The other principal environment built by Sony Imageworks was Metropolis, seen here in the background during a scene between Superman and Lois.

“So we started building what The Daily Planet actually looks like by extending that location. We positioned buildings we had from Spider-Man all around the park. And then on both sides of The Daily Planet we took buildings and made them taller and changed their textures so the front street façade of The Daily Planet was unique. And we worked on layout. We looked at maps of New York. The art department modified Manhattan Island: the shorelines and where the street grids were and where the bridges were and we found a good place for several city blocks surrounding The Daily Planet and adhering to the grid of Manhattan. It allowed us to change the streets. We altered the Brooklyn shore to be where Lois lived and we altered the Jersey shore somewhat to be where Lex’s mansion is. And then took out Staten Island and Long Island to open up the end of Metropolis to the ocean.”

Houdini was used to develop a wide range of effects, including fire, smoke and dust in the Shuttle and Metropolis Disaster sequences, Superman’s flight into orbit and Superman going for a final spin around the globe.

Rhythm & Hues Performs Sea Rescue and Brando Recreation
Rhythm & Hues was tasked with creating 120 vfx shots for the Sea Rescue involving Lois Lane and her family and Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. The Sea Rescue entailed giant crystal growth; extreme water simulations (volumetric simulations of foam particles, waves, swirling whitewater and ocean mist); digital stunt doubles, including Superman; matte paintings; and environments using painted and scenic textures. Plus Gertrude, the CG glass bottom yacht impaled by crystal.

The Fortress of Solitude work comprised interior digital set extensions with translucency to augment production-built set, where Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) discovers some of Superman’s secrets, including the mysterious reappearance of Superman’s father, Jor-El, played by Marlon Brando. Footage from Brando’s original 1978 performance was repurposed using a combination of 3D modeling, facial animation and textures from both partial projection and those generated by mouth phoneme shapes.

For the Fortress of Solitude sequence, Rhythm & Hues built interior digital set extensions with translucency to augment the practical set. Original footage of Marlon Brando’s performance was repurposed. 

“We took our proprietary tools and pushed them further,” suggests visual effects supervisor Derek Spears. “The open ocean was done with WaveTools, which is for simulating coherent surfaces or what they call ambient waves. They have the ability to generate foam on top of that for whatever wave crest and that’s automatically generated as well. Also, in the vicinity of objects that cause white water, we mapped various elements that we shot in practical form, elements along the base of the crystals or the yacht per se. And then we created green water splashes up against an object and bubbles that are trapped beneath the surface. WaveTools got pushed to a higher level of realism.

“FELT is a new tool. It’s a vector description language that allows us to describe very complex systems of motion and simplify them and add high-level detail on top of that. For instance, when waves are crashing against crystals or the boat, sometimes we used FELT instead of practical elements or we’d use a combination to render the hero elements in FELT and support that with 2D elements underneath.

“The Gertrude model breaking in half was all-digital. We used Rigid Body Simulation and particle debris for high-level detail. Houdini was used primarily in the Sea Rescue sequence. It was used entirely for animation and rendered in mantra. Our water toolkit is based on using Houdini. Ahab is the in-house fluid simulator.”