Logan (Hugh Jackman) and Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) face off in the big alley battle sequence.

During the R&D phase of the sequence, Hydraulx investigated different off the shelf software packages that specialize in procedural destruction of 3D geometry, as well as Maya's native rigid bodies and nCloth. While they showed promise and produced some interesting effects, Liles says their limitations became present early and forced to abandon them for the most part. "We then tried to extrapolate the methods we liked about these programs and implemented them within our current Maya pipeline with some custom plug-ins and Mel scripts. The most successful method was to use Maya's nCloth to simulate a semi-rigid mesh tear and fold like the reference videos. This provided gross movement that felt right, but produced less-than-ideal geometry 'shards'. We then took procedurally shattered geometry and parented them to this cloth simulation."

The results of this approach were very encouraging, but very hard to modify in case the director requested adjustments. Eventually, the team modeled the pieces by hand, and animated them by hand as well, using the nCloth simulations as reference, in addition to tower and building collapse videos. This allowed for real compositions of the shots that didn't rely on time-consuming simulations that may not be entirely successful.

The dust and smoke effects were mainly particle effects using a combination of instanced geometry, points and sprite particles, and custom volumetric mental ray shaders. Maya fluid simulations were used as secondary elements and for motion reference. Secondary 'hero' debris animation was created via rigid body simulations. Finally, RayFire was employed to break up the larger chunks of debris in specific shots, such as when Deadpool blasts the tower with his laser eye beams. The various elements were then assembled on Flame workstations.

Hydraulx also handled another mutant, called Gambit, for a brutal fight with Wolverine and Sabretooth in an alleyway. Gambit has the capacity to charge any object with a tremendous amount of energy, which he uses to dispose of his enemies. "We animated CG cards to show his powers, and also created all the mayhem that he generates in the alleyway with his energy-charged staff weapon. We used a mixture of simulations and practical elements to complement the practical effects that had been filmed on set. On all these mutant effects, we had to find a delicate balance between trying to make it look cool, but also keeping it based in the X-Men universe."

Rising Sun Pictures delivered 37 shots that included the infamous adamantium injection sequence.

Slicing and Dicing VFX
Some other sequences featuring Wolverine were tackled by Rising Sun Pictures. The Australia-based facility delivered 37 shots that included the infamous adamantium (a high-tech indestructible metal) injection sequence. During the operation, Logan is suspended in a surgical theatre on a metal rack that is lowered into the water. There's a rig around him with metal injection guns. The needles are super-heated, so the water boils as they hit it, and they start spinning like drills before plunging in to his body.

Due to safety reasons, the guns and needles were not on the practical rig. "There were a few practical needles in there, but these were mostly removed in 2D," notes in-house VFX Supervisor Tom Proctor. "There was also a lot of object tracking that was required to track the needles to Logan's body. Since the needles were done in CG, they were being matched to reference. We built our model to match a practical gun model that was provided as a reference. As we needed to articulate the movement to match Logan's thrashing, we embellished the joints and built in extra hoses to accentuate that. In some shots, the entire rig was replaced with our CG model. Additionally, there were some practical bubbles rising in the tank in the foreground. We needed to remove these bubbles, add the CG rigs, then add the bubbles back over the top. There was a lot of 2D layering over the rendered guns, needles and bubbles."

Once Logan is injected with adamantium, he escapes by using his new claws to slash his way out. The claws are seen punching through an external door, then tear out a highly symbolic 'X'. CG Supervisor Dan Bethell and his team had to create a door rig that would in effect 'unzip' between being a completely healed clean door and a door with a very pronounced slash and ripped metal. "We modeled up a slashed pronounced edge door, and then rigged together a door that would unzip in time with the claw animation and do a reveal. That was then rendered out as series of passes which were all brought together in 2D. To help bed the claws in the shots, the reflections of the environment were crucial to get the level of realism that was required. For all of the shots, we were provided lighting reference (gray ball, chrome ball, etc), but there were also practical models of the adamantium claws that were turned around on set to give us an idea of lighting and reflections."