Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/639267
34 cgw j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 6 solver used. In fact, the decision was made early on to run the majority of the production's pipeline through Houdini, with the reasoning that everything was so tightly coupled together – from postvis, to effects, to lighting. Rendering was done in Mantra for the most part, with the "Essex" destruction se- quence rendered in Maya with Pixar's RenderMan. "Keeping everything within one package was the ideal route because it meant everyone was working off the same platform, and it proved successful," says Hyde. "We were able to develop a very streamlined pipeline by staying with Houdini." One of the main challenges recognized early in the process was how to integrate the live action, animation, and effects simulations. Hyde explains: "A whale breaching or interacting with the surface, for example, would need a representation of the CG water surface for ani- mators to realistically animate to. Likewise, with the action footage of the hydraulics, the water surface has to behave so it looks like it initiated the movement of the boats." To this end, the group imple- mented a high-level postvisual- ization stage before proceeding to shot work. "Here we generated proce- For the feature film In the Heart of the Sea, the digital artists at Dou- ble Negative had to create a number of CG creatures: dolphins, rem- ora fish, seagulls, eels, great white sharks, and a plethora of smaller fish. They also gave life to families of bull, cow, and calf sperm whales that appear in approximately 80 shots. Their "biggest" task of all, though, was to create the film's antagonist: the vengeful behemoth white whale that appears in just over 60 shots. The peculiar behavior of this whale seems almost unbelievable, yet the heart of the Sea story line is indeed real, prompting the filmmakers and digital artists to research and analyze the behavior of sperm whales. The whales, including the antagonist, were brought to life via CGI by the visual effects team, led by VFX Producer Leslie Lerman and VFX Supervisor Jody Johnson. "It was particularly challenging, with a creature of such immense size and power, to push the envelope without going over the edge, since we didn't want to pluck the audi- ence out of this real world and take them into a fantasy realm," says Johnson. "Each time we conceptualized an action sequence that involved the main whale or any of the secondary whales, we sent it off to our experts and we'd discuss how plausible it was and what other behaviors they might suggest. It gave us a great spectrum from which to work." PROCESSING THE WHALES DNeg's Tosh Elliott modeled all the sperm whales in the film. While there was an abundance of available photography, ana- tomical drawings were few and far between. To help maintain realism, whale expert Dr. Luke Rendell provided feedback during the process. "For instance, we discovered that whales do not have binocular vision, so both eyeballs would not be visible when directly facing a whale," Elliott explains. Elliott started with the sperm whales and built them to accurately reflect real whales. A great deal of concept art, however, was done for the main whale, which needed to be an older character, not a sea monster. According to Production Designer Mark Tildesley, it was im- portant to ensure that this whale felt like a living presence in the film. The modelers shared topology among the adult secondary whales. Only the calf and dead bull were different enough to warrant their own unique structure. Extra details, such as wrinkles on the tails, were added to the characters in Autodesk's Maya and Pixolog- ic's ZBrush. "We decided against a full-blown muscle system for the whales because the amount of blubber surrounding the muscles obscured them," says Kieron Helsdon, CG supervisor at DNeg. The final bull and cow models were a realistic 52 feet and 36 feet long, respectively, while the behemoth was a whopping 95 feet long, weighing approximately 80 tons, with a tail spanning 20 feet – nearly double the size of the other whales in the film. Laetitia Gabrielli textured the whale family in The Foundry's Mari, using variants so the whales did not look the same. She also added the small remora fish attached to the whales, which provided scale to these ocean mammals. BATTLE SCARS The large whale, though, required more attention. Initially, the group tried a few images of white whales, and while they looked "fantastic," the pure white color also gave them an ethereal, calm presence – certainly not the look that was needed for this vengeful creature. Research, though, revealed that many older whales start to lose their skin, so the artists made the whale darker but with visible white in patches where the skin has flaked off. "He is also scarred from previous battles with humans and other predators, so his appearance conveys the harshness of his history," adds Lerman. The texture artists reviewed whale scarring reference and how they heal aer skin damage. They also considered the size of the creature and that of a human so the scars would have the correct scale for a harpoon injury. "While creating the scars, we found reference of how they shed their skin, and we ended up having cloth simulations of floating skin, to add to the damaged skin textures," says Helsdon. "This also created some movement and interest underwater." Lookdev Artists Chris King and David Mucci then developed various looks for the creature, depending if it was below water or breaching above the surface and needed a wet look. "We found that with the underwater environments, aer we tested with raytraced