X-Men’s vfx team discussed the challenges of working on a tight schedule and with houses in five countries. ™ and © 2006 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved. X-Men character likenesses ™ and © 2006 Marvel Charac

A main focus was the rejuvenation work Lola did to strip off 20 years from the actors. Williams said their digital makeup often involved 200 layers as they stripped shadows and restructured the faces of Ian McKellan (Magneto) and Patrick Stewart (Prof. Charles Xaiver). They collected photos of these well-known actors from their younger days. Then, primarily using 2D solutions, filled out their loss of bone density and muscle that comes with the aging process. In fact, they took them back too young and had to add shadows back to make them a bit older.

Lots of digital makeup was also used on the Jean Grey/Phoenix (Famke Jannsen), especially for the finale.

Bruno said all the actors were digitally scanned (a common practice in most films today) in case they had to replace them at any one point, especially with the flying bodies and shattering body parts in a digitized room.

They also lamented they had to remove some of the debris used in the stormy, final scene (assets were reused from Weta Digital just coming off King Kong) and played the vfx team’s favorite version that higher powers asked them to remove and simplify.

Bruno said the biggest lesson learned was never to try to do a picture in five countries in one year.

Awash with water effects and groundbreaking work worthy of its own entire day of explanation and examples was the panel on “Poseidon — A World Turned Upside Down.” Vfx supervisor Boyd Shermis (panel moderator) turned to multiple sources on two continents (including ILM, Moving Picture Co., CIS and Giant Killer Robots) to produce more than 500 shots.

Instead of using a model, the 1,200-foot liner was created entirely in CGI, particularly so that the camera could always be in the sweet spot for the action.

Worthy of its own entire day of explanation and examples was the panel on “Poseidon — A World Turned Upside Down.” Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. 

ILM relied on and worked with Stanford University on its new generation of Physbam simulation system to create the ocean, complete with turbulence and bubbles. Artists particular wanted to capture how water scatters light through its volume. ILM’s Mohrn Leo, assoc. vfx supervisor oversaw the water simulation and rendering on the movie. Kim Libreri, vfx supervisor at ILM, said the rendering really taxed the studio, using 70% of ILM’s capacity, as the rendering demands were also farmed out to Stanford and whatever resources they could muster. It was the single greatest demand ever put on ILM, which had topped out at roughly 40% on previous projects.

Steve Moncour, CG supervisor for Moving Picture Co., said his place photographed “the living daylights” out of the set, as well as people and costumes to be recreated for dynamic action scenes. MPC used a combination of motion-capture motions and PAPI to create the animation of things breaking and people reacting, rolling and falling.

Bryan Hirota, vfx supervisor for CIS, used a laser scan of the set so they could expand the galley and hallways to give the perspective of a ship that long.

It was impressive to see the various attempts at rolling the ship digitally as the artists followed a real-life example caught on a TV documentary in which a camera crew had photographed a freighter that had rolled and sank in the Pacific, not far from Australia.

The evening culminated with “A Look Back at Aliens — 20 Years Later.” On hand to discuss the 20th anniversary of the release of the science fiction action classic Aliens, were moderator Paul Taglianetti, vfx producer/supervisor; Bob Burns, Aliens archivist; Alec Gillis, creature fabricator, Stan Winston Studio; Pat McClung, vfx miniature supervisor; John Rosengrant, creature supervisor, Stan Winston Studio; Dennis Skotak, vfx co-supervisor and dp; and Robert Skotak, vfx supervisor.