The Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse features a unique pistol-packing mama. Once the gunleg design was approved and built, Eyetronics scanned and built a CG model. All images courtesy of Dimension Films. 

Working as a vfx artist for director Robert Rodriguez has one main advantage: every project is sure to be completely different from the previous one. After the Spy Kids movies, The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl and Sin City, here comes Grindhouse, a new intriguing feature film concept opening April 6 from The Weinstein Co. Co-directed by Quentin Tarantino and Rodriguez, the double-feature movie is an homage to the exploitation B-movie thrillers of the `70s. In the visual effects-filled Planet Terror segment, a small town has to deal with an outbreak of dangerous infected people called Sickos.

As on most of his movies, Rodriguez acted as vfx supervisor, splitting the shots between his own Troublemaker digital unit (320 shots) and The Orphanage (106 shots). Ten shots were shared by the two companies. The Orphanage also handled 35 shots for Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof segment. Troublemaker Digital (TMD) comprises of four key artists: Rod Brunet, Chris Olivia, Alex Toader and Drew Dela Cruz. "We are generalists with experience in 3D and all things 2D, including compositing final shots," Brunet says. "In preproduction, we focus on different sequences of Robert's script. Sometimes, that means concept art and storyboarding, but it always evolves into the 3D realm and grows from there. Grindhouse was the first Rodriguez project on which we completed so many final shots."

Most of the animatics were a guideline or visual blueprint to aid in communication on set. TMD tried to take them to a finished look in order to help establish the mood, choreography and pacing upfront.

A New Vfx Challenge
Compared to Rodriguez's previous vfx projects, Grindhouse required very little greenscreen work. Most of the plates were shot on real sets, providing TMD with a new challenge. "In the Spy Kids series, you accepted the exaggerated designs because they were part of an overall stylized look," Toader observes. "In Sin City, nearly all the backgrounds were CG, which made it easier for us to art direct and create. On Grindhouse, we had to do a lot of reverse engineering on the lighting set up and camera work. Everything we did had to match the live-action plate. So, there was less room for artistic license, if you will. It was far more challenging than creating a whole computer-generated shot, which made this project different for all of us."

TMD typically uses several software packages at a time. Notes technology manager Kris Bushover, "We will use whatever we have to make it work. For instance, in tracking, we use boujou 3 and PFTrack by the Pixel Farm. Each one seems to address different problems. We use SOFTIMAGE|XSI 5.1 for 3D and previs work. We have a 116-processor render farm for XSI running Softimage's implementation of mental ray. Additionally, we use Apple Shake for slates and creating QuickTimes for Robert to review. This is all managed by Rush render queue manager."