The creation of Rocket, the smart-mouthed raccoon, was the hardest part of the Guardians project, says VFX supervisor Kyle McCulloch
In pursuit of realism Photorealistic characters, like Guardians of the Galaxy’s Rocket, drive technology forward, says Framestore VFX supervisor Kyle McCulloch “[For Rocket] we implemented
right up next to him, render all of
developing the face shapes and the
our own fur model and fur shader.
those hairs and have it not buzz and
sculpts for Rocket, we would always
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There’s a guy called Steve Marschner
have it not look like anything other
render it before and after, showing the
Despite the industry’s competitive nature, Double Negative has remained a leading VFX vendor, providing various effects for some of Hollywood’s biggest hits, including The Dark Knight Rises, the Harry Potter series and Godzilla. But it was the studio’s work on Inception that saw it gain the major plaudits. Limbo City and the Paris fold-over sequence required extraordinary effects work, an achievement recognised by the Academy Awards in 2011 when the team bagged the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. “Inception was a unique opportunity to do something a bit different,” says Franklin, “where VFX was placed at the heart of storytelling, and it was good fun making it.” For this project, the art led the science, requiring the Double Negative team to build custom tools in order to
who wrote the paper on physically
than hair.
puppet and the fur, and play a game
accurate rendering for hair, and we
“[Not seeing the fur] was a major
of charades, where you look at a pose
went ahead and implemented his
hurdle for us in the animation process
and, without the animator telling you,
model – mostly because when we
because traditionally you have an
guess what they’re going for.
were doing side-by-side comparisons,
animation puppet that’s got smooth
rendering our fur next to real fur, it
surfaces and is grey-shaded, and
implemented a system where our
got great looking results very quickly.
you’re putting that in the plate and
animators could kick off a relatively
“The disadvantage is that it’s
“Then on top of that we
doing your animation. And on a
inexpensive version of the furred
computationally expensive, so then
grey-shaded model it’s really easy to
render. We realised we needed to
we had to dive in and figure out
see every wrinkle and curve of every
be showing [director] James Gunn a
how we were going to make it more
sculpted shape, so performances read
render, and not playblasts, so we did
efficient. That was another huge piece
very clearly. And then you put the fur
a lot of relatively low-res renders early
of development we had to do because
on it and it all disappears.
on and got those in front of him rather
Rocket’s got millions of hairs, and we needed to be able to get the camera
“We took a couple of different approaches to tackle that: in
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than playblasts which helped us get to exactly the right performance faster.”
© 2014 Marvel Studios.
Another big change that’s affecting the industry is globalisation. The usual territorial borders of being a US effects house or UK VFX shop no longer apply; most big vendors have satellite offices situated all around the globe. During 2014, Framestore opened an operation in Montreal, while Industrial Light & Magic set up a facility in London. One studio that’s realised the benefits of having artists based in different parts of the world is Double Negative. Having originally formed in London in 1998, the studio now has offices in Singapore and Vancouver. “The VFX film industry has changed a lot, both globally and locally,” says Paul Franklin, VFX supervisor at Double Negative. “The business has become a lot more international in that the US studios, who are the main purchasers of feature film VFX, are much more willing to look at VFX vendors all over the world. That isn’t to say they weren’t doing so in the 1990s, but back then the primary reason to go overseas for VFX was price. Price is still very important today, and there are plenty of tax incentives and subsidies to encourage filmmakers to pick one location over another, but quality and working relationships with the filmmakers play a much larger part than they did 16 years ago. A large part of [Double Negative’s] success is down to us developing strong relationships with great filmmakers who come back to work with us time after time.” Franklin has also noticed significant changes much closer to home. “In terms of local business, the VFX industry in London has grown from a couple of hundred people to a couple of thousand and more,” he says. “UK VFX houses have gone from being niche specialists to comprehensive one-stop facilities, capable of handling all aspects of the VFX, even on the largest shows.”
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