Another challenge for CIS Hollywood took place inside the Cobra base underneath the polar ice caps. The exterior of the Ice Cave started as a panoramic matte painting and they added gusts of CG snow and wind.

"Another challenging sequence took place inside the Cobra base underneath the polar ice caps. The actors were shot in a set against greenscreen that resembled the mouth of an ice cave. The interior of the ice cave was a Cobra hangar with Typhoons and a Nightraven that Ripcord eventually pilots. We used a panoramic matte painting for the background of the interior and built the midground platforms, vehicles and props in 3D to accommodate the different camera angles for the sequence. The exterior of the Ice Cave started as a panoramic matte painting to which we added gusts of CG snow and wind.

"We developed most of our CG Elements in Maya, with some help from Houdini and 3ds Max. CG Fire elements for the flaming Neoviper shots were created in FumeFX, a 3ds Max plug-in. CG Water elements were created in RealFlow and surfaced in our proprietary mesher. Rendering was done in RenderMan with several custom shaders for metal, skin, hair, fire, fluids and volumetric lighting. We also did some additional rendering with V-Ray. Shots were composited in Shake. Boyd shot several 360-degree HDR panoramas of the training pit that gave us accurate lighting for CG elements inside the training pit -- particularly the CG Baroness, Stormshadow, Neovipers, Jetpack, Molepods and set extensions.

"Most of our CG assets were characters for shots involving stunts or crowds. A lot of shots began with us tracking a CG character to its live-action counterpart for the invisibility suit, adding CG fire, or transitioning to a digital double for a particular stunt. We built digital doubles for the Baroness, Stormshadow, Scarlett, NeoViper, as well as several Joes with varying hats, gloves, vests, and weapons. For the characters we started with a point cloud and reflectance maps from a 3D scanner. We would mesh the scan for use as a 3D template for the modelers. For the Baroness we developed a RenderMan shader that calculated light absorption and scattering for CG hair -- this gave our hair renders a more natural sheen, volume and color."

The movie provided the opportunity for CIS Hollywood to push its CG pipeline for characters, environments, vehicles, water, fragments, fire, smoke, dust and ice. "Each major sequence brought a new set of challenges that drew upon every artist in the facility. There were huge technical challenges, but at the end of the day the ultimate criteria for each shot was pure entertainment value. Everything had to be cool, big and loud, be it a huge CG environment, a digital double or a flaming tire."

Another unique opportunity, according to Shermis, was coming up with the ultimate underwater submarine battle. "You have two big underwater submarines that are highly maneuverable and they somewhat bend the laws of underwater physics in terms of how far you could see and how quickly you could maneuver. But we otherwise tried to replicate the feeling of doing a submarine battle underwater."

This was designed and executed by London-based MPC (led by Greg Butler, the visual effects supervisor), which was tasked with going way beyond Thunderball or any more recent underwater adventure, for that matter. MPC’s CG team built the fully underwater station environment using Maya and rendered using a mixture of RenderMan and mental ray depending on the sequence content. The usual CG challenges of creating fluids applied, with much testing to create a believable environment.

The R&D team focused on solving the various underwater CG challenges. The team investigated the physics of the underwater environment and how this affects color refraction and visibility fall off using reference sourced from arctic underwater photography. The result was a specific color curve operation for shaders, which helped to manage to color fall off in the depths by shifting colors to blue across a curve. This also gave efficient light volume for rays. The R&D crew also focused on the underwater explosions, which required research into underwater explosion and implosion techniques essentially requiring a zero gravity situation.

"I refer to it as Star Wars underwater," Shermis concludes. "Again, it was another tricky balance between real world and [the fantastical.]"

Bill Desowitz is senior editor of AWN and VFXWorld.