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for Films showcasing the DC Comics superhero. “This movie has it all — a ton of complex environments, a bunch of characters and a lot of effects work,” says VFX supervisor Jim Berney.“Yet it’s not a case of visual overload. Director Martin Campbell doesn’t come from an effects background, so we had to take him through the process, but he brought storytelling and realism to the pic- ture. In scenes he’ll want to see the charac- ters’ eyes and not a spaceship flying by. Al- though the premise is unreal, he wanted a foundation in reality. So, for a giant effects movie, it doesn’t feel like one.” One of Imageworks’ key tasks was creat- ing the Green Lantern’s iconic suit. “In the comic book, it was a black and green suit that could have been done practically, but the suit designer and production designer had the idea that the suit wasn’t something Hal just put on — it was something that changed the morphology of his body; he be- came the Green Lantern with the suit.You needed to see his muscle fiber in it and the Sony Pictures Imageworks provided VFX for the Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation film . Richard R. Hoover served as VFX supervisor on the film, and Sabrina Plisco, ACE, edited. The film features 1,014 visual effects shots, and 1,557 3D stereo shots. In total, 268 Imageworks employees spent 358,000 hours animating the film’s characters. The rendering time amounted to 22,000,000 hours. Luma used fairly low-res geometry to create Havok’s custom rig, then adjusted the number of rings on the energy beam, how fast they moved and their scale. energy within it,” Berney explains. The suit had to be skin-like “but with a depth to it. It had to have subtle layers, but they couldn’t be too transparent or it would be like an anatomy freak show.The suit had to be powerful, strong and alien.” The suit’s energy also had to flow and move around Hal’s body at different levels and stages from “his low-level pilot light to full battle mode with a static electric green aura about him.” Imageworks was also charged with craft- ing the constructs or objects the Green Lantern wills into being and produces from his energy, which flares up around his head and chest, flows down his arm and blasts out in a big pulse from his ring.“The constructs could have been a wireframe, solid or trans- parent,” Berney muses. “They’re made of ‘will’ so they needed primarily to be green. But we wanted these objects to feel real, substantial and tough.” So the animators modeled, rendered and textured real items. Parts of the objects closest to Hal’s ring were more transparent and energy-filled; moving toward the center parts became more realistic. All were col- ored different levels of green. Except for the construct flamethrower whose flame was rendered red hot.“Green fire just didn’t look hot — it didn’t look like it would melt glass, so we did it as regular fire,” says Berney. Imageworks created the fully-CG charac- ters of Tomar-Re, a half-fish, half-bird creature, and Kilowog, a warm-hearted brute with a rhinoceros skin, plus about 35 others charac- ters which are seen close up in the Great Hall.“They’re different lifeforms from around the universe and are mostly off the wall – an eight-legged crystal, a jellyfish, a metal robot, a figure made of boulders,” says Berney. “We replicated another 100 in the background and 3,600 randomly for huge crowds.” The otherworldly nature of these charac- ters didn’t lend themselves to motion cap- ture so their faces were completely hand an- imated.“What’s interesting about this movie 18 Post • July 2011 www.postmagazine.com is that while it features a lot of technology it also showcases hand-crafted animation,” he notes. “There’s a lot of technical innovation but just as much pure human talent.” Imageworks did employ a motion cap- ture-like system for suit replacement shots for the Green Lantern, Sinestro and Abin Sur. The actors were photographed with tracking dots painted around their necks, then the motion-tracked data was converted into muscle movements to enable a soft blend of their necks and the suits. Earlier in the process, facial-tracking systems captured a catalog of the actors’ facial movements and expressions for a one-to-one correspon- dence with the motion-tracked data. “The neck is as complex as the face,” Berney says. “Because the suits come from the cellular level, the CG suits have to track perfectly to the actors’muscle movements.” Although Maya “and heaps of proprietary plug-ins” handled most 3D modeling and ani- mation tasks, the super-villain Parallax, “an amorphous soul-sucking cloud,” required a combination of software solutions, including Massive for the souls “roiling and fighting for position;” Side Effects’ Houdini for cobwebs, diaphanous membrane and connective tissue; and the proprietary Svea particle effects tool. The effects crew numbered 45 people who handled the Green Lantern’s aura, vapor trail, shockwaves and blasting constructs.“The constructs are actually a reverse explosion: We deconstructed the models so they accel- erate to infinity and pop into place,” he says. “The look is comprised of seven different en- ergy signatures crawling around.” Imageworks devised several main envi- ronments for Oa, including the vista of the “hodge-podge” of a city built up over millen- nia from various structures; the Great Hall where the Green Lanterns are assembled; and the alien metal sculpture where Hal is perched during his training sequence and which gives a 360-degree view of Oa. Apart from distant mountains, which were a digital matte painting, the Oa environments were The Smurfs