CGI VFX Making of : "RealFlow Fluid Simulation - The Immortals Case Studies" by - BarXSeven VFX
59Check out this phantastic Nextlimit Realflow Case study for the film the "Immortals" !
Stephen Elphick from BarXseven, talks about how RealFlow was used to simulate the wrath of Ares, God of War in Immortals.
----The Problem
How to create slow motion exploding heads using CG fluid simulations as Ares, the God of War, annihilates the enemy warband by smashing open their heads with his hammer.
To show his speed and power, Ares moves in realtime throughout the carnage, which is shot in slow motion to highlight the comparatively sluggish nature of fragile mortals.
Stephen Elphick: "The most challenging aspect was creating an explosion that had the right interior pressure on the fluid. This had to give a sense of a smash from a hammer blow.
And the schedule was tight! With only five months to develop the explosions of nine heads simultaneously, and a small team of six.
----The Solution
BarXseven had never used RealFlow before but found that it integrated well with their existing pipeline.
"Realflow is attractive due to its easy to learn workflow. It offers good results with a large amount of control without overwhelming new users with the complexities of its inner workings.
We decided to go with Realflow because it was important to have an application that gave consistently good fluid simulations and was integral with Maya which constitutes our main 3d pipeline. It also boasted a very easy to learn workflow and it was immediately clear it was easy to get good results.
Realflow performed exactly as it promised to and allowed simulations to be repeated with speed. It was very easy to pick up all the features that we needed to complete this project and had the flexibility to mix and match the interaction of rigid/soft body and fluid simulations."
----How?
"I modeled and textured the helmets and masks of the victims in Maya and then used a procedural script to create a shattered helmet. I imported these collections of geometry into Realflow where they were filled with the simulation fluid.
The end process involved importing everything back to Maya and layering to create a fantastical explosion of blood and gore."
----THE RESULT
"The most rewarding part of the project was seeing people"s reaction to the end result. After staring at simulations of heads exploding for five months it had completely desensitized me from the subject matter, which has to be one of the goriest scenes in the film."
BarXseven is a visual effects and animation company based in Montreal, Canada, staffed by a dynamic group of talented 2D and 3D artists, known for tackling creative and challenging work. From pre-visualization to post production and concept to completion, BarXseven delivers beautiful artistic shots for feature films and television. Every detail of every shot is given the attention it deserves to produce stunning results.