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Australia’s Dfilm helps spin the tale of a sci-fi thriller
By Lisa Stanley
What is the matrix?
Nothing less than a jaw-dropping, science fiction tour de force. With
it’s cleverly conceived story that unfolds like a well-choreographed
dance, The Matrix has already established itself as a sci-fi
masterwork. And while story is first and foremost in the film, groundbreaking
camera work and visual effects play a large role in advancing the plot.
Of the hundreds of 3D visual effects shots, absolutely nothing is gratuitous:
nevertheless, these shots make the ride that much more fun and exciting.
Dfilm Services
It was over a year ago that two Australian digital media houses were approached about the possibility of creating shots for the Wachowski brothers’ forthcoming sci-fi thriller. Both Animal Logic and Sydney Australia-based Dfilm Services jumped at the chance. Using Side Effects Houdini these two houses created over 50 3D effects shots ranging from smoke to complex character animation and everything in between.
As Australia's only dedicated feature film visual effects house, Dfilm got their first bit of sci-fi film experience through their work on Dark City. For The Matrix they took on over 40 of the shots including the highly memorable, mirror sequence and the "bug" bugging device. In order to accomplish these scenes they put the power of Houdini behind three very talented animators.
Mirror, mirror…
Neo (Keanu Reeves), has chosen to embark on a journey to discover the truth about the matrix, he’s swallowed the red pill and his bizarre life starts becoming immediately stranger. Warped reflections seem to be particularly favored in this film---a reminder that in the matrix, appearance does not reflect reality. Thus, sitting in a room with Morpheus and his crew, Neo sees the reflection in a mirror spontaneously change. He reaches out to touch the glass only to discover that it’s not solid. As he slowly draws his hand back we see that the mirror, has stuck to him like reflective toffee and is being pulled along by his hand. Then as he gazes at the mirror residue on his fingers, the liquid reflection begins to ominously engulf his arm, shoulder and neck. They did tell him to buckle his seat belt.
While he may not be Lewis Carroll, Sr. Animator Dominic Parker, on loan at the time from The Computer Film Company, London, is quite capable of putting a protagonist through the looking glass…or putting the looking glass on the protagonist as the sci-fi version goes. Using a combination of 2D tracking and morphing, and 3D effects, Parker and fellow animator Justin Martin helped make "Kansas go bye-bye," for Neo.
Parker explains that the underlying principle of the mirror "goo" was create NURBS models and have more NURBS creep over them using Houdini’s Creep function. Body parts, such as Neo’s hand, were digitized models brought into Houdini for animation (IK, capture and deform) and lighting. The hand itself wasn’t rendered but served as a template for the mirror to creep over. Final renderings were done in RenderMan---so, in other words the funky looking reflections were faked. Houdini’s compositor was used in the previsualization stages for rough composites.
While the creation of this sequence may sound fairly straight forward, the challenge, according to Parker lay in the fact that the Wachowski’s didn’t have a specific pre-determined look. "They were concerned with the narrative of the film," he explains. "The visual effects worked when they told the story. There were storyboards, but it was a question of moving towards the end result. We changed the design over and over until they honed in on the look they wanted. Houdini’s procedural nature allowed me to redesign the shots without having to go back to square one each time. With Houdini, once you’ve done the ground work it will work for the next stage, whatever the next stage is."
There’s something bugging Neo
Early in the movie, Neo is kidnapped by government agents who in the course of their interrogation melt over his mouth and begin the process of "bugging" him. Agent Smith takes an electronic wire tap-looking device out of a case. He presses a button and a liquid sack begins to form at the lower end---the sack expands and we can see something wriggling inside. Suddenly the sack bursts revealing what might be described as a mechanical scorpion. The menacing device is carried, tentacles flailing and body squirming, over to Neo’s exposed stomach. It quickly crawls towards Neo’s belly button and, tentacles first, begins to burrow itself. After a long, painstaking moment the bug continues to descend until only its tail remains to be seen. The next moment Neo finds himself sitting up in bed in a cold-sweat, convinced it’s all just a dream.
Dfilm’s Computer Animation Supervisor, Sally Goldberg, jumped at the chance to do the character animation for these four shots. As an animation veteran with experience on all the major 3D animation packages, Goldberg likes a challenge. In this instance the Wachowski’s were quite clear about what they were looking for…this scene had to be realistic, ominous and creepy. The bug itself was to conform to well-conceived sketches. Goldberg began building her NURBS bug model traditionally and then applied procedural modeling/animation techniques to it.
The model of the body was animated with IK. The tentacles were keyframed constructor points to which dynamic lag was added via expressions. The surface of the tentacles was then built on top of this. The various feelers and spikes protruding from the bug were built up through points on the animating bug’s surface. Goldberg chose to do the shot in Houdini because she felt it would be easier to obtain the level of depth required for the animation in Houdini than in another package. "The ability to have ‘automatic’ secondary animation of elements that follow the keyframed action of the underlying character was Houdini’s most helpful feature," she states.
Automatic secondary animation would also prove most vital in the transformation sequence. At more than 90 frames in length, this sequence, where the electronic mechanism forms the bug within a liquid membrane, was the most technically challenging aspect of the project. Goldberg created the liquid to automatically conform to the bug’s transformation. This meant that if the animation for the bug had to be changed, the sack animation would automatically adjust. Finally, there was the challenge of creating the liquid within the membrane. Goldberg explains her secret:"What made it look like liquid was the delay between the motion of the bug inside the sack and the movement of the membrane on the surface of the sack. This made it look like the bug is moving and the sack reacting. I accomplished this by using an equivalent of the trail sop and combining the geometry of the sack from different frames."
Matrix Effects
Parker, Goldberg and Martin helped us get caught up in the momentum of a film that will undboutedly prove to be a sci-fi classic. Over and above the mirror and bug, the three animators spent the 12 months of this project working to create smoke, a warping road and buildings, a bending spoon, morphing mouth and the helicopter crash sequence. Warner Brothers and the Wachowski’s are both pleased with the results and Dfilm is receiving a lot of positive attention for their work: work which includes a great deal of precision compositing and riveting Houdini-generated 3D animation.
Contact Information
Dfilm Services
Sydney Australia
Telephone: +61 2 9436-1466
Side Effects Web Site: http://www.sidefx.com