Wolves and Vampires, Skin, Snow and Fur.
Image Engine and Tippett Studio.
Tippett Studio: Wolves in the Snow
Tippett Studio was asked to return on this film after their work on New Moon. Working with a team of about 60 people, they created new wolves according to Spades’ preferences. “We had a mandate from David [Slade] to make the wolves as photorealistic as possible; he wasn’t a fan of the way they looked in the second movie, where we made them look a certain way because that is what Chris Weitz wanted.” And in a first for this series, added a great deal of interaction between wolves with humans and vampires- and snow that had to match the fake snow used on set. “We shipped a 55 gallon drum of fake snow back from the set because they had a very specific mixture of snow. It was half shredded paper and half some sort of polymer,” provided by a company in London.
The digital snow was a particle based system that would generate to stick to the hairs that had their own effects animation. Aesthetic decisions such as how far into the hair, how big, the color. The snow particles were paint map driven, both in initial placement and in falling off. “We would kill particles in the fur, and create new particles in the exact same position that would follow a different set of physical guidelines.” The snow shaders were relatively simple, not requiring any sparkle.
Tippett Studio: Compositing the Battle Scene
The battle sequence between the newborns and the six foot wolves weighing 1000 pounds was another sequence of great strength. The actors playing the newborns were shot in close proximity to each other, making it difficult to animate the wolves between them as they bit and tore their way through the newborn crowd, a task that had to be handled by Tippett compositor Satish Ratakonda. “We had to come up with something that cheated the distance between the vampires,” said Ratakonda.
“Taking more time for the wolves to cross from one vampire to another, and manipulate the contact timing when the wolf is hitting the ground and the vampires.” Layering, as the wolves passed in front or in back of the actors, also increased timing. This doesn’t mean they spread the actors location over a wider space, it means they created the illusion of space as the wolves charged forward from vampire to vampire. All of this resulted in a great deal of painting was required since the actors playing the newborns were being pulled and jerked on wires and falling on foam mats.
To increase the feeling of the wolves massive weight, Ratakonda displaced the ground around their feet and they came crashing down, and layered in flying grass and debris.
He also used shadows to help create distance between vampires and wolves, adding denser shadows as the two were in closer proximity and lighter shadows as the wolves bounced away to their next victim.
The shadows were created by matchmoving models of the wolves and vampires from the plate.
Ratakonda also kept his eye on the detail. When one newbie was attacked by a wolf who grabbed his shirt, pulling and shredding it, Ratakonda requested a shirt with wrinkles and tears from the paint department.
By animating that single image over a period of frames, he was able to create the illusion that the digital wolf was grabbing a live action shirt, pulling it away until it tore, and the shirt snapping back into position in tatters.
"This conversation could get very science-fictional," Tippett says. Take the CG rat, Templeton, which Tippett Studios animated based on Steve Buscemi's vocalization for "Charlotte's Web." "A huge part of that performance was a bunch of animators astutely observing rat behavior. Twenty years from now -- or 20 minutes -- we'll have the technology to motion capture a real rat. Then we'll be able to dial in Steve Buscemi's motion capture and blend a real rat and a real human. Whose performance is that? Just knowing how political Hollywood is, even if everybody thought Templeton was the greatest character of all time, who's going to give a rat an Academy Award?"
