Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/977547
e d i t i o n 1 , 2 0 1 8 | c g w 1 7 ed on the planet Crait, where the Resistance fighters take cover in a mine, and a battle ensues in the third act. BLOOD-RED TRAILS The mineral planet Crait is stunning. Gen- eral Leia [Carrie Fisher] leads her ragtag band of fleeing Resistance fighters into an abandoned mine here occupied by white Vulptices, fox-like animals covered with sparkling, crystalline fur. Outside, sun glints off the planet's white salt surface, with blood-red soil a scratch beneath the crust. Gouged into the terrain is a long canyon lined with jagged, red crystals. To create the planet, the generalist (digital matte-painting) team at ILM San Francisco worked with plates shot by Ben Morris at a Bolivian salt flat. "The first part of the sequence looks rather similar to the reference photography, but as the ground gets torn up, it became more of a challenge," says Pasquarello, visual effects supervisor at ILM San Fran- cisco. "The whole idea is to have it become bloody red during the battle." On one side are giant, new, gorilla-foot- ed walkers, the AT-M6s, flanking a massive First Order cannon aimed at the mine en- trance. Protecting the mine are the Resis- tance fighters in ski speeders, piloted ships that zip across the surface on one ski. "The mono ski isn't very big, and it's in- tended mostly for balance," Pasquarello says. "But we wanted it to kick up a trail of red." Animators drew guidelines for the ski speeders in digital environments based on previs shots that were updated in postvis to work better with the plates. Then effects artists carved into the crust and sent trails of red dust into the air as the speeders cut grooves into the surface. "It was a three-step process," Pas- quarello says. "The effects artists used the guides for several layers of particle emit- ters. The ski has a shovel-like blade at its base, and we emitted particles under the surface from that, and then we had several passes on top. Red minerals get thrown into the air and emit more particles as they hit the ground." Effect artists also created beautiful red explosions and blasts from the AT-M6s that raise clouds of red dust mixed with white salt. As the Resistance fighters near the oncoming First Order forces, Finn (John Boyega) aims his ship directly into the mouth of the cannon. "It was supposed to be a serene mo- ment," Pasquarello says. "Violent outside, but inside the cannon beam, almost like pure light. They lit him very red on set. We gave four elements to compositing: a tube of light; a high-energy pulse down the cen- ter; plasma – a fluid simulation – running through the tube to give it motion; and an environment reacting to the plasma. Then compositing made it more intense." Finn doesn't stop the cannon. It blasts the mine door, and Luke Skywalker walks out a door surrounded with flames created by effects artists using ILM's Plume. The AT-M6s aim all their firepower on him, creating craters of red. "When Luke and Kylo face off, each shot is a one-off," Pasquarello says. "When Kylo lands, the ground is blood red. As they talk and fight, ash starts falling back down, and by the end, it's pure white again. All the explosions were CG, done by our effects team." CRYSTAL CAVERNS AND FOXES Earlier during the battle, Rey arrives in the Millennium Falcon and lures the First Order TIE fighters on a fast flight into and through a narrow red-crystal canyon. "That's an entirely 3D-generated environ- ment," Pasquarello says. "The whole point was that as they ride, the canyon gets in- creasingly narrow. So we modeled the basic shape of the cave first to get the ride. Then we augmented it with hundreds of thou- sands of red crystals and stalactites. The ship hits some, so we grew and populated the cave with stalactites, by hand in some cases." (A separate team led by Bill George repurposed many of those assets as well as vehicles and environments from the battle to create a Disneyland ride.) Meanwhile, crystal foxes inside the mine reveal an escape route for Leia and the Resistance fighters. A practical fox built by Scanlan's team provided lighting reference and moments when the animals were quiet. But once in postproduction, the foxes evolved into creatures that resembled a leaner animal. "Rian wanted them to have fox charac- teristics, but at the same time to be more delicate and skittish," Pasquarello says. Modelers painstakingly placed various sizes of quills and crystals on the creatures, all of which had to be simulated and lit. "Going from crystal to hair was a rough transition for the lighting team," Pasquarello says. "The crystals are bigger than the quills." Outside the exit, the generalist team pro- vided a wall of ice and floated the rocks and boulders that Rey lis to free the Resistance fighters. Artists in San Francisco worked with Isotropix's Clarisse, Maya, Planetside's Terragen, Nuke, Katana, ILM's Plume, and RenderMan RIS, on the studio's Zeno pipe- line, to create their shots. Sharing the work on the third act were art- ists in ILM's Singapore studio led by Prichard. For the cockpit shots of the speeders during the battle on the planet surface, the Singapore artists added reflections, layering in the sky, ships from other shots, the red trails in the white salt surface, blasters flying by, and maybe a background ship spinning THE CRYSTAL FOXES THAT APPEAR IN THE FILM ARE ALWAYS DIGITAL CHARACTERS.