“Modeling and Rendering of Clouds on ‘Stealth'” by Krall and Harrington
Conference:
Type(s):
Title:
- Modeling and Rendering of Clouds on 'Stealth'
Session/Category Title: Production Rendering
Presenter(s)/Author(s):
Abstract:
Cloud modeling and rendering have been an ongoing challenge for many productions at Digital Domain over the past 10 years. While our voxel rendering tools are constantly improving and have allowed us to create many beautiful cloud images on past shows, nothing had prepared us for the technical and artistic challenges presented by “Stealth”. This show has over 800 shots, a large percentage of which involve digital terrain and skyscapes. The production required new techniques for modeling clouds, using natural shapes that will be scrutinized up-close as our planes fly past, as well as seamlessly fitting into larger cloud structures in both background plates and matte paintings. In addition to this modeling task, there was also the challenge of building a pipeline for rendering these clouds. Due to the large volume of shots, we had to extend the rendering capacity of our proprietary voxel renderer to handle far more volumetric data than we have ever produced on the screen up to this point.
