Kai Zhang-Looking Outwards-05

The Making of Movie CGI Effects – Doctor Strange

At the bottom of the page is a video that breaks down the computer generated imagery of the blockbuster movie Doctor Strange. I’m rather fascinated by the making process because at current time it’s getting more and more difficult to differentiate the CGI and real shooting in large budget Hollywood movies. And the reason is due to the rapid increasement of computing power and software capabilities.

However, one might not expect from the process is that the CGI making is not all about 3D generated objects that’s plugged into the filmed footages. There is a combination of  2D and 3D layers that makes up the full imagery, for example, the fogs or the ashes are usually 2D painted. And also a lot of the “people” in the movie aren’t real at all. In some cases, to create some of the visual effects, modeling human figures and manipulate it is even more efficient than shooting using chroma key.

The methodology is straightforward. Exporting 3D imagery into 2D workspaces and layer them in the timeline. Aftereffects is usually the most common tool to use. But in most cases, despite different components are exported from different files, algorithms are used to make sure they line up in 3D spaces. For example, the light-whip is tied virtually to the hand in another work file. Also, a large portion of the physical reaction of objects, particle effects, etc. are calculated using 3D engines that embeds all the physical equations needed for the result. One rather amazing thing is – by moving sliders of the physical reaction level can often result in totally different film styles easiliy perceived by the audiences.

In the end, the combination of different aspects of the element are tied together and rendered out as static imageries (frames) and played in the sequence, which results in the final grand state of the art.