ILM on Dinosaurs and effects at Siggraph
August 2015 – In the heavily attended production sessions at SIGGRAPH 2015 in LA, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) held a discussion on two fronts – one was a celebration of their 40years of visual effects and technology and the other a behind the scenes look at the visual effects that went into the creation of Jurassic World. Both sessions shared a unique vibe at the show in that the audience was strongly enthusiastic and deeply connected with the experiences from seeing these films and scenes in their real life as well as the the presentation from the ILM staff that showed the love and pride in the work they are doing to help bring these visions to realization.
Siggraph 2015 – ILM 40th Anniversary Panel
The 40th anniversary event started with a highlight reel from the early days including Star Wars, Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark and countless others. The veteran members of the panel talked about the technology creation path, the use of miniatures and progress that has been made in the computing power available. These techniques allowed them a great deal of freedom in the creation of the effects for the films. One of the revelations was that use of real models and miniatures has not been completely replaced with digital CGI, but instead, the use of these models and miniatures has increased. One of the reasons was the ability to use real materials (sand, dirt, wind, and fire) as elements in the shot which react to lighting differently from CGI lighting. The session ended with a sneak peak at their interactive Star Wars content. Built around a multi-camera curated / directed content movie, the interactive environment lets you choose your viewpoint, character view, route taken and overall experience to enjoy a scene from the Star Wars world. The sample had a city scene with R2D2 & C3PO as well as Boba Fett and storm troupers, where you can travel the city and characters in action, you can optionally be “in a character” and see the view and hear dialog from their perspective, or you can go “out of scene” and investigate other objects in and around the scene. This is being developed by ILMxLab as a new interactive experiences, and the time frame and platform for deployment has not as yet been finalized but the “Star War’s Force Awakens” project may been seen at the upcoming holiday season.
Jurassic World Dinosaurs
On the presentation the next day on Jurassic World, the team talked about not only the tools and techniques used on the new film, but also the issues of legacy compatibility with the 22 yr old original film in the franchise. The original film had a large variety of props and special effects, most of which did not make it in the archives over the decades, so a lot had to be reviewed from notes. There was one original raptor sculptures remaining, but not the raptor outfits used by the actors in the original. Similarly, most of the T-REX parts were missing. Also, in hindsight review of the original, creatures like the T-Rex appeared at multiple scales in the film, and had to be standardized in size for the new movie.
The new film has 988 VFX scenes and included a massive 242 minutes of motion / performance capture as the basis for the creatures. Due to the critical nature of the creature performances, the various dinosaurs were “cast” just like the actors with a casting call & tryouts to select performers to be the Motion Capture (MoCap) basis for the whole film. An interesting view of the process was not only the actors having to walk like dinosaurs (Raptors) but the real time view of the CGI creatures that overlay the actors. This includes the periodic view of raptors stopping, standing up straight on their hind legs and doing a “t-pose” with their arms to re-register the Mo-Cap.
The VFX for the film included the aspects of the movie being shot on film rather than digital. The production team used several multiple camera rigs, as well as using and rebuilding one of the cinema cameras used on the production of Ben Hur.
