Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/110536
n n n n VFX The Unisphere in the lower left of the image is one of the few buildings still standing on the 1964 World���s Fair site in New York City. It���s also one of the few real elements in this image of the Stark Expo site in Iron Man 2, which ILM Singapore built and sent to ILM in San Francisco for final touches. Even so, the artists kept the ideas within the limits of real mechanics. ���We looked at how things actually get deployed,��� Holcomb says. ���We added a lot of flare to [War Machine], but he definitely has a real-world feel.��� On the Surface War Machine existed as a practical suit with a metallic-looking surface on set that the ILM crew used for lighting reference as well as a jumping-off point for the modelers. ���We wanted to capture the feel of the practical suit, but Jon Favreau wanted to go beyond it,��� says John Walker, lead technical director, who helped develop the look of the digital suits. ���So, we introduced more surface texture and played with the materials to get a true metallic response. It was a team effort with Ron Woodall.��� Woodall painted, Walker developed materials, and the combination provided a surface that reacted in the way the visual effects supervisors and Favreau wanted when lit. ���Most of his armor is a dark, black metal,��� Walker says of War Machine. ���His face plates and biceps were sort of a brushed aluminum, and we didn���t want the aluminum to pop more than the rest of the armor. Also, he was in a dark environment, so we needed a nice sheen with good edges. We have to do a lot of tweaking to get material to read as raw metal, and paint to read as dull or shiny paint. Ron [Woodall] and I tried to hit the artwork exactly, but in the end, it���s what looks best.��� New shaders that worked with the new energy-conserving lighting technology helped fit the characters into footage shot on location under artificial lighting, and look real in digital environments. ���We [created] materials that behaved better, were more energy-conserving, and promised to be easier to use when they got to sequence lighting,��� Walker says. Special settings helped the crew match Iron Man���s look from the first film. Until Terminator, 20 May 2010 TDs set separate values for specular and reflection. Now, specular and reflection are one and the same; they���re unified and grounded in physics. Even so, some technical directors who had honed their skills using the former methods continued working with the familiar lighting tools. For his part, Snow prefers the new tools and believes they help the lighting artists mature as filmmakers (see ���Just Like the Movies,��� pg. 18). ���I actually did a shot on this show, a chase scene under the freeway, and it was like lighting a shot on set,��� Snow says. ���I could go in with a blank slate and create a set of lights from environment spheres shot on set, and put those lights in my scene just like in the real world. Doug [Smythe] has created a suite of plug-ins for managing the new lighting tools that made the process easy; it was very intuitive. You can get something out of the box now that looks real, so you can spend your effort thinking about how a director of photography would approach the shot. It���s not about, Does this suit look like metal? It���s about, How can I approach this creatively?��� On the Ground In addition to building the digital prosthetics���that is, the parts of the suit that the actors didn���t wear���the full suits, and the drones, ILM created huge environments in which much of the action takes place. In the film, Tony Stark rebuilds the Stark Expo that his father had created as a modern-day technology expo. In reality, the action takes place in New York City on the site of the 1964 World���s Fair, which is now a park. Whenever possible, ILM started with helicopter plates of that site shot by Sirrs, and then replaced everything except the freeways and the Unisphere, one of the few World���s Fair buildings still there. ILM constructed all the other buildings seen in the film as well as the grounds. The challenges were creative and technical. ���Mike Riva, the production designer, had created the expo design, but Jon [Favreau] didn���t ever quite say, ���This is it,��������� Snow says. ���So, when location photography ended and we had to build the site in postproduction, we asked Jon to articulate what he didn���t like.��� Favreau told them that he felt the art was too Blade Runner- and Minority Report-ish. More importantly, he told them that he had grown up in Queens, across the road from the site. ���We thought that maybe he was trying to imagine what this fair was like in his youth,��� Snow says. ���And if you think of his style, it���s kind of retro. So, we used the 1964 World���s Fair as the departure point. We tried to capture the essence of that and update it, and it was a win.��� The crew found a world of reference on the Internet and even discovered plans for buildings that had been impossible to build at the time. With the creative challenge tackled, the task of actually building the digital Stark Expo fell to the crew at ILM Singapore. ���They worked largely in [Autodesk���s] 3ds Max,��� Snow says. ���But we also mixed in some of our Zenviro tools for certain fast-moving scenes because we like the motion blur better, and CG water that we created in [Pixar���s] RenderMan.��� Much of the action starts in a Japanese garden in the Stark Expo site. Although Fav��reau wasn���t sure he wanted a set built, Snow and Sirrs convinced him that it would help pin down the action. Everything beyond a 20-foot area, though, is CG. The sequence ramps up with the drones chasing Tony Stark in his Iron Man suit. Once in the Japanese garden, War Machine, Tony���s friend Rhodey, helps him fight the drones. The garden fills with gunfire, sparks, explosions, fireworks, and lights. After several minutes of shooting, Stark tells War Machine to duck. He pulls out new lasers, spins around, and slices the drones in half. And then, with the drones split in half, Whiplash shows up. ���So that gave us the ability to use some of those lighting tools I was touting earlier,��� Snow laughs. ���We used the whips, explosions, gunfire, all of that sort to make something a little more edgy and atmospheric.��� Marc Chu, who was an associate animation supervisor on the first film, led the animation team who created the characters��� performances for this sequence and the others. ���It was a big challenge to make all the characters feel unique,��� he says. ���Iron Man is nimble. War Machine is less nimble. And the drones were like muscle cars.��� Although Cheadle and Downey wore Imocap suits fitted with chest plates to capture the light, it wasn���t always possible to rely on