WING COMMANDER

SPACE ACE ENGAGEMENTARTICLE BY KEVIN /I. MARTIN

Space warfare has been a staple in sciencefiction literature since the era of pulp magazines,but with relatively few exceptions - most notablythe star Wars and Star Trek films - motion pictureshave steered well clear of this subject matter. Inrecent years, only Aliens and Starship Troopershave chosen to explore the subgenre, Aliens relatedthematically to America's involvement in Vietnam,with technology-dependent marines being routedby essentially unarmed foes, while Starship Troop­ers embraced an openly fascist government's de­fense of earth against monstrous bugs. Eschewingsuch political fare, the fox filmed Entertainmentrelease of Wing Commander- replete with elabo­rate combat scenarios, armadas of aircraft-carrier­like capital vessels and swarms of fighter spacecraft- elected to evoke the feel and sensibilities of a

World War II naval epic.Wing Commander first took flight a decade

ago as a CD-ROMcomputer game created by ChrisRoberts, who would ultimately take the reins of thefeature film as well. The interactive first-person ad­venture, released by Origin Systems, followed theexploits of young Confederation lieutenant ChrisBlair as he dueled in his fighter spaceship againsta catlike alien menace called the Kilrathi - a story­line that would be retained for the motion pictureyears later. The first two Wing Commander gamesfeatured animated characters; but with the 1994release of Wing Commander III: /feart of the Tiger,computer gaming evolved further, incorporatinglive-action video segments. After Origin was ac­quired by Electronic Arts, Roberts' next Wing Com­manderentry continued the cutting-edge natureof the series, becoming the first computer gameto include 35mm live-action. More recently, WingCommander V: Prophecy proved so expansive inscope that production ofthe game required an

Nearly three hundred digital effects shots wereproduced by Digital Anvil for Wing Commander­directed by Chris Roberts, creator of the popularcomputer game upon which the film was based.

eight-figure budget- more than half of the $27million figure allocated to Roberts for makingthe feature film.

Roberts began development on the featurewhile still working for Electronic Arts. The film'sdeliberate retro look - featuring spacecraft thatbore a strong resemblance to aircraft, battleshipsand submarines - arose from the director's desireto do a World War II movie in space. "I wanted tosee spaceships going toe-to-toe, slugging it outand blowing up," Roberts remarked. "I hadn't seenany movie pull out all the stops and deliver thatkind of action since Return of the Jedi. fortunately,production designer Peter Lamont got on boardwith this approach right away, showing up with tenhuge illustrated volumes containing blueprints

and detail of various warships."In addition to pulling double duty as co-writer

and director, Roberts employed his own newlyformed company, Digital AnviL to handle the 290­shot digital effects load. Time-Slice filmsjoinedforces with Cinesite London to create a fresh spinon the 'frozen-time' look popularized in recentcommercials. Animated Extras was hired to provideanimatronic and prosthetic creature work, whileDigiscope wrangled an array of 2-D effects. PacificTitle/Mirage Studio was called upon to render thefilm's opening sequence.

Before the notion of handling the majority ofeffects in-house took hold, a number of effectsvendors, including Boss film Studios, were invitedto bid the show by the film's producer, Todd Moyerof No Prisoners. Two days after Moyer received itsbid, Boss went out of business. Suddenly there werea number of very talented artists faced with unem­ployment. Moyer snapped up Chris Brown, ThomasDadras and Erik Strauss immediately, hiring themas the film's visual effects supervisors and effectsline producer, respectively.

The initial team of ten effects artists at DigitalAnvil was to double during production - not toosizable an increase, given the heavy effects shot

CINEFEX 77 ~ 55

load. The fledgling firm's first task was to producea trailer for the as-yet-unshot film. Much of WingCommander's colorful approach to outer space wasworked out while creating the trailer, which alsosucceeded in its principal goal of generating inter­national presales - a key to securing the picture'smulti-investor financing.

Taking advantage of a film subsidy available inLuxembourg, the filmmakers chose to mount theirmain unit shoot in that country, on stage facilitiesowned by the Carousel Picture Company, The num­erous spacecraft interior sets built there rangedfrom an enormous flight deck to cramped fighter

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cockpits, all taking form under the eyes of PeterLamont and supervising art director Charles Lee.Stylistically, the various sets kept to the utilitarian,'exposed-innards' look pioneered in space filmssuch as Silent Running more than a quarter ofa century ago. Visible ducting and pipes wendedthrough the overheads and behind an array ofNokia flat-screen LCDmonitors - units on which

video playback supervisor Harry Jarvis displayedthree hundred monitor graphics generated by thefrench company Cryo. Decades-old British aircraftcalled Electric Lightnings were purchased andmodified severely to serve as the film's full-sized

Themerchant ship Diligent passes through ahypermassjump point that instantly transportsthe craft through spacefor a distant rendezvouswith the gargantuan capital ship Tiger Claw.

Rapier fighter spacecraft. In addition to the setsdominating Carousel's stages, the production alsomade its presence known in the Hotellnterconti­nental Luxembourg, where an online editing bayand cm shop were established, as well as a TIlinethat linked them to Digital Anvil's headquartersin Austin, Texas.

Overall, the DAvisual effects thrust was a fullydigital effort utilizing Alias/Wavefront Maya. 'Tdalways wanted to do a film with all-digital effects,"said Roberts, "and the space environment reallylent itself to COLsince we could show audiencesthings they'd never before seen. With space, thereisn't the same issue that arises when doing modern­day landscapes digitally, where a certain measureof artificiality destroys the illusion:' Without theresources or manpower to fully utilize traditionalproduction pipelines, DAestablished a uniquehierarchy for producing effects shots. While thedigital effort, overall, was headed by Tom Dadras,individual artists would sometimes take on all as­

pects of a given shot, first modeling a ship, thenanimating, texturing and lighting it, an approachthat led to a certain pride of ownership.

Since the Rapier fighters would be featured ex­tensively in the film's numerous COspace battles,the Rapier mockups in Luxembourg became thefocus of an extensive series of measurements toensure accurate COreplication. An abundance ofother spaceships seen in the movie existed onlyas computer models. Although concept artist RonCobb performed some spacecraft design work earlyon, the look for these vessels was determined prin­cipally by the art department, which drew inspira­tion from the stacked and layered look of vintageJapanese battleships. Under the guidance of super­visor Mark Woollard, a staff of nineteen British

modelmakers built several spaceship conceptualmodels. Built largely from polystyrene and detailedthrough the time-honored method of kit-bashing,these models were never intended for the screenor even to be scanned, instead serving as stylisticjumping-off points for the DAteam's digital model­ing process. "The art department models stayed onour desks as reference," stated digital artist ScottPeterson. "We maintained the overall proportionsand shapes, but couldn't really incorporate thedetails because they were a little underdeveloped

The Rapier fighters and the aircraft-carrier-likeflight deck from which they launch were designed

to impart the sense of a World WarII naval epic.

- what looks good on a three-foot model won'tnecessarily work to represent a ship six miles long."While the concept model approach was used forseveral key spaceship designs - most notably theConfederation capital ship Tiger Claw, a Broadswordbomber, the merchant ship Diligent and a KilrathiSnakeir vessel- other spaceships needed to fill outthe warring space fleets were designed wholly atDA,a process that continued through to the endof postproduction.

The Confederation space vessels reflected autilitarian World War II sensibility that contrastedstrongly with the organic, buglike Kilrathi space­craft. The differing looks were further defined bycolor, with the alien craft painted in warmer hues.Although Chris Roberts was determined to keep theship and creature concepts apart from their lower­budget gaming origins, one aspect of the designsdone for a game did make its way into the movie."The art department had hit on a tri-wing designfor the Kilrathi Dralthi fighters that featured fold­up wings," Chris Brown recalled. "These were veryorganic, fitting well within the design parameters,but they just didn't work dramatically. Wewentback and sampled from all the wings of spacecraftused in the Wing Commander games, eventuallysettling on a knife-and-dagger form."

Extensive modeling of the ships was essentialto creating credible space imagery. "Our approachwas to build everything," Peterson stated. "Ratherthan bump-map all of the pipes and fixtures - anapproach that would never have held up, as closeas we'd be getting to the ships - we actually builtlittle radar units and all the various panel cut-inswith geometry. It's important to include recogniz­able shapes and forms to which the viewer canrelate. Applying that thought to the whole modelresulted in a credible six-mile-long spaceship:' Tofurther enhance the scale of the ships, the armor­plate hull surfaces required additional geometryto break up specular highlights. "We built in linearbevels to create these specular breakers. Whereverthere was a ninety-degree turn on the hull geom­etry, we'd chop it off and make it into a linear bevel.Even the smallest forms were beveled to add that

bit of depth. It's hard to get specularity to workacross any flat surface; so we'd build a slight slope,then push and pull to create irregularities in thesurface." Since some of the single-ship files ran

to between sixty and seventy megabytes in size, tosave on rendering times, closeup details and off­camera geometries were simply switched off oncethe digital camera had pulled away.

for continuity, texturing was usually handledby the modelers themselves. "Wescanned in live­action plates to get real metal textures," Petersonsaid, "so our bump-maps featured this grainy kindof metal coloring, and we used projection mappingto ensure a consistent look all over the ship's hull.This coloration worked stylistically because wedidn't need some futuristic material- these were

functionaL utilitarian metal ships. Lighting-wise,

the ships often fell into 2010 territory, with a veryhot-looking sun side and a very cold side - there­fore, details either blew out or went unseen. Tokeepthe dark side from going completely black. we putin many running lights and let spill from the openlanding bays illuminate these areas, adding colorand depth:'

Animatics for the production's space exteriorswere rendered quickly at near-video resolution,with most shots becoming available for viewing onan Avid within two minutes. Even so, Chris Browninsisted the animatics be projected on a big screen."A monitor can't fully duplicate the big-screen look

CINEFEX 77 ~ 57

and feeL" related Brown. "Being able to view eventhe roughest of ship and planet graphics through ahalf-decent video projector made a big differencein my ability to evaluate movement appearanceand composition."

The film begins with Kilrathi vessels attackingPegasus, an asteroid colonized by earth's Confeder­ation forces. With Digital Anvil cranking out a hugenumber of finals during the last month of postBrown turned over the opening sequence to PacificTitle/Mirage Studio. "Pac Title also took later shotsof the Tiger Claw setting down on an asteroid," saidBrown. "In both instances, they worked from shipsand backgrounds DAprovided:' PTMsupervisorDavid Altenau used RenderMan to render the DA

elements, a decision that led to a slight differencein look from the Maya-rendered cuts handled byDigital Anvil. "RenderMan had a really crisp look,as opposed to the soft near-glow that comes off theMaya renders. Since the Pac Title shots did not in­tercut directly with our stuff. the difference wasn'tanything objectionable. The system had some ini­tial bugs, which took Alias a while to rewrite, butthe look we got with the Maya renderer was worththe wait:'

With the asteroid's defenses smashed, the aliensare able to steal a crucial piece of equipment-theNAVCOMcomputer - and the colony soon falls tothe overwhelming firepower of the Kilrathi. ChrisRoberts was intent on bringing feature-film-qualityvisual elements to the Wing Commander universe,and the physical appearance of the Kilrathi was noexception. "When we did the first games, the levelof graphics quality available resembled what you'dsee on Saturday morning cartoons," Roberts ob­served. "On our later live-action games, we utilizedanimatronics, but that approach didn't jibe withmy idea of the Kilrathi as big cats -I wanted themto be able to move like cats. Unfortunately, whenyou have a man in an eight-foot-tall suit that kindof motion is not readily achievable. Ideally, thefilm's Kilrathi would have been full-blown digitalcreatures, but time and expense made such anapproach impossible."

Roberts instructed Nik Williams of Animated

Extras to avoid viewing any Kilrathi developed forpast Wing Commander games. "Chris' original brieffor us was to create feline Samurai," said Williams."Descended from cats, the Kilrathi had since losttheir facial hair and learned to walk upright. Theprincipal challenge with the Kilrathi suit design­which was developed by Pauline Fowler and JulianMurray, who sculpted several third-scale alien pro-

58 ••• CINEFEX 77

totypes over a like-sized figure - was to disguisethe human form within:' Towards that end, theKilrathi warriors sported stylized armor with anexoskeletal shell. which served to mask the pointsat which a human performer's knees and elbowsbent. The costumes were constructed largely fromfiberglass, with a chain-mail-Iike, foam-lined fabricproviding flexibility in the midsection, hips andknees. Knee and ankle joints were hinged mechan­ically, with stilts utilized to make the performersboth taller and mobile.

Two members ofthe Williams team, Mark Jones

and Graham Riddell, played the Kilrathi admiral andcaptain, while fifteen additional Animated Extrascrew members accompanied them to Luxembourg.The group's duties included dressing the performersand operating animatronic functions built into theheads of the three principal Kilrathi. These allowedsnarling lip movements for dialogue scenes andfeatured nictitating membranes that could coverthe eye from either side, in addition to a standardeyelid. More rudimentary animatronic heads wereused for two midground Kilrathi, with the remain­ing background creatures produced as straight­forward static masks.

Foam latex was selected over silicone for themanufacture of Kilrathi skin appliances. "With allthe stunts and explosions going on:' said Williams,"it was going to be too easy to tear silicone, whichcan be rather difficult to repair. With all the bullethits involved, there was a lot of on-the-spot rigging.Fortunately, we took all the molds along with usso the chest pieces could be remade after specialeffects supervisor flarry Wiessenhaan's crew blewholes in them. Wewould pack blood bags and gutsinside, then cover the bullet hits with a thin layerof plaster painted to match the armor:'

Aboard the flagship Concordia, Admiral Tolwyn(David Warner) is notified of the Pegasus disaster.fie realizes the Kilrathi fleet can now penetrate be­hind Confederation lines and will soon have a clear

path to earth unless a capital ship can be broughtin to oppose the alien menace. The action switchesto a merchant vessel outward bound from earth,the Diligent. captained by Paladin (Tcheky Karyo).Also aboard, and fresh from the academy, are Blair(Freddie Prinze, Jr.) and Marshall (Matt Lillard), enroute to their first assignment- the capital shipTiger Claw. While imagery garnered by the flubbleSpace Telescope served as ajumping-off point forthe more distant and colorful environments seenlater in the film, matte paintings of earth, Venusand Mercury drew on reference materials obtained

from NASA'swebsite. flowever, those images woundup being enhanced rather extensively. "There wereonly six or seven shots of earth at the beginningand end of the film:' Chris Brown said, "which was

fortunate because creating credible views of earthis tough - the real thing looks like bad matte work.The NASAchannel can manage because everyoneknows that their stuff is real. but that same kindof imagery won't play in a feature:'

Diligent receives a message from Tolwyn thatmust be delivered to Tiger Claw. Blair, partiallydescended from genetically engineered forebears,has inherited an extrasensory perception of space­time. Paladin puts the young officer's innate talentto good use, allowing him to co-pilot the Diligentthrough jump point Scylla - a stellar hypermassthat bridges different sectors of space almost in­stantaneously. "When we were figuring out the rulesfor this space environment" Brown related, "it wasdecided that pulsars - rotating neutron stars, thestuff of collapsed suns - would be used for the entryand exit points we'd see our spaceships make theirhyperspace jumps through:'

Generating appropriate imagery for the stellarphenomena proved to be a time-consuming proc­ess. "Maya was still a beta version at that point"said digital artist Pauline Saab, "so we were lackingtools and didn't have proprietary software - thereweren't any programmers to help us write stuff forparticle effects. We combined Mayawith older Aliasproduct to achieve the pulsars and nebula seen inthe film:' The DAparticle work was blended withtransparent image planes and geometry-deforminganimated texture maps, and then combined withthe ship elements using Wavefront Composer. Whileentering and exiting jump points, the CGspaceshipsrequired interactive lighting to tie them into theirenvironments. Toaccomplish this, a blurred imageofthejump point was projected onto the ship toprovide the proper colors and textures.

Three separate hyperspace jumps are shown inthe film. The Diligent jump was handled primarilythrough exterior views of the streaking ship, whilea later shot of Blair executing ajump in his Rapierfighter combined a zoom-in/dolly-out closeupwith Innerspace-Iike light ray animation emanat­ing from his face. A third jump, seen from inside theTiger Claw bridge, utilized Time-Slice, a variant onthe 'frozen-time' effect that has been popularized ina number of television commercials. Tim MacMillan,owner of Time-Slice films, had recently completedwork on the NBCminiseries Merlin in Europe, and

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WING COMMANDER(continued from page 58)

Chris Brown met with him to view a demo reel. ~r

In the past frozen-time had been achieved viatwo different methods. One required mounting be­tween one hundred and three hundred cameras inan arc around the subject, then laboriously regis­tering each still image produced to the one follow­ing it. The other approach used fewer cameras, withmorphing software creating in-between frames, butthis process introduced distortions and often pro­duced a diffuse and underdetailed look.

MacMillan's rig obviated the need for dozens ofcameras and morphing. The unit was a curving arcof machined aluminum onto which were mounted

120 Zeiss lenses, facing inward. film was threadedbehind the array oflenses and along the length ofthe aluminum structure, which had a camera mag­azine at one end and a take-up reel on the other."It was like a big box camera," Brown commented."Timjust popped the rig's front cover to capturea whole arc of images through those Zeiss lensessimultaneously. There was some flexibility built in,as well- the cover could be opened incrementallyalong its length, allowing for shooting speeds be­tween one and fifty frames per second. To capturethe frozen moment on the bridge, we cut a mouth­shaped opening in the front of the set put the rigon the end of a Phoenix crane, and then extendedit right into the set. The beginning and end of the

shot take place in real time, with our choreographedfrozen moment occurring in mid-take." The Time­Slice footage went to Cinesite London - MacMillan'schoice for all post work - where the aspect ratiowas modified to conform to Wing Commander'sSuper 35 format.

After emerging successfully from the hyper­space jump, Diligent makes her approach to TigerClaw. "The big ships are really like central charac­ters in this film, so the shots that introduce themrequired a lot of attention," stated digital artistRhett Bennatt. "Diligent comes in from the topof the screen with Tiger Claw in the distance. Wefollow Diligent as it goes right down the lengthof this enormous capital ship. Then it stops and

Ablaze with interactive illumination, a Rapierapproaches thejump point. created with particle

systems and animated texture maps.

turns toward the larger ship as big doors open upto receive it. It's about a thirty-second shot thatestablishes scale and shows you everything in lin­gering detail."

Real-world imperfections were incorporated tomake shots like this lengthy approach read as bothspectacular and photorealistic. "When the Diligentis on final approach to Tiger Claw, we built a delib­erate operator error into the move," Chris Brownsaid. "The camera overshoots, continuing to trackalong after Diligent has stopped and begun itsdescent. Then the camera corrects, looking backand down at Diligent as the smaller craft enters thelanding bay." The landing bay/flight deck area ofthe Tiger Claw was constructed full-scale, but theLuxembourg stage was too short for the flight deckto be built in its entirety. This necessitated redress­ing and reshooting the set to produce two differentplate elements that Digiscope seamed together,doubling the length of the set.

Tiger Claw enters a star system containing abrown dwarf sun, asteroid belt and Jupiter-likeplanet. This colorful environment was largely thecreation of digital artist Mark Goldsworthy, whohad also developed jump point Scylla. "Mark did atremendous amount ofR&'D for us," digital artist

Rodney Brunet related, "plus more than seventyanimatics.lIis brown dwarf star started out as a

background painting for the original presentationtrailer, but Chris Roberts loved it so much that agood deal of the film's action wound up beingcentered around it."

While on patrol in their Rapiers, Blair andhis wing commander, Deveraux (Saffron Burrows),encounter a Kilrathi communication ship nearthe brown dwarf. After an aerial dogfight the pairdestroys two of the Dralthi fighters. Chris Browndirected second unit for the show. "I took a CYA

approach to the Rapier fighter cockpit stuff," saidBrown, "shooting everything three different ways.We utilized a half-cockpit for tight close ups, whilemedium shots were done from outside the Rapiermockup, looking in at the pilots through the cock­pit glass, with a translight mounted behind for thebackground." five generic nebulas were generatedat Digital Anvil, then passed to the production artdepartment which produced the translights. Amesh screen was placed between the Rapier andthe trans light softening the background and sug­gesting greater depth. These translights were alsoutilized for scenes on the bridges of Diligent andTiger Claw, for angles that included only a sliver

CINEFEX 77 ~ 63

of window in frame. "The translights saved us froman unmanageable number of greenscreen shots-I know I'll be using them again and again on futureshows," For the third angle, the camera was movedback further from the mockup, which was mountedon a gimbal built for the taxi scene in The FifthElement and shot against greenscreen.

The bold, hand-held look of the live-actionwas carried through to the digital space exteriors."Top Gun had some terrific aerial dynamics, whichserved as inspiration," said Brown. "We decided tolet the smaller ships blow right into camera whileadding camera shake, as if a shockwave of air has

64 •• CINEfEX 77

buffeted the camera operator. Of course, there's noair in space; but the visceral nature of this approachserved the story best. Adding heat-ripple when aship's engine passed close by was another thingwe lifted from that film,"

Another deliberate nod to the past took placewhenever the Rapiers launched from the flight deckinto space. "As they clear the deck, the fightersdrop, making a little dip before flying off" noteddigital artist John Ford. "This was reminiscent ofthe motion made by a plane after it's catapulted offthe deck of an aircraft carrier. Then there's the clam­

shell maneuver Tiger Claw performs as these huge

Earth forces square off against Kilrathi invadersin a number of large-scale battles sweetened withpyrotechnic explosions and digital shockwaves.

hinged sections of the ship fold over the runwayflight decks - it's the deep-space equivalent to bat­tening down the hatches and securing for battle,"Rapiers returning from combat missions to eithertouch down safely or crash into the flight deck werewholly the province of Digital Anvil. "There wasn'tany money to throw one of the full-size ships downthe set or blow it up. So we did the landings andcrashes with COships, adding them to the live­action flight deck,"

Seeking inspiration for the movement of thejuggernaut capital ships, Digital Anvil viewed doc­umentary footage and studied the war films Tora!Tora! Tora! and Midway. "After viewing these films,"Brown stated, "Chris Roberts was adamant aboutholding on shots ofthese big ships coming acrossscreen for a long time. That was more daring anapproach than I was at first comfortable with, butin the end these long-duration shots worked verywell, and they went a long way toward establish­ing the necessary sense of spectacle,"

This sense of spectacle - in the best Victoryat Sea tradition - is particularly well illustratedpartway through the film, when Tiger Claw is ledinto a trap and badly damaged during the ensuingbattle. This sequence, along with the action in themovie's climactic scenes, featured vessels firingbroadsides into one another, thus requiring exten­sive pyrotechnics to capture the grandeur of mightyships in combat. Initially the idea had been to shyaway from this scientifically inaccurate approach,since in reality, flames and fireballs would not longexist in the vacuum of space. "Pyro has been usedextensively in space films, even prior to Star Wars,"Chris Brown remarked. "So a lot of R&'Dwent into

developing an alternate look. But none of it workedfor our traditionaL World War II kind of story. OurR&'Ddidn't go entirely to waste, however, since thedigital shockwave accompanying the pyrotechnicblasts only came about because of it. The idea wasto do something in the vein of Star Trek V/'s explod­ing planet shockwave, but then supplement it withrippling effects that enhanced the scale," Brownbudgeted a pyro shoot into the schedule, but uponreturning from Luxembourg, he discovered that theDigital Anvil team had created a viable and muchless costly alternative. "They'd been experimentingwith Pyromania's package of explosions on CD-ROM,

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serrated skin pieces on its body. Then I developeda procedural graphic interface that allowed us totype in the speed, tension and force needed to ripit apart. It toolk about two months to figure outhow to do all that."

T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous concludes with

an equally impressive, albeit smaller-scale, effectas Ally walks away from the fossil egg that launchedher time-travel adventure. Behind her, the camerazooms in for a closeup as the egg rocks, cracks andfinally hatches. Aslimy baby T-rex emerges, leapingdirectly at the audience and freeze-framing in thefilm's final image. Matthew Hausman supervisedthe egg effects, an entirely digital sequence. "Thetracking was amazing," remarked Phillips. "Therewere stacks of papers on the table, and we scannedsome ofthose so that as the baby T-Rex breaks outof the egg, he slips on the loose paper and it movesaccordingly. That worked well because you reallybuy that one is tied to the other. Interaction wasthe key."

Nominally educational. visually stunning andwholly entertaining, T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceousproved beyond a doubt that the very visceral expe­rience of large-screen stereo in combination withdynamic computer generated visual effects makesfor a powerful result. Already in production for itsnext Imax 3-D show, Siegfried and Roy: The MagicBox -which features a full twenty minutes of CO­L-Squared Entertainment hopes to position itself asone of the premier companies doing large-formatpictures. "Things are really changing in the large­format community," said Jini Dayaneni. "More andmore theaters are being built, and with films likeT-Rexthere is an opportunity for commercial enter­prises to make their money back. That will. in turn,allow us to have bigger budgets:'

For Brett Leonard, the inevitable drive toward

feature-length Imax fare - particularly in stereo­holds infinite possibilities. "We're definitely goingto be pushing for more character developmentin the medium and in the pictures that we do atL-Squared," Leonard commented. "With Imax 3-Dyou get something that you can't get in any othermedium -scale and intimacy. To me, it fulfillsthe promise of pure cinema:'

T-Rex:Back to the Cretaceous photographs

copyright © 1998 by Imax Corporation. All rightsreserved. Photographs courtesy of L-SquaredEntertainment and Blue Sky IVlfX. Special thanksto Amanda Roth, Scot Byrd and Todd Erickson.

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WING COMMANDER(continued from page 64)

and their tests were looking great. Rodney Brunethad tailored a number of the shots to make thesegeneric explosions work for us in the context ofour scenes:'

Brunet began with a reference explosion fromthe Artbeats digital film library, then proceeded toadd both geometry and particle effects. "The ex­plosion would begin on an image plane within theship's geometry:' Brunet said. "That kept it fromlooking like a 2-D comp with the blast pasted overthe ship. Then I did a lot of filling-in with particlesthat gave the blast some density:' Another aspectto the space battle was the energy shield surround­ing the ships. "The shields are initially transparent.but as they're pummeled, they grow weaker andbecome increasingly more visible. Eventually theyare worn down to the point that missile strikes canpass right through them and impact the hull:' Todistinguish between the two warring fleets, thecolor of pyrotechnic hits was varied, with Kilrathivessel hits reflecting the aliens' green atmosphere,while exploding Confederation ships registeredthe more traditional blue and yellow fireballs.

Creating the appearance of physical damageto the capital ships required additional modeling."Rather than use texture deformation, we chose tobreak part of the digital model. then build an inte­rior piece that could fly out in response to the shiptaking a missile hit." commented Scott Peterson."To build in this specific kind of battle damage, wewere mostly pushing isoperms around. Isopermsare to NURBSmodels what quads are to polygonalmodels, a kind of construction history - once agiven shape is built. the isoperms can be pickedoff the model and moved to form curves or othercomplex shapes elsewhere:'

i Blair joins a raiding party that storms the KiI­rathi communication ship. In a pitched battle be­tween man and KilrathL Confederation forces provevictorious, recovering the stolen NAVCOMand un­covering the Kilrathi fleet's plan of attack. Blairnext takes his fighter through ajump point to warnAdmiral Tolwyn's armada. "It became clear to usthat the Confederation armada wasn't big enough:'said Peterson, "so a cruiser-class vessel was addedto beef things up. Since there wasn't time to sketchout ideas, the ship really took shape on the moni-

tor as opposed to being worked out in advance. Weimmediately opened Maya and started building.Maya's ability to reference the models was reallynice - a ship that was only fifty or sixty percentcomplete could still be plugged into the animaticfor lighting and effects tests. Then, as the ship de­veloped further, whenever we loaded the model foranother test. Mayawould automatically update toshow the current level of development. This allowedthe animator to work out timings and resolve moveissues without having to wait for the final versionof the model."

Pursued by the Kilrathi Snakeir, Blair heads to­ward the Scyllajump point. maneuvering adroitlyaround the hypermass while the larger vessel iscaught by the immense gravitational forces anddestroyed. Tolwyn's task force masses around thejump point as the Kilrathi ships emerge single-file.The Confederation ships then vanquish the invasionfleet - ending the immediate threat posed by thealiens and concluding the film.

After the effects were delivered to Fox in late

1998, many of the personnel hired for Wing Com­manderremained at Digital Anvil. setting to workon a new slate of gaming, feature film and commer­cial effects projects. Others, including supervisorChris Brown,joined producer Todd Moyer's startupeffects facility, based at the No Prisoners officesin Santa Monica. There, preproduction would sooncommence on a feature based on the BattlestarGalactica television series.

For Chris Roberts, Wing Commander succeedednot only in transposing his gaming vision of spacecombat to film, but also proved to be a learningexperience. "If I knew then what I know now ..:'Roberts reflected. "Well. I'd probably have been abit less ambitious. I now know the kind of time andeffort necessary to make a film of this scope. Thepicture would have looked slicker with more timeand money, but I'm proud to have brought it in atthis price, and proud of the finished product:' Witha fresh proliferation of space sagas on bookstands,and new interactive space battle games being de­veloped as successful. ongoing series, the spacewar film will have ample source material to drawupon for some time to come.

Wing Commander photographs copyright ©1999by Twentieth Century fox. All rights reserved.Additional photos courtesy of Digital Anvil andNo Prisoners. Special thanks to Ifenry Eshelman,Lori Mezoff, Michael Abbott and Chris Olivia.