GI Joe: six studios united around Autodesk to create the most impressive visual effects

Visual effects studios in California, London and Canada create spectacular effects using Autodesk's Flame, Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, Mudbox, MotionBuilder and FBX applications.

A total of 1,500 visual effects shots have been necessary to create G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra one of the highest-grossing films of this summer. Autodesk with its tools Flame, Maya, 3ds Max, Softimage, MotionBuilder, Mudbox and FBX have made it possible to turn the fantasy of a script into reality.

Stig Gruman, vicepresidente de entretenimiento digital en Autodesk Media & Entertainment, ha destacado que “facilitar la colaboración creativa forma parte fundamental de nuestra estrategia de desarollo de software. G.I. Joe It is a perfect example of the success of said strategy. The film is the result of the work of six extremely talented visual effects studios who used Autodesk's range of tools to compose this mammoth project and achieve a stunning visual result.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdvMpL4wtMg[/youtube]

Digital Domain (Hollywood)

A team of 175 people worked for more than a year creating 320 visual effects shots for two of the main sequences: a chase scene set in Paris that ends with the destruction of the Eiffel Tower and the attack of a large-scale convoy. Digital Domain relied on Maya as its primary animation, modeling, lighting, character programming, and rigging tool, as well as Mudbox for creating modeling drafts. "The Eiffel Tower was a huge and very detailed model, made up of several million polygons. Thanks to Maya we were able to control the large load of data and carry out our work. Maya is a tremendously robust program in many aspects, but what attracts us most is, without a doubt, its ability to integrate into a production line," said Bernd Angerer, animation supervisor.

CIS (Hollywood y Vancouver)

As the company responsible for 265 shots belonging to five sequences of 20 minutes in total duration, CIS used an arsenal of Autodesk tools intended to perform a wide variety of tasks, such as modeling hard surfaces and creating stunts and virtual environments (GI Joe's headquarters, the Sahara desert, the energy shaft, an underwater obstacle course and an ice cap). "The scope of this film is beyond concept. I literally couldn't imagine how to pull off a show of such complexity without using Maya and Flame," said Bryan Hirota, visual effects supervisor at CIS. “In addition to Maya, we use 3ds Max and the FumeFX extension to create and render dynamic fire and smoke effects, MotionBuilder to process motion capture data, and Flame to carry out complex 2½D and 3D compositions,” added Hirota.

The Moving Picture Company MPC (Londres)

MPC created 168 visual effects shots, most of them for an epic underwater action sequence atop a massive cliff created entirely digitally. Greg Butler, visual effects supervisor at MPC and head of a team of 100 artists, commented that “having already worked on Poseidon with Boyd Shermis, visual effects supervisor also on G.I. Joe, we knew we were in good hands. For this film we decided to rely on Maya as the main tool, although we also used Mudbox for metal curvature effects and MotionBuilder to perform some motion capture tasks. Autodesk tools have become an industry standard that makes it easy for our own research and development team to create custom code. Thanks to FBX we were able to avoid developing special programs or making major changes to exchange data, which made the process infinitely simpler.”

Prime Focus VFX (Hollywood, Winnipeg, Vancouver)

The 55-person Prime Focus team, formerly known as Frantic Films VFX, helped create 124 visual effects shots. The process included pre-visualization tasks, creation of digital environments, simulation of liquids and representation of large volumes of particles. The exciting finale, on which the bulk of Prime Focus' work is concentrated, includes scenes during which a plane is devoured by Nanomites (a high-tech weapon that disintegrates metal), a gigantic digital environment and intense 3D spaces that simulate the sky and clouds. Chris Bond, senior visual effects supervisor and president of Prime Focus VFX, highlighted that “we chose the tools 3ds Max and Maya, creating a bespoke animation production line using 3ds Max and our proprietary volumetric particle rendering system, Krakatoa, to represent the billions of particles needed to create a swarm of Nanomites.”

CafeFX (Santa Maria)

“It was very exciting to be involved in bringing this fantastic American icon to the big screen,” said Seth Lippman, CG Supervisor at CafeFX. The team of 50 artists created over 100 shots that included complex organic facial manipulations of lead characters Destro, Zartan and NeoViper. "We use Maya for character animation and camera movement alignment and Softimage for CG animation and lighting. We were especially pleased with the output delivered by Softimage's ICE (Interactive Creative Environment) dynamic engine and its ability to create threaded simulations. Softimage integrates seamlessly with mental ray, allowing you to create a seamless bridge between effects and lighting. What's great about using Maya and Softimage is the flexibility they offer to apply the right tools that best suit you. "They adapt to people's talent," added Lippman.

Framestore (Londres)

Framestore created several shots of the wide-open environments that appear in the film: a helicopter taking off from an air base in Afghanistan, a composite image of Paris, a massive underground missile silo, and a CG recreation of a transport plane flying over stormy waters. Jon Thum, visual effects supervisor at Framestore, acknowledges that a lot of custom code had to be created in Python to get things exactly as they should in this film," he said. "The real advantage of Maya revolves around its custom programming capabilities. Maya's flexibility and expandability has allowed us to fully integrate the tool into our production line; Without a doubt, it is our favorite tool.”