Digital Dimension, using Fusion, created all 200 vfx shots in THE PINK PANTHER 2, the latest film in the Inspector Clouseau series starring Steve Martin.
Much of the work on THE PINK PANTHER 2 involved wire removal, approximately half of the total number of shots. Other tasks included greenscreen shots and matte painting. For example, in the crowd scenes at the Vatican, in one of several balcony gags in the film, Inspector Clouseau dangles two boys by their feet while hectoring the pair. "On the set, they built a section of the balcony: the rest was green screen," explained Julie Cardinal, VFX Producer at Digital Dimension. "For the set extension, we did tracking, rotoscoping, keying and then matte painting, filling in the ground and the rest of the building around the balcony."
One of the more challenging shots on the project was a scene with a fire hose. The comic effect required significant water enhancement in post. "Most of the scene was actually shot with a regular garden hose," Cardinal said. "So we had to change it into a fire hose and then add a lot of water." The team recreated elements of the background to show the water splashing realistically off various objects. "That was all assembled in the comp. We had to do a lot of tweaking to get it looking right, but in the end our CG water blended in perfectly," said Cardinal.
Fusion provided a solid solution for Digital Dimension in their work on THE PINK PANTHER 2. "This is an excellent node-based compositing system," explained Vissal Nguon Ong, Lead Compositor at the facility. "Fusion is user-friendly, and we find that new artists learn it quickly." Favourite features include the tracking system and the 3D environment. "Doing the camera projection in Fusion with FBX is a big help," explained Ong. "We just load the FBX objects and the camera info into Fusion and sometimes use these as tracked masks, instead of rotoscoping the objects. It makes life a lot easier for us!"
