Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/639267
14 cgw j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 6 Postvis Halon artists created previs and postvis for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, working with Director JJ Abrams and Visual Effects Supervisor Roger Guyett. Sometimes the lines between previs and postvis blurred. "You think of postvis as getting footage shot on the day in which something needs to happen – a set extension or CG element – so the editors can make a cogent story," says Senior Previsualization Supervisor AJ Briones. "Or, you might combine plates. But, there are also CG shots that hav- en't gone through previs, so a lot of post is still previs." Briones gives an example from the third act. "We added set exten- sions and temporary lightsabers to the plates for the lightsaber battle," Briones says. "At the same time, we were doing post- vis on the space battle between the X-Wings and TIE Fighters to track the camera, add snow, take out bluescreens, and ex- tend the shots." And then one day, in between shots in the edited footage, Briones saw a black card. "It said something like, 'The planet explodes. As it explodes, it turns into a sun,' " Briones says. "That was a lot of fun, challeng- ing. You relish the oppor- tunity to do those shots. When I was a kid playing with Star Wars toys, I never imagined I'd be flying those things in a real film. It was pretty surreal." at ILM also created massive environments – set extensions and all-CG environments. "There were a lot of fantastic locations," says Visual Effects Supervisor Pat Tubach. "When we created the 'Falcon' chase se- quence, because the ship is flying at high speed, we had to re-cre- ate a lot of that environment. We had a ton of plates shot in Abu Dhabi, and Roger [Guyett] shot a lot of aerial footage. We used some in shots, some as refer- ence, and some as projections for our digital environments." Tubach worked with Guyett, as he had done on previous films, to manage the crew of approximately 200 artists in ILM's San Francisco studio, 75 in Singapore, 75 in London, and 75 in Vancouver, as well as the work done by 80 artists at Abrams' Kelvin Optical, and at Base, Hybride, and Virtuous. The photography and scans of the desert in Abu Dha- bi, where the village battle, the desert chase, and other sequences on Jakku take place, gave the artists at ILM what En- vironments Supervisor Susumu Yukuhiro calls a "recipe for the environment. "We knew how the sky looks, how colors reflect on the dunes," Yukuhiro says. "You think you know what a dune looks like, but the sun on particles of sand creates weird colors." To make the desert dunes, the artists sculpted 3D shapes, and then projected photog- raphy on top. Because the geometry was so complex, Yukuhiro began experimenting with Isotropix's Clarisse iFX. "That worked fantastic," Yukuhiro says. "Throughout the show, the geometry is big and heavy, but we didn't have to optimize or make proxy versions of the environments. Clarisse doesn't do modeling, but we could bring in 3D geometry, interactively light it, interactively place things in the environment, and then render it. It was a really great way of working." Yukuhiro counts the 'Millen- nium Falcon' chase through the desert graveyard as the team's most challenging. "It was not a technical challenge," Yukuhiro says. "It was an aesthetic challenge. We weren't making another sci-fi movie; we were making Star Wars. Not the prequels, the original Star Wars. Star Wars has iconic shots that are about simplicity, not complexity. For example, in one of the first se- quences, there's a shot of the speeder bike. The camera pans and we see the Star Destroyer in the desert. It's a simple flat shot with the iconic silhouette of the Star Destroyer. We did that shot four times. We really pushed that look." A second major location was Maz's castle. The filmmakers shot footage for that sequence in the back lot at Pinewood Studios outside London. "There was no actual castle," Tubach says, "only a destroyed version. So we reverse engi- neered how it was oriented and worked out what it looked like. Then, using plates from the Lake District in England, we created a picturesque English countryside location with a beautiful, ancient castle. Of course, we then had to figure out how to bring it down in an interesting way." (See "Believ- able Destruction" on page 16.) Trees in the background were a combination of photo elements and CG trees. "Any- time a tree moves, we created it in Speedtree so we could an- imate it," Yukuhiro says. "Also, the grass." The largest environment was the Starkiller base planet, which the ILM artists created by SUPREME LEADER SNOKE IS CG, PERFORMED BY ACTOR ANDY SERKIS AND ANIMATED AT ILM LONDON.