Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/773214
www.postmagazine.com 26 POST JANUARY 2017 in San Francisco was creating two iconic digital human characters: Grand Moff Tarkin, played by the late Peter Cushing, who appears in about 40 shots, and [the late] Carrie Fisher's young Princess Leia, who is seen in one shot. "It took a lot of hard work by a rock star team who took a really rigorous approach," says Hickel. "It's easy to get midway and when problems arise be tempted to use band-aids to fix things and get the shot done. But we knew we'd have to take a rigorous approach to evaluating the model, compar- ing it to archival footage, painting and shading the model. If there were any problems we couldn't use cosmetics to hide them — we had to lift the hood and really fix things." Animators replaced the head of the actor perform- ing the Tarkin character with a younger Peter Cushing head; sometimes they replaced his entire body with CG. "An interpretation has to happen — Guy Henry, the actor playing Tarkin, wasn't doing a Peter Cushing impression. We had to make sure his performance fit in the scene but that it felt like Cushing," says Hickel. "We all got very focused on the details. Toward the end of the process, when we were getting notes from Gareth, we were beyond discussing skin and teeth and really got into the acting." Like most Star Wars films, the epic space battle surrounding the Shield Gate was a massive under- taking for animators. "What made it interesting and fresh was Gareth's direction: It was like shooting live action with immersive sets on our virtual produc- tion stage," says Hickel. "During rehearsals and the early takes, he and the camera operators hunted for angles as the scenes played out — they figured out the best place to be in the middle of the action so we could follow through with the animation." To achieve this, "We pre-animated beats of the battle action and loaded it into the virtual cameras on a loop. On our virtual production stage, here in San Francisco or in London, Gareth could look through the viewfinder and see how the action played out over and over. He could conceive shots and find angles, he could ask us to attach a camera to a particular ship. It's an interesting way to work beyond storyboards and previs," Hickel notes. Autodesk Maya was ILM's workhorse tool for animation and some modeling. ILM also relied on The Foundry's Nuke for compositing, Side Effects' Houdini for particle effects and ILM's proprietary software Zeno, Plume for simulation and rendering, and the newly-developed ILM Flux for digital char- acter reconstruction based on archival footage. During the film's 18-month production schedule, ILM "made the switch" to Pixar's RenderMan/RIS interactive rendering, says Sumner. "From a lighting and rendering standpoint, it was a new paradigm and gave us a new shader set." RIS had a few on-set applications, including on-set LED lighting. "When they were shooting the cockpit on a gimbal, we pre-rendered a number of sequences that were played back on an array of LED panels for natural, interactive lighting on the environment and the actors," he says. Rogue One also marked the first time that the output of our realtime rendering engine was used in a film. "We've been working with Lucasfilm's Advanced Development Group in San Francisco on realtime rendering for features," says Sumner. "A handful of shots for K-2SO were lit and rendered through this pipeline and composited into shots. It's a very positive advancement, and I hope we'll continue to use it in the future." The Third Floor's postvis fed editorial in London where artists filled in backgrounds or added CG characters and elements to produce temp comps. Sumner notes that it was "humbling" to work under ILM chief creative officer John Knoll on Rogue One. "For four years, from the movie's inception to completion, he was the cornerstone," says Sumner. "From the concept of the story through the initial drafts and acting as senior VFX supervisor on the show and one of the executive producers, he poured his energy and creative passion into Rogue One. We all wanted to do the best job we could do for him." ILM upgraded to Pixar's RenderMan/RIS for the film. Autodesk Maya was the primary animation tool.