3ds max and combustion form a nice balance in
Equilibrium
-- by Audrey Doyle
The Article
SITUATION
According to Charles Darby, one of the biggest challenges about
creating virtual environments for film is making the environments feel
believable. "Even if you’re creating a fantastical or futuristic city,
viewers still must believe the environment they’re seeing on the screen
is a ‘real’ place," says Darby, who is visual effects supervisor and
co-owner of Digital Firepower, a Hollywood facility that specializes in
creating elaborate digital worlds through 2D and 3D digital matte
paintings. "But whenever you create a virtual environment, holding onto
reality is extremely difficult," he adds. "The further away you get
from live action, the more challenging it is to maintain a sense of
realism." As challenging a task as this might be, it’s something Darby
and his fellow artists at Digital Firepower overcome on every film they
work on, including Equilibrium, their most recent and most
difficult to date. One reason they can do this is because the team of
highly trained traditional artists have the skills to re-create
computer environments that evoke a sense of realism, no matter how
far-fetched the environments are. The other reason is because the
artists have tools that are robust yet versatile and intuitive enough
to help them meet their goals. Those tools are Discreet’s 3ds max™
modeling, animation, and rendering software, and combustion™,
Discreet’s paint and compositing system.
PROBLEMS/CHALLENGES
One of 2001’s anticipated fall movies, Equilibrium is set in a
futuristic society where citizens must take a drug to prevent them from
expressing their emotions. Digital Firepower’s role in Equilibrium
was to create the city of Libria, which is where the film takes place.
The three-year-old facility is no stranger to creating complex virtual
environments for film; for its most difficult project before Equilibrium,
last year’s Dungeons & Dragons, artists created 15 elaborate 2D/3D
digital worlds. However, Darby says Equilibrium was more
challenging than D&D for a few reasons. First, the digital matte
paintings and set extensions the team created for Equilibrium
are entirely 3D. "Where our past shows consisted of 2D environments or
hybrid 2D/3D environments, Equilibrium is much more
3D-intensive," Darby says. In addition, unlike for D&D, for Equilibrium
the team had to build a city that was oppressive and yet stately enough
to fit in with the mood of the film, but that also looked tangible
enough to be believable. Plus, while in most of the D&D shots the
camera focuses on one particular building and keeps the rest of the
environment in the background, in Equilibrium the entire city
is the focus. Another reason is because D&D was a fantasy film,
whereas Equilibrium is not. "With a fantasy you automatically
have an advan-tage in that your colors can be stronger and your
architecture can be more stylized," Darby explains. "But with Equilibrium,
we had to make thousands of decisions as to what would make the city
look real. How could we make Libria look like a real city even at
different times of the day, given that there is no city on Earth that
looks like Libria? How could we create this city so that it felt as
real as the live action?"
SOLUTIONS/BENEFITS
Darby found the answers to his questions with help from the
comprehensive toolsets in 3ds max and combustion
software. "We’re impressed with the tools in combustion,
especially the tracking tools, and the tools in 3ds max are
versatile and efficient," he enthuses. "Both products worked together
to help us get this job done." According to Darby, the first step for
the artists was to devise the city’s look. "This movie was shot in
Berlin and it’s about dictatorship," Darby says. "So we decided to
create a city that resembled Berlin in color and mood and that had
architecture that was dark and oppres-sive, but not colorless." For
inspiration, the artists turned to designs and drawings created by
architects Hugh Ferriss and Albert Speer, along with photos of Berlin
and Munich. Once they decided on the look of the city, the artists
began building it. According to Darby, Libria appears in 37 shots in
the film. Although he says all 37 were challenging, he points to five
that were particularly tricky. The first shot begins with a car
traveling over a road that resembles a dam-like wall dividing Libria
from the wasteland surrounding it. This cuts to the second, in which
the car approaches the city’s "inner wall", passes through the city
gates, and travels underneath another roadway. This cuts to the third
shot, in which the camera pans upward to reveal the entire city. In
these shots, the only real elements are the car and some live action in
a guard tower. Everything else is a digital painting created in 3ds
max and 2D-composited and tracked in combustion.
"The difficulty with these shots was the fact that during the sequence,
you’re driving through this digital city and it must look totally
real," Darby says. "This is the first time viewers see Libria, so it
was important that we make it look impressive, but also believable."
Meanwhile, the fourth and fifth shots were difficult primarily because
of the complexity of the camera moves. The fourth shows the Palace of
Justice. The first two floors of the building are portions of a real
stadium in Berlin; the artists digitally extended the stadium another
12 stories. The fifth shot shows the Hall of Equilibrium. "For
this we received a live-action plate of vehicles heading toward the
base of the Hall, and we added a massive structure on top of the base
and blended it in," Darby says. "In both shots, we had to deal with
complex camera moves—dollies and cranes that must link up with live
action. It was tricky."
According to Darby, 3ds max and combustion software
helped the artists create Libria despite the fact that these scenes
were so difficult. For instance, although some of the eight artists who
worked on Equilibrium were new to 3ds max, they learned
the program quickly. "It’s a complex program, but it’s not difficult to
get into, so artists can understand it."
Plus, the artists were able to create a render queue in 3ds max
software to speed up the rendering process. "Rendering in 3ds max
is fast and efficient. Some of these shots are very large, but they
still ren-dered quickly in it," he says.
Furthermore, thanks to the open architecture of 3ds max
software, several plug-ins are available that extend the software’s
features. One that came in quite handy was Scene Genie, a 3D camera
tracking plug-in from Autonomous Effects. "We take our tracks pretty
seriously, and Scene Genie is a great tool for 3D tracking. We love
working with it, and we like the fact that it works from within 3ds
max," he says. "In the past we’ve used a mixture of 3D modeling,
animation, and rendering programs on our projects. But for Equilibrium,
it was all 3ds max," he adds. "And from here on out, we plan to
continue doing that."
The combustion product, meanwhile, enabled the team to
accomplish numerous 2D tracks accurately. "Plus, the keyer is extremely
efficient, even for getting rid of tracking markers in plate
photography," Darby says. "We could roto and paint in combustion
very easily. We swapped over to combustion [from another 2D
compositing application] shortly after we started on this project, and
we’re very happy we did. We composited more than half of the big hero
shots in combustion. That would have taken much longer to do in
other programs." All told, the Digital Firepower artists are pleased
with the results they achieved with the Discreet products. "We take
pride in being fairly clever about how we construct a shot. We don’t
want to fall into a technical quagmire, spending our time discussing
how to accomplish a shot technically," Darby says.
"We want to spend our time discussing how to accomplish a shot
artistically. "These products let us do that," he concludes.
