Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/714180
VISUAL EFFECTS www.postmagazine.com 13 POST AUGUST 2016 We have a few different effects animation tools that we have that luxury of being able to activate, depending on what the specific effect is. For Houdini specifically, we found that we had to destroy deform- ing characters. Take a typical CG char- acter, where it has fleshy, muscle jiggle, and skin deformation, and take that and shatter it. We found that we need to use Houdini, and we had an easier time get- ting up to speed and tackling that effect." What hardware platforms are you running? "We are pretty much all Linux for most disciplines, with the exception of the art department and texture painters. They will use Macs when needed, but our primary platform is Linux." What scenes would you call attention to in terms of VFX highlights? "I think there are a couple of things. One is the burning skyscraper I described earlier. It's a CG set surrounding a high- rise building. It's a big action scene with a big fire fight. That burning skyscraper is a hero set piece in the scene and is very visible. That took a lot of ingenui- ty in terms of being able to dive in and get realistic-looking rendering in a very complex scene with a lot of very complex buildings. Just the sheer organization of the scene, and incorporating CG fire, and accurately get the physical reflections to work versus trying to cheat it all after- wards as a reflection in 2D — that was definitely a big challenge." How much is CG in the scene? "The whole building was CG. The scene was shot on a 30- x 20-meter set of a partial rooftop and then we built the city around it and extended the rooftop they were on." What other visual effects stand out? "The other area where we found we needed development and we couldn't use our current tools right out of the box was for 'EAs.' That was the name of the villain's soldiers. They are basically de- mon soldiers. We found we had to build tools to be able to do the destruction of those characters. The creative direction to destroy them was, when they get hit by a projectile, they would fracture into obsidian pieces in the areas of their bodies where they were impacted. We basically had to destroy them with any weapon possible. All the members have different weapons, whether it be a bat or boomerang or gun or bare hands. We found that we had to develop some tools to take a deforming character and shatter it. And sometimes you had to do that hierarchical or repetitively. We'd take a shattered character and continue to shatter it with a secondary bullet hit." The levels of destruction must vary? "Absolutely! We have anywhere from a precision sword, like a katana slicing through a creature, to a baseball bat. Very different in terms of the physics, and we definitely fine tuned it per weapon." When did you wrap up? "We've been done for over a month. I am on vacation right now. We finished in the end of May. We delivered everything in 2D and stereo. It trickled into July, but by July 4 th everything was done. They had wrapped on visual effects." 'Destruction' is a common theme in Suicide Squad. MPC called on Maya and Houdini to execute their VFX shots.