Matrix at AEAF

Sections of the industry were stunned this week when neither of the two Matrix sequels Reloaded or Revolutions were short listed for the official Bake Off. Fxguide was able to watch a lengthy visual effects breakdown session at the AEAF conference the week before, in which two of the visual effects supervisors Dan Glass and John ‘DJ’ Desjardin broke down numerous sequences from the films. If the packed Sydney audience response was any gauge, the Bake off

The highlight of this years AEAF conference was the morning dedicated to the EON, Matrix presentation by John “DJ” Desjardin and Dan Glass.

The morning was divided into to talks for each of the Matrix Reloaded and the Matrix Revolutions, and much of the material shown will not be seen elsewhere. The producers are currently planning a special DVD extravaganza, but a lot of the material shown at Darling Harbour will not be featured as it consisted of “B-rolls and animation tests” commented DJ at the break.

Much has been made of the now famous construction of an entire length of freeway for the filming of Matrix ReLoaded, and the sheer size of the film’s budget that would allow such a grand vision. Similar attention was of course given to the visual effects: it is often said that it is great to have reference material shot when trying to animate something unusual. For the Matrix the team wanted some reference material of people in long coats fighting in zero gravity, – so they did a deal to use the Space program’s zero gravity test pilot jet or “vomit comet”. By flying at extreme speeds and high altitude the fight choreographs were able to actually ‘fight’ in zero gravity. This was partly to test the feasibility of filming green screen sequences this way and partly to just obtain great reference for the animators.

DJ and Dan Glass outlined how each was response for a section of the films, either inside the matrix or in the real world. In each area of the films several companies such as ESC, Animal Logic (Aus), Giant Killer Robots and BUF Compagnie (FR), SPI , Tippett Studios and Pixel Liberation Front (PLF) were used.

The section covering the role of PLF was particularly interesting. PLF worked under the leadership of Colin Green from the concept art and story boards to first produce a story reel, then a animated Previz of the entire film, and in some cases data to the motion platforms. A typical dock scene in Zion for example was initially conceived as a set of style frames and concept art. Detailed story board frames would then be drafted, while the main visual effects unit tried to work out the three dimensional physical interpretation of the drawings. As many of the concept art drawings were extremely detailed and very complex, this was not an easy task. PLF would then produce a Softimage Previz of the sequence, without any complex shaders, lighting or textures.

The Soft files would then be handed to the main effects company handling that sequence, in this case ESC in California. ESC would convert the files to Maya, and start work towards the final look and texturing of the Dock. PLF would stay with the production for a long time, including being based here in Sydney during principle photography. In this case of the dock sequences they were joined by some key ESC animators. The ESC animators would produce realistic ‘rough’ animation as best they could and then get that animation approved by the Wachowski brothers. The Maya files would then be handed back to PLF for analysis to drive the motion base for the actors to be filmed in. PLF would produce data to drive the huge motion base, the motion control camera rig, and the computer lighting rig. So called “slap comps’ were provided on set to check alignment of the 3 major computer driven devices with the ESC artists original animation, and then once the Directors were happy, this would be passed on to Editorial and eventually back to ESC again for final animation and compositing.

Rendering resources were naturally massive, Dan Glass broke down a fire sequence from Reloaded, where an explosion of flames chase Neo as he flys away. While flames were shot live action, this particular sequence required the flames to reach out almost as a hand and nearly engulf Neo. To create this Dan’s team used complex fliud dynamic fire simulations that worked out the volumetric shaders and render the inferno. Dan quoted render times at over a 100 hours a frame for this sequence.

The motion base was also used for the crews flying through the underground tunnels. For 2 days the actors were tossed and thrown.On the first day the moves were more moderate, but on the second day the Brothers decided to let fly. DJ commneted that some of the expressions on of pain and worry on Laurence Fishburne’s face were not so much acting as real pain from the extremely uncomfortable buffering he had to endure. With the rig isolated up in the air, even a minor fire had to be put out by the actors, as it was too inaccessible for the crew to quickly react, he joked.

What came across in the two sessions was the size and epic proportions of the films. From complex BFDF light scattering measurement machines to anaylise the individual cloths of each actors wardrobe, to the R&D for the simultaneous 5 HD camera 3D performance capture of the actors for the Burly Brawl, the Matrix films were immensely vast in both range of effects and shear volume of work. This was felt markedly by the effects crews who got virtually no break between the deliver of Reloaded and work on Revolutions. To compound their concerns, one of the primary visual effects providers Centropolis, closed down during post-production, requiring their entire workload to be shifted mid project to Sony Pictures Imageworks(SPI).

We were told that not only did SPI have to pick up someone elses work, and get up to speed with no pre-production, but some of their shots intercut shot for shot with the same shots from Tippett studios. As the process developed – both companies produced outstanding results, but it was discovered very late that on Niobe’s ship had been modelled with its primary headlights low on the craft by SPI, while the same lights were much higher on the Tippet sequences. Faced with no chance of re-rendering the huge sequences from either company, DJ added to one SPI shot at the last minute, the head lights turning off below and new lights being activated above. Given the speed of this insanely fast cutting action sequence, it is doubtful anyone could have possibly noticed, but the effects supervisors felt much better not letting the error get through, although the Wachowski brothers teased them that next they would be requested to include a shot of Niobe flicking the ship to high beam.

Judging from the response from the crowd, the audience really appreciated the amount of work that had been assembled for the talk. Even with the entire morning sessions devoted to the Eon Matrix presentation, it was clear the two could have talked for several more days, swapping tapes and play favourite clips from a stack of DVDs and betacam tapes that they had brought back to Sydney for the conference. Unfortunately everything that has a beginning does have to have an end.