Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/135926
Digital Worlds "ILM was the lead house with 520 shots split between San Francisco and Singapore," Guyett says. "And Pixomondo did about 380. We split the work logically, giving ILM the Enterprise, the language of how "warp" works, the majority of the space work, and anything they had been involved with before. Pixomondo helped us through the shoot and took on three big sequences: an attack on the Star Fleet conference room, the big sequence on Kronos with the Klingons, and a sequence inside the warp core. We also had Atomic Fiction do 100 shots and an in-house team of around 12 people at Bad Robot for the rest, mostly simple shots." Halon handled the previs. "We did a lot of previs, but there's an organic quality to making a film," Guyett says. "JJ [Abrams] will always try to improve on his original idea. And once we start on the sequences, they tend to be post-vis'd." action actors an eyelid like the nictitating membrane on an alligator that flips up on the bottom, to make them a little less human." To put Spock inside the volcano, Guyett filmed a stunt actor jumping on a rock at night. "Everything around him in the film is digital," Guyett says. "We did an incredibly complicated lava simulation." Digital effects artist Daniel Pearson used Naiad, fluid simulation software once sold by Exotic Matter but no longer available (the technology has been acquired by Autodesk), to create the fiery lava flows in various resolutions. "JJ [Abrams] wanted a sense that the volcano was getting hotter and more dangerous every time he cut back to Spock standing in the sea of lava," Tubach says. "It's easy to make lazy ocean waves, but we had to have the lava rise and the waves ratchet up in intensity. Dan spent a lot of time choreographing the scene. He had high-resolution Red, Burning Red ■ AT LEFT, simulation artists at ILM put Spock (Zachary Quinto) inside fiery CG lava, and at right, added digital doubles to practical and digital environments. The film opens with an 18-minute sequence set on an alien planet populated with white-skinned people who live in a red jungle. "Their volcano is about to erupt," Guyett says. "Their civilization will be lost unless Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) can drop a cold-fusion device into the volcano to seal it." Kirk steals a sacred scroll from the inhabitants' temple as a diversion and they chase him, while Spock drops into the crater to plant the cold-fusion device. ILM created the jungle set extensions with an assist from Pixomondo and put Spock on a rock inside the fiery volcano. On set, Pine and the actors playing the alien inhabitants worked on a small set with trees and other vegetation painted red. "It would have been possible to film green plants and color-correct them, but it wouldn't have been satisfying," says Pat Tubach, visual effects supervisor at ILM. "We needed the complexity you get in nature. We carried that detail into our CG extensions, which helped bring realism into the scene." By filming the actors with different angles, the set appeared much larger. "They would run," Tubach says. "JJ [Abrams] would point the camera in a different direction. They'd run, and he'd reset again." Because the 20-some actors on set didn't fill the extended environment, ILM artists added digital doubles. "Paul Kavanagh, our animation supervisor, dressed up in a mocap suit and emulated the aliens' moves, and we applied that motion to our digital data," Tubach says. "They integrated well; it helps that the skin tone was a single color. In addition, we gave our digital doubles and the live10 ■ CGW M ay / J u ne 2 0 1 3 splashes in the foreground that were like water sims with extra viscosity, and had different levels of resolution in the mid-ground and background. He started with broad strokes and worked in more detail as needed because a small change could put you days behind." As the lava rises closer to Spock, the camera moves outside where Kirk dumps the stolen scroll and jumps off a cliff into an ocean. The camera travels down through the water. "And there is the Enterprise, underwater," Guyett says. "It's a fantastic reveal. Spock is in the volcano about to die. Kirk is back on the ship, but they're underwater. And then the ship emerges from the water. As the device explodes inside the volcano and freezes the molten rock, the Enterprise flies over and transports Spock out. That tees the whole movie up." At ILM, effects artists started with ideas and techniques they had used for fluid simulations in Battleship (see "Water World," April/May 2012) to have water pour off the Enterprise as it rises from the sea. "The artists still spent a lot of time getting the simulations to look right," Tubach says. "The thing JJ was most concerned about was that the audience understands this is the Enterprise. So as the ship rises, the water stays off the number 1701 on the nacelle." The Spock rescue sequence had a purpose beyond creating tension and excitement. It established a through-line for the film. "The opening set up the concept of professional responsibility