WORLD WAR Z:  – VFX 

How was the collaboration with director Marc Forster?
It was a pleasure to work with Marc Forster, he’s a great director and I hope we will get the chance to work with him again.

How was the collaboration with Production VFX Supervisor Scott Farrar?
Scott has got a great eye and is very good at finding the essence of a problem and coming up with solutions.

What have you done on this show?
completed more than 450 shots for WWZ, including all of the work in the Jerusalem sequence with zombie hordes, the plane crash sequence, the Wales sequence and the Epilogue.

How did you approach the impressive Jerusalem sequence?
It was clear from the beginning that one of our biggest challenges would be the large Z crowd scenes. Max Wood, cg supervisor on the show and in charge of the 3d pipeline, started planning early on for the different aspects of the challenge including building of a large crowd of humans and zombies, mocap clips needed, R&D updates (including tools for our in house crowd system ALICE) as well as planning for how we would be able to render these large and dense crowd scenes.

We set up a photo booth with our photographer James Kelly, on set in Malta where we photographed performers and extras. 2h3D scanned the same characters that we used to build a large crowd of humans and zombies.

What was the main challenges to recreate Jerusalem?
The Jerusalem scene was shot in Malta. In a variety of shots we had to slightly augment the cityscape by adding architecture from Jerusalem. We also created large 2.5d matte paintings of Jerusalem using photos taken on location by one of our compositing leads Lev Kolobov. The environment team lead by Thomas Mouraille built a 70 ft tall wall that was seen in many of the shots in ”Busland”.
It’s the wall that we see the zombies climb later on in the sequence. The wall was built using photo references of small pieces of the on-set wall as well as various other concrete build references. Outside the wall we created a large CG environment with derelict buildings. The wasteland environment was created using stills photography and aerial footage from Malta.

How did you recreates the various vehicles such as the helicopters?
2h3D scanned the various vehicles, MPC’s photographer James Kelly did the texture shoots of the vehicles that were then built back at MPC using Maya, Photoshop and Mari. MPC built a helicopter, a bus with texture variations, a passenger plane with texture variations, a smaller Cessna plane and a military Antanov plane.

The hordes of zombies are moving in a fresh new way. What were your references and indications for it?
During pre production we received reference material showing insects swarming and schools of fish formations as well as motion studies that had been made with performers overseen by the Production Animation Supervisor, Andy Jones. We also received concept work early on showing different formations that the Zombie crowds could take. These included pyramid formations and also tentacle-like shapes.

Can you tell us in details how you handle the crowd animation?
Animation supervisor Gabrielle Zucchelli worked closely with crowd lead Marco Carboni to make sure that our zombies moved in the right way when part of large crowds, interacting with live action and as hero digital doubles. MPC’s pipeline was adapted to be able to push single ALICE agents through to the animation department and then either keep them as hero or incorporate them back into the crowd simulation.

Part of the animation challenge was to match the live action performers Zombie movements and in some cases take it a step further. The Zombies keep on running even when their limbs are broken and attack prey head first, without pain. In all of the complex crowd shots we added quite a few layers of hand animated zombies.

Can you tell us more about how you used your crowd system ALICE?
Using ALICE our Crowd team went through a huge number of development tests trying to define what these Zombie effects should look like, many of the shots required us to leverage the power of PAPI, MPCs Physic API.

PAPI and ALICE are bridged together allowing us to create behaviours and animations in the crowd engine which can then also be used to drive physics simulations at the same time. This allowed the crowd team to weight in and out of ragdolls, create partial ragdolls and/or entirely/partially driven animations to choreograph the hordes of zombies which plough through Busland. Some of the zombies also had extra logic written so they could interact with their surroundings and other zombies.

PAPI is built on top of the Havok physics engine and is exposed as both a scrip-table and node based physics system to the TDs, which they can use to drive all manner of effects. Although being originally conceived for KINGDOM OF HEAVEN many years ago, WWZ was by far the most challenging combined rigid body and crowd simulation we have ever tackled.

Can you explain in details about the zombie creation?
Creating characters for the movie was a big task as we had to build so many unique humans and zombies. Characters were built from reference photography and scans gathered on set. Our Model Lead Ashley Tilley and Texture lead Jung Yoon Choi oversaw the asset team, creating 24 different body types, men women and children with lots of different texture variations. Each character was built as human, and at three different levels of zombification. Level three zombification being emancipated with missing hair, defined veins and wounds. Level one being zombies that just had been bitten, with a few bite marks or smaller wounds. The texture team created a library with wounds, blood stains, bite marks, rotten teeth etc that they would add to the zombies.

Each character was also built at four different levels of detail, hero (LOD A) for close ups through to LOD D for distance. LOD A B and C had groom with dynamics and full cloth simulations. LOD D was rendered with geometry hair and no cloth simulation. We used Maya, Zbrush, Photoshop, Mari and Nuke for building our assets.

For our large crowds we created an even bigger wardrobe. The wardrobe was designed so that any item of clothing could go together and each item would fit any body type. Clothing items were built to match the different zombification levels, dirty and torn for level three and clean for humans. Once built we decided on a crowd with 3000 variations, not one identical to another. Where needed, we could still go in and change the top or trousers of any character where it would make more sense for the shot.
The cloth and hair simulation team was lead by Edward Lim. For the larger crowds we used MPC solver, our in-house cloth solver that is well integrated with ALICE. We used ncloth for hero cloth simulations or where extra crowd cloth detail was needed.

How did you create the impressive shots with the zombies doing a pyramid?
We captured a wide variety of mocap clips for the different actions that we needed. For the pyramid shots we captured actions including climbing up ramps and a net. We started with the geometry and then populated it with clips based on inclination using ALICE. The larger pyramids typically included around 5000 agents. Once the pyramids were populated we started working on the detailing, adding animation vignettes with zombies climbing and falling as well as the various actions needed on the ground.

Can you tell us more about the render challenges of so many zombies?
Rendering the zombies in the large crowd shots was challenging in many ways. Once the crowd and animation work was complete we analyzed the scenes to work out how we could split up the crowd before passing them over to cloth simulation and lighting. We would work on different groups of zombies that could be rendered together, based on position and how close to camera every agent would appear throughout the shot. In quite a few shots, zombies that start in the background end up very close to camera. These agents all had to be rendered with a very high detailed characters. Our lighting leads Jon Attenborough and Wes Franklin worked closely with our compositing supervisor Jonathan Knight to break down the many passes and layers that made up the crowd. Compositing leads Lev Kolobov and Jeremy Sawyer then set up standardized Nuke templates that streamlined the compositing work flow. For the complex zombie shots we rendered deep passes allowing us to combine the different layers of the crowd.

How did you handle the plane destruction and the debris?
Most of the plane sequence was shot inside a section of plane on a gimble rig. Green screens were put up outside the windows and we comped in aerial plates shot in Wales. The plane was filled with extras and stunt performers to which we added CG crowd extensions. We also added plane extensions to a few shots.

In the movie a Zombie makes it into the cabin and starts an outbreak. Gerry throws a grenade and destroys part of the side of the plane. MPC enhanced the SFX teams explosion, adding vapour and debris, and cg Zombies who get sucked from the plane, as well as a cg wing and engine. In the shots where the camera is outside the plane, we added a full cg plane, debris, vapour and cg Zombies. The sequence ends with the plane crashing into trees and tumbling towards camera. A live action plate of the trees and ground was shot outside London. MPC added mountains to the background, replaced the centre section of trees with cg breakable trees and changed the sky. A cg plane was added and the FX team, lead by Oliver Winwood added layers of fx including a large flowline dust trail, tree parts and ground interaction. Live action elements were added in comp and were combined with the fx elements using deep passes. Asset lead, Leandre Lagrange, oversaw the up-resing of models and textures of our existing plane for the crash, this included a broken engine, wing and nose cone.

How did you created the UN research center in Wales?
The majority of the exterior of the building was shot in camera. MPC added a skybridge in between the two different buildings. For an establishing shots we created a 2.5d matte painting of the practical building which we added to the background.

Can you tell us more about your work on the Epilogue?
We created a few different shots for the Epilogue. One shot is a large 2.5D matte painting based on photography showing a large rubbish dump with large stacks of zombie bodies. The stacks were created with our crowd tool and then rendered. On top of the renders we added layers of matte painting and live action elements of smoke, fire and embers. We also built a couple of diggers that drive through the scene.
For another section we created large stacks of zombies climbing up a building. The environments were a combination of aerial plates and matte painting. We added flame thrower elements using live action fire elements.
For the stadium shot we created a large crowd of zombies that enter the stadium and get blown up by a large bomb. This shot was seen through a night / drone look.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
The biggest challenge was the large zombie crowd shots in the Jerusalem. The challenge came from the complexity of the shots, and ensuring the many departments who worked on the sequence worked closely together. Great team work and some fantastic people on the show helped us overcome the challenges.

How long have you worked on this film?
MPC worked on WORLD WAR Z for over two years including pre production.

What was the size of your team?
The team size varied through the time that we worked on the project. Average size towards end was around 150 people.

VFX

300 – RISE OF AN EMPIRE:

300 – RISE OF AN EMPIRE: CHARLEY HENLEY (VFX SUPERVISOR) WITH SHELDON STOPSACK AND ADAM DAVIS 

                                   

 How did you work with Production VFX Supervisor John DJ Desjardin?

The work was based out of MPC London so with DJ over in Los Angeles we had regular cineSync reviews. We reviewed shots together from our FCP suites and he was able to draw and add notes directly onto the footage, which is very useful. We also had a three way link with MPC Vancouver VFX Supervisor Pete Dionne and 2D Supervisor Arek Komorowski. The important thing was to make sure communication was as clear and direct as possible. We reviewed the work regularly sending layouts, temps, and WIPs continuously through the short post period to make sure the edit was up to date with our latest work and most importantly that we were all on the same page with look and shot design. This was very important, as there was so much creative freedom on the show, we all needed to tune in to the tone of the movie.

What have you done on this show?
In a nutshell our job was to create the world around the actors who where shot on predominately blue screen stages. MPC’s scenes included the post burning of Athens on the acropolis, Xerxes palace, the desert and caves, the post battle of Hells Gate on the cliff edge, Xerxes bridge over Hellespont and the epic Marathon Battle.

 

Original, beautiful and graphic environments were designed for each sequence, with the correct atmosphere, historical content and style to support the mood and story. We built beaches, the sea and boats, palaces, deserts, cliffs, cities on fire and ancient Greek monuments like the acropolis. These then needed to be filled with a combination of digital and live action characters, mythical creatures and armies, animal’s and even flies. Atmosphere and FX filled the left over space with smoke, rain, eyeballs, flying limbs, sweat and blood. We even added “floaties” particles to fill the space and catch light. Most shots involved almost every VFX skill set, from animation to environments, from simulated FX to element compositing.

The show was a blast to work on as we had so many different challenges and a freedom to really style up and design the look for each scene.

Can you describe one of your typical days during the post?
A day in post for the lead team would generally start with a production meeting to summaries key issues and news for the day. Followed by sequence reviews where we would review the shots in edit context with each of two teams covering all disciplines, which had various scenes divided up between them. Other mornings as new shots came in we would brief our team at MPC Bangalore, India for camera tracking, 3D roto animation and rotoscoping and paint work, simultaneously kicking off Matte painting and comp with a creative task to experiment and design a look for a given scene. The afternoon would involved focused reviews with each department, the first few months would be all about asset building, Layout and animation, later we would be concentrating on FX, matte painting, Lighting and Compositing. Many days would end with a review with DJ in LA or with our Vancouver team.

Our Production Team led by Oliver Money and Gracie Edscer were in a constant cycle of budgeting new shots as they where coming in and scheduling and re-scheduling each shot to make sure all departments were feeding each other to maximum efficiency. We had a very tight turn around on this show so it was key that departments dependent on up stream work got what they needed on time. We also had a team of sequence coordinators doing a great job of driving the shots through the pipeline.

How did you recreate the iconic final shot of the first film?
This was based on the original footage scanned from the first 300 film. Additional elements where shot for Xerxes and his horse. His axe was CG matched to a stick he was holding. We had to then manipulate the original plate to have interaction between the horse and bodies as it walked across them, adding CG moving shields and 2D moving cloth as well as extra blood and flies.

Can you tell us in details about the Marathon battle creation?
MB was one of our biggest scenes. It was based on shooting plates on approximately 60×60’ set of mud surrounded by blue screen. In addition to key actors and props we only used about 20 muscular extras playing Greeks and another 20 for the Persians. The rest of the armies were created using a combination of practical shot plates on cards for the closer action and digital crowds to fill in the hundreds behind them.

The first priority was to build the environment. After extensive research on the look of Marathon bay in Greece, we sent our environment lead Marco Rolandi to a wonderful wild beach in Spain to shoot stills. These where used for image based modeling, textures and Matte painting. We used these stills to create the cliffs and environment for the battle. Creating a CG beach and cliff with projected textures and a Matt painted cyclorama for the distant mountains and sky.

Layout of the scene was the next priority as all of the work depended on everyone knowing what should go into each shot! Stanley Dellimore, MPC’s Head of Layout set up a great team for us. Based on early models of the environment, the whole battle was plotted out and then constantly referring to the cut we split the battle out into beats to keep it manageable.
Hundreds of shots needed character specific roto animation to line up soldiers who needed limbs removing or weapons that needed to be added in post, along with huge amounts of roto and paint preparation. CG FX were used for most of the blood hits, simulated using Flowline particles, rendered as meshed geo with additional displacement. The blood was very stylized as was the rain added through out the scene. The references we used were from Frank Millar’s graphic novel style and the movie SIN CITY.

Many shots required lightening, which was created with a combination of animated matte paintings and rendered lighting passes flashed up in compositing. We also stylized the look of lighting strikes carefully timing them and dynamically retiming shots after each strike. Visually any lightening frames had a specific grade and lighting pass to emphasis the graphic novel style. Boats had cloth dynamics for sails and rope work which had to be fine-tuned to look good during the dynamic retimes.

MPC London 2D Supervisor Bronwyn Edwards shot practical elements to enhance the chaos of the battle including blood, raindrops and mud spray, ash particles, dead bodies and smoke. Bronwyn and Arek’s team of compositors had the challenge to find a balance between a photo real finish and styling up every shot to have the feel of a graphic novel with maximum impact always looking to enhance each shots story telling purpose.

How did you created and animated so many soldiers?
MPC Crowd HOD Adam Davis who worked as a CG Supervisor on the show along side Sheldon Stopsack and Max Wood, concentrated on our retime and crowd challenges.
“Animated soldiers were done by the crowd department lead by Jo Plaete, using MPC’s proprietary crowd system ALICE. There was an initial motion capture session for the soldiers which was done out in LA at Giant Studios. This allowed us to capture a lot of really heavy stunt performances, which would be used for the large battle sequence. We also captured several more actions in house to supplement the shots, and along with the keyframe animation cycles for the elephants & war rhinos fed all of these into ALICEs motion synthesis engine.

As we had a very short time to deliver so many shots, we wrapped up as many of the crowd tools as possible, this automated a lot of the complicated tasks the crowd TDs would be facing, shot after shot after shot. Particularly whilst working with the ever changing retimed shots, keeping as much of this as possible hidden from the artists, allowed the crowd TDs to concentrate on populating the shots as quickly as possible. As we also had a lot of artists coming from our layout department to help out, many for the first time, it provided a safety net for them, meaning they only had to concentrate on making the shots look good rather than worrying about a lot of the technical complexities.”

How did you handle the slow-motion challenge?
This was one of the bigger challenges on the show, Adam Davis recounts. “MPC had developed a selection of tools for the movie, another Snyder production, which we updated for RISE OF AN EMPIRE. This film pushed us much further though as we had to deal with so many crowd and fx shots and such a large and varied number of speed ups & slow downs. This was made even more complex by the number of different frame rates the footage was shot at, with a mix of 24fps, 48fps, 96fps, 1000fps and 1200fps.

The retime pipeline was designed to allow us to have a single retime curve for each shot where it was necessary. The curve was generated by our compositing team as part of the plate re-timing process, with one of our compositors on the team Mirek Suchomel, becoming our retime guru, from day one to the end of the show he looked after almost every retime in the pipeline, at some point I think he started to dream in slow motion!

The retime curve could then be brought into all of our major applications such as Maya and Nuke, and exposed a selection of data to the artists and their tools, such as the slowdown or speed up factor in various different forms. The system allowed any work to be done on the shot in any department effectively independent of the retime. Therefore allowing for retimes to be changed later or normal animations cycles to be used and FX dynamics to be calculated at normal speed. Every artist on the team would simply animate or simulate their work matching the plate, and then at render time the retime data would be used to interpolate the caches/animations. This allowed us to keep working on shots without having to go through every department each time a retime changed as the edit evolved and editorial played around with speedups and slowdowns.

The biggest challenge was with the footage shot on Phantom cameras, at 1200 fps this would have meant hugely long frame ranges for shots of only a couple of seconds. The retime system allowed us to split the retime curve into several layers to combat this. For the shots filmed at 1000s of fps, we linearly retimed the plates into what we call our working timeline, before applying the remainder of the retime at rendertime. This allowed the artists to work at sensibly long frame ranges.”

Xerxes had a massive palace. What indications and references did you use for this palace?
The palace was roughly based on the ancient ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persepolis. We took cues from Persian art and architecture. The idea was everything exterior should be centered around the kings podium and that the interiors and exteriors would have an exaggerated sense of scale. Many structures were derived from beautiful classic Persian sculptures.

Can you explain in details about its creation inside and the outside?
Interiors where all detailed models, textured and lit with ray traced reflections and bounce. We filled the space with atmospherics; smoke flames and particles in comp. For the exteriors, to deal with the massive amount of detail and the fast turnaround needed, we modeled in full but texturing was a combination of a basic texture pass which was lit combined with matte painting techniques used to add additional detail. Some of the big exterior shots were treated as stand alone environments and rendered in Mental Ray. But we mostly used Renderman.

At a moment, Xerxes emerges from of river of gold. Can you explain in details the creation of this beautiful shot?
CG Supervisor Sheldon Stopsack: The biggest challenge of this shot was the marriage of two different plates, one for entering the pool in the cave and the other for rising as a king and stepping out into the Palace. Being shot at very different angles and lenses. There was a lot of juggling by one of our lead layout artists Paul Arion, to find the perfect blend of two real camera moves into a seamless single CG camera. The liquid gold effect as Xerxes emerges was done with Flowline particles, being meshed and rendered as a solid surface. Accurate Keyframe Roto Animation plus additional Tech Anim to fully match Xerxes body with a CG model was crucial to ensure a good connection to the fluid simulation. The look of liquid gold proved to be challenging as well with a lot of tweaking needed to find the right viscosity in drips and rippling effects.

Can you tell us more about the CG elephants?
CG Supervisor Sheldon Stopsack: Part of my role was to supervise the creature, asset builds and lighting pipeline for the show. Building believable giant elephants and selling their scale was the challenge but we were able to take some cues from the mammoths we had built for previous films. A key issue was to give them a sense of weight. Our rigging department played a lot of attention to the layout of muscles, and creating believable muscle dynamics, which then drove the overlaying skin. At which point the shading also became a crucial aspect, skin wrinkles and folding, even though partly displacement had to be dynamically driven by the rig. Selling the scale and weight was the key. Adding hair, dirt and dust also helped sell scale and realism.

What was the biggest challenge on this project and how did you achieve it?
The sheer number of digital characters that need to move in so many ways was certainly one of the bigger potential challenges on the show, but MPC’s proprietary crowd system ALICE made it possible. Being able to seamlessly mix in numerous motion capture cycles for bipeds with animated cycles for quadrupeds we could bring to life an army for Xerxes, with elephants, giants, immortals, war rhinos, horses and motion captured dwarves riding animated giants all could be tuned by the crowd TD’s per shot and adjusted for scale and speed and number. ALICE really saved us on this show massively reducing the need for hand animating anything from charging armies, one to one fights sequences, ship sailing, horses rearing, birds, even flies swarming.

Have you split the work amongst the various MPC offices?
We did the majority of the sequences in London leading the project. Three sequences were done in Vancouver including the burning of Athens along with some environment and FX work. In our facility in Bangalore we completed Matchmove, Rotoscope and Paint and Prep work along with some of our assets builds and some compositing for the London based shots, so it was really a global show.

What do you keep from this experience?
We had a great experience on the show. It was brilliant to have encouragement to be creative in promoting the fun and stylish look of the film. DJ allowed us to push out some cool ideas for shot design and look development and the team really went for it. Exercising freedom to express the mood and story behind a scene with all the tricks available to the VFX artist will hopefully carry on to other shows for many of our artists who worked on RISE OF AN EMPIRE.

How long have you worked on this film?
March 2013 to end July 2013.

How many shots have you done?
215.

What was the size of your team?
Around 300 people would have worked on the project at some point over the five months.

What is your next project?
MPC are working on a number of shows including GODZILLA, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, CINDERELLA, MALEFICENT, X-MEN DAYS OF FUTURE PAST and EXODUS.