Visual effects work was used to enhance the on-set special effects.

When Alice hits the ground, the action keeps going as she’s assaulted by two combat helicopters and by Nemesis, a seven-foot tall genetically modified man. The villain is so popular among fans of the videogame that the sequel was originally subtitled Nemesis. It was later changed into Apocalypse when producers of the Star Trek movie franchise picked it up first for the tenth installment of their own saga. Nemesis was designed and created as a man-in-a-suit by Toronto-based make-up artist Paul Jones, and digitally enhanced for facial expressions at Mr. X. “We heavily retouched the eye area in order to help conceal the fact that it was a performer wearing a mask,” O’Brien explains. “In any make-up, the most delicate part is often the area where the prosthetics meet the eyes of the performer. With the help of digital technology, we were able to create a character that really looked alive.”

Chain reaction
Alice’s foes meet their fate when a rocket hits one of the helicopters. The machine blows up and a large piece of debris hits the second helicopter, causing it to explode. Its body then breaks up into two parts with the front piece turning around and falling down right at camera. The complex choreography was previsualized in Maya and executed at Mr. X with a combination of miniatures, CGI and digital effects. Six models were built at 1/8^th scale — three for each helicopter — and shot high speed on a black background. “We set up the miniature shoots to precisely match the previs, breaking the shots up into specific camera set-ups that made sense from a rigging and time perspective,” O’Brien notes. “The models were shot separately and combined with a plate of the location. Rotors and debris were added in CG.” Mr. X used Maya for 3D animation and rendered the images in RenderMan, mental ray being favored for some elements.

The sequence concludes with a gigantic blast when a missile hits the twin towers. The destruction of the building was realized via miniature effects enhanced with digital effects at C.O.R.E., a Toronto-based company commissioned to do 118 shots. First, a 44-foot tall miniature replica of the Toronto City Hall was built and equipped with some 900 individual window elements. The miniature glass panels were then detonated in a carefully programmed sequence of pyrotechnic events that radiated downwards from the top of the tower. Led by digital effects supervisor Kyle Menzies and assistant digital effects supervisor Jesse Bradstreet, C.O.R.E. artists animated a digital shockwave that distorted the windows just ahead of the blast. “We warped the facade in 2D using a moving mesh that was created in Digital Fusion,” O’Brien explains. “Then, we utilized Maya to generate several layers of elements, including glass pieces, debris and dust. These digital layers did a lot to enhance the overall scale of the event.” Requested after the miniature had been blown up, an aerial view of the blast was created by duplicating in CG the look of the miniature/digital shockwave and combining it with a plate of the real towers.

Now that’s explosive!

Shopping for Textures at the Butcher Shop
As if bullets, rockets and shockwaves were not enough, Alice also confronts the Licker, a vicious creature that she had already vanquished in the first movie. Very popular among fans of the videogames, the Licker was created and animated in Houdini at C.O.R.E. “We didn’t use the model that Framestore CFC had built for the first movie,” O’Brien comments. “We started from scratch with a brief from the director to make it look flayed and as disgusting as possible. In order to deliver on this level, we scanned chunks of real meat that we got from the butcher shop and blended them together in Deep Paint to create organic textures that made sense. On top of that, we added gooey and slimy textures that I had shot for real. This is something that I did as often as possible on this movie. I always favored the real thing as opposed to a computer-generated element. This is why I shot many practical effects to enhance the action: liquids running and sticking, dust hits, blood sprays, etc.”