Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1144162
64 cgw s u m m e r 2 0 1 9 and Industrial Light & Magic generating the larger share (494 and 550, respectively), along with Digital Domain and Framestore assuming a number of shots as well, while DNeg, Cinesite, Cantina Creative, RISE, Lola, ScanlineVFX, Capital T, Exceptional Minds, and Perception rounded out the list. Despite Endgame being a continuation of Infinity War, the facilities did not rest on their laurels, with a number of advancements for the latest film, especially concerning work on Thanos, Smart Hulk, and throughout the final battle. "Interestingly, Endgame has about 200 fewer VFX shots than Infinity War, but the actual complexity and length of the shots far exceed anything we've ever done," says DeLeeuw, who was also visual effects supervisor for Infinity War as well as Captain America: Civil War and Winter Soldier, and second-unit VFX supe on Iron Man 3. "A film like [Endgame] is kind of your doctorate thesis. I couldn't have done Civil War without Winter Soldier. I couldn't have done Infinity War without Civil War. And, I couldn't have done Endgame without Infinity War. It was definitely a progression in terms of under- standing the size, scope, and especially the density of the effects in Endgame." Endgame picks up following the dev- astating events of Infinity War, with the universe destroyed aer an injured Thanos manages to activate the Infinity Gauntlet, and half of all life across the universe disin- tegrates, including T'Challa, Groot, Mantis, Strange, and others. However, surviving Avengers unite to take back the Infinity Stones in order to reverse Thanos's de- struction, but soon learn that Thanos has destroyed the stones. Five years pass, and Scott Lang (Ant-Man) escapes from the Quantum Realm, prompting the Avengers to ponder whether time travel is possible and leading Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Bruce Banner (Hulk) to successfully build such a machine in an attempt to resurrect those who Thanos had disintegrated. S M A R T H U L K Avenger fans are used to seeing two sides of Hulk (Mark Ruffalo): the angry, green, mus- cular version and the scientist Bruce Banner. In Endgame, they see a whole new side – Smart Hulk, with the stature of the big green guy but with the intellect and demeanor of the scientist. "I think we pushed Smart Hulk further in terms of what we could do with a digital character," says DeLeeuw of the work, which was handled by ILM. ILM has worked with Hulk a few times in the past, such as in Thor: Ragnarok. But this time, the single character had both brains and brawn. "We spent a lot of time trying to find the right balance of Ruffalo, but not too much, and just enough Hulk," says Russell Earl, ILM's VFX supervisor. "Our creature team of Lana Lan, model supervisor, and Smart Hulk lead modeler Sven Jensen worked to sculpt the perfect blend of Ban- ner and Hulk." This required a new approach, giving the CG character more human-like qualities. So, between Infinity War and End- game, both ILM and Disney Research Studio rewrote many of the programs the teams of artists used for creating the CG movie char- acter from the actor's performance. ILM began with scans from Disney Re- search Studio's Medusa Performance Cap- ture System, a mobile rig of eight cameras and lights coupled with proprietary soware for reconstructing a high-resolution version of an actor's face in full motion, without the use of traditional motion-capture dots. Ruffalo (and Josh Brolin, as well, for the char- acter Thanos) sat in front of the cameras and practiced facial shapes and performed dialog. That information was captured and used as the basis for building the underlying Banner mesh as well as for the basis of ILM's Hulk facial shape library. Medusa tracks the pores of an actor's face, from which a photoreal 3D model is derived. However, the eight-camera solution requires the actor to sit in a studio environ- ment. "We wanted to put Mark Ruffalo on the set with the other actors for a more inti- mate performance so they'd be able to act off each other," DeLeeuw says. "Sometimes when you have your actor in a motion-cap- ture environment, it's very sterile and you don't get the same performance." So, ILM began the solve using SNAP, what was then its current facial solver, which comprises two head-mounted cameras positioned in front of the actor's face, where tracking markers are placed, enabling the facial animation to be acquired on set. The trade-off is that a low-resolution mesh is used, which ILM then reapplied to the high-resolution mesh from the Medusa scan to drive the facial shapes. "We started there but felt like we needed a higher level of fidelity given Ruffalo's ILM PUSHED THE ENVELOPE FOR THE DIGITAL CHARACTER SMART HULK, A COMBINATION OF BRAINS AND BRAWN.