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e d i t i o n 1 , 2 0 1 8 | c g w 9 F I R E I N T H E G R E E N H O U S E To prevent anyone but him from taking the special herb, Killmonger orders the Wakandans to burn the glowing plants to the ground. "They had some practical flower beds with propane bars on set that we lit," says Craig Hammack, visual effects supervisor at ILM. "We were able to use a few of those shots. The propane gave the actors something to react to and the DP something to expose for. Many of the practical plants needed augmentation to achieve the look intended, so we replaced and augmented where needed with a look driven heavily with subsurface scatter and internal glow. We used our Plume to create fire in the chamber." P O W E R S U I T Black Panther derives superhero strength and power from a special herb he ingests and from a vibranium-powered suit. At the beginning of Black Panther, T'Challa wears his Captain America: Civil War suit. Then, his genius sister Shuri gives him a new suit. "The suit is contained within his neck- lace," says Geoffrey Baumann, overall visu- al effects supervisor. "It comes tumbling out to cover his body. Before it forms, a subdermal glow shoots down over the skin like tribal tattoos. On Black Panther, it's purple. On Killmonger, it's orange." We first see the suit in Shuri's lab, a set extended by Method Studios artists who developed the suit's formation. "The suit is formed from little triangles," says Todd Perry, associate visual effects supervisor at Method. "Each triangle folds out from the previous one and follows a design pattern of the suit itself." When T'Challa and Killmonger are suited up, the suit is CG. "If they're fully in the suit, they are fully digital characters," Perry says. "If they retract the mask, we retain the plate and matchmove the digital suit from the head down to the photography and finesse the connection point so the head doesn't slide around. I think people will miss the fact that anytime they see these guys in suits, the suit is a CG replacement." To create the suits, the crew did mul- tiple photogrammetry sessions using an array of 100-plus SLR cameras that fired simultaneously. The photogrammetry cap- tured both actors and their stunt doubles wearing suits in various damaged states. Method artists created models from the photogrammetry. To rig the models, they put the actors and stunt actors through a range of motions while filming with three cameras. The rigging department then devised systems with deformation correc- tives for animators based on rotoscoped performances. Lastly, modelers modified the photogrammetry models to give the characters superhuman physiques, which resulted in using the CG replacement suits throughout the film. Method shared mod- els and textures with Luma for shots of Black Panther in the Busan chase and with Double Negative for shots of both charac- ters in the final battle. For shots of Black Panther in the nighttime chase through Busan's streets, Luma artists made the suit shinier to reflect the neon lights. Anytime something hits Black Panther's suit, the vibranium technology collects and uses that energy. Luma artists worked with Marvel to create that look and shared the design with the other studios. "We flattened the suit like laying out clothing on a bed, converted the texture set to a set of curves, and the curves be- came goal paths for the simulation," says Brendan Seals, Luma visual effects super- visor. "Over the course of a sequence, it was additive as the suit amassed more energy; the number of uv files was in the hundreds. We triggered events using Hou- dini to send particle simulations through the glyphs, characters, and lines in the suit. Any time animation triggered a bullet hit, it would call on these particle simulations."