Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/161463
VFX for Feature Films "Neill said let's do this as miniatures — let's not even try CG," he recalls. "It would have been hard for a digital artist — the space ship launch, trees breaking and snapping, dirt everywhere. If you got it wrong it would feel fake. So they shot miniatures at Kerner with five Red cameras rolling simultaneously at high speed." Muyzers says that the variety of work Image Engine handled for District 9 seemed "hard at the time but looks simple now" compared to the diversity and complexity of work for Elysium. "The droids, flying vehicles, massive environments and the complexity of the ring itself — we're so proud of our team. There's not one shot that I think could look better." For The Wolverine, Weta created the Silver Samurai and this effect of the mutant Viper shedding her skin. 16 "4K is here to stay, and we're setting new standards with these features. We worked closely with the Academy [of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences] and their ACES color encoding system to refine what it did on the show. It's still early days for ACES, but it's an absolutely key component to 4K — a powerful way of managing color workflow for the future." Besides building out the Elysium ring, Image Engine added droids and flying vehicles to numerous plates. Actors performing on-set in gray suits were painted out and replaced with digital droids making sure "that the performance of the actor was clearly visible in the performance of the droid," Muyzers explains. "There was a motion-capture shoot for a few crowd shots, and our animators added more detailed animation to the droids, like pop-up gadgets that would show highly-advanced robotics. These included weapons, sensors, lights and even a collapsible police baton." Helicopters were photographed as stand-ins for space vehicles. By painting out the helicopters and inserting space ships of a completely different design, Image Engine was able to preserve the vehicles' interaction with the environment — landing and kicking up dust and dirt, for example. "The integration made the vehicles real and tangible," says Muyzers. "That was absolutely key to getting performances that worked for the space ships." There was room for miniatures in Elysium, too. "I don't believe miniatures are dead," Muyzers says. A space ship crash was done with one-sixth scale miniatures at Kerner Optical, now 32Ten Studios in San Rafael. Post • August 2013 THE WOLVERINE Wellington, New Zealand's famed Weta Digital (www.wetafx.co.nz) returned to the Marvel Comics universe with The Wolverine, the latest in the hit X-Men franchise, which follows Logan/The Wolverine as he tangles with the Yakuza. The company's work on the film was diverse, encompassing characters and environments, which gave Weta's artists "more of a sense of the whole film," says Weta VFX supervisor Martin Hill. The main CG character in the movie is the Silver Samurai, The Wolverine's nine-foot tall adversary, who's not only clad in traditional samurai armor and weapons, but also a mechanized battle suit. "They built a full practical armature of him on-set, and we needed to bring it to life," Hill says. "It couldn't walk or move; it was effectively a place holder or it was used when seen from behind or at a distance." Recreating the design in CG was a challenge because "when the model was created, it wasn't necessarily designed with all the range of motion and articulation needed," he reminds us. "We made changes so it could walk, move its arms and swing its sword around without looking conceptually different from the original." Although director James Mangold wanted "a dynamic and characterful performance" from the Silver Samurai, the villain's suit was "mirror-like and closed" and allowed "no facial expressions," says Hill. "So all the emotion was put into the animation — head nods, dazed or confused body movements. It would look quite robotic if those nuances weren't there." Motion capture footage was used as reference for the Silver Samurai's martial arts' www.postmagazine.com moves and swordplay as was video footage of visiting kendo experts. "Jim wanted the Silver Samurai to move with fluidity and confidence although he was very tall, broad and bulky," says Hill. "The reference footage gave us the nuances to apply to augment the animated performance." Weta developed new render techniques for the Silver Samurai's metal body, without which the character could have looked "too chromy, unreal and CG," Hill notes. "Our inhouse shaders created his surface as damage built up from the fight. We used arc welding footage as reference and discolored the surface to show hits." Animators also looked at footage of traditional Japanese sword forging techniques to craft the Silver Samurai's weapon, which cuts through bone like butter. "Beating and folding the metal, the striated metal effects — we used them as inspiration to create a hot weapon that could slice through The Wolverine's skeleton," says Hill. The company also extended the sequence's two-story, high-tech lab set to appear as if it were 20 to 30 stories tall. In another complex character animation, Weta was charged with helping the wounded mutant Viper shed her skin. As the actress appeared to slice her face open with a fingernail, Weta match moved the performance and added digital elastic skin that pulled at the new skin beneath it. "It took a lot of 2.5D effects and 3D with lighting effects to deform her body," says Hill. Weta aged and de-aged Yakuza boss Yoshida in a battle with The Wolverine using highly-detailed scans of the younger and older actors portraying Yoshida and morphing between them. The company added, extended or ripped out digital claws for Logan and crafted digital doubles to extend stunt doubles' wire work. For a night sequence featuring a dying animatronic bear, the director wanted more emotion. "So we needed to match move the animatronic bear with a 2.5D technique, where we animated on top of the performance to give more expression to the eyes, brows and tongue," Hill explains. "Once we made a new performance we warped it onto the animatronic bear, and with skilled comp work it looked seamless. It was easier working with the animatronic plates than creating a full CG bear to match." For the exciting bullet-train fight, which was shot on a soundstage in Sydney, Australia, Weta extended a short segment of the train set and built Tokyo in the background. "Creating a fully-digital city is a huge undertaking, and not one I wanted to get into if there was a better way," recalls Hill.