Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1453602
12 cgw j a n u a r y • f e b r u a r y • m a r c h 2 0 2 2 down to the digital dojo, built to closely match the on-set practical set piece built using Lidar and texture photography. It is here where a practically shot Neo is shown standing inside. Morpheus was a full-hero digi-double that DNeg had to match and blend between two takes of a practical performance, then simulate and transition between two digital costumes to create the final ffects. Throughout the sequence, the artists com- pleted digital head replacements to remove stunt performers, digital set extensions, and set repair to ensure continuity with the dam- aged sections. This all culminated with the dojo being blasted apart, which was craed in a way that it could break and splinter in an art-directable manner, while still feeling grounded in reality. Building IO One of DNeg's larger environment builds was the underground hidden city of IO. "If Zion was a town, then IO is a megacity," says Ev- ans, "towering constructions of farms, fac- tories, and residential blocks, all crammed into a sprawling cave environment." The director wanted the city to feel as if it were built by humans, he notes, but influen ed by the machines. For this imagery, the artists referenced brutalist-style buildings mixed with the look of intricate 3D-printed architecture, along with various clean energy factories and tiered farming plots. All of this helped in designing little vignettes ready for hand placement. The group also spent time working out the logic of life in IO, with farms connected to water irrigation, walkways, marketplaces, and an endless array of tiny details that all serve to make a convincing city. The environments team used Maxon's recently acquired ZBrush for carving the rocks, with additional matte-painted details on top. The crowd team, meanwhile, ran small vignettes of action to help populate the city with peo- ple, while the layout and animation teams populated the background with flying shi s to keep the space alive. Furthermore, the FX team added chimney smoke, layered atmospherics, and a layer of clouds generated by the bio-sky above. These were volumetric clouds that would accurately scatter the light shining through from the sky panels, giving the look that Wachowski sought, while still matching to the production concept images. The number of elements making up every shot was very high, Evan notes, forcing the team to split those elements into numerous passes, making the lighting scenes trickier than usual to template. "More passes means slower and more complex compositing for the artists, plus more renders to manage, so it was certainly a challenge for all involved. But the team did an incredible job pulling it all together," he adds. Mirror Images In Resurrections, mirrors, windows, and refl ctive surfaces have replaced the iconic phone booths/landlines as a way to exit the Matrix. And, size appears to be no limita- tion, as characters have the ability to alter their dimensions to fit in o these escape hatches. In one particular sequence, Neo steps through a train mirror and into his pod membrane. While finding a efl ctive surface seems much easier than locating a phone in the film creating the associated effects was anything but. In fact, Evans describes the train mirror sequence as "a complex puzzle that had to be put together." He details the work. The so-called A side was shot with Neo (Keanu Reeves) reaching into a practical latex/rubber sheeting, giving him something to push against — which was later replaced with a CG mirror and rippling glass; the B side was shot at a 90-degree angle in the hero pod, where Reeves had to re-create the action of his hand pushing through the surface. A few sheets of a gelatin-like membrane were physically created for the actor to stretch DNeg used Unreal Engine to render the CG environments in these shots.