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48 cgw | e d i t i o n 3 , 2 0 1 8 J U R A S S I C E V O L U T I O N : 2 0 1 8 a mocap suit and play Blue, as he had for Jurassic World. "He had undergone hundreds of hours of training, rehearsing, and exercising to get the muscle memory for Blue's posture," McIn- tosh says. "ILM can retarget the data, so Rob could be upright, not as bent over. We knew we were onto something when we looked at the takes and got that predatory feeling. But, motion capture is the sort of thing we use only when it makes sense." Rubinchik sometimes used motion cap- ture almost as previs to put ideas in front of the director, but otherwise, except for that sequence with Blue and Owen, the CG dino- saurs throughout the film were keyframed. In that sequence, Blue circles Owen as she considers what to do, and the motion- capture data gave animators a starting point for the performance. For the final performance, they referenced lions about to attack. "She could leap on him and kill him," McIntosh says. "We build up the tension with her body pose, her silhouette. When she's still, she crouches. She squints her eyes, her nostrils flare. We have shapes in her throat undulate like a crocodile's." Just as Owen is about to touch Blue's nose, one of the mercenaries shoots Blue with a tranquilizer dart – and then Owen, too. Meanwhile, the volcano is erupting. "We shot plates of Chris [Owen] in a practical clearing, then added lava creeping around the sides and overtop of the jeep," says Alex Wuttke, ILM visual effects supervi- sor in London. "Then we had to add a bunch of vegetation that gets burned. We also add- ed lava bombs. We did all the lava and lava bombs with [Side Effects'] Houdini." Stampede The volcano eruption causes a massive stampede by dinosaurs fleeing the smoke and lava bombs. The filmmakers shot most of the sequences on location in Hawaii, but the volcano wasn't big enough for the director. "So we replaced much of the background, put our volcano in, and added effects," Vickery says. "The special effects team had hundreds of feet of smoke tubes and pyro explosions on the ground that they could trigger as the actors ran in the valley. That gave us something to match to, but it's much harder to do that in post than to create all-digital effects. It's obvious when the digital doesn't match the practical. I believe it's the right thing to do – to get as much in-camera as you can – but it's not the easiest way." The mandate for Jurassic World had been to ground the animation in the natural world, and animators on that film had referenced animals of equivalent shapes and relative sizes to build a library of movements. So, animators on this film drew on that library for the stampede. "We could take a run cycle based on the runs of rhinos and elephants, and plug it in to the plate to make sure the action was dynamic and fast enough for J.A.," McIntosh says. "We built the action shot by shot." As they are running, the Carnotaurus attacks a Sinoceratops, two dinosaurs new to the franchise. "Instead of what we've done before with dinosaurs chomping and going back and forth, we came up with the idea of levels," McIntosh says. "We had one going low and one going high. Both dinosaurs have horns, so we looked at bullfights, at how they almost li each other into the air. The animators would shake the dinosaurs' ankles and knees to create impact tremors on footsteps, knowing that later simulations would cause dust to fall off." The Sinoceratops wins the fight and runs away from the volcano. But now that its meal is gone, a limping Carnotaurus retargets onto Owen, who has joined with Claire and a lab tech named Franklin near a transparent gyrosphere. Claire and Frank- lin climb inside, and that's when the T. rex swoops in. As the T. rex fights the Carnotau- rus, it jostles the gyrosphere loose, sending it rolling downhill and over a cliff. For this sequence, the special effects team built a roller-coaster track for the gyro- scope that dropped the polycarbonate ball with the actors inside 45 or 50 feet. "The mandate from J.A. day one was to match the animatronic dinosaurs as much as possible and to use the real gyrosphere when it makes sense," McIntosh says. "Bryce's reactions were so genuine. She said it was genuinely frightening to have that thing drop them almost 50 feet. And, the great thing about the dinosaur animatronics is that if they are working, if the puppe- teers are in sync, you've got it. The lighting is correct. The animal is actually there. It's invaluable reference for the CG. Then we can do CG eyes, pupils dilating, blinks, nostrils flaring, and the audience is not sure what effect is being used." The other main dinosaur fight takes place in Lockwood's granddaughter Maisie's bedroom in the mansion. She has been running through the house to escape the Indoraptor, which had managed to escape its cage. Finally, Maisie runs to her bedroom and climbs under the covers. We see a claw reach toward her. And then Blue attacks the Indoraptor. In this shot, the actor saw an animatron- ic claw, but the fight is between two CG dinosaurs. Animators in London created this fight as well as earlier shots with the animals being auctioned, and one of Owen ILM GAVE THE CG DINOSAUR BLUE PERSONALITY WHEN IT UNITED WITH OWEN (PRATT).