The studios responsible for “Batman V Superman:Dawn of Justice” were MPC, Double Negative, Scanline VFX and Weta Digital. We met VFX supervisor Keith Miller from Weta at FMX some time ago for an interview about “The Jungle Book”. We spoke to him about CG placenta, slime simulations and other gooey things in relation to the work on “Batman V Superman”.
Miller has been working in the VFX industry for more than ten years, one of his first projects was “King Kong” in 2005. He was also involved in “Man of Steel” and is back on board for “Justice League”.
DP: Weta was responsible for the first part of the “Doomsday” sequence in “Batman v Superman”, in which the monster is born. What references helped with the Embrio look?
Keith Miller: A lot. For example, the “Alien” film series and other classic science fiction films as well as slime and goo materials. For the birth of the Doomsday Creature, we looked at some disturbing reference material, such as a photo of a dead baby seal that was still in the placenta. The image showed many details such as the network of veins and the appearance of the vessels at different tissue levels. It was a really horrific image with a lot of blood, but we stared at it for a long time as we built up the texturing for the creature placenta. We didn’t want Doomsday’s skin to be dry and crunchy when he was still in the placenta and therefore swimming in amniotic fluid, so we looked at footage of newly born baby hippos, rhinos and elephants. A specific detail can be picked out from each reference source, and when put together they create a homogeneous vision.
DP: MPC was the lead for the Doomsday character. How did you share the creature with them?
Keith Miller: The textures of MPC’s asset achieved a dry skin look, but we wanted the look of a newborn baby. So we created new textures, changed the shading network a bit and built our own mesh system. Of course, we didn’t want to stray too far from the creature look developed by MPC, but we modified Doomsday accordingly to fit our scenes. These changes went back and forth in the development process between the client, MPC and ourselves until they were approved, after which MPC integrated them into their own system.
DP: What tools were used to realise the slime simulation?
Keith Miller: With our proprietary simulation framework, without any other plug-ins. A lot of setting tests were necessary to find the right consistency and flow behaviour. In particular, an online video in which someone explains their recipe for making slime was useful (see the breakdown video above, minute 7:45).
DP: What was the biggest challenge for Weta in the project?
Keith Miller: The fluid simulations. The simulation itself, the cleanup and the rendering took a lot of time because we had a lot of fluids with different refractions in the ray and path tracing setup. The birth shot alone took around a week to render – if not longer.
DP: You also worked on “Man of Steel”. Were you able to take over work on that for the second part?
Keith Miller: There were overlapping environments such as the Genesis Chamber, but apart from that the two projects weren’t really similar. We created digital doubles of Superman for both films, of course, but for “Man of Steel” our work was mainly centred around the Krypton planet and the associated science fiction environment, including the spaceships. With “Batman v Superman” – apart from the Genesis Chamber – it was more about real, man-made environments. This was seen in a much more destroyed version in the second part, so the 3D model had to be rebuilt and re-lit. Our work for the previous film therefore yielded few advantages and we had to start from scratch for the second part.
Interview: Mirja Fürst
Here is the new VFX reel from MPC for “Batman V Superman”:
New DC films 2017
So, longing for the DC superheroes yet? “Wonder Woman” starts in June:
Fans will have to wait until November for the cinema release of “Justice League”:
