To celebrate the release of Prometheus on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download, Moving Picture Company has released its visual effects technical breakdown.

The movie follows a team of explorers as they attempt to discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth. The quest leads them on a thrilling journey to the darkest corners of the universe where they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

The technical breakdown shows how the CG artists at MPC created the alien planet LV-223, the space environments, the human crew and alien space-crafts and an explosive crash scene sequence. It also shows how the Hammerpede alien was brought to life.

Watch the technical breakdown

More on Prometheus

View the viral video that came out in the run-up to Prometheus’ release

Watch production designer Arthur Max and Ridley Scott discussing the design of Prometheus

In issue 158 3D World spoke to MPC, Fuel VFX and Weta Digital to find out how they were involved in Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. You can buy issue 158 of 3D World here

Buy the digital edition of issue 162 – on sale now!
On sale 09 October 2012 via the 3D World Magazine app (iOS)
On sale 09 October 2012 at Zinio (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)

▲ Fuel VFX delivered 150 visual effects shots for the Avengers Assemble film from Marvel Studios

Animal Logic today announced that it has finalised a deal to buy the business assets of Sydney-based studio Fuel VFX which recently went into voluntary administration.

Animal Logic has formed a new company, called Animal Logic Fuel, which will trade as Fuel VFX, based in Newtown, Sydney. The five original founders of Fuel VFX – Jason Bath, Paul Butterworth, Andrew Hellen, Simon Maddison and Dave Morley – will remain in-situ and drive all aspects of the new business.

Animal Logic CEO Zareh Nalbandian said: “Fuel VFX represents some of Australia’s best design and visual effects talent and capabilities. Highly regarded around the world for its advertising and film VFX work, it is a name with a great pedigree and a solid future. I am excited to welcome it into the Animal Logic family.”

Paul Butterworth, VFX Supervisor and Art Director said: “This is an exciting development for our clients: the talent and expertise of both companies will be combined under the Fuel VFX banner to create one of Australia’s most creative and skillful design and effects teams for advertising and short form design and post production.”

Animal Logic and Fuel VFX confirmed that both companies will operate their own film VFX divisions retaining distinct identities and individual client relationships.

Read our interview with Fuel VFX about their work on Avengers Assemble

Fuel VFX delivered 150 visual effects shots for the latest blockbuster from Marvel Studios. We caught up with Fuel VFX’s CG supervisor Mike Bain and executive producer Jason Bath to ask them how they created the Loki-Thor fight sequence and more…

Sydney-based creative house Fuel VFX looked after three sequences that occur in and around Tony Stark’s New York penthouse, perched atop Stark Tower.

In a scene near the film’s opening, Tony and Pepper are celebrating the tower coming online when they are interrupted by Agent Coulson from S.H.I.E.L.D. Fuel designed and created the various holograms featured in this scene which give an insight into some of the other members of the Avengers team, as well as the mysterious tesseract artefact.

The penthouse set required sweeping views of New York to be added behind Stark's floor to ceiling glass windows, for both night and day looks in two different scenes, as well as extension to parts of the interior set

Fuel’s work can also be seen in the Loki-Thor fight sequence that takes place on the floating balcony outside of Stark’s apartment during the battle to protect New York. Read the interview below to find out how the CG was created…

Read the interview

3D World: How did Fuel VFX get the gig to work on The Avengers? Did you have to work with any other creative studio in order the produce your shots?
Jason Bath: We’ve been working with Marvel for a few years now and Avengers is our fourth film in a row with them so it’s a great relationship for us. It was really good to work with Janek Sirrs (VFX supervisor) and Susan Pickett (VFX producer) again who we got to know on Iron Man 2.

The New York City cyc asset was required in all three of our main sequences and that was supplied by ILM. However, the way we needed to use it was a bit different to their usage so we had a bit of work on our end to adapt it – mainly additional work on the Chrysler building as it was quite prominent in our shots and adding life to the cyc.

• You can read about ILM and Weta Digital’s VFX work on the Avengers Assemble in the July issue of 3D World

3D World: What was your company responsible for?
JB: Aside from the scenes mentioned above, we did some extra bits and pieces – the CG Stark Jet, which was a re-use of the Fuel design used in Iron Man 2; the Security Council monitors; and some shots at the end of the film to integrate Loki into the smashed concrete floor after the Hulk has pummeled him.

Fuel designed and created the various holograms featured in this scene which give an insight into some of the other members of the Avengers team, as well as the mysterious tesseract artefact

3D World: What 3D software was used to create this work?
Mike Bain: The software we used on Avengers was pretty much out of the box. Tracking was done in SynthEyes and 3D Equalizer. All the CG work was done in Maya and rendered with Mental Ray: the CG Stark Tower, the top-up set extensions inside Stark’s penthouse, and all the 3D elements in the holograms.

All compositing was done in Nuke along with any cyc projection work. After Effects and Photoshop were large contributors to the Stark holograms.

3D World: What was the biggest technical challenge?
MB: The Loki-Thor fight sequence was the trickiest and most technically challenging. There are actually about 60 shots in the sequence and there were a lot of different elements to it:
- CG Stark Tower set extension
- New York city panoramic cyc
- Reflection replacement in practical glass
- CG scepter replacement
- Scepter blast FX; hammer/scepter clash FX
- BG alien chariots
- (Not to mention having to pull keys through Thor’s hair!)

There was a lot of camera and object tracking in the sequence and some of it was quite tricky so both SynthEyes and 3D Equalizer were used depending on what gave us the best solve.

But getting the Stark Tower set extension looking right was the biggest challenge. We quickly discovered that the partial set-piece that was built for in-camera use wasn’t a good fit with the CG designed version. This meant changing the design of the CG version somewhat as well as taking the plunge to replace more of the set than we’d originally intended so we could minimize the tricky areas where the set needed to join the CG.

For the final scene the New York cityscape needed to be added, along with FX animation from Loki's sceptre, and background CG chariots of the attacking aliens

We’d had a similar experience with our CG Burj Tower work for Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (in the sequence where Tom Cruise climbs the building) so we’d dealt with this issue before. The difference on Avengers though, was that any changes we needed to make to our model would affect another vendor as ILM also had Stark Tower in their shots, albeit wider framing than ours.

That meant any changes we needed to make to the design or model of the tower also had to factor in the implications for them. So there was a bit of back and forward with their supervisors and digital matte painting departments, and Janek, to make sure that we were all sitting in the same place.

But it was probably the lighting that was the trickiest aspect. The live action was filmed on a blue screen inside a sound stage with only the actors and a partial set piece, but in the final film the fight takes place outdoors, high above New York City. So we were fighting the studio lighting a bit – the plate photography was telling us one thing, but we needed to make that look like something else. To complicate matters, our shots also had to seamlessly intercut with ILM’s fully CG shots.

Fuel worked on some shots at the end of the film to integrate Loki into the smashed concrete floor after the Hulk has thrown him around like a ragdoll - one of our favourite bits of the film!

Janek was really on top of this and worked closely with us to push the live action grade and our CG lighting in one direction and kept the relevant ILM shots in line as well.

Then it was just a matter of getting all our textures on our CG Stark Tower suitable for close-up use and continuing to liaise with Janek and ILM about the look of the glass – it’s colour, reflectivity, the level of distortion of the reflections – all of that needed to be consistent.

3D World: How many people worked on each sequence
JB: The crew tends to cross-over between sequences as needed but we had about 50 people work on The Avengers throughout five months of production.

3D World: What was the most useful piece of software/kit that you used and why?
MB: I don’t think there was one piece of software specifically, but the combination of a few that made production smoother for us.

SynthEyes and Equalize were essential for tracking, Maya for 3D and Nuke for 2D. Our suite of shots were really multidisciplinary and required tracking, modeling, texturing, shading, lighting, FX, extensive roto and keying, re-grading and more.

Photoshop, After Effects and Maya were also used for the holograms, and we couldn’t have achieved any of those effects without them.

Using the multi-channeled EXR output through Maya and Mentral Ray for lighting enabled us to get through our shots more quickly, and made it easier for us to review our work – especially for the Loki-Thor fight set extensions and CG scepter shots.

• Read a review of Maya
• Read a review of Photoshop
• Read a review of After Effects

3D World: Can you think of where a specific part of the pipeline was useful in fixing or achieving something in particular?
MB: From a 3D perspective, Maya enabled us to do a lot of the work in one application, from designing 3D elements, to building and rendering set extensions and doing complex FX work.

3D World: What was the most interesting shot to develop from a technical angle?
MB: Probably the Loki-Thor fight sequence for the challenges described above.

Maya enabled Fuel to do a lot of the work in one application, from designing 3D elements, to building and rendering set extensions and doing complex FX work

3D World: Can you talk us through the Loki-Thor fight sequence and explain how it was created?
MB:

• The live action shots are put into camera tracking with the idea to use the CG Stark Tower geometry to match up to the partial set. This is where the differences between the two were discovered in detail and we needed to work with Janek and ILM about how to address that
• Where needed, we brought in our adjusted models of the Stark Tower to ensure we could matchmove all shots accurately
• Loki’s practical scepter was an incomplete, flexible version for stunt purposes so it needed to be replaced with a CG version. So an object track of the stunt scepter was also undertaken – sometimes requiring hand tracking due to the combined motion of the handheld camera and wobble of the stunt scepter. The stunt prop was painted out and replaced with the CG scepter complete with glowing jewel. There was a little bit of look dev work getting the different textures on the scepter shaft and blade rendering nicely and accurately. Then getting the scepter behind Thor’s hair in a number of close-up shots proved quite labour-intensive
• Once we received the geometry of the environments, we lit them with a combination of CG lighting and high-dynamic range, on-location lighting which ILM had provided
• Using assets supplied by ILM we blocked out the BG chariot animation
• Stark Tower was rendered with a bunch of additional passes so that the Nuke compositors could see the final look for the set extension
• In the meantime, our FX department was developing particle effects in Maya for the scepter blast, and also a spark-like effect for when the hammer and scepter clash. Once the look was approved these were rendered in Mental Ray for the required shots
• The Nuke team were comping test renders along the way to give us feedback as well as getting the New York cyc sitting in each shot as a priority. There was a lot of on-set glass so there was a lot of paint out and 2D reflection replacement, as well as some tricky re-times to occupy them. They soon turned their attention to pushing the lighting in the plates in a certain direction, as per Janek, to try and better capture the outdoor lighting required. This of course had implications for our lighting of Stark Tower and we needed to adjust our rendering a number of times – especially because when the look of sky changed in the cyc, it had a significant impact on the look of the glass in the tower
• The Stark Tower renders also had some look dev/art direction regarding the number of clouds reflected in the glass and the level of distortion in those reflections
• Then everything went to comp basically, and for them it was a combination of making the revised plate grades work with the 3D

Thanks to Mike Bain and Jason Bath for the interview.

The making of Prometheus

Fuel VFX also contributed to the VFX in Prometheus: Find out how Fuel VFX, MPC and Weta Digital helped director Scott Ridley to terrify the world once more in his long-awaited sci-fi blockbuster in the new issue of 3D World.

And for more on the VFX in Avengers Assemble, see the July issue of 3D World – the one with the Hulk on the front cover.

To see more work from Fuel VFX visit its website

Coming soon online: Hoxton Redsox’s Happy Birthday David viral teaser for Prometheus

Ridley Scott’s epic thriller Prometheus takes its name from the state-of-the-art spaceship that transports its crew to a distant, foreboding world. Check out a new video showing the spaceship now

Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien terrified the world using tension, shadows and props and now, 33 years later almost to the day, he’s back with Prometheus.

Prometheus lands in cinemas in the US and Canada on 8 June. That’s in just two days! In the UK, we’ve been treated to the film’s release already. If you’ve seen it let us know what you think.

Hopefully you’ve managed to stir clear of all the spoilers that can be found all over the internet. Don’t worry, we’re not about to ruin anything for you – here’s just a little something about the stupendous work on the awesome spaceship to get you in the mood.

Watch production designer Arthur Max and Ridley Scott discussing the design of Prometheus

As Scott says: “It’s opened up the door to get bolder, get better and get your attention…”

It’s certainly done that. We hope you enjoy the film! Don’t forget to let us know what you think of it.

Look out for a special making-of Prometheus article in the next issue of 3D World

Find out how leading effects houses The Moving Picture Company (MPC), Weta Digital and Fuel VFX, and several others helped to terrify the world again in our special making-of Prometheus article in next issue’s 3D World – on sale on 19th June.

For more info see the Prometheus site

Titled ‘Two Letters’, the spot shows a CT scan, a jet engine and a wind turbine, represented by letters merging to form the machines.

Fuel’s VFX Supervisor Anders Thonell worked on the spot alongside director Graeme Burfoot. “Graeme gave us a very detailed brief and sketched how he wanted the letters to move and form,” says Thonell

“This was really helpful for us because we knew from the outset that this campaign required careful design and planning to accompany the grunt of a big simulation job.”

Lead FX Steve Oakley assisted by designing software which plugged into Maya to drive the constructing machines.

The simulation effects were complicated through the need to strike a stylistic balance with a subtle prominence of the letter G and E.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-fpTvJxpzI

The animation also includes some interesting treatments: “We’ve added character to the letters and multiple methods on almost every shot – key frame animation, particle and cloth simulations, proprietary simulations.

“This commercial has been a lot more hand-made than I anticipated, but it was necessary to get to that level of detail,” says Thonell.

The spot was rendered using the Maxwell renderer because of its short depth of field used in-camera – Maxwell includes features that enhance the DoF, while handling a vast amount of geometry.

View more work from Fuel VFX

View more commercial work on 3D World