Sunshine

MPC was given over 750 shots to kick start the sun and bring to life the mission to save the world. As the sun is a major ‘character’ of the film, it’s visual development was a key aspect of the effects work. VFX supervisor Tom Wood headed up a team that produced some of the most stunning images of the sun ever put on film.

“It is the year 2057, the sun is dying and mankind faces extinction. Earth’s last hope lies with the Icarus II, a spacecraft with a crew of eight men and women led by Captain Kaneda. Their mission: to deliver a nuclear device designed to re-ignite our fading sun.” The film has been described as The Core meets 2001 in space and it arguably contains some of the best detailed sun 3D renderings ever done.

The stunning visual effects work, a total of 750 shots, was carried out by MPC (The Moving Picture Company) and involved conceptualizing and creating the surface of the sun and the realization of two enormous spaceships including mile wide sun shields. The film was directed by Danny Boyle, who also helmed 28 Days Later and The Beach.

One of MPC’s major tasks was conceptualizing the sun. The artists used NASA observations as reference. These are, at closest, 50 thousand miles across an image. However, in the movie the action takes place much more closely that that so a period of creative exploration was required to conceive the final design. NASA images depicting the turbulent sun captured at various wavelengths of light, gamma, x-ray and extreme ultra-violet, were used as reference.

07Apr/sunshine/sunCThe close up sun is an immense environment where everything was deliberately extremely chaotic and disorientating. The crew used Maya fluid systems to generate thick clouds and rigid body simulations to shatter the payload towards the end of the movie. Atmospheric particle elements burn holes in the payload and create contrails which help give a sense of speed during the descent. Extensive use of matte paintings incorporate large detailed vistas. The distant sun was made up from many layers of surface movement with many small explosions and eruptions. To make it accessible and familiar to the audience, the cg version also contains many of the familiar elements found in the real sun, again sourced as reference from NASA archives.

Fxguide spoke to Tom Wood at MPC about the film.

fxg: What 3D rendering software did you use? I understand the sun was done in maya fluids but how was it rendered?

TW: We used the Maya fluid systems to generate thick clouds during the descent into the sun which were rendered with Mental Ray. We also rendered out separate Lighting passes that could be used as masks in shake to control lighting & create energy discharges during the descent.

fxg: Was this composited in Shake at MPC? – Did you use an OpenEXR pipeline ?  Was it a multi-pass render process to 2D from the 3D?

TW: : The ship was rendered with several secondary passes in the float OpenEXR format, the beauty pass was reconstructed from the secondary passes to allow us to tweak ship Lighting in comp.

fxg: There are a lot of close up destruction sequences in the film - can you discuss what elements you were getting off set – vs how much it was just green screen and all CGI please?

TW: The close up destruction inside the ship was predominantly achieved by Special Effects. Additional flame elements were added to a few shots to reduce the fireball effect of some of the pyrotechnics during the start of the fire. Also the source of some of the pyro were removed digitally where it was impossible to hide the charges.

07Apr/sunshine/sunBThe exterior destruction shots were entirely computer generated. Multiple plates were shot of miniatures for the communication tower destruction sequence but were ultimately consigned to the cutting room floor due to their unsuitability.

For the exterior destruction shots the ship was converted to use MPC’s PAPI dynamics system. The shield was also created as a particle system so we could rip sections apart during the descent. MPC also created lots of atmospheric particle elements so they could burn holes in payload and create contrails to help give a sense of speed during the descent.

In the movie, the ship is not seen in direct sunlight, this presented an unprecedented and unique challenge to the lighting team. With the Living Section in the shadow of the shield they needed to to create an oppressive, claustrophobic feel to the infinite space around it. The shield itself measured 1 mile in diameter and was covered by individually operated 2 x 5 metre gold panels. To ensure their movement was appropriate for the action taking place, the animation team used MPC’s Giggle software to help generate the shield from 130,000 individual tile elements

fxg: You mention Giggle software – I have not heard of this – is that an in-house program? What does it do and how does it work?

TW: GIGGLE is an in-house scripting language that controls our rendering tools; it is essentially an interface between Maya and Renderman which allows us to control and render large numbers of complex elements.

07Apr/sunshine/sunAfxg: The design of the Icarus is both original and central to the plot of the film. Can you explain who designed the ship? Do you have any  model shots – such as grey turntable style shots showing the ship design please? Was the design locked in before your team started or was it an MPC design.

TW: The overall design of the ship came from the art department. The gold shield covering the 350m cube payload with the living section poking out of the back. As MPC constructed the digital version of the ship a number of significant changes were made to the layout of modules in the rear living section. All modules and the remaining parts of the ship, shield, bomb etc. were to MPC’s design. Every part of the ship barring the airlock was detailed by MPC’s team of modelers and texture painters.

The ship had 2 main sections, the Living Section & the Payload/Shield section. The Living section was around 300 meters long & had around 50 modules. After the main spine of the ship was built, a team of 5 modelers built the individual modules. The Art department provided a ‘design bible’ of images that we drew upon in creating the individual modules. These were mostly from ISS & Mir Space Station designs but we also included the London Eye & Radio Telescopes for structural inspiration. The basic design of the ship was done by the production designer Mark Tildesley but we had to come up with how the modules actually worked & fitted together. The back story was the modules were built on earth & assembled in earth orbit & that led the design thinking. We also used set plans to ‘build out’ from the main Flight deck & Mess Room so the module shapes followed the interior designs.

fxg: Regarding the design, what considerations did you have in making it look large given the scale of the shield, especially from behind the shield ? Was there any particular lens or camera style or movement you used to film those CG shots?

TW: The size of the ship always had to be a major consideration in every featured shot. Once Danny Boyle and Alwin Kuchler had started to shoot live action sequences, many of the previz shots already in conception were changed to be more in keeping with their visual vocabulary. We soon came to use the same dynamic as the main unit in terms of how a shot was created, with the main emphasis on the play of light across or through the shot rather than on simple narrative requirements.

The camera style had to maintain a form that was consistent with what was shot on set. We didn’t want large outlandish camera movement on the CG shots but a more majestic & graceful movement, we tried not to use too many wide angle lenses because that would give a more miniature shot feel to the CG model. Even though we are in space & there is no correct up or down, we tried to maintain a consistent view of what was up & down with the ship. This was to help the audience to become familiar with the ship layout & structure.

fxg: There is a lot of halation – did you use a plugin or custom software for those optical halos/glows?

TW: As the show depicted the sun, impossible to capture correctly within the conventional movie cameras, we decided to make every shot appear to be on a knife edge of stability regarding that capture. If it appeared that the camera was struggling to cope with the flood of light it would give the shot both an edgy feel but also appear like the rest of the movie and not stand out as digital.

fxg: Was the fire sequences also maya fluid based?

MPC: This was done with many layers of a Maya soft-body mesh then a custom shader developed by MPC with more fluid noise & displacements on top of this. It was rendered with multiple passes for controls within Shake.

Sunshine is in theaters now in certain countries and makes its debut in the United States in September.