2013 Movie News Archives

June 30, 2013: John DesJardin Talks "Man of Steel" Visual Effects

Man of Steel VFX productsion supervisor John "DJ" DesJardin filled Animation World Network in on the secrets behind making "Man of Steel". Here's a portion of the interview...

    Kryptonians are not constrained by earth physics and have abilities way beyond human limitations. It was established that each time a character would move at speed or fly, their digital version, with CG set replica, would be used so the camera could follow the characters' action instead of trying to fit their animation within a pre-established camera move on an empty plate or limit their action to the constraints of wire rigs.

    Superman, Zod and Faora required the creation of digital doubles while Namek, an 8-foot-tall Kryptonian warrior, was created as full digital character using on-set performance capture. Zod's armor was also fully CG, placed over the actor's body.

    The sequence also required complex simulations. As Superman battles with his enemies, buildings are destroyed, vehicles are wrecked and roads are ripped apart. The mayhem necessitated the use of MPC's proprietary destruction toolkit, Kali, enabling the FX team to handle the demolition of different elements, including brick, glass, wood and concrete. The team also used Flowline to generate volumetric dust, smoke and fire around the destruction.

      For Metropolis, Dneg (under the supervision of Ged Wright) rendered 32 square miles, which they situated along the eastern seaboard. The city is nearly all CG and was developed in previs form by Pixel Liberation Front. It was a mash-up of Chicago, New York and LA. "Dneg, which had already done a virtual Gotham for Batman, developed a procedural city basket for Metropolis. Their team did lidar from the ground up along with texture photos. We also got a helicopter with a lidar mounted on a steadicam to go down some of the city canyons. We wanted to get roof detail but ended up getting detail all the way down to the streets. They had a complete survey of Chicago, which was then used to tear apart. Then they could throw it back together again procedurally. Then there was another procedural process to layer in the structures inside a building they knew was going to break. Office building interiors became easier to do in CG because the camera moves were impossible. We broke our rules at the end just to keep up with the fight, shooting on greenscreen sets and the rest of it was all replaced later.

Read the complete 3-page interview at the AWN.com website.



2013 Movie News

Listed below are all the Movie News items archived for 2013 organized into various categories:

“Man of Steel” Movie News:

“Superman/Batman” Movie News: “Justice League” Movie News: “Superman: Unbound” Animated Movie News: “Justice League: The Flashpoint Paradox” Animated Movie News: “Justice League: War” Animated Movie News: Christopher Reeve Movie News: Other Movie News:

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