View this breakdown of the visual-effects work that went into one of the best film scenes of 2012

VFX studio Atomic Fiction, caught our eye last year with its work on Looper and since then there have been a few interviews online about its work on Flight.

The pivotal shot of the landing gear breaking is incredibly realistic. Atomic Fiction used a combination of Maya and V-Ray along with 3ds Max and V-ray for the matte work for the external shots.

Fume FX was used for the fire – mixed with other particle chunks for the frozen water and co2. The team had to be restrained, as the director wanted the VFX to be part of the film, not a spectacle.

Inside the cockpit the team had even more of a challenge. Due to budget limitations, the plane was shot in three pieces during the rotating move, with the actors hanging upside down in turns. It was all composited back together using Nuke. It just goes to show what software (in the right hands) can do – absolutely seamless.

Elsewhere, Atomic Fiction worked on layering matte paintings with plate footage and CG elements including planes, structures, vehicles and storm clouds, to create wonderful effects.

To listen to an interview on Flight, head over to FX Guide.

If you haven’t seen Flight yet, we suggest you hold off seeing the breakdown shot near the bottom of this post, but in the meantime you may like to check out some cool VFX work done in Looper…

▲ Atomic Fiction was the studio used for digital environments in the film. You can read more about their involvement in issue 164 of 3D World

• Read how ScanLineVFX created the heart-stopping final scene in Looper

Renee Dunlop talks to one of the studios involved in Looper, ScanLineVFX, about the challenges it faced when creating the climactic final scene.

Watch the VFX breakdown of Atomic Fiction’s work on Flight movie

Like CG planes?

Who doesn’t? Check out more digital planes in Voile Noir – a masterful CG short.

Kerrie Hughes talks to project lead Michael Balthazart about the mix of live-action and CG.

▲ Voile Noir is composed of 60 shots, over 40 of them fully CGI and the remainder a seamless blend of live action and CGI elements

Renee Dunlop discovers how the characters in Hotel Transylvania were brought to life using simple silhouettes, vivid colours and strong graphic clarity

After facing its own death and resurrection as frequently as a vampire feeds, Hotel Transylvania takes its cast of happy monsters into a world of colour that Halloween candy would envy. Departing from the grey and gothic look, the crew of 400 artists, under the guidance of production designer Marcelo Vignali, animation supervisor Bill Haller and model supervisor Mark Krentz, release their monsters to cinemas this autumn. At the head of the pack is Dracula, owner of the high-end hotel, who finds his human-free resort playing host to an unexpected visitor…

The journey

Marcelo Vignali dreamed of monsters for nearly a decade, but initially the trip to this beastly getaway was no vacation. He started visual development on the film in 2004, and came on board full-time in 2006. Soon after, the project went into a short period of hiatus while the story was rewritten. “This is just a theory of mine,” says Vignali, “[but] Hotel Transylvania is such a compelling title that people get a very strong image in their head. I believe that a lot of people had different ideas [of] what our movie would be about.”

Jill Culton was one of the earlier directors. “[She provided] the design direction to create that rich, lush look you see in our film,” says Vignali. Culton’s style, combined with artist Neil Ross’s concepts – whose compositions used rich textures and bright colours balanced with large open areas where the eye could rest – offered the look Vignali wanted. Culton developed the project for a year and a half, but the studio was considering a different story direction, and when Culton realised this she decided to step away from the project. There were six directors in all. Two other directors, Todd Wilderman and Chris Jenkins, joined the project and stayed on for a year before the final director, Genndy Tartakovsky, came on board. “I think at this point the studio had a clear idea about the film they wanted to see and the story they wanted to tell,” says Vignali. “Even though our movie had gone into hiatus a few times – when we would lose a director and another would come on board – our core team members creating the visuals remained in place.”

Originally the bats were not intended to perform dialogue or show emotion but as that evolved, so did the rigging

One of those visuals was Vignali’s decision to make the hotel architecture Romanesque, which has far fewer windows – perfect for vampires. “Typically, Dracula movies always use Gothic architecture because it’s really beautiful and elaborate, but we went with something a little older and simpler – and I think a little creepier.” The spaces were huge, so Vignali’s background in theme-park design and how to use pools of light to guide the viewers’ attention came in handy. “We wanted to create spaces that were really inviting,” says Vignali, who strived for a theatrical quality. As the light goes up it drops off naturally, keeping the viewers’ eyes lower, where the characters are going to be. This was particularly helpful in the massive lobby. “[This was] probably one of the largest spaces I’ve had to design,” says Vignali.

The characters

Animation supervisor Bill Haller had been with Sony for over seven years, and Hotel Transylvania had been in development throughout that time. “I’ve been chasing it the whole time, it’s been a dream project,” he says. “I mean, cartoony monsters? What animator wouldn’t want to work on that?”

Sketching over the top of the animator’s pose helped to show the Tex Avery pose that sells the look of the film

Some character designs were inherited from earlier directors. Initially the animation was reminiscent of the traditional Disney style, but it evolved into more of a classic Tex Avery look. The animators would provide basic postures, then Tartakovsky would sketch his desired pose over the image. Smears were also used – Haller explains that they simulated smears in 2D with long, stretched poses and had to use all kinds of deformers to keep artistic control. Motion blur didn’t cut it, but the proprietary deformers could be used to squash and stretch characters into whatever form was desired. “If Dracula flies across the lobby in five or six frames, we could have two of those frames smear back to his original location in a convincing shape,” he says.

Dracula’s cape was rigged with roughly 100 controls, and able to respond to his mood almost as if it was another character

Of course, you can’t do Tex Avery without a strong silhouette. “In this film we had a lot of instances where a character would hit a pose and freeze, almost like in a 2D film, and the silhouette had to be really strong,” says Haller. Proprietary tool Silhouette was used to create the poses, enabling animators to draw wires on top of the geometry and then pull those wires to manipulate it.

While the frozen positions reduced some of the character animation requirements, additions such as Dracula’s cape added more. “Sometimes we wanted the cape to be closed, sometimes open, and sometimes we wanted it to come off his body and do its own thing,” Haller explains. This required an elaborate cape rig with five layers of controls. The controls brought the cape to 60-80 per cent completion before it was handed to the cloth department for final detailing.

The Mummy is a round, blobby character with eyes peering from between the bandages. Tartakovsky wanted to make him lively and eccentric, running animation tests ranging from moving him about like a big ball to more traditional Egyptian mummies’ movements. They went for personality, starting with his entrance. As the Mummy comes into the hotel, he enters in a sandstorm tornado that stretches towards the ceiling. A particle system and an elaborate series of rings acted as a sand emitter. Animated and scaled, the rings would emit sand particles in the shape of a gyrating tornado traversing the lobby.

Frank was another challenge, spending many of his scenes dismembered. He arrives at the hotel in boxes and is assembled, often improperly, by the hotel’s inefficient zombie staff. Frank’s disassembly and reassembly required multiple characters, and body parts often had to be shrunk to a single point to achieve the required effects.

The extreme Tex Avery poses resulted in comical and scary postures

The models

Model supervisor Mark Krentz was tasked with figuring out how to provide some pretty hefty landscapes within the budget. Working closely with the layout department, he started with low-resolution proxy models representing the assets for each environment, and then published those to the layout team. Layout dropped in cameras and worked with the director to figure out where the focus was and what was important.

“We were basically developing the pre-viz, and [that] was very helpful,” says Krentz. “In the past we’d have a full set of designs for an environment, spending days modelling high-resolution geometry that never made it into frame.” The improved process meant some of the larger interior castle environments could be built, scaled, published and set-dressed in just a day or two.

The dungeon was designed when it played a prominent role in the film but by the end the room that saw the most screen time was the sauna

Modularity was also important, particularly with the town, which consisted of just seven buildings. “We had Mr Potato buildings,” says Krentz. “We took two sides of the buildings and made them our street view, and the other two sides for an alley view, so we’d get much more mileage out of them.” Set dressing helped make the buildings appear unique.

Rocks can be surprisingly difficult to model convincingly. Krentz realised that a micro-polygon sculpting tool such as ZBrush or Mudbox was the only solution. The trees also took some R&D. The subtle style of paint strokes and layering of textures in Neil Ross’s concepts resulted in wispy leaves that blended into each other – something that couldn’t be modelled and made to work in the dimly lit 3D environment. The trees ended up looking like the lollipop trees you drew as a child – but there was nothing selling them as trees, so the modellers added leaves and twigs off the volumes to break up the edges.

The freedom of digital modelling all too often results in anomalies such as disproportionately large rooms, but the hotel was created so that the rooms not only fit inside the exterior walls, but also are connected to each other. “You could walk from room to room through that entire hotel, run one camera from outside through the lobby doors and take a tour of the hotel without having to turn off any geometry,” says Krentz. “It was almost like an architectural piece.” That made it easier for the layout team to work with the hotel because they didn’t have to worry about turning off different environments because of interpenetrating geometry.

The guest monsters enjoy a range of relaxing activities, such as water aerobics in the pool

The hotel retained some earlier elaborate rooms that you barely see, a variety of different sets and locations that were featured prominently in the story, such as the spa – essentially the renovated dungeon where monsters can relax, be stretched on the rack or be boiled. “A certain amount of attention went into those sets,” says Vignali. “We don’t spend a lot of time in them but I don’t think that’s such a bad thing – it really does create a sense that there’s a lot more to Hotel Transylvania. And hopefully audiences will want to spend more time in these various locations in the sequel!”

 Learn where to find textures for 3D projects at Creative Bloq.

Want more making of articles?

Let us know what you’re interested in finding out more about via the comments box below, or via Facebook or Twitter: @3DWorldMag.

In the meantime check out these:
The Making of Pixar’s Brave
The Making of Transformers 2
The making of Indian smash hit: Eega
The making of Halo 4: the commissioning trailer

Bond’s back and is looking good. We’ve just seen the new trailer for Skyfall and it got us thinking: what movies do you think are going to be massive this year? The Hobbit’s coming and the Total Recall remake, but what movies would you like us to cover?

We’ll be covering the following movies with making-of articles and interviews with the 3D artists who helped created them. But what other movie would you like to know more about?

In the meantime, enjoy these action-packed trailers:

Watch the Skyfall trailer

Watch the Total Recall trailer

Watch the Hobbit trailer

Peter Jackson has confirmed that The Hobbit duo of films will now be a trilogy! Woohoo!

Have your say

Let us know your thoughts via Twitter, Facebook, or via the Comments box below.

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exnEDYKqNyM

A YouTube user has posted a video of Mudbox’s new Gigatexel engine in action.

The engine, which enables users to paint very large data sets in real time, forms part of the new Advantage Pack update, announced earlier this week at Siggraph 2011.

The sneak peek is captured on a hand-held camera, which also provides a view of the Vancouver Convention Centre in the background.

Thankfully, recording switches to a tripod during the demo itself, which shows a model with 1,200 2k texture maps being manipulated on a standard GeForce gaming laptop.

It may not be your standard corporate screen-capture video, but it’s clearly accurate: Autodesk has linked to it from its community website, The Area. Plus, it looks cool.

Warner Bros. has just released the trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. It already looks set to be more VFX-heavy than part 1, which is no surprise for the final instalment. Already we can see some vicious looking creatures, bursts of magical light and some vast environments.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mObK5XD8udk

A Rise of the Planet of the Apes teaser trailer has also appeared online. Teaser is certainly the right word – we’d much prefer to see more of Weta Digital’s effects in the trailer, though a lingering shot of a CG ape is quite eerie…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqyKYrDta_E

Origin stories are all the rage it seems, alongside the Apes movie is X-Men: First Class, which has a new international trailer out there. A completely different approach to above, the trailer is all effects and very much worth a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yq7Za1JnZg

Based on the graphic novel of the same name, Cowboys and Aliens stars Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford, and is directed by Jon Favreau. It’s pencilled in for release from July 2011, and features VFX from ILM and creature work from Legacy Effects, which evolved out of Stan Winston Studios.

Get an early taste of the effects with the teaser trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBKU9WU_wLo

Related links

Official Cowboys and Aliens website
Industrial Light & Magic
Legacy Effects