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www.postmagazine.com 24 POST AUGUST 2014 VFX IN FEATURE FILMS der-like alien Mimics threaten to over- whelm Earth's United Defense Force. Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) was sent to the front lines and quickly died during a beach invasion, but when the blood of the alien he killed splashed on him, it gave him the ability to reset time, waking up to relive the same day's events, over and over again. Knowing the outcome, he becomes better prepared each time to fight the Mimics as he teams up with Sergeant Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt), who also hones his fighting skills. Sony Pictures Imageworks created about 430 VFX shots for the film, most of which appear in the first two acts. "The film pushed every level for us," says Imageworks' VFX supervisor Dan Kramer, who worked closely with the production's VFX supervisor, Nick Davis. "The destruc- tion was at a level I hadn't done before, and there were wide establishing shots of the beach with massive crowds. The complexity of the battle integrated digital and practical effects, and required a lot of paint and roto to fill out. And we had to be really efficient about compositing a huge number of elements. Although this wasn't a show with 1,200-1,400 shots, there were hardly any simple shots." Imageworks began with "extensive terraforming" of a militarized Heathrow Airport, lead by CG supervisor Matthew Welford painting out gates full of 747s and constructing a 3D scene with bar- racks, tents and vehicles, populated with hundreds of soldiers. Animators also built highly-detailed Drop Ships, modeled after VTOL Ospreys, but with four props and a large fuselage for carrying troops. For the dramatic beach landings, Leavesden Studio's back lot was sur- rounded by a giant green screen, which made it difficult to achieve "good clean pulls" for compositing, Kramer notes. "There were quite a lot of practical effects on set, like giant gas fireballs and black plumes of smoke. These physical effects and the harsh English weather took a toll on the screens over the two months we filmed there. We created digital versions and comp'd in practical elements close to the actors," and devised a library of digital and practical effects imagery from which compositors could source. Digital pyro was created in Side Effects' Houdini. Pixelux Entertainment's DMM plug-in was incorporated into Houd- ini for the destruction pipeline, which bent and broke models based on the pre-de- fined properties of different materials. All of the effects systems were supervised by Dave Davies and Steve Avoujageli. Imageworks crafted a giant digital hovercraft, an aircraft carrier, and many smaller landing craft for the battle sequence, along with digital water and surf. Massive crowd software was used to cover the beach with digital armies; for them artists matched the look of the heavy practical mech suits worn by the stars "using mocap and hand animation for specific actions," Kramer points out. The fast-moving, spidery Mimics could regenerate limbs. "It was a challenge to figure out how to rig a creature with no fixed form or volume, no fixed number of limbs and with tentacles composed of sharp, angular pieces of obsidian," Kramer recalls. "So we built a procedural rig to an- imate all the small, intertwined tentacles and gave the animators high level control for the overall shape of the limb." The Mimics could also expel one of their tentacles as a kind of javelin. "The tenta- cles had almost molten front ends with double-helix smoke trails in the sky," says Kramer. "So it was a heavy thing to render as there were so many in each shot." Once off the beach and back in the English countryside, Vrataski crashed a helicopter, attacked by a Mimic, into a barn. "A practical helicopter on a gimbal rig went through the barn roof; we added the alien and painted out the rig," says Kramer. "Once inside the barn, everything was digital, including a digital Vrataski at the helm of the helicopter." Imageworks employed a LIDAR 3D scan of the barn along with on-set photogra- phy to build a virtual set for generating new camera plates. Imageworks used Autodesk Maya for modeling and animation, with Autodesk Mudbox for additional modeling. A host of proprietary tools were employed for rigging; rendering was done in the company's version of Arnold with OSL shading language. Imagework's Katana and The Foundry's Nuke were used for lighting and compositing, respectively, and Houdini for fluid sims and particles. Katana originated at Imageworks, but is now sold and supported by The Foundry. PIXEL MAGIC Officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) have taken a step up the educational ladder in 22 Jump Street, where, having made their way out of high school, they go undercover at a local college to crack a drug ring. Pixel Magic's Lafayette, LA, facility (www.pixelmagicfx.com) created 120 VFX shots for the film with Raymond McIntyre Jr. serving as 2nd unit VFX supervisor, supporting Edwin Rivera, the production's VFX supervisor. The major- ity of the shots were part of a lengthy sequence in the fictional Metro City Port, lensed in the Port of New Orleans, where instead of finding a tractor-trailer full of drugs, Schmidt and Jenko discover a cargo of exotic animals, where comedic chaos then ensues. After the animals fled the trailer, a high-speed shoot out on the trac- tor-trailer began. The actors were rigged and shot against greenscreen with the tractor-trailer on a gimbal. McIntyre shot plates of stunt people atop the truck for wide shots. "The greenscreen plates with the actors were shot with lots of camera movement, no motion control," he ex- plains. "The background plates had to be shot with operated camera moves that approximated the motion of the fore- ground, and then we temporally shifted them in post to fit. Once Schmidt hit the CG gantry crane, the netting connect- ing the two actors became CG. Yanking stunt people with a practical net would have been too abrupt and put too much force on them. So the CG net pulled the doubles over the beam. We animated the motion and speed of the doubles in the computer to create a more believable motion path while maintaining their arm Sony Pictures Imageworks created about 430 VFX shots for Edge of Tomorrow.