By TREVOR HOGG
By TREVOR HOGG
Images courtesy of Framestore and Warner Bros. Pictures.
After a successful collaboration on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Visual Effects Supervisor Stéphane Nazé and Framestore reunited with filmmaker James Gunn and Production Visual Effects Supervisor Stéphane Ceretti for Superman. Among the highlights of the 590 visual effects that had to be created were the entirely digital Krypto the Superdog, the Fortress of Solitude, the nanite-blooded Engineer, CG animatrons, Krypto welcoming Supergirl, and a battle that occurs inside the Fortress of Solitude.
“I was quite excited because Superman was much closer to the comic books and not like a sequel or prequel of something existing. It was more about how we create a new version of Superman, and James [Gunn] was keen to be close to the comic books. Even the designs of Krypto and the Engineer, you feel much closer to the comic books. The comic books are not dark, and Superman is way closer to that spirit.”
—Stéphane Nazé, Visual Effects Supervisor, Framestore
A Soviet astronaut canine that appeared in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 proved to Gunn that Framestore could handle Krypto. “The brief with Cosmo was to have a real dog, and because James Gunn liked our approach, he said, ‘Okay, next time I have a movie with a dog, it will be you,’” explains Stéphane Nazé, VFX Supervisor at Framestore. “Even though Krypto is based on James Gunn’s dog Ozu, the dog itself doesn’t exist. On Cosmo, we had a real Golden Retriever and took photogrammetry with the idea being to match the existing dog on set. For Krypto, James came with a lot of references of his dog, but Ozu was not white and is small, so it was not possible to match him pixel to pixel. By the way, Ozu is absolutely crazy and never does what you’re expecting. On all the shots that we sent to James, it was always a clip of his dog doing something close to what you have in the shots. However, sometimes you have to deviate, but it was important for us to always check that Krypto was behaving like a real dog.”
Given that Krypto does not have any lines of dialogue, emotions had to be conveyed through physical actions. “We typed on the Internet, ‘pissed dog.’ Or, ‘happy dog,’” Nazé states. “It was incredible. Maybe the dog was not happy, but he was acting like a dog you think is happy. We came up with a lot of clips like that.” The opening sequence has a battered and bruised Superman crashing to the ground in the Arctic and whistling for Krypto. “When you have the dog jumping on him, there was nothing on David Corenswet; he was acting like something was actually shaking him. We had to replace parts of the body for contact. At the end of the movie, when Krypto is shaking Supergirl and being violent, we had to replace everything except her face; that was because, on set, a stunt performer literally grabbed and shook Milly Alcock on the ground. A dog won’t grab someone in the same way that a human would with two hands. It was supposed to be with his mouth. We had to replace a lot.” A lot of time was spent on getting the color correct for the white fur, especially in a snowy environment. Nazé notes, “Pending the color tone, the light would shift it to green or blue. For the human eye, it is easy to detect if white looks real or not. The first time we put the dog in the plate, he looked black. Then we had to boost the amount of bounce. The render time started to be absolutely insane.”
Having the plate as a lighting guide was messing up the ability to integrate Krypto. “One of the challenges was that the grade was done on a whitish plate that was burnt out, so you need to change it to be able see the details and contrast,” Nazé remarks. “But doing that altered a lot of the values. We learned quickly to be detached from the plate. The approach was more what you want to see instead of what you would get if he was there for real.” The grooming was accomplished through the proprietary software Fibre. “It allowed us to have much more control, and the quality of the fur was unique. You always have dead hair stuck in the fur, as well as particles, dirt and humidity on the inside of the hair. We pushed all of the details in those shots. It was smart to have an in-house tool because you can ask for a specific request, and it’s not like having the limits of commercial software. You can unlock some parameters, then boost or push it.” Plowing through the Arctic landscape to get to Superman, Krypto creates a snowstorm. Nazé explains, “Krypto is running fast but not like a rocket. We cheated more on the simulation by boosting and moving the snow to create a snowstorm. When you have Krypto going towards the camera, you have this cloud that is dying off, then you have another simulation more like real-time. The trick was to exactly blend between the snowstorm and Krypto stopping and jumping on Superman.”
“The reason I enjoy working on this type of movie is collaborating with a director like James Gunn, who is visual effects-friendly. We spent a lot of time pushing the quality instead of figuring out what he wants. James knows what he wants, however, you can also come with suggestions; he would be frustrated if you didn’t do that… [W]hen James goes, ‘This is a good idea,’ you are proud because you feel a part of something. That to me is key.”
—Stéphane Nazé, Visual Effects Supervisor, Framestore
A complex asset was the personal sanctuary for Superman. “The Fortress of Solitude was insane to render because it consists of 6,000 pieces of crystals refracting,” Nazé notes. “We had seen in the comic books the overall shape of the of the Fortress but had to decide on what it looks like close-up. The idea was to blend the exterior and the interior set, which had an opaque floor, but having the crystals transparent outside and opaque inside made no sense; at one point, it was challenging to find exactly the perfect adjustment between both of them. Also, the quality of the crystals was different between the ground floor versus the top. You have this top-down shot where you have all of those crystals going towards the camera; that was a crazy shot to render for Framestore.” There had to be a degree of opaqueness to create a sense of depth inside the crystals. “If you have a piece of crystal with no structure inside, like bubbles of fractures, it looks like plastic because you don’t feel the thickness. Each piece of crystal had fractures and bubbles, so when you spin around, it feels solid.” To render the 140 shots with crystals, they were broken down into different categories. Nazé says, “We divided the shots into different layers, like far background, mid-ground and foreground. The far background were frames being projected on geometry, the mid-ground was a mix, and the foreground was rendered to limit the number of pieces, bounce and transparency.”
Robots populate the Fortress of Solitude. “Those robots are like chrome balls, and the difficulty with them was mostly to create and animate a lot of things you don’t see in the frame,” Nazé notes. “If you look at the robots close-up, you’ll see Superman being reflected, which means we had to animate the digital double for Superman being reflected out of frame and sometimes Krypto and the 12 robots in the scene. If you don’t do those out-of-frame reflections, the shot will look poor.” The environment had to be created 360 degrees to accommodate for the reflections. “Sometimes we had to animate characters that were out of the frame, like the Engineer running around.” There was no shortage of capes that had to be animated. Nazé remarks, “The joke at the beginning was, ‘We have to put capes on the robots as well?’ It was challenging because Krypto has a cape and now all of the robots. All of the robots in the movie are CG. They built a practical one, but the robot was unable to run and do crazy acting; it was also not reflecting the environment. Even if in some shots there was a big close-up of the practical robot, we had to replace everything.”
Performing in a motion capture suit and providing the voice for the sardonic Robot No. 4, also known as Gary, was Alan Tudyk. “Alan established the vibe, and we got clips of him explaining to us how the robots should move and what was the ideology behind the movement,” Nazé explains. “He was specific about what to do, which was useful to us; that became our bible for the development of the animation. When the robots are moving around Superman, there were people in gray suits on stilts. It is always better to do the maximum in-camera even if in the end you replace a lot.” While the automatons tend to Superman, he relaxes by watching holographic home movies. “It was one of the first conversations we had when starting to work on the show. I asked Stef, ‘Do we go with digital doubles or shoot them on plates?’ Stéphane Ceretti came up with this approach using Gaussian splats. We had three different companies do the same test, and Infinite Realities in London did the best one. That was challenging because it was one of the first times Framestore was playing with this tech. The idea was to develop some tools to render everything through Houdini. I was impressed with the flexibility that you get with the motion of the character, and the camera can be placed where you want. At one point, you have the character spinning and see their back, which was amazing. That was also challenging because with the Gaussian splats technique you can’t splice geometry, but you want to splice them to create a glitch. It was a mix of tech using Houdini projecting on some part of the hologram.”
Nanite particles enable the Engineer to be a shapeshifter, where she can have her forearm transform into a spinning disc that detaches, flies around shredding robots, reattaches and turns back to normal. “Stunts did the choreography,” Nazé states. “Even when she transforms and does a back-flip, we always got reference in terms how she moves. We always had this motion as the arms are transforming with the blades. Everything was CG except for the face. The weight was not an issue because it wasn’t a massive transformation of volume. The black outfit was so dark sometimes that it was hard to read the volume and all of the small details, so we had to boost the light more than what was on set.” Large areas of particles were regrouped or divided to make it look noisy. Nazé adds, “You can see a progression when she transforms. It starts small and becomes bigger. At one point, we had two versions; what you should get if you go through physicality and gravity versus something more art-directed in animation with no particles. We went with animation because the idea was to be art-directed and for James to be able to choreograph across the framing.”
Sometimes plates had to be blended for the fight that ensues when Lex Luther and the Engineer enter the Fortress of Solitude. “The editor was able to cut something because he used the real action plate,” Nazé remarks. “Then, we had to replace the stunt performers with robots and body track the Engineer, keeping only her face. We also had to replace the Fortress of Solitude because the set consisted of the ground level. There’s a shot where the Engineer is slicing robots and a crystal. Only people going frame by frame will see the cracks inside of the crystal. We replaced the reflection on the sunglasses of Lex Luther so you see the fight across the sequence. In another shot, you have a piece of robot going so close to his face with all the sparks and embers. We had to track his face to have some relighting on the face for integration. For Lex Luther, it was more about integration.”
Driving the storytelling and the visuals was the original source material. “I was quite excited because Superman was much closer to the comic books and not like a sequel or prequel of something existing,” Nazé observes. “It was more about how we create a new version of Superman, and James was keen to be close to the comic books. Even with the designs of Krypto and the Engineer, you feel much closer to the comic books. The comic books are not dark, and Superman is way closer to that spirit. The reason I enjoy working on this type of movie is collaborating with a director like James Gunn, who is visual effects-friendly. We spent a lot of time pushing the quality instead of figuring out what he wants. James knows what he wants, however, you can also come with suggestions; he would be frustrated if you didn’t do that because there was an expectation that you would have creative input. It was like, ‘You asked for this. but we also think that would be good.’ Sometimes it’s ‘no’ or ‘yes,’ but when James goes, ‘This is a good idea,’ you are proud because you feel a part of something. That to me is key. To just do the job is less exciting.”
Watch a clip from Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios of “Krypto Saves Superman,” which shows Superman in peril, injured and vulnerable in a snowy landscape, when Krypto the CG Superdog arrives to rescue him. Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA8CQ7XOifw. In another short clip, “Keep An Eye on Him,” Krypto tugs on Superman’s cape to capture his attention. Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jow0XrN-fE.
