Case Studies
The Guardian
RealFlow4
pushes fluid simulation boundaries
Just as you were thinking it couldn’t get any better
after seeing Poseidon….there comes The Guardian.
The Guardian (USA release date 29 September) exposes the full
potential of RealFlow4 with its truly awesome fluid visual
effects. Digital compositing and VFX website vfxtalk.com reveals
all on The Guardian’s fluid FX secrets and will follow
up soon with an in-depth feature and interview with the RealFlow4
experts about their great work on the movie. Want to find
out what it takes to create an all-destroying, photorealistic
wave? Ask the experts! Visit Vfxtalk
and click on “Do the interview” to submit questions
for the upcoming interview.
The Guardian’s Fluid FX Secrets
Revealed!
When Poseidon hit movie theatres in May 2006, the vfx community
was in awe of the outstanding fluid fx accomplishments. Photo-real
fluid fx that behave realistically on such a grand scale have
always been excruciatingly difficult and vastly expensive,
reserved for the likes of ILM and its team of Stanford scientists.
What has remained a secret, until now with The Guardian’s
release, is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of all --
at least for studios without the resources or time to develop
in- house fluid solutions.
RealFlow4, an exponentially improved fluid simulation software
(by Next Limit Technologies) was driven from hobbyist’s
tool to high-end feature film workhorse by the fx demands
of Poseidon and this off-the-shelf software was used to create
awesome fluid fx! In The Guardian, the potential of RealFlow4
is revealed. A strategic alliance among Next Limit (the makers
of Maxwell and RealFlow), Hollywood vfx studio Flash Film
Works and Fusion CI Studios (an R&D and fluid fx studio)
has leveled the playing field.
Working in-house with the primary vfx studio, Flash Film
Works, Mark Stasiuk of Fusion CI Studios developed the fluid
fx pipeline and supervised a fluid fx team of 7 artists using
RealFlow4 to create elements of stormy ocean surfaces like
boat wakes, cresting waves, bow sprays, and enormous breaking
waves. Relying on RF4’s new 64-bit, multithreaded, stable
fluid engine, in combination with the fluid dynamic functionality
added by Stasiuk’s customized scripting, vfx supervisor
William Mesa ordered up complex, large-scale fluid elements
of millions of particles that precisely fit the director's
requirements.
“Disney’s challenge to us was that we raise the
bar for ocean fx even further than we had beforer.”
says William Mesa, founder of Flash Film Works. “With
the Next Limit engineering team supporting our production
needs, the artistic & technical support of Fusion CIS
and our own skilled team of RealFlow artists, we created fluid
fx that went well beyond anyone’s expectations.We feel
well equipped to meet any water fx challenges that come our
way.”
“This was a serious test of RealFlow4 in high-end production
work,” says Stasiuk. “The improved workflow and
ease of script development meant we could stick to a fast-paced
shot delivery schedule, even with the studio's demand for
rich, photo-real fluid behaviors. I was able to develop procedural
Python scripts for specific natural phenomena, and deploy
these as tools for the RealFlow artists. They could then take
3D elements like boats and ocean surfaces and quickly simulate
interactive effects like realistic whitecaps and boat wakes,
providing them as rendered elements for the compositors. Fluid,
spray and mist passes were simulated over periods of a day
or less for most elements, and rendered as self-shadowing
particles over a few hours, even for simulations of millions
of particles, using Lightwave’s 64-bit renderer.
With a PhD in fluid mechanics Mark Stasiuk, co-founder of
Fusion CI Studios, has worked in r & d with software developer
Next Limit for the past 3 years while using RealFlow in features
and commercials. The result has been a unique business relationship
that has combined active production feedback and Stasiuk’s
scripting expertise to accelerate the development of Next
Limit’s RealFlow into an easily accessible, high-end
production tool. Stasiuk provides in-house production consultation
for users of RealFlow and also creates fluid elements for
films and commercials in his own studio. “The developments
in the software during the past year have been phenomenal.
Certainly RealFlow4 has helped level the playing field in
fluid fx.” says Stasiuk.
Working with Mark on The Guardian’s production demands,
we refined our fluid solution so that it can produce complex,
photo-real fluid fx on a tight schedule for reasonable costs,”
says Next Limit Technologies President, Victor Gonzalez. “Many
studios can’t afford the overhead of developing fluid
solutions, but they still want to customize their tools to
meet production needs.
RF4 now gives them this opportunity. With increased competition
and shrinking production budgets, off-the-shelf software like
RealFlow represents the future trend in fluid fx.”
Fusion
CI Studios
Copyright:
VFXTalk Oracle (http://www.vfxtalk.com)
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