“Spider-Man 3: VFX Highlights” by Sony Pictures Imageworks
Conference:
- SIGGRAPH 2007 More animation videos from SIGGRAPH 2007:
Title:
- Spider-Man 3: VFX Highlights
Company / Institution / Agency:
- Sony Pictures Imageworks
Description:
The effects in “Spider-Man 3” continue in the Spider-Man tradition of creating improved CG environments and CG digital doubles. The new challenges were to execute VFX which had both intricate character and effects animation components (Symbiotic Goo and Sandman) and to mix more live-action-stunt and face-replacement footage into virtual shots.
Symbiotic Goo’s development was supervised by digital effects supervisor Peter Nofz, CG supervisor David Seager, animation director Spencer Cook, and effects lead Ryan Laney. Toolsets were created within Maya and Houdini to give rigging and dynamics con-trols to character animators and effects artists.
Sandman’s development was led by digital effects supervisors Ken Hahn and Peter Nofz, CG super-visor Bob Winter, sand-effects supervisor Doug Bloom, and software engineer Jonathan Cohen. More than 10 man-years were spent developing tools and software to control particle systems for Sandman’s emotional, character, and effects per-formance, which involved individual manipulation of millions of grains of sand.
Maya animations by the previs and animation teams were re-engineered by Nic Nicholson and John Schmidt for shooting motion-controlled stunt and face-replacement work. VFX Supervisor Sheena Duggal supervised the shooting of face replace-ments, including determining complex eyelines based on Sam Raimi’s direction.
Other work highlighted in this piece includes actor face capture and CG reproduction using an updated pipeline based on Paul Debevec’s work at the Insti-tute for Creative Technologies. In addition, miniatures for the crane disaster were created and shot at New Deal Studios, and enhanced and composited at CafeFX.
Additional Contributors:
Contributors: Sony Pictures Imageworks
Visual Effects Supervisor: Scott Stokdyk
Visual Effects Producer: Josh R. Jaggars
Digital Effects Supervisors: Kee-Suk, Ken Hahn, Peter Nofz
Animation Supervisor: Spencer Cook
Digital Effects Producers: Christian Hejnal, Carey A. Smith
CG Supervisors: Grant Madden Anderson, Francisco X. DeJesus, Albert Hastings, David Seager, Robert Winter
Sand Effects Supervisor: Douglas Bloom
FX R&D Lead: Jonathan Cohen
FX Software Lead: Chris Allen
FX Animation Lead: Ryan Laney
VFX Plate Supervisor: Sheena Duggal
VFX Plate Leads: Gregory Nic Nicholson, John Schmidt
Look Development/ Lighting Leads: John Haley, Jonathan Litt, Dan Lobl, Andrew Nawrot, Victor Schutz, Terrance Tornberg
Sand Shader Look Development Lead: Laurence Treweek
CG Character Animation Leads: Bernd Angerer, Peter Giliberti, Chris Williams
FX Animation Leads: Aaron James McComas, Jeff Wolverton, Bjorn Zipprich
Compositing Leads: Matt Dessero, Blaine Kennison
Character Pipeline Lead: Chuck McIlvain
Character Set-Up Lead: Arthur Gregory
Modeling Leads: Kui Han Lee, Alexander H Whang
IBR Texture Lead: Bill La Barge
Texture Paint Lead: Elbert Yan
Cloth/Hair Lead: Michael L Stein
Roto/Paint Lead: Nathalie Gonthier
3D Matchmove Lead: Rachel T Nicoll
Motion Capture Lead: Remington Scott
