Computer Graphics World

May 2009 32 n n n n Visual Effects "Working on this film is my proudest moment here at the company, guaran- teed," says Bruce Holcomb, model super- visor, who has built CG models at ILM for nine years. "We put a lot of love and a lot of effort into this film. We wanted to salute 30 years of history." e two biggest challenges for Holcomb and the modeling department were the two biggest ships, the 2000-foot Enterprise and the villainous Narada, a six-mile-long Romulan mining vessel. "We started with concept drawings from Ryan Church that didn't have a lot of technical information," Holcomb says. "ey let us [the modelers] add that." And they certainly did: Some parts of the final models ILM created for the Enterprise and the Narada were so de- tailed the crew didn't need to subdivide the polymesh before rendering. e goal for modelers working on the Enterprise was to pilot the ship into the 21 st century without changing the look too much. "It was the best exercise I've been involved in," Holcomb says. "e Enter- prise is a sacred thing for this company, so we wanted to be sure we thought of every- thing. I have never spent so much time and love on anything." Working from the concept art and from reference footage, the modelers began flesh- ing out the parts starting with the saucer section, which Rene Garcia built to match that in previous films. en, the team be- gan the subtle process of streamlining the ship—stretching it from the original 1300 feet to 2000, making the neck a bit thinner in areas, and otherwise slightly changing the proportions to make it look grander. Although the modelers built the ship using polymeshes in Autodesk's Maya and ILM's Zeno software, Holcomb helped visualize these changes using NURBS in Autodesk's AliasStudio. "I created design curves to give a direc- tional sense," Holcomb says. "AliasStudio lets you streamline stuff you can really see, like the beautiful moment when the Enter- prise comes by the camera and you can't tell what it is, but it feels graceful." e design process for the Enterprise continued for four months. "It wasn't one of those things where you build the model and that's it," Holcomb says. "We were looking at it as days went on, looking at it and caring about it. John Goodson, one of the viewpainters [texture painters], was a model maker in the practical model shop for three of the earlier films. We'd gather around his desk and say, 'is could be thinner. Let's try that.' e look changed depending on the camera lens and how close it was to camera, and every time we saw it, we would tug on something." e other main ship, the Romulan mining vessel, is asymmetrical, mysterious, and a big contrast to the Enterprise. "e general sense of this ship is that it's a night- mare," Holcomb says. At six miles long, a huge nightmare. "Selling the scale of that ship was chal- lenging," Holcomb says. "We always had to do something to make it look that big in CG—details on the windows, vent work. Any time you see the ship in its entirety, it has one paint job. We let lighting speak for it. But, when the camera is close, we painted it on a shot-specific basis." Modelers also created Spock's little ship, which has interdependent flanges that ro- tate clockwise and counterclockwise, and an early version of a Starfleet vessel named the Kelvin, which appears early in the film. Al- though the Kelvin has only a saucer and en- gineering pod, it was a particularly intense project for the modelers because the ship breaks apart over a span of six minutes. "We designed six different stages of damage," Holcomb says. "And the damage included a lot of inner bodywork to give it scale. We didn't go down to chairs and bathroom stalls, but we did beams and girders." (Top) ILM's viewpainters produced shot-specific textures for close-ups of the six-mile-long Narada, but one well-lit map created the nightmarish vision when the entire ship was visible. (Bottom) modelers sculpted a streamlined version of the Enterprise with great care and respect for tradition.

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