Rhythm & Hues talks special effects for Emma’s diamond form

Monday, May 30th, 2011

emma_frost_diamond_xmfc
Rhythm & Hues, who worked on “X-Men: United,” talked to Comicus about the special effects and difficulties when rendering Emma Frost’s diamond form on the big screen. The company was also responsible for Angel Salvadore’s wings and Mystique’s transformation.

In the past you have already worked, sometimes marginally, on almost all the other movies belonging to the Marvel mutants saga. Which are the differences between the job you have done for those movies and the one on X-Men: First Class?

Rhythm & Hues was previously involved in the 2nd X-Men film. The work on that film mostly involved an aerial dogfight with the x-jet and several f-18′s while Storm creates tornadoes to allow them to escape. The biggest difference between the work on this film and that one was we dealt mostly with hard surface objects and heavy dynamic simulations for the tornadoes and atmospheric effects on the previous show. On this film our focus mainly revolved around character work and augmenting the performances of the actors. For example we had to create a believable portrayal for the digital Emma in her diamond form that stayed true to the intent and performance that the actress created when we filmed the scene. They were equally difficult, but very different in terms of focus and implementation.

I guess that several departments of the Rhythm & Hues and dozens of artists have been working on a movie like this. How are your departments divided for such a huge project? Which is the complete process which leads to the actualization of a sequence with visual effects?

Because Rhythm and Hues specializes in working on large studio films, we have a pipeline and workflow that favors specialists and teams broken up into specific disciplines.

For example, on a shot of Emma Frost in her diamond form we have the following procedures: The asset development group creates the “model” of Emma, the surface is given shading properties of diamond and controls are created that allow people to manipulate and move the character around. Once this is setup, we can publish the character into as many scenes as needed. The next step is for the matchmove artists to frame by frame match the performance of actress’ body movement using the Emma asset. This is then sent down the pipeline to the Lighting artists who render the character and create the look of the diamond in the scene. Those images are then passed on to the compositors who integrate the Diamond Emma into the scene after erasing the actress. Many hands touch the shot and it is a truly collaborative process as everyone bring something special to the work and elevates the quality beyond what a single person could do.

SOURCE via Comicus.it: Rhythm & Hues – Gli effetti speciali di X-Men: L’inizio

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