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Friday, 24 December 2004 | Levent OZLER
CafeFX Recreates The Aviator's Record-Setting
H-1 Flight
CAFEFX RECREATES HOWARD HUGHES'S RECORD-SETTING
H-1 RACER FLIGHT FOR MARTIN SCORSESE'S "THE AVIATOR"
Santa Maria, California December 245 2004 - Howard Hughes may be best remembered as an eccentric billionaire recluse and Hollywood mogul but he was also an important aviation pioneer whose exploits required CafeFX (www.cafefx.com) CG skills to recreate his 1935 world speed record-setting flight for "The Aviator" (Miramax Films). The film, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo Di Caprio as Hughes, opens nationally today. CafeFX also crafted additional shots of Hughes reviewing a fleet of Lockheed Constellation aircraft.
"Our CG effects for Hughes' H-1 racer sequence are seamlessly integrated with live-action footage, a radio-controlled miniature and a set piece of the plane that enhances the storyline," says CafeFX producer Jonathan Stone. "Our collaboration with the picture's vfx supervisor Rob Legato and vfx producer Ron Ames couldn't have been smoother. They gave us direction and feedback and were very amenable to our input, allowing for suggestions from our team as to methodology and approach to creating the sequence."
Developed to be the fastest landplane in the world, the H-1 racer had a significant impact on high-performance aircraft design for years. Hughes flew the H-1 to a world speed record (352.322 mph) on September 13, 1935, over a specially instrumented course near Santa Ana, California. His plane is now on exhibit in the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C.
The CafeFX team collected reference material on the H-1 and its historic flight and visited a full-size mock-up of the fuselage, which was built as a set piece for "The Aviator." "We had to be very aware of the innovations Hughes introduced with this plane," notes CafeFX digital effects supervisor Danny Braet. "Hughes's rivets were absolutely flush and we had to do the same with our CG model. He also used a particular metal for the skin, and we had to mimic how it interacted with light."
CafeFX built several CG versions of the H-1: one for close-ups where only the glass cockpit was seen, one for medium shots, which was also used by the studio's vfx department, and one for the take-off, which shows the landing gear. The CG sequence begins just before the plane leaves the runway at Mystery Mesa. It takes off, does a turn to pick up speed, races then turns again beginning to trace a series of figure 8s, which lead to Hughes setting the new world speed record.
"Our 19 CG shots are intercut with live-action shots of Leo in the cockpit, distant shots of the radio-controlled plane and people watching from the ground," notes Braet. The sequence culminates when, just after setting the speed record, the H-1's propeller gets blocked, the engine stalls, and Hughes is forced to glide to a landing in a nearby cornfield. The emergency landing was a live-action scene.
Luke McDonald created the H-1 model in Newtek Lightwave. "Our pipeline at CafeFX is different from the pipeline at some of the bigger facilities," Braet explains. For more compressed timelines, CafeFX's multi-talented animators all have the skills to model, texture and light objects for maximum flexibility and fast results. They tapped the radiosity light engine to calculate light bounce and reflectivity for the plane's shiny metal surface and glass cockpit screen.
For the test area landscape, CafeFX employed High Dynamic Range Imagery (HDRI) techniques. Braet visited the actual Mystery Mesa location and shot the environment, using a high-resolution digital still camera to capture multiple exposures. The CafeFX team used the images to stitch a landscape panorama with PTGUY software, which Braet calls "the best stitcher out there."
3D Mesa Setting
Although live-action scenic backplates had been shot, they were made on a cloudy day and the CafeFX team opted to return to the location for new helicopter aerials. "To save time in the air and get accurate shots, we went online before the shoot and grabbed some satellite data of the location from which we wrote custom plug-ins," says Braet. "They enabled us to reconstruct a good bit of the mesa environment in 3D. Then we made a CG copter and mounted cameras to it so we could previz the shoot and decide what shots we needed and at what speed."
The CG H-1 racer was composited into the environment -composed of the stitched landscape or portions of the live-action backplate mapped onto 3D geometry with Eyeon Digital Fusion. Speed changes demonstrating the record-setting nature of the flight were accomplished with the retimer in Digital Fusion.
To capture the effects of the sun on the plane, the CafeFX team crafted Bling Bling for Digital Fusion; the program allowed them to use the After Effects plug-in, Null's Lens Flare "for a nice play of glitter" on the H-1's metal skin, Braet reports. Close-ups of Di Caprio, which were filmed against greenscreen, were tracked with Boujou and composited into the CG cockpit, recreating camera moves as necessary.
While the movie's visual effects team had done a previz of the racing sequence, "it was hard to know for dramatic purposes how it would play," notes Braet. "As it turned out, we made quite a few changes to the choreography to keep things interesting. The flexibility Rob (Legato) and Ron (Ames) gave us to do this made us feel like real filmmakers."
Additionally, CafeFX created three shots for a sequence in which Hughes and his colleagues walk onto the airport tarmac to review a fleet of new Lockheed Constellation planes, which Hughes has acquired for TWA.
Here, using reference material the CafeFX team modeled and textured a Constellation in Lightwave, then cloned it to build a fleet, adding variations in detail to individual planes. "This plane had the American flag painted in reverse on it so we had to recreate that even though it may look strange," say Braet.
The crew used Boujou to track the live-action plate on the tarmac, which begins with an overhead shot and moves down to the horizon to reveal the fleet of planes, composited in Digital Fusion, behind the actors.
"Working on 'The Aviator' was very exciting for all of us," says Braet. "Rob (Legato) was very open to our suggestions to add things and come up with new ways of doing things. That's the art of filmmaking and that's why we put so much effort into everything we do."
CaféFX, a division of the ComputerCafe Group, is headquartered in Santa Maria, CA, and has a studio in Santa Monica, CA. The company was founded as ComputerCafé in 1993 by Jeff Barnes and David Ebner to produce broadcast promotions and television ID packages. Today CafeFX works on major motion pictures Spy Catain and the World of Tomorrow, Master and Commander, LXG, The Core, Spy Kids 2 & 3, Panic Room, The One, Armageddon, Flubber) for the leading Studios, while its Santa Monica-based commercial and music video division, The Syndicate creates commercials for national advertisers including: Nissan, Adidas, United Airlines, California Milk Advisory Board, Kinerase, Microsoft), broadcast projects (CBS, HBO, NBC) and music videos for top bands such as Green Day, Dave Matthews, Incubus and J.Lo. Both the Santa Maria and the Santa Monica studio are outfitted with the latest effects, design, compositing and rendering technologies, including Discreet Logic Flame, Commotion, Lightwave, Digital Fusion, Photoshop and After Effects.
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