FEATURE VFX WORK

Below are details for some of the feature films I have worked on during my time in the VFX industry.

Role - Lead layout Technical Director

Description - The Death Cure was my first show requiring construction of a full size cg city build. Despite the challenges the team and I faced including pipeline and hardware limitations, we were able to complete a procedural build at a scale and level of fidelity that had not yet been achieved before at the studio, and set the foundation for further large scale city shows still to come.

This city consisted of two separately treated builds, one for the Slums - the outer city, and the other for the tightly packed inner city with its futuristic skyscrapers. These builds both leveraged city engine for their construction method, and used different build templates based on their requirements.

For the slums, we created a library of layouts representing various slum blocks. Using new asset packaging software we had available to trial, we were able to instance a vast amount of these blocks atop the outer city template. This template used real world open street map data, and both the slum blocks and individual ruined buildings were distributed together to produce a treatment that was grounded in reality. We could iterate on the distribution of slum block and building placement using height as the main variable.

The inner city was build on a radial network preset and again utilised height for its distribution mechanic. It favored the taller inner city skyscrapers towards the center, and key buildings were hand placed and excluded from placement iteration.

Further modular kitsets such as roads, overpasses, and rail networks were also used to create various standalone layouts, and once dressed were added to shots as required.

The show also featured a number of night time shots, which raised the need for inner city building interiors and lights. We handled these by dressing a limited number of floors which could then be propagated in a random order up the height of the building interior to fill them. These also included settings applied to the light panels which provided lighting with much needed variation for light temperature and brightness.

In addition to the city there were many technical card rig and full cg camera shots, and a travelling train chase sequence requiring consolidating multiple plates in 3d space for a number of shots.

For my efforts on this show I received a shared HPA nomination for Outstanding Visual Effects.

Role - Lead layout Technical Director

Description - War for the planet of the Apes was a difficult but enjoyable show to work on which demanded a high standard of artistry and technical input to satisfy.

As lead on this show I was responsible for managing the layout team to oversee the setup of many shots, sequences, and continuity events. These included full cg cameras and many optical effect type cameras. I also took full ownership of the entire Prison Camp environment which staged the 3rd act of the film, and was fortunate to have plenty of hands on time with the tools during this show. My tasks included establishing blocking and staging of cameras to support the prison camp approach shots, assemble and maintain the Prison Camp masterlayout, and dress high detailed parts of the environment to specifically match plate reference. An extremely high attention to detail was required to recreate the entire prison camp set area, allowing shots to switch between plate and full cg as required. Set extensions had to be perfectly aligned to this to support the ground contacts required by the many ape puppets that were added.

Technology wise we utilised a fully procedural grown forest using a new in house toolset, which gave us the unique snow covered pine trees across the mountain side and right down to the prison camp surrounds.

My efforts on the Prison Camp gained me a shared VES Nomination for 'Outstanding created environment in a photoreal feature', at the 2018 VES awards.

Role - Layout Technical Director

Description - At the time of 'Maze Runner - The Scorch Trials' I was working out of the Environments department, so was fortunate to work closely with many other specialists such as modellers, texture artists and matte painters, to collaborate directly on the creation of the scorch environment.

My layout tasks involved establishing many one off shots and angles, focusing on composition and the integration of plate elements. Rather than a single masterlayout that the sequence took place in, this was a travelling sequence requiring many different layout builds to service a number of shots each. There was a lot of work involved in blocking camera angles and exploring lenses which allowed for a lot of creative freedom.

Once hero assets were available I setup and maintained a damaged building library and established placement for a lot of these elements within shots. Using predominantly paint placement methods, I added supporting dressing of rock debris and props once the shot composition was approved. We also had the help of some procedural fx tools for additional debris and blowing cloth to help further the look and detail, and which were added after the initial layout debris pass was created.

Role - Layout Technical Director

Description - 'Dawn of the planet of the apes' was an enjoyable show and offered a good amount of artistic set dressing opportunities that I was tasked with.

For the forest shots there was a lot of work spent on establishing contact geo and cg branch additions for the animated apes to swing on. This was done with lidar scans of the forest areas so to get placement of these branch assets into the correct locations, and with close collaboration with animation to align to their iterations. Adding additional foliage to the forest floor was another key task as this allowed interaction with the deer and apes during the opening hunting scene of the film.

The human settlement provided a large set extension and I setup a big display of hanging laundry items using ncloth and a hanging cable toolset which we converted to hero assets for use.

Koba Tower was a tall cg building which held the final duel in the film between Koba and Caeser. Being a partially constructed building, I spent a lot of time dressing debris piles and loose construction material in areas to support shot views and add much needed details.

The swinging lights leveraged the same hanging cable workflow as the laundry however this time these were animated to add some dynamic interest to the windy shots during this sequence.

Role - Layout Technical Director

Description - My work on The Wolverine consisted of mostly shot work, establishing cameras and contact geo for cg characters.

The most notable sequence was the bullet train, for which we had to add damage to the steel during the rooftop fight scene. We defined the damaged pieces using a variety of blend shape methods, and once correctly established these were then treated for hero rendering. Continuity of these elements was also involved in the process, as the actors moved around atop the train.

Role - Assistant Technical Director

Description - My first feature film was arguably one of the biggest - James Camerons 'Avatar '.

I came aboard as an Assistant TD and worked in both the shots and layout departments performing various tasks during the final 6 months of post production.

In the Shots department we used fluid workflows to create and position many of the 3d cloud formations across shots, particularly those with cameras high in the air. I also helped test a new deep opacity system for use in the compositing department, which was later rolled out into the core pipeline.

In the layout department our main role was recreating vegetation dressing within shots, using template files as reference and our own library of hero assets. Utilising in house scripting tools we were able to randomise and cull assets to create unique layouts and avoid repetition. Dressing was then optimised extensively before passing down the pipeline.