Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/977547
18 cgw | e d i t i o n 1 , 2 0 1 8 out. Each of the 30 or 40 cockpits demand- ed a custom treatment. "We might put eight things in the reflec- tions," Prichard says, "maybe 12 things if we add in dirt and grime, all based in reality. You might not notice the trails, but they help focus the eye where we want it to go." They also opened the third act by flying – and exploding – the Resistance fighters' slow transporters during their retreat from their cruiser to Crait as the First Order's Mega Destroyer blasted down on them. The artists created the explosions and transporter destruction entirely within Houdini. "We usually add 2D elements, but in this case there were so many we did everything in Houdini," Prichard says. "First, we used Houdini rigid-body simulations to break up the ships. Then we added the explosions with lots of small shooters to help give a sense of scale and size." THE SACRIFICE One of the most visually dramatic sequenc- es takes place during that Resistance retreat when Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern), the last Resistance fighter remaining on the cruiser, turns the big ship, shis into lightspeed, and aims it straight at the Mega Destroyer. She sacrifices herself to help the Resistance escape. "When I first read it in the script, it ticked all the boxes," Morris says. "We'd have crazy chaos and destruction. A big moment. But Rian [Johnson] said, 'You know what? I want to do the complete opposite. No sound. No crashing explosion with huge, deafening noise. Let's think about how that might work.' We put a lot of detail into these shots, but the clever thing was the idea, the visual design." Although originally slated for London, the shots ended up in Vancouver a few months before the release date. "We started thinking about how we could represent something moving at the speed of light and destroying things it travels through," says Dan Seddon, visual effects supervisor at ILM Vancouver. They looked at images of particle accel- erators, at the neutrinos branching off in the Hadron Collider. They did tests building up layers and effects elements, while at the same time, concept artists created images with hyper-exposed scenes. "We combined all those with an over- the-top lighting design," Seddon says. "We looked at how old Sony cameras automati- cally expose down, and tried that idea. The artists took the animation, roughly lit it, and played around with light and exposure. We have blinding light and then everything is exposed down massively so you can see the intense light searing through the crack of the spaceship. There are seven shots total, slow-motion shots that are almost like still frames. The only things moving are particulates slicing through the ships in the silence, breaking the Star Destroyers inside the Mega Destroyer into little shards. Ani- mators made the shards move slowly and gracefully. Effects artists created sheets of particles that slice between shards. And lighters created massive washes of lights coming out of the cracks." Despite the impact of these shots, the Vancouver studio's primary work focused on complex shots centered on a hangar inside the Mega Destroyer where Finn and Rose fight Captain Phasma and other storm- troopers until Vice Admiral Holdo attacks. The crew handled the destruction, shots prior to the destruction, and space shots around the sequence. "Creatively and technically, it was our most challenging work," Seddon says. "Typically, environments tend to be in the background, so we can come up with optimizations. But the Mega Destroyer is a First Order ship that's 60 miles across. The hangar inside is so huge it could fit a regu- lar-sized Star Destroyer. We know because we tried it." Ultimately, having the Star Destroyer inside didn't work in the shots, but it gave them ideas about how to sell the scale of the hangar. The generalist artists started with CG concept art – models that Jenkins created during production and postpro- duction – adding details to those models while working in Autodesk's 3ds Max and Chaos Group's V-Ray. "We weren't able to cheat because we would have to destroy it all," Seddon says. "So we needed a regular 3D pipeline for the effects artists and animators. And, that meant we had to have two environments in terms of lighting – the warehouse and the burning, inferno version." The generalists created lighting designs and did architecture, set dressing, and lighting for non-destruction shots in 3ds Max and V-Ray. The assets were then passed to modelers working on the regular 3D pipeline, to rebuild and republish for shots with destruction that were ultimate- SKI SPEEDERS SLICE INTO THE SALT CRUST, CUTTING BLOOD-RED TRAILS THROUGH THE WHITE SURFACE. THE PORGS ARE ANIMATRONICS AND CG ANIMATRONICS.