State of the Art - The Industrial Light and Magic special effects thread

I too was really impressed with how they still looked mannequin-like. Really nice subtle animation.

They do have a free trial you can try. I would guess that one might be Transformers 3.

 

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their Scientific and technical Achievement Nominees yesterday:

Lucasfilm was nominated for its iMOCAP system and ILM for it's ?. I don't know what that stands for.

You can read all about it here:

ILM and Lucasfilm nominated for Sci-Tech Awards

 

ObaQ is ILM's batch scheduler for their renderfarm. I'm guessing DOALL is part or complimentary to that. I remember them mentioning it at one SIGGRAPH, but my memory is fuzzy. More details here:

The Power of the Incredible Hulk - the ILM Linux Death Star (scroll halfway)

Also you could consider Ambient Occlusion and ILM Sci-Tech, even though it's listed as Double Negative. ILM developed it for Pearl Harbor under the supervision of Hayden Landis (and was shown at the Stupid RenderMan tricks and a RenderMan course). Ken McGaugh (and probably Hilmar Koch) were involved in that. McGaugh later went to Weta where he helped on things like SSS for Gollum (also in implementation development at ILM for Star Wars 2 and applied on Hobby), and later went to Double Negative. I'm guessing they're giving the award to Ken (we'll see if Hayden also gets a nod).

IMocap would probably go to Kevin Wooley.

 

Well now we know who is the ILM vfx supervisor for Star Tours 2: Bill George.

Here are some photos with Lucas, George, and Disney Imagineer Tom Fitzgerald, along with some cool concept art in the background.

Star Tours

 

The locations sound like they could be pretty awesome.

 

Oh yeah. Podrace,etc in 3D.... Bring it on.

 

That would rock hard. Flying around the skyline and tunnels of Coruscant would rock too.

 

That would be cool. There's endless possibilities with today's technology what they could depict. The one thing they do need to update though is the "immersion" factor. I'm sure the 3D will help that alot, but they really need to try and put you right in the middle of it more than the original. The original was great for its time but today is different.

 

Gotta give the illusion of speed and movement to really get immersed into the ride.

 

Well, we assumed this was coming, but this is official confirmation from Bay himself:

ILM on Tranny 3

 

Yep, can't say that's a big surprise.

 

I'm glad that's a better summary since the first site I saw last week with the press release only mentioned the return of Megan Fox.

 

I'm sure Farrar is assembling a core team of AD, FX Prod, etc. if he hasn't already. Maybe the meeting was with that core group going over preliminary stuff? I would imagine.

 

Yeah, usually those meetings already involve the VFX producer and most likely the animation supervisor.

 

A little write up on Transformers 2. Transformers 2

This also confirms that Farrar will be back for Transformers 3.

 

This is some great behind the scenes footage for Ghostbusters 2. Here: Ghostbusters 2 at ILM


This was shot at ILM. You can see Ed Hirsh(guy yelling "action!" and "cut!", etc) and Creature Supervisor Tim Lawrence, ILM vet Mark Siegel among others. Fantastic look at how this stuff is/was done.

Thanks to vfxblog for the link.

 

Great behind the scenes look at model work for Star Trek by ILM, featuring John Goodson, Howie Weed, Pat Sweeney, and Kate O'Neil.

Here: ILM and Trek: Generations

Thanks to vfxblog for link.

 

Here's a little Wired.com piece about Lucas' new pre-viz system and its application on the Clone Wars animated show.

Cool stuff for director's of films and tv shows. Lucasfilm's new pre-viz system

 

ILM are the main fx house on Peter Berg's Battleship film, based on the game but sounding much more interesting with aliens !!

Don't know the supervisor or any other details. It's due out in 2011.

I hope new Trek film is in 2012 as I'd hate ILM not to be on that because of other commitments.

 

I remember that game! But a movie? Ok sure.

Here's a Avatar still:

Notice who the picture credit is from. Their work looks spectacular as does WETA's

Here's the pic: ILM Avatar pic

 

Yo Shane, fantastic finds. I sometimes go around YouTube looking for that sort of material. Don't recognize some, I will have to pul the DVDs don't remember much of the extras from Ghostbusters 2. BTW if you ever find the Pearl Harbor Ocar VFX Submission reel, let me know. I lost that file (in QT) long time ago, saw it once on YouYube but lost the link.

They're using that system, or something similar at ILM for feature films. They gave that gizmo to Michael Bay so that he could personally manipulate the virtual camera on Transformers 2, the shot where the Decepticons are at the botom of the ocean.

Aghhhh!!!! I like Peter Berg ... but aliens?!?! If they wanted something with battleships, why not redo something like Midway, or make movies about the battle of Coral Sea, or if you wanted amphibious action, there's Tarawa.

Im sure ILM's work will be great but the description makes it sound like a GIJoe fiasco.

Yeah we knew they were working on the final battle but it's nice to have visual confirmation. Especially sne I wasn't sure if the first trailer contained ILM shots, which it does, including when the coters torch the big tree. That CG fire looks amazing!

 

I forgot, Paramount has put up their awards season site, and they're pushing Star Trek and Tnsformers 2 for Best VFX. You can even see the names of the potentia nominees plus some before/after pics from Star Trek:

Paramount: For Your Consideration

 

Awesome. Star Trek was also nominated as one of the Ten Best films by the National Board of Review critics association.

Speaking of that film, I loved how Abrams combined real world locations and even structures and architecture(The power plant for starship assembly plant and Beer Brewery for inside of Enterprise) and enhanced it with vfx. Fantastic work.

 

Previz system
Oh was that the same previz system they gave Bay for those shots? So this must be part of their crossover tech they talked about when they all moved under the same roof.

Avatar
Yeah it looks like ILM is also working on some of the floating mountain shots with copters, which was the most impressive environmental image I remember from the very first teaser. WETA's Navi look exceptional also.

But that fire, yes, it does look amazing. They've really come a long way with that.
I think Cameron said the enire film only contains about a handful of fx shots in space, so we can expect a lot of planetary work for this film.

 

AMPAS announced their semi-final consideration list for the Best VFX Oscar:

The list includes

Avatar

Transformers 2

Star Trek

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

and

Terminator Salvation

Congrats to the ILM teams who worked on all of these films.

The full list of all 15 films can be found here:

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