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m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 5 c g w 3 1 on all fours and using their tails, or beating their huge, leathery wings. An impressive fight takes place between Caine and a Sargorn named Greeghan in Balem's boardroom – a huge digital environment construct- ed by Framestore. Below the cavernous, gilded hall of the boardroom is another Frame- store environment, a grue- some DNA laboratory revealed through the floor, which can be made transparent in an instant. The fight that rages through these environments is a com- bination of practical and visual effects, transitioning seamlessly between real-life stunts and full-CG shots. Ramps were built in the par- tial Balem lab set, which allowed actor Channing Tatum, who plays Caine, to skate as if he were using jet boots. The team then removed the ramps, added Caine's boots, and ani- mated the pursuing Greeghan. With the environment built in CG, the artists were able to replace camera moves when necessary and create fully CG shots with a Caine digi-double for any shots that were impos- sible to film practically, such as when the pair crash through a pane of glass. S U P E R S P A C E S H I P S As well as environments, Framestore created several of Jupiter Ascending's spaceships. The most complex, Titus' Clipper, is introduced with a majestic sweep through the icy rings of a planet. At three kilometers (a little less than two miles) long and consisting of close to a billion polygons, the Clipper is Framestore's biggest model so far, a much larger construct than even the International Space Station (ISS) in Gravity. The ship is more lavishly detailed than the ISS, too, "a floating city with a city's worth of architecture," as Montreal VFX Supervisor Chris Lawrence puts it. "Part of the challenge was giving the model enough richness to sell the scale while still looking functional – a chal- lenge the modelers were very happy trying to solve." The dock the Clipper arrives in is just as grand, a sprawl- ing palatial environment with hundreds of individually placed lights and lots of reflective grand architectural detail. A small section of it was shot – a single floor for the actors to walk across, surrounded by greenscreen. Needing to rescue protag- onist Jupiter from the Clipper, Caine and his old friend Stinger enter an armory, another fully CG environment build, to com- mandeer a pair of nimble, one- man fighter ships called Zeros. The ship protects itself by releasing a shoal of Warham- mers – half a million mines that litter Caine and Stinger's path to the ship. With so many Warhammers to weave in and out of, and plenty of explosions and debris along the way, there was a lot of emphasis on choreographing the elements in a way that would be easy to follow visually. "Making it readable was a big challenge," says the sequence's CG supervisor, Andy Walker. "It was all about using different colors to contrast different areas of the shot, backlighting it with explosions so you could see the Zeros. We made the Warhammers slowly spin to make them catch the light, which made them less flat. The idea was that they glistened a little bit, like shoals of fish. Oth- erwise, they would remain black for much of the shot – either all invisible or all too visible." Taking the Wachowskis' vision for their sprawling and original universe and help- ing realize it on the screen produced a multitude of extremely diverse challenges that were equal parts testing and enjoyable. "The variety meant we could never slip into a rhythm, but it was also a lot of fun," says Solomon. "It meant that no two sequences were the same, which is also what's so surprising and appealing about the film." ■ (TOP) ACTOR CHANNING TATUM IS FILMED SKATING ON A RAMP, AND THEN THE SCENE (BOTTOM) WAS DIGITALLY ALTERED TO LOOK LIKE HE WAS WEARING CG JET BOOTS. MARCH.APRIL 2015, Volume 38, Issue 2: COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD (USPS 665-250) (ISSN-0271-4159) is published bi-monthly with special additional issues in January and July resulting in 8 issues per year by COP Communications, Inc. Corporate offices: 620 West Elk Avenue, Glendale, CA 91204, Tel: 818-291-1100; FAX: 818-291-1190; Web Address: info@copprints.com. Periodicals Postage Paid at Glendale, CA, 91205 & additional mailing offices. COMPUTER GRAPHICS WORLD is distributed worldwide. Annual subscription prices are $72, USA; $98, Canada & Mexico; $150 International airfreight. 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