VIRTUAL PRODUCTION
“Instead of just previs’ing the effects shots, we’re previs’ing the whole thing so we can see how the film plays. It helps the story develop in a way that is harder to just imagine while you’re writing it.” —Aaron Sims
TOP TO BOTTOM: Unreal Engine rendering of the DIVE cave environment. An Unreal Engine screenshot of one of the cave environments for DIVE. (Image courtesy of Epic Games) Underwater divers in the film. ASC has explored live motion capture to help bring the divers to life. (Image courtesy Epic Games) Men In Black character Mikey, in reference maquette form, was one of the characters Aaron Sims worked on at Rick Baker’s Cinnovation for the 1997 film.
“I thought, ‘Let’s do the most difficult one first, which is water.’ We have other settings in the desert and the woods, which we have seen more of with game engines, but water is hard.” To help plan out exactly what DIVE will look like – including what physical sets and locations may be necessary – the ASC team has been building virtual sets first and then carrying out virtual set scouting inside them. “You build it, and you can go with your team to this virtual world and go scout out your world before you go make it – we never really had that luxury in traditional visual effects,” notes Sims. “We can build just enough that you can actually start to scout it with a basic camera, almost like rough layouts, and then use Unreal’s Sequencer to base your shots, and work out what else you need to build.” That virtual set scout resembles previs, to a degree, continues Sims, while allowing the filmmakers to go much further. “Instead of just previs’ing the effects shots, we’re previs’ing the whole thing so we can see how the film plays. It helps the story develop in a way that is harder to just imagine while you’re writing it.” This year, ASC helped Epic Games launch its announcement of early access to Unreal Engine 5. The new version of the game engine incorporates several new technologies, including a ‘virtualized micropolygon geometry’ system called Nanite and a fully dynamic global illumination solution known as Lumen. ASC’s work on a sample project called Valley of the Ancient,
16 • VFXVOICE.COM FALL 2021
PG 14-18 AARON SIMS.indd 16
8/29/21 2:33 PM
