallowed all episodes of the GAME OF THRONES and enjoyed it as if I was thirteen again. There are also some classics that I’ve watched ten times.
Recently THE BIG LEBOWSKI which I consider a great life-philosophy guide or ROSEMARY’S BABY which I love for it’s atmosphere and Polanski’s dark sense of humor.

BARTEK OPATOWIECKI // Senior TD

Can you tell us more about the rigging process?
From the very beginning we knew that the animation layout will be done in 3dsmax and CAT. Motionbuilder was also the obvious choice for cleaning mocap data.
We just needed to write some tools to automate exchange of shots between the software we were using. “Shotbuilder” is a set of tools helping not only in that but also enables to automatically create scenes for artists working in next phases of production (simulation, lighting, rendering).

This way it was very easy to move animation from Motionbuilder to 3dsmax, load latest versions of rigs, animation, cameras’ settings and models with shaders, then cash whole shots and create scenes for artists working at next stages. One person could do it for around 20-40 shots per day.

Have you developed specific tools for this project?
Rigging of characters was based on iterations. Animators could use preliminary models with set proportions, practically in the beginning of modelling process.
Shotbuilder enabled almost automatic integration of the project in every moment of animation.

Background characters were created basing on two main types of rigs. Main characters like Mage, Assassin and fighters got their own setups. We used skinfx and psd method for the Fighters setups.
The main characters setups were basing on simple bone deformations and a lot of psd (pose space deformations).

LUKASZ SOBISZ // FX TD

The clothes looks really great. How did you achieve to this result?
Cloth simulation workflow has been evolving since we used Maya nucleus some time ago for THE KINEMATOGRAF (a shortfilm directed by Tomek Baginski).
Since our main application of choice is 3ds max we’ve developed a solid and reliable ways of moving the data between the two packages, so that it’s nearly transparent at the time speaking. It’s based on common *.fbx for geometry and *.mc format for deformations. Nothing fancy here – just a solution that works. All data exchanges is handled by dedicated set of scripts for simulation queuing on multiple computers and gathering it all together for final baking in Max.
One of the most important things for me, when doing cloth sims, is robust and stable collision handling. In terms of collisions, nucleus is the state-of-art technology.
Our setups are nearly always closed in multilayered, complete cloth-rigid structures, and without proper collisions we would have to split this into separate files. That would of course complicate the workflow. We also make heavy use of constraints. It’s the flexibility they give I consider a second big thing about Nucleus.

Can you tell us in detail the destruction process of the people and the ship?
Whole destruction process was simulated with Thinking Particles for 3ds Max.
It’s completely procedural and encourages to experiment and learn new ways of dealing with problems.
In case of the ship, everything had to match with the previsualization. Thanks to the great layering system in TP we could iterate through successive simulation layers and combine everything in the same simulation environment.
It was a real time-saver, especially considering the fact that we’ve started the simulation setup when there was still some ongoing development with the ice geometry covering the whole ship. Same goes for the characters, some of which had to consist of a few layers to get believable results.
For example Clowns cloth fragmentation was a separate piece of geometry. In another shot there was a frozen Marin, who got shot with an arrow causing him to fall apart uncovering layers of skin, flesh and bones.
Most shots were slowmotion so it became crucial to get stable and pleasant rigid body simulations.
There came some help from native ShapeCollision in ThinkingParticles. Very solid solution.

How did you create the beautiful particles effects of the two spells?
To achieve enough level of details and handle multi-milion particle sims we used famous Krakatoa renderer. Particles where driven with thinking particles system, which gives some unique workflows with Matterwaves node. It allowed us to control the emission with procedural maps and uv coordinates for maximum freedom.
The motion was enhanced with fumeFX, which integrates very well with TP and gives access to any voxel field stored within fume’s cache. Another feature that saved us a lot of time was MagmaFlow coming with Krakatoa. Editing particle channels after simulation is finished, streamlines render passes generation and gives additional control over the look of particles.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– Platige Image: Dedicated page about THE WITCHER 2 on Platige Image website.

// THE WITCHER 2 – CINEMATIC – PLATIGE IMAGE

// THE WITCHER 2 – BREAKDOWN – PLATIGE IMAGE





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

The Art of VFX at FMX 2012

By
Vincent Frei
-

Hi all,

On next week that will be the new edition of FMX with its rich program of conferences, great speakers and guests.

Among the impressive list of speakers, some have been interviewed on The Art of VFX such as Erik Nash (Digital Domain) for REAL STEEL, Sue Rowe (Cinesite) for PRINCE OF PERSIA and JOHN CARTER, Thilo Ewers (Pixomondo) for SUCKER PUNCH thus the studio Modus FX (SOURCE CODE, MIRROR MIRROR).

As well as, Jeff White (ILM) and Guy Williams (Weta Digital) for THE AVENGERS and Platige Image team for THE WITCHER 2 that will be on The Art of VFX in the days to come. Do not miss this opportunity to meet these great VFX artists and more.

The Art of VFX will also be present on site and would love to meet you.

Best regards,
Vincent

MIRROR MIRROR: Sebastien Moreau – VFX Supervisor – Rodeo FX

By
Vincent Frei
-

Sebastien Moreau began his career in visual effects over 15 years ago. He worked in several studios such as Hybride, Weta or ILM and participated in projects such as MIMIC, STAR WARS EPISODE II, WAR OF THE WORLDS or THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING. In 2006, he founded Rodeo FX with Mathieu Raynault and oversee the effects of movies like TERMINATOR SALVATION, SOURCE CODE or RED TAILS. In the following interview, he explains his second collaboration with director Tarsem.

What is your background?
I have worked in Canada, the US and New Zealand… most notably at ILM, Weta, Hybride and Buzz Image Group. However, I am most proud of where I am now at Rodeo FX as the company’s President and VFX Supervisor. We are a VFX company continually expanding our personnel with creative artists and executives that share a vision for the company’s growing future.

How was this new collaboration with director Tarsem Singh?
This was Rodeo FX’s second time working with Tarsem. Having worked on IMMORTALS with him, we were familiar with the scope of his vision… which was especially helpful this time since the post production schedule for MIRROR MIRROR was incredibly short. It was the first time working with VFX Supervisor Tom Wood. Tom was aware of our working with Tarsem on IMMORTALS and trusted us early on in the delivery process. Tarsem gave clear direction, carried out by the film’s VFX Supervisor, Tom Wood.

How have you worked with Production VFX Supervisor Tom Wood?
We met Tom Wood in person at the beginning of production on the MIRROR MIRROR set, here in Montreal. We then sent a great team of concept artists and modeler at Mel’s with Tom to get all the concepts, modeling and camera work he needed on a weekly basis. We also sent our camera match move team to do the data wrangling. We then met weekly via Cinesync and Skype.

Can you tell us what Rodeo FX did on this film?
Rodeo FX sent a team to create the concept, starting with the castle. Tarsem told us he wanted the film to have a surreal look. The concept stage is truly important in the process of creating environments. Rodeo FX was brought in as part of the VFX production team to create over 160 VFX shots including: the film’s opening shot transitioning the seasons from summer to winter, the long shot of the Castle and the cliff on which it stood, the long distance shot with the approach leading to Snow White opening her bedroom doors, the interior of her bedroom, day and night sequences of the castle’s exterior, stormy skies, snow falling, computer generated (CG) crowds, Snow White’s courtyard and the interior and background of the Queen’s Chamber and the environment during the Queen’s wedding. Rodeo FX created all the Snow White castle establishing shots.

What indications and references have you received from Tarsem for the castle and its environment?
Tarsem and Tom Wood first planned realistic winter landscapes. Once that vision changed, they referenced the work of legendary illustrator Maxwell Parrish for the cumulus clouds. They also referenced the architect Gaudi for the castle and environment around it for inspiration for the look of the film.

How did you proceed to create the castle?
We started with concepts for the creation of the castle. We started creating the Hi-res model, textures and shading. We spent a good deal of time detailing the asset itself. To ensure being in sync with Tarsem’s vision, we had many discussions with the film’s Production Designer, Tom Foden, and with the VFX Supervisor Tom Wood for every aspect of the castle. We had several detailed discussions regarding textures, architecture, shape, materials, design and the overall look of the castle to be congruent with the Queen’s sense of style and opulence. The castle could be considered an integral part of the story. It’s the center of the Queen’s comfort zone.

Did you use procedural tools especially for trees?
Yes, we used XSI and Arnold.

Can you tell us more about the beautiful transitions between the seasons?
First of all, the snow was created with Nuke’s particle system. The challenge was to have the right timing from beginning to end. The Nuke’s particle system was fast and easy to play with. We rendered different depths and textures of snow… foreground snow, background snow and mid- ground snow. So the snowfall would become lighter and heavier at times for a real snowfall look and feel. We also had an all-winter look in CG, transitioning to a summer scene. We used textures, like an icy lake animating the transition from one season to another. Rather than just use a dissolve, we worked to create something that looked more like a time lapse from winter to summer. The transition we were going for was to be organic, so the audience would feel the sense of time passing with the seasons changing.

How did you handle the many different skies that we see in the room of the Queen?
A big challenge for us in creating the sky outside the Queen’s chamber was to create a fantasy sky with cumulus clouds… some in the subtle shapes of animals. We started by tracking the camera to have a reference for the placement. We then did a huge sky asset for all moods in the movie. We projected the MP in Nuke by loading all 3D cameras, making it fairly easy to have a quick comp for all scenes. The difficult part of the process wasn’t creating a quick comp for each scene. Then it was a matter of tweaking the sky by moving it around a bit and painting the part that showed the most. This part of the process was necessary to have a nice composition for the parts of the sky seen the most. The sky was sent to compositing with several layers making it a little easier for the compositors to animate the clouds on a fix frame, using a warp recipe we developed here at Rodeo FX.

The castle interior includes many digital set extensions. Can you further explain their design and creation?
For the castle’s courtyard conception we tried a lot of different looks to get a certain feel. It was not conceived immediately, but rather, it developed into a process until we got what we wanted. Tarsem and Tom [Wood] provided us with several references to convey what they were looking for. Creating scenes with their vision and our artistry took time, communication achieved over time.

What was your equipment to retrieve the necessary informations during the shooting?
We used excellent camera survey, photosurvey and lidar scans.

How did you handle the lighting challenge for your mattes-paintings?
Since the environment was an asset, the CG guys could easily provide trees and land layers already lit to the matte painters. It was a good base for them to add their magic touch and create those funky skies.

Can you explain in more detail the use of Nuke and Flame to create your shots?
Again the position passes were really handy for all the cg shots to tweak colors and create rough mattes. Most of the sky projection was done directly in Nuke and Flame to allow the compositor to animate the sky on a still frame. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. For example, Nuke is an asset because it can handle big resolution and it’s easy to test the animation because you have a big render farm. But we found the Genarts were a bit unstable in Nuke. Thanks to all the other tools it was easy to recreate the same thing. On the other hand, Flame is much more stable with Genarts plugin, but has some problems handling big resolution.

What was the biggest challenge on this film and how did you achieve it?
Time was a bit of a challenge having such a short post production schedule. However, I think one of the biggest challenges was creating the forest for two different seasons. The rendering time could go up quickly. Using Arnold really helped us achieve a good result with a short amount of rendering time.

What was the size of your team?
Rodeo FX now has close to 100 people covering every aspect of VFX. For MIRROR MIRROR, we used a team of 40 artists.

What is your next project?
Rodeo FX is presently working on THE TWILIGHT SAGA: PART 2 BREAKING DAWN, THE HOST, NOW YOU SEE ME, JACK THE GIANT KILLER and several other films and live production projects that we’ll soon be able to announce. It’s all very exciting… a lot of diverse work all on a large scale.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– Rodeo FX: Official website of Rodeo FX.





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

MIRROR MIRROR: Martin Pelletier – VFX Supervisor – Modus FX

By
Vincent Frei
-

Martin Pelletier began his career in the VFX almost 10 years ago. Before joining the teams of Modus FX, Martin worked at Hybride and Buzz Image Group and participated in projects like ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, SIN CITY or 300. At Modus, he oversaw the CG for project such as SUPER or SOURCE CODE.

Can you tell us about your background?
I finished my training in 3D computer graphics at Cyclone Arts and Technologies in September 2001, yes, just before the attacks in New York … So I had to be very patient to finally get my first job at Hybride Technologie as an tracking artist and render wrangler for 8 months! Thereafter, things have tumbled very quickly. I made the back and forth between Buzz Image Group and Hybride as an generalist artist to finally focus on the textures, lighting and matte painting. Then, I joined Modus FX in 2008, at the very beginning, as Artistic Director in charge of look development for the first 3 years of the company. I eventually decided to leave my machine to gradually take my current role as VFX Supervisor.

This is the second collaboration between Modus FX and Tarsem Singh. Can you tell us more?
Indeed, Modus was selected for the film IMMORTALS to work on two short sequences that allowed us to develop a trusting relationship and to prove our efficiency to Tarsem and his production team. So the door was wide open for a second consecutive collaboration on the film MIRROR MIRROR. The workload of more than 200 shots came to confirm the impression that Modus had left on the first collaboration.

How was the collaboration with Production VFX Supervisor Tom Wood?
Excellent. Tom Wood is a supervisor at once exceedingly accurate in his comments and conscious about the production time. We therefore referred so as to put the emphasis solely on which improved each shot.

Can you tell us what Modus did on this film?
Modus has delivered a total of 194 shots that are essentially 2D and 3D set extension, CG snow and some split screen shots.

What was the real size for the birch forest set?
The interior built by the production measuring approximately 82 feets by 236 feets.

Is the back of the set was a painting or a green screen?
Production first took up the challenge of making a painting of birch forest on black background. During the editing, they had to face the facts that a digital extension would be necessary.

What materials did you use on the set to retrieve all necessary information?
We were contacted by the production after filming was finished, so I have no information about it.

What references and informations have you received from Tarsem for the set?
Production has provided us with a 3D scan of the set and the size and multiple reference pictures. The indications for the choice of trees were used with birch branches at the top only.

How did you manage to recreate the trees and rocks?
The birches are pictures taken by Modus and applied on cards to ease the layout in both Softimage and Nuke. About the rocks, they have all been modeled in mid-rez and textured with pictures of rocks on the set. The 3D volume was more important to keep the rocks rather than the trees.

Can you explain in detail the creation of the set extensions?
Each extension was composed of 2D trees applied on cards, rocks modeled and textured in 3D, a 3D ground and a forest background with generic lighting and shadows generated by the matte painting department. The layout of trees and rocks on the ground was done by the 3D department, then an export to the Nuke of the same layout allowed compositors to make positioning adjustments of the assets until the very last minute to make the final shot. This procedure has also greatly helped us to avoid the back and forth between the various departments to apply the changes requested by Tom Wood.

How did you create the digital snow?
We used Maya to generate several sequences of generic snow at different scales to cover the foreground, the midground and background for the majority of the shots without parallax. For shots with more complex camera movement, we had to reuse the same snow recipe, but make it specifically for each shot.

Modus FX teams have completed nearly 200 shots in 2 months. How have you organized the studio to reach this deadline?
Using an approach that required no specific changes per shots. We divided the 194 shots in 8 groups. Each group was in fact a specific section of the forest. So we created 8 forest extensions that allowed us to cover all angles of a same group of shots.

Have you collaborated with other VFX studios?
Since Modus could not made entirely all the forest shots, other studios such as Rodeo FX and Mokko Studio have received a similar workload. It was therefore essential to have open communication between the three studios to get to create extensions to the same styles.

Have you developed specific tools for this project?
Nothing entirely new, but we adjusted our export tool from Softimage to Nuke to facilitate the transfer of layout scenes.

Except the very short time, what was the other challenge on this film and how did you achieve it?
Without hesitation, the biggest challenge was to build a pipeline that allowed us to quickly change the layout of any shot at the compositing when Tom Wood required to move or add trees at specific locations.

Were there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleeping?
A particular shot in which the camera rotates on itself 180 degrees (cork screw) gave us some trouble tracking since the truncated tops of the trees on the set was visible in the final frame which forced us to track real tree extensions.

How big was your team?
51 people in total including the artists and team coordination and supervision.

What is your next project?
Since the end of MIRROR MIRROR, I work on THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK: DEAD MAN STALKING.

What are the four films that gave you the passion for film?
BACK TO THE FUTURE, INDIANA JONES, THE MATRIX (only the first … like most people) and PULP FICTION. Yes, I know how I looks cliche on my choices.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– Modus FX: Dedicated page about MIRROR MIRROR on Modus FX website.

// MIRROR MIRROR – VFX BREAKDOWN – MODUS FX

© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012





MIRROR MIRROR: Stuart Lashley – VFX Supervisor – Prime Focus

By
Vincent Frei
-

Stuart Lashley began his career 10 years ago at MPC and works on projects such as TROY, SUNSHINE or WATCHMEN. In 2010, he joined Prime Focus teams.

What is your background?
I studied computer animation and visual effects at Bournemouth University. I started in the industry around 10 years ago as a compositor at MPC. I’ve been involved with Prime Focus in London since it came about in early 2010.

How did Prime Focus got involved on this show?
We were very keen to get involved with MIRROR MIRROR (then called UNTITLED SNOW WHITE). Prime Focus has a good relationship with the director and the production company, having just worked together on IMMORTALS, and the character animation work seemed ideal for our newly formed but highly experienced animation team to sink their teeth into. We approached the bid fairly aggressively with a great deal for concept and animation test pieces presented up front. Our animation tests went down extremely well and along with landing us the work on the mannequin sequence, helped influence how the eventual action in that sequence played out.

How was the collaboration with director Tarsem Singh and Production VFX Supervisor Tow Wood?
It was a fascinating and enjoyable experience. I’d worked with Tom in the past and it was useful to have that familiarity there at the outset. Tarsem works with an impressive fluidity on set and although there’s no doubt that he knows exactly the image he wants to create he was refreshingly sympathetic to the needs of visual effects and whenever possible gave us plates that would make our job as painless as possible. Naturally it was exciting for us to be working with a director who has such an incredible visual style to his films.

What have you done on this movie?
We created two 8 foot tall wooden mannequins that come to life and attack the seven dwarfs in their woodland home. We also worked on the Queens ‘cottage on a lake’ environment as well as the magic mirror transitions and a magical zoetrope.

Can you tell us more about the design and the creation of the Wooden Mannequins?
As usual the design started with collecting lots of reference. We had a few parameters to keep in mind whilst thinking about the design. Firstly they had to be similar enough to the real puppets that the Queen uses to control them. Their proportions had to work from an animation perspective and allow the full range of articulation required for the action. There were design elements favoured by production that needed to be worked to and of course the overall aesthetic had to both fit in with the MIRROR MIRROR world and look menacing enough without being too scary for younger viewers. We ended up designing a range of mannequin possibilities and went through a bit of a mix and match process with Tom before settling on the final design.
Building the final mannequin was fairly straight-forward as far as models go. Texturing was slightly more involved. During the sequence the camera gets extremely close to the mannequins so it was essential that the look of the wood held up. The texturing was done in stages allowing distant and mid shots to push through first while textures were up-res’d for the close and extreme close-ups.

How did you manage the on-set interaction for the Mannequins?
All the larger interactions like the smashing beds were done using a live action stand-in. The stand-in was then painted out and replaced with our mannequins. As a bonus this also gave us smaller more subtle interactions like the odd shadow or occlusion or even a reflection we could utilize to help the integration. Smaller iterations like the snow being kicked up were done in CG.


How did you rig them?
The rig setup was pretty basic with it being a rigid bodied character. In addition however the mannequins were setup in such a way that rigid body dynamics could be used for moments when they needed to fall limp and easily blended with keyframe animation.

Can you tell us more about the animation challenge with those Mannequins?
The main challenge was really in finding a good balance between involuntary puppet action and self-driven intent. They had to look like they were being controlled to a certain extent but you had to feel like these things were really alive and wanting to kill the dwarfs. The balance tilted in favour of more self-motivated action with hints of puppet like limpness.

The Queen has an impressive cottage on a lake. Can you tell us more about its creation?
This was an interesting if unusual design brief although perfectly in keeping with Tarsem’s style. The idea was that there’s this ‘mirror world’ that the queen gets transported to through the magical mirror. This world would consist of nothing but a wooden cottage in the middle of a very calm mirror-like lake. The elements of this world would be very simple in form but have an unnatural quality to them. The cottage itself had to be unusual in its shape but when viewed from certain angle would resolve to form the wings of an eagle totem pole.

We designed a few variations always starting with the wing shape and altering the model along the cameras perspective to preserve the illusion. Some of the designs were pretty wild but production designer Tom Foden eventually settled on a much simpler dual cottage shape. The modelling started with basic guide geometry onto which the individual wooden slats could be procedurally generated. This allowed us to easily make tweaks to the underlying shape without repositioning individual slats. Once we were happy with the slat layout our model and texture artists could then work up levels of variation and detail.

How did you create the lake and the skies?
The lake was a combination of shader-based displacement for the calm ripples and fluid fx for the interaction with the queen. Tom Wood asked us to look at examples of very long exposure photography and in particular the smoothing effect it has on rippling water. This was applied to the lake renders to give the shots that slightly ethereal look.
Similarly the skies had to have that real but not quite real feel to them. For this our matte painter referenced photos of real lenticular cloud forms that naturally have a very fairytale look.

At a moment the Queen goes through the Mirror and emerge from the lake in one continuous shot. How did you create this impressive shot?
The shot started out with a blocking process in order to figure out the camera. In this case the plates had already been shot by the time we started work so that very much dictated what the blended camera had to be. Once the position and timing of the plates was locked and the camera and of course the position of the lake surface worked between them, we could then start working in the CG shot elements and the water FX. In order to drive the water interaction we needed a pretty tight body track the queen all the way down to the deforming pleats of her dress.

Can you tell us in detail the destruction process for the cottage?
As soon as we had a version of the cottage with basic layout of slats we started work on the process of destroying it. We ran a number of early tests using physics based dynamics simulation. Our goal was to have this cottage go from fully standing to a pile of rubble and to do so in a way that was aesthetically interesting. Our effects TD came up with a system whereby an underlying skeleton would be used to control which slats gave way and when which allowed for great control over the shapes that were formed throughout the destruction. What we learnt from the FX tests fed back in to the modelling process where further tweaks had to be made.
While this was happening the shot was being blocked to work out event timings and camera movement. We passed these early versions which contained very rough representations of the destruction events to editorial who would return timing tweaks. Once the timing was more or less locked it was just a process of swapping in FX and environment iterations as they were developed.

The Queen had a beautiful zoetrope. Can you tell us more about it?
The Queen uses this zoetrope as kind of a magic crystal ball. Our job was to create the glass egg that sits on top of the zoetrope and the effect that happens within it. For the opening sequence we worked with post house One of Us who gave us the dying rose animation we see inside the egg and of course produced the beautifully animated sequence we are then led into. For that shot we had to build a full CG zoetrope because of how close we needed to get to it. For all other shots the zoetrope is real and the egg is CG.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
Probably the limited amount of time and the huge amount of animation required, not only on finished shots but through an extensive postvis, blocking and editing phase. It was a pretty tight schedule with editorial changes happening right up to the end. We tried to have our teams work in parallel as much as possible.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?
Not really but I probably had one or two mannequin attack nightmares.

How did you manage the work between the different branches of Prime Focus?
The majority of work happened in London with some FX help from the guys in Vancouver. Management of this was fairly straightforward.

What do you keep from this experience?
Really pleased to have worked on a Tarsem film.

How long have you worked on this film?
4 months.

How many shots have you done?
98.

?What was the size of your team?
50.

What are the four movies that gave you the passion for cinema?
ALIENS, TERMINATOR, TERMINATOR 2 and JURASSIC PARK.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– Prime Focus: Dedicated page about MIRROR MIRROR on Prime Focus website.





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

WRATH OF THE TITANS: Gary Brozenich – VFX Supervisor – MPC

By
Vincent Frei
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Gary Brozenich is a CG artist for over 25 years, he joined MPC while the studio only had a dozen artists. After working on numerous commercials, he joined the film division since its creation and will be in charge of CG on TROY and KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. He will be then VFX supervisor for films like THE DA VINCI CODE, THE WOLFMAN or CLASH OF THE TITANS. It is therefore natural that he talks about his work on the CLASH sequel: WRATH OF THE TITANS.

What is your background?
I studied traditional painting and illustration at The School of Visual Arts, NYC. I did further classical studies in New York before relocating to London. During this time I made a living as a modelmaker/sculptor/finisher. Through contacts in the traditional industries I became interested in 3D, it had so much potential. I started a company in London with a few others in the traditional modelmaking field to create photoreal CG imagery for advertising. We competed directly with photographers for all of our work. It was with Alias Wavefront software on Silicone Graphics machines in 1997 and I had never used a computer before, so it was a steep but brilliant learning curve. That company faded after 5-6 years and I went to work at MPC when we were about 12-15 people doing almost entirely commercials on the 3d side. Then film VFX hit London and me very hard at about the same time and I knew it was what I wanted to be doing. I have been a CG Supervisor and VFX Supervisor for MPC since then.

How was the collaboration with director Jonathan Liebesman?
Jonathan was great collaborator from the outset. He came into the show with very strong ideas of creature design and shooting style and methodology. We had seen his previous films and knew he had specific tastes and approaches that were going to create the base fabric of the film and that held true throughout. On our side I came into the project with strong ideas about what I wanted myself and MPC to bring and approaches I thought would help keep the big CG shots held within the grain of what he was trying to achieve. From the start both he and Nick Davis were open to our ideas would embrace them when they fit the bigger picture, and slam us with a tangential challenge when it didn’t. Which was great. “Whats a better idea?” was a phrase he would use often and he’d throw it to us to respond to, sometimes ours would stick and other times not, but it was a good environment. A lot of the crazier ideas came from Jonathan. The Makhai having two torso’s was his concept that took me a while to get my one head around, but once we had the plates and started animating I saw that it added a whole new layer to it. That same spirit of really pushing it and challenging us filtered into all the work.

What was his approach about visual effects?
Jonathan is very VFX savvy. I’ve never had a director ask me what tracking software I use before. He doesn’t overwhelm the process and lets us get on with our work, but he has a genuine hands on interest in the process and understands what he can do with it. Occasionally he’d do his own rough CG blockouts on plates-“postvis”-and sending it to me to save too much interpretation. Its something we are seeing a lot more with younger directors and it truly helps grease the wheels and lets you have a greater short hand both on set and in post.

How was the collaboration with Production VFX Supervisor Nick Davis?
Both myself and MPC have done many projects with Nick before. My first CG Sup role was with him on TROY so our working relationship has spanned a number of films and years. He is always fantastic at keeping the creative barriers open for myself, the artists and animators to contribute with and through him on every film. He brings a huge amount of experience to his projects creatively and technically. He also took on Second Unit directing so his imprint was significant on WRATH. Both he and Jonathan were open and receptive to our input, but would often counter with something bigger. A healthy balance for the show and to ensure their bigger picture was coherent.

What have you done on this movie?
The primary creatures and sequences were the opening dream sequence, the Chimera attack, all of the Pegasus work (both wing additions and full CG) and the final battle after Kronos breaks from the earth, releases the Makhai to fight the humans on the ground and sees his demise. Mixed in there is a lot of one off work, like the gods dying and dissolving, full CG temples and set extensions and a number of DMP’s and others scattered throughout. A lot of creative challenges.

The movie features lots of creature. How did you proceed to manage their interactions with the locations and the actors?
Each one was handled in a different way and often differently on each set up. It was one of the first issues we started to tackle with Nick. Nick was aware in pre-production that JL had a style and a shooting approach that was going to be gritty, hand held and in the trenches. Charlie the production designer was creating an arena for these creatures that would force the actors and stunts to face each other- no matter what. Tight corridors that had to fit a Rhino size creature and ten humans was going to guarantee they would be thrown, trampled or killed.
So we started in pre-production discussing approaches with the stunts, SFX and Nick how to make this look as earthy and integrated as everything else Jonathan was aiming for. The Chimera was too big, fast and agile to have a proxy or “man in suit” to stand in on most occasions. We did have liberal use of SFX wall explosions and kickers positioned around set timed to go off on his path. At first I was unsure if this would cause trouble in post- that we would be too bound to these and it would inhibit the animation too much. On some shows I would opt for adding it all ourselves, but with Jonathans style in mind we would typically go for the plate with the most grit in frame.

The Chimera sequence is pretty intense. Have you create previz to help the filming and to block the animation?
Some of the key shots were heavily pre-vised for technical planning. There was a cable cam brought in for one particularly long shot and that required a significant amount of planning and rehearsal. This shot specifically “stuck to the plan” in terms of the shot by shot methodology of the sequence. There was a geographical layout for the sequence as a whole and the FX breakaway and destructible walls were layed out accordingly. The primary action events were established, but, largely the structure, framing and action was recreated through JL and Sam as the shooting progressed and unfolded.

Can you tell us more about the Chimera creation and its rigging challenge?
The creature was largely designed in pre production before we picked up the sequence. There is a classical idea of the beast that the production stayed true to. The fleshing out of it was the biggest challenge to us. Making it belong not only in our world, but in the visual world that JL was creating for the film. Mangy, dirty and diseased were the major themes but preserving its power. It had to feel like a neglected and battered creature from the darkest wild. The challenges for Anders Langlands (CG Sup) and the rigging team was something we had to face a few times, an anatomical split in a creature that would need to be weight counter balanced by the rest of its body. The trickiest issues were where to place the split in the neck, how far back on his spine would feel natural, how to proportion the rest of the anatomy to compensate for this and how to gracefully handle the interpenetration issues arising from two heavily mobile portions occupying the same anatomical space. These issues were dealt with very effectively and very early on with range of motion studies with Greg Fischer and his animation team.

What were your references for the Chimera animation?
Lions. Particularly a few clips where they attack humans. Nearly every move he made was based on footage we could source.

How did you manage the fire thrown by the Chimera?
It was always a combination of FX and LA flame thrower elements. The creature actually emits an atomized spray from the goats head and a heated vapour from the lions head who’s combination creates the fire. We started each shot with FX elements created through both Maya and Flowline and detailed it or bulked it out with actual flame thrower material shot as elements.

What are the modifications about Pegasus between the previous movie and this one?
It was primarily upgrading existing assets to the latest versions of in house software. Primarily our groom tools that we call Furtility. Also, the horse was less kept looking than in the first so we added longer fur around the hooves and roughed him up a bit.

Can you tell us more about the Gods death that turns them into sand?
Originally it was only Poseidon that had this effect, but as shooting progressed it was applied to all of the gods. Shots were matchmoved and the actors were roto animated to their performances. We did not marker them up as we did not plan do so many or for them to be delivering dialogue during the transition between states. We created models to match the actors at the time of the shot, but obviously needed to deal with a more sculpturally designed version of their hair. The actual destructive process was created using Kali, which is an in house creation for shattering and rigid body simulation with a simultaneous geometry creation/extraction. Once the Kali effect, which gave us the gross collapsing effect, was approved it was the used to drive a more granular particle simulation that gave the sand like appearance. Likewise the initial model that was Kali’d was used to spawn a surface of particles that inherited its colour from the textured and dmp-projected geometry and that served as the rendered hard surface for the actor. This was then introduced in a patchwork across the performers face and clothing through judicious work in compositing using Nukes 3D and geometry capabilities. In some cases whole sections had to be retracked and warped to contend with the changing topology of their faces as the delivered lines.

How did you create the huge environment for the final battle?
It was a combination of plates from two primary locations Tiede National Park in Tenerife and a very different looking battlefield specific location in south Wales. For the initial eruption and the path of destruction that Kronos lead I did several weeks of shot specific aerial photography over various volcanoes and lava created terrain in Tenerife. Nick Davis and I discussed the shots extensively and I shot a number of iteration of each in a few locations to give Nick and JL the material that they would need to cut with. So to answer your question specifically – we tried to shoot all of it, even if we knew it would be reprojected and altered significantly in post. I am a very big believer in having a plate to anchor work into whenever possible. Even if you deviate significantly from it in the final execution of each shot, which we did, it will give the editor, director, supervisor and all of the artists an inherently realistic core to spring from. Following the shoot Nick and I limited our suggested selects for JL and he and the editor cut with those. To aid the process I thumbnailed the storyboard or previs image onto the corner to remind them of the intended composition once Kronos was in the shot. This was sometimes taken on and often a better alternative or a new shot would rise through the cutting process.

The Makhai are impressive creatures. Can you tell us more about their creation?
The design process began at MPC with Virginie Bourdin and our Art Department. Nick had given them an initial brief and we were entrenched in making these tortured creatures that had to have the size strength and presence to emerge from a volcanic rock, but not be too large that they could not fight hand to hand with a human and also be killed by them. The scale of Kronos precluded him as a viable option for a good punch up and Nick and JL needed a scaled opponent to keep the humans occupied and the action flowing in the scene while Kronos made his way to the location. We had a number of sessions and thought we were honing in on a solid design when JL threw us a total curve ball that he wanted them to have multiple arms and two distinct torso’s and heads. For a while we had a hard time getting the idea straight in our minds and how a character like this could fight, but more specifically how it would emerge, run and navigate very complex terrain on its way to the fight. We simultaneously worked it in concept and as a rough rigged model so that we could do motion studies as the design matured to ensure it would function all the way through the film.

Does their double body aspect causes you some troubles especially on the rigging side?
Absolutely, similiar to the Chimera but with much greater range of motion due to the anatomy and location of the split. It was a great challenge for Tom Reed our head of rigging and his team to confront. Many iterations and clever solutions to conceal and embrace the issues as features created the creature that’s on the screen now.

The Kraken was a huge challenge on the previous Clash. For this new Clash, Kronos is much more bigger and complex. How did you faced this new challenge with its amount of FX and particles?
The major difference between the two challenges was the variety of material required to bring Kronos up and move him forward. The Kraken emerged from water and was constantly dripping water which at that scale quite quickly turns to mist and streams.

The step up in complexity for Kronos was huge. The most difficult part was probably the smoke plume that trails out behind him as he lays waste to the battlefield. We split the plume into two main sections: the main plume behind him, and what we called the “interaction plume”, that was directly tied to his body. The main plume itself was simulated in 50 caches that were re-used from shot to shot. Each of those caches was several hundred gigabytes a frame. The interaction plume was simulated bespoke for every shot since it tied directly to Kronos’s animation. That consisted of a thick, dense plume coming from his back, and many smaller smoke trails coming from cracks in his surface. By carefully placing and layering these elements we could create the effect of a single, massive eruption of smoke. We then layered on lots of live-action smoke elements in comp to complete the effect.

All the fluid simulations for the smoke were done with Flowline, and in many shots totalled terabytes of data per frame. In order to handle this we wrote a new set of volume tools to allow us to manage and preview the scenes without running out of memory, then to stitch these all together efficiently at render time. Even so we had to split the smoke out into many render layers in order to be able to get it through prman.

As well as the smoke, Kronos is constantly streaming lava and breaking off chunks of rock from his surface. These were handled as separate particle simulations using Flowline for the lava, and PAPI, our rigid-body solver, for the rocks. Again, these effects were made up of many caches rather than being done in one for speed and flexibility.

In order to bring all these separated elements back together in comp we made heavy use of deep images rendered out of prman to generate holdout mattes so that we could layer everything up in the correct depth.

How did you manage the lava?
The lava was all generated as flowline fluid particle simulations. There was a base layer of ‘all over’ emission from an emission map based on the largest cracks on Kronos’s surface. This was then augmented with extra simulations to create specific streams and flicks as the shots required. These were typically of the order of 10 million particles or so for each simulation. The particles were then rendered as blobbies in prman, using a time-dependent blackbody emission shader to get the correct colours as the lava cooled.

Can you tell us more about the use of Kali for the destruction made by Kronos?
Kali is our FEM destruction toolkit. It allows us to take any asset and shatter it at render time. It’s great for this kind of effect as it gives you a really nice recursive cracking effect – big chunks break into smaller chunks, and again into even smaller pieces. When you’re shattering or collapsing something it gives you a very natural breakup. Unfortunately when you’re breaking up something as big as a whole mountain it quickly generates an insane amount of geometry, so we augmented the base Kali sim by turning some pieces into groups of particles that tracked with their parent chunks then broke up into dust, as well as adding extra trailing particles coming from the chunks, fluid dust simulations and particle simulations with specifically modeled rock geometry. Then in composite we added even more layers of dust elements of top.

Have you developed specific tools for this show?
The main new tool we developed was the volume tools for handling huge numbers of large caches in Maya. As well as loading the Field3D volume caches on-demand it incorporates a GPU raymarcher so FX and Lighting artists can quickly preview changes to the shading of the volumes with basic lighting. The tool is scriptable as well in python so artists can combine and remap densities post-sim, as well as perform more advanced operations like displacement and advection, all in a programmable framework. It’s very cool.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
Kronos and all of the enormous amount of destruction that comes with him. Achieved through a good core of FX TDs led by Michele Stocco and Kevin Mah. A great element shoot and some strong compositors led by Jonathan Knight and Richard Little.

Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?
Everything with Kronos and all of the enormous amount of destruction that comes with him.

What do you keep from this experience?
We all learned a lot by being fortunate enough to work on two of a franchise. Our approach from the shooting methodology, the liberal use of large scale aerial photography and always trying to obey the confines of what the real world film making environment allows, was all driven by our experiences on the first film. Then pushing that in small ways.

How long have you worked on this film?
I was on it for about 15 months.

How many shots have you done?
We completed about 280 but worked on close to 350.

What was the size of your team?
Between our offices in London and Bangalore we were around 200 artists.

What is your next project?
I am on Gore Verbinskis THE LONE RANGER. We are all pretty excited. Its a great chance to work with such a celebrated director that uses the VFX medium so well.

What are the four movies that gave you the passion for cinema?
There’s a lot! But here’s a few:
THE GODFATHER I and II, near to perfect.
EXCALIBUR. It burned into my childhood visual memories quite deeply.
DAYS OF HEAVEN was beautifully shot by Nestor Almendros.
Most everything That Chris Doyle has shot for Wong Kar Wai. He’s a great modern cinematographer.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– MPC: Dedicated page about WRATH OF THE TITANS on MPC website.





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS: David Vickery – CG Supervisor – Double Negative

By
Vincent Frei
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After explaining his work for HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 for which he received a BAFTA Award, David Vickery is back on The Art of VFX. He talks about the participation of Double Negative on THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS.

How did Double Negative got involved on this project?
Ben Lock originally approached us from Aardman and we jumped at the chance to work on the project. Everyone felt that the crew would very much like the idea of working on something that their children would enjoy!

What have you done on this movie?
Double Negative‘s work on the show ranged from compositing multiple GS layers, rendering CG hero characters and crowds, sky replacements, complex wire and rig removals, and painting out the cut lines on characters faces.

How did you split the work between Dneg London and Singapore?
The majority of the visual effects work was carried out by our Singapore office with Jody Johnson remote VFX supervising from London. However, we did a lot of the initial look development and pipeline set-up in London to make it easier for Jody to sign off on.


How did you organize the work feedback and reviews between those two place so far away?
Jody worked very closely with Aardman VFX supervisor Andrew Morley and would then relay briefs to Oli Atherton (our 2D supervisor in Singapore), via Polycom video conferences. It was really important to us that Aardman considered the Singapore crew to be part of Double Negative as a whole and not a separate facility on the other side of the world. Singapore lead 3D artists Cori Chan, Sonny Sy and Leah Low would take charge of hero sequences and give progress reports to London during daily Cinesync sessions. It all worked very smoothly, even the time difference worked to our advantage. When we got in first thing in the morning it would be midday in Singapore and their crew would be ready with loads of questions. The London team would pick up the baton and be working well after our Singapore crew had gone home for the night. Producer Clare Tinsley could schedule London to fix problems for Singapore whilst they were fast asleep and be ready for them when they returned to work the next day!


Can you tell us more about your work methodology for the cleanup and rig removal?
Aardman developed a new technique to create the facial expressions for their characters on PIRATES. They constructed their puppets as usual, with heads made from hand moulded plasticine. The lower sections of the head, including the mouth and all the required mouth poses were created with a series of interchangeable 3D printed parts. This approach not only sped up the animation turnover but also allowed the characters more diverse range of facial expressions than if the whole head had been plasticine. Rather than try to blend the join between the two head pieces before shooting, the removal of the seams (or ‘cut lines’ as we called them) was left to post production meaning that every shot in the movie required visual effects. Dneg’s first task for any shot was to remove these cut lines.

Did you create procedural tools for the cleanup or everything was done by hand?
Our 2D supervisor, Ian Simpson, wrote a Nuke tool that would sample pixels from either side of a cut line on a frame by frame basis and then use an average colour to patch over it. Artists could define the area that Nuke tool sampled from with roto shapes, giving them a precise control over the end result. Some characters also had joins where the head attached to the neck. Aardman were always very careful to disguise cut lines and joins behind beards, glasses, and clothing wherever possible but it was still rare to find a character that didn’t have some join or seam that we hadn’t come across before. It’s very rare in production to find a completely automated or procedural solution to a problem. The organic nature of Aardman’s stop motion animation and the sheer variety or rigs they used constantly provided us with new clean-up challenges. These had to be done by hand.


Can you tell us more about how you creates the audiences for sequences such as The Pirate of the Year Award and the Scientist Convention?
The Pirate of the year awards and the Scientists convention are great examples of our CG character work in PIRATES. Some of the shots feature hundreds of characters yet only one or two of them are practical puppets. To maintain consistency of style across the production all character animation was executed by Aardman, who would then export animated geometry caches and send them to Double Negative where we could rebuild their scenes using the assets we had prepared.


How did you get the informations from Aardman for those sequences?
Jody, Pete Jopling (2d supervisor) and myself would have regular meetings with Aardmans VFX supervisor Andrew Morley. He was incredibly helpful and was able to brief us very clearly on all the requirements of our sequences. We had a lot of creative freedom and were encouraged to develop a strong look for each sequence before presenting it to Aardman for feedback. If we ever had any questions we would just pick up the phone – Aardman were always available.

What kind of elements did you received from Aardman?
For each shot we would receive an hero animation plate containing the practical character animation. Aardman shot using DSLR’s mounted on miniature motion control rigs, so for clean up, rig removal, and set shifts we would get clean plates that would be a perfect repeat of each shot’s camera move. These were really helpful. If a shot required CG character work, Aardman could position the practical counterpart of the CG puppet in the set, under camera ready lighting and shoot a reference plate for our 3D artists to match to.

How did you manage the lighting challenge?
Aardman provided us with HDRI environments for each new sequence or set piece. Dneg London set up lighting rigs using a combination of the supplied HDRI maps placing additional area lights to simulate the diffusers and bounce cards used on set. Small point lights were added to replicate lamp or candle positions in the original plates. We had to work hard to match the qualities of light and shadow in the scans. Wherever CG characters needed to connect and interact we had to rebuild the practical sets in 3D to cast shadows and bounce light correctly onto our characters and help integrate them into the plates. The Pirate of the Year sequence provided a particular challenge in trying to create the feel of a large crowd in very dark lighting conditions. Oli Atherton’s team did a fantastic job at the compositing stage to craft the final look of these shots. It was great to see such a strong look created, picking out details and movement in the shadows with rim lights, letting the rest fall into the shadows to subtly establish each CG characters presence in the back corner of the tavern. The lighting ended up being as much of a 2D job as it was 3D.


Can you tell us more about the pipeline between Aardman and Dneg?
From a 3D perspective the largest pipeline challenge was the initial look development of the CG characters. Aardman provided us with their models and textures along with photographic turntables of the actual puppets against a neutral grey environment. Our CG characters needed to be carefully lookdev’d to match their practical puppets. The show provided a perfect scenario to production test Double Negative’s new ‘V4’ Renderman pipeline; a physically plausible shading system that relies almost entirely on ray-tracing. Initial render times were a little longer than we were used to but the results were fantastic. Small subtlety’s in the way the light flooded and bounced around the models provided a near perfect match to Aardmans practical puppets and we were even able to introduce tiny amounts of subsurface scattering into the plasticine to further perfect the look. We were so confident of the new shading system that we didn’t once need to refer to Aardmans own CG turntable renders.

How did you manage the stereo aspect of the show?
All of the work had to be completed in stereo, which meant that clean-up often had to be done twice – once for each eye. The stop motion really worked in our favour here though as all our clean passes were a perfect match for the hero plates which took some of the difficulty out of the work.


What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
Details like the animators thumb prints on characters, quirky set shifts or random glue spots contaminated every shot. In order to retain the hand crafted soul of the work; Jody Johnson (Dneg’s vfx supervisor) would study each frame and decide which of these errors to selectively leave and which to remove. It was important to Aardman that the work was finished to an incredibly high standard but still retained the Aardman look and this was an incredibly simple yet time consuming part of the work.


Was there a shot or a sequence that prevented you from sleep?
No! Our Singapore team had everything under control. They did a great job.

What do you keep from this experience?
It was a pleasure to work on a film that obviously had so much soul and love poured into it. The beautifully hand crafted sets and characters in the PIRATES served as a constant reminder of how much work goes on before we even see anything! Its not always about visual effects!


How long have you worked on this film?
9 months.

How many shots have you done?
The final count was 393.

What was the size of your team?
25 artists in London and 57 in Singapore.

What is your next project?
I’m currently in pre-production on FAST AND THE FURIOUS 6 as the show’s Visual Effects Supervisor.

A big thanks for your time.

// WANT TO KNOW MORE?

– Double Negative: Dedicated page about THE PIRATES! BAND OF MISFITS on Double Negative website.





© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2012

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