Allan McKay - Advanced Visual Effects Pipelines for Feature Films

Priest Overview

• Train Destruction
  The grand film finale for Priest involves a massive train of vampires blowing up, over several shots we see the initial train begin to tear open and begin to explode and then eventually completely erupt into massive fireballs and explosions. Here we look at the development of these vfx, primarily creating photo realistic explosions that needed to hold up close up to camera, as well as looking at subtle changes to how many CG explosions are usually done, that made a world of difference in selling the explosions as completely realistic. We also look at the pipeline for making the trains buckle and explode, tearing metal as areas begin to blow out, using 3D Studio Max’s skin wrappers and other tools to build a very unique and easy way to control the fragmentation and destruction of the carriages as metal walls and roofs begin to blow apart and bend due to the force of the explosions. We will discuss several shots and the deconstruction of each of them.
• Creating a procedural approach to motorbike crashes
  For the two hero characters boarding the mobile train in the finale sequence of the film, both hero’s individually leap off of their motorcycles onto the train. This required their motorcycles, still in motion, to begin to veer off and eventually lose control and begin to tumble, smash apart and eventually explode in two individual shots. The approach taken here required for a mixture of hand animation, reactors dynamics and particle flow’s advanced procedural controls to build a unique way to control the bikes being able to tumble and flip over and break on impact. Here we look at how this was done in a way to keep complete control and layer up the animation from hand animation through to procedural animation to get the entire effect needed.

Transformers 3 Overview
We look at FX automation, taking full advantage of Maxscript to generate actual shots from scratch. In one case we had a shot which involved 16 characters being killed off, each requiring 8 FX passes of everything from fluid sims to particles, sparks, ash, lasers, etc.... We demonstrate here where we created a rig for each character controlling their direction and other information, as well as time of impact and other useful information. From there we are able to generate 128 max files for each effects pass automatically with each character set up and ready to render (or sim) allowing for a really robust workflow. We worked with Max and Maya seamlessly on this project to take full advantage of each package.