ACROSS VFX GENERATIONS: WITNESSES TO THE EVOLUTION

By CHRIS McGOWAN

How has the VFX industry changed over time? Veteran artists who have witnessed the evolution firsthand discuss milestone trends, innovations and changes they have experienced during their careers – and select a film or series that has served as a landmark in VFX or their own professional journey.

Rob Bredow, Senior Vice President, Creative Innovation, Lucasfilm & Chief Creative Officer, ILM

The visual effects industry is going through a substantial period of change right now. It’s useful to look back at the last time we had that much transition happening, which was, if I can be dramatic, back to the age of the dinosaurs. Jurassic Park (1993) was significant in its use of CG to bring living, breathing characters to the screen, and it changed everything about the way visual effects were created. Just prior to Jurassic Park, major advances were made in the application of computer graphics on Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). Over the next several years, most VFX transitioned from models and optical effects to digital. I’m fortunate to get to work with many people today at Industrial Light & Magic, who made that transition from the model era to the digital era, and see how their skills and experience continue to advance the industry today, contributing to some of the latest developments we are seeing today.

The movie that had the biggest impact on me personally was Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980). There were many moments that stood out to me, but none more than the opening scene of the AT-AT walkers attacking the rebel base on Hoth. One of the most memorable images from that film is a BTS photograph of Phil Tippett popping up through a trap door in the miniature Hoth set to pose the AT-AT for the next frame – which taught me then that there were real artists who got to make these films.

Phil Tippett, VES, Founder, Tippett Studio

The advent and development of computer graphics changed everything, opening up an entire field and engendering a global workforce to handle a multitude of media. While controversial, I’m very curious [about] the ethical application of AI, which is already finding its way into VFX production. I am investigating how to train models based on my own style and work to create a new original film.

From my own career, I think Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997) were my most impactful projects. They both featured breakthroughs in early CGI, proving to ourselves – and others – that we could create believable creatures – dinosaurs and arachnids – on screen.

Rob Hifle, CEO & Creative Director, Lux Aeterna

It’s mind-blowing where we are now with artists working across the same project tasks in different countries using super-efficient workflows. I started working in the early ‘90s when digital cameras were just starting to enter the marketplace. Most of the edits I was working in and out of were still using film, so Steenbecks were the tool of choice. However, it was only a matter of time before all the editors were using non-linear editing systems allowing video to be rearranged on computers. Edits were easily transferable without being spliced together, now that the source material was on tape. My entry into the business was at such a pivotal time in the television and film industry. The speed at which the tech was advancing was phenomenal.

Flash forward 30 years and it seems nothing has slowed down. It actually feels like it’s ramping up. I am constantly mind-blown by the tech advancement leading to the reinvention of the VFX workflows. Real-time virtual studio productions are starting to manifest themselves into our drama and documentary workflows, as we have seen recently working on The Crown for Netflix. We also do a lot of Houdini VFX work here at Lux Aeterna, and we’ve managed to significantly reduce our render times using the latest XPU render integrated with USD [Unique Scene Description].

These game-changing developments are happening over days, not weeks or months. AI has been integrated into our software toolsets over the last 20 years to speed up the more laborious tasks, but what’s happening now is very different. Generative AI has developed at such a rate that the ethical aspects have not had time to catch up… it has polarized the industry through its perception. Just like the introduction of non-linear workflows back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, AI is the present-day disruptor! I have always been an eternal optimist when it comes to technological advancement, and I’m sure the AI storm will calm with regulations and legalities.

Dayne Cowan, CEO, Kraken Kollective

There have been many incredible advancements lately, like NERF, or Neural Radiance Fields, for example, but during my 30 years in the industry, the most standout evolution for me arrived in a cluster. When these four developments – global illumination, ambient occlusion, subsurface scattering and image-based lighting – became production-usable, it catapulted visual effects to a whole new level. We had been struggling for years to make our CG look realistic and fit live-action scenes. This cluster made realism possible. Lighting from the real scene could drive the lighting in the CG scene, tiny contact shadows were possible and realistic-looking skin was achievable. As a VFX artist, it was a dream come true!

Jurassic Park III (2001) was one of the first times we had seen techniques like global illumination and ambient occlusion used on a project. As mentioned, this completely changed our workflow when it became more widely production-ready some years later and made it possible to realistically and more easily integrate CG into live-action scenes. Developments in subsurface scattering would enhance it even further, but this was the beginning of an amazing evolution in the industry.

Sylvain Théroux, VFX Supervisor and Partner, Raynault VFX

I will name the two changes that I think had the biggest impact on my career so far. I started in 2001, so the move to fully digital was already underway before I joined the industry. The first has been the progressive lowering of the cost of entry. Hardware, software and knowledge used to be a lot more expensive, making it very difficult to get started. Now, Blender and Linux are free, can run on low-cost hardware, and there are thousands of hours of free training available everywhere on the internet. It makes it cheaper to get started, but also that a lot more people can try to get in.

The second biggest change is remote work. It’s given us a lot of flexibility [in] how we work and much easier management of work-life balance. It also helps to be able to hire across a larger geographic area and reduces the need for large offices. In our day-to-day work, it has been by far the biggest change. Wasting time waiting for your shot in in-person dailies or staying very late at the office waiting for renders are things I am definitely not missing.

[For a landmark film] I would go with the 1998 movie What Dreams May Come starring Robin Williams. It was a creative and innovative way of using visual effects, applied to a dramatic subject that you don’t usually associate with a visual effects movie. It was something very different from spaceships and monsters. The paint-smearing effects and great matte paintings created a different world. I think it was ambitious for the time. It would still be a challenging brief today.

Ben Magana, VFX Supervisor, Framestore (Montreal)

Our trade is constantly evolving. We’re always devving new tools and technologies, so every year we have breakthroughs and innovations. If I had to choose one change, though, it would be a more personal one: how we’ve adapted our ways of working following the COVID pandemic. This was a huge accomplishment on the part of our tech and systems teams, and it allowed us to continue delivering work for major Hollywood projects despite the entirely new environment we found ourselves operating in. Working from home allowed us to create a better balance between our work and personal life. In many ways, we’re still in the learning phase of this new scenario: while we’ve achieved more balance in some areas, we do need to make sure we don’t lose sight of the benefits of in-studio working: bonding, mentoring, training and ensuring younger artists get access to and input from the wider team so that they can grow, learn and reach their full potential.

For me, [a landmark VFX film] has to be Gravity (2013). It was the first movie to successfully use on-set interactive lighting. This helped to create a seamless integration of CG backgrounds but also allowed the actors and everyone on set a better understanding of where things were spatially. Needless to say, it was a great tool on set and back in the VFX studio. Gravity is a stunning film where t he VFX work is not only spectacular but also crucial to tell a compelling story.

Prashant Nair, CG Supervisor, Framestore (Mumbai)

The 21st century has witnessed a remarkable CGI revolution fueled by technological advancements that allows filmmakers to create awe-inspiring visuals once deemed implausible. For me, the advent of virtual production represents a major change. Having LED screens, VR, and portable options like Framestore’s fARsight GO, all ensure we can better empower directors by allowing them to preview everything from camera moves to CG characters and creatures at a far earlier stage. This means they’re able to more fully actualize their creative vision as they strive to transport viewers to novel and captivating worlds and more immersive storytelling.

Being able to work on The Jungle Book (2016) from recce and shoot to the creation of lifelike creatures was a real game-changer for me. It was an exciting challenge, from the realistic interactions with Mowgli to ensuring the CG animals’ expressions and gestures were natural rather than exaggerated. The film showcased the enormous potential of CGI when it comes to producing immersive and visually spectacular experiences. On the episodic front, His Dark Materials (2019-2022) represented a real raising of the bar when it came to VFX for the small screen. From huge polar bears to shape-shifting dæmons believably interacting with humans, it felt like the envelope was being pushed for episodic.

Neishaw Ali, CEO and Executive Producer, Spin VFX

The VFX industry has undergone significant transformations in the past decade, influencing workflows, competition and collaboration, thus creating a borderless economy. [For one], real-time rendering, powered by tools like Unreal Engine and Unity, is blurring the lines between pre-production and post-production. It enables interactive feedback and reduces iteration time, which can enhance the filmmaking process. This technology allows for more dynamic visual storytelling, transforming traditional workflows.

Creative tools developed through AI and machine learning software can automate many repetitive tasks such as rotoscoping, tracking and even creating realistic digital doubles. These advancements have leveled the playing field, allowing smaller studios to produce high-quality VFX that were once only achievable by larger, well-funded studios.

As cloud-based workflows and cloud computing become more cost-effective, it has the ability to foster a borderless economy in the VFX industry. These technologies enable remote collaboration and instant scalability, allowing teams from different parts of the world to work together seamlessly as was proven during COVID-19, where VFX artists worked remotely. These trends have collectively transformed the VFX industry.

Avatar (2009) was a landmark moment in the VFX industry, setting new standards and influencing future filmmaking with its groundbreaking visual effects. The film utilized cutting-edge motion capture technology to create realistic character movements, including facial motion capture to record subtle expressions, resulting in highly lifelike CGI characters. James Cameron pioneered virtual filmmaking by showcasing real-time representations of the CG world viewable on set through custom cameras. This allowed him to frame shots and preview action in ways previously unseen. These innovations have since become integral to modern filmmaking. The impact of Avatar on motion capture, 3D technology, virtual production, environmental creation and machine learning integration has driven the industry to new heights of creativity and technical excellence.

Jason Zimmerman, VFX Supervisor, Star Trek: Discovery and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Working on the newest iterations of Star Trek is daunting because it has always been a mainstay in VFX. Starting almost 60 years ago, the TV show – and then movies – that followed were incredible sci-fi moments made possible by a who’s who of VFX veterans who were part of creating the foundations of the VFX industry: Douglas Trumbull, VES, John Dykstra, Richard Yuricich, ASC, Dan Curry, VES, Ronald B. Moore, Gary Hutzel, Rob Legato, ASC, Bill Taylor, VES, ASC, Syd Dutton, Michael Okuda. All VFX Hall of Famers. That’s pretty much been the norm with each series and movie since. They have been contenders for Emmys and Oscars and often with VFX that were innovations along the way. The ships themselves are beloved by fans and treated almost as characters, so showing those throughout the years whether through models and miniatures or moving into the CG era has always been central to the shows and by extension pushed the boundaries of VFX to give us the most realistic representations for storytelling. That work has laid the foundation for how we today try to emulate not just ships, but space, planets and aliens. Star Trek laid the groundwork for a lot of what we see in TV and film down to this day.

Star Trek has always been at the forefront in one way or another. For my career, the show that comes to mind is Game of Thrones (2011-2019), specifically Season 2. It was the first time I, as an artist and supervisor, felt like the lines between feature and TV VFX began to blur. Not that there were not great VFX before that, there were. To me, the scope and scale of what Game of Thrones started producing felt like a big moment in VFX and TV in general. As an artist, it made feature-level VFX attainable in the TV realm, and out of that a lot of other shows started to get much more ambitious. Today, you have so much great work out there. Every year there are many shows doing thousands of shots a season at an incredibly high level, and I believe to an extent Game of Thrones sort of kicked the door open for that to happen.

David Lebensfeld, President & VFX Supervisor, Ingenuity Studios and Ghost VFX

For me, the answer to [what are the biggest changes you’ve experienced in VFX] is what allowed me to start my company. The game-changer was the democratization of hardware and software tools. The barrier of entry came down enough to start a business without a significant financial investment, thanks to desktop hardware and software. At the time, in 2004, desktop adoption was in its relative infancy. Prior to that, we used to need beefy workstations or turnkey solutions, and the evolution continues even now. Today, all we need is a laptop and YouTube. Cloud-backed services allow rendering and storage in the cloud, so you can pay as you go. This lower barrier to entry brings creativity to the forefront. There are no real gatekeepers. This paradigm is based on talent, just like basketball where everyone has a basketball and access to a court.

The Matrix (1999) was a big visual effects movie around the time when desktop solutions became more widely available. This film influenced a generation. One of the big things about that movie is the sheer quantity of VFX work and the fact that VFX is really part of the storytelling. It is VFX-forward, rather than playing a supporting role. There are so many other iconic examples, ranging from Jurassic Park (1993) to Star Wars (1977) and beyond.

Matthew Butler, VFX Supervisor, Digital Domain

I’ll deliberately avoid the knee-jerk reaction to the current and future involvement with AI, but it is clear that it will create a massive change. Instead, I think it’s interesting to go way back in time and reference something that we take for granted now. Here’s one: digital cameras! Can you imagine a time when everything was shot on film and had to be scanned to get into a digital world to be manipulated? As an example, during Titanic (1997), not only was everything shot on film but even on-set reference photography, including stereographic reconstruction photography.

Due to disc space and throughput limitations at the time, the film was scanned into 8-bit RGB color space – a Missive limitation, and all “finals” had to be reviewed on a loop through a film projector, and we were at the mercy of the randomness of the chemical bath that processed our film overnight. So, the advent and improvement of digital cameras, along with the high-depth color pipelines, catapulted the quality and eased the production of VFX work massively.

A second advancement I must note is the improvement of simulated effects animation and rendering. This procedural computation of natural phenomena such as fluid simulations and gas combustion has reached levels where it’s often better to solve it synthetically than it is to use real life! Not that long ago, we would assume that the “real” photography of any natural phenomena would always be superior to what we could synthesize using mathematical algorithms, but I don’t believe that is the case anymore.

For fun, let’s pick The Day After Tomorrow (2004) [as a landmark film]. While the water simulations are now very crude by comparison to today’s capabilities, at the time they were ground-breaking. It’s a very different thing to solve the motion and light behavior of an “un-broken” continuous water surface than to compute the volumetric, “white water” look of particulate spray. So, to tell the story of tsunami waves crashing through New York, big advancements in water simulation had to be made, and how it was animated and rendered re-thought. Again, it’s crude compared to what we would be able to do today but landmark at the time.

Guy Williams, Senior VFX Supervisor, Wētā FX

When I started in VFX at Boss Film [Studios] in 1992, film was king and TV/commercials were seen as sort of a lesser part of the field – we did that work too, but our goal was to get the big film projects. The entire industry was built around this idea, and because of this, more companies sprouted up, globalization kicked in, and we had even more companies around the world servicing the growing film industry.

Enter the streamers – TV was no longer fixed to a delivery schedule or block size, and TV content could now include more work close to the scope of film. It could be consumed on demand instead of at a fixed time. We started to question the strength of film in this space, but with the likes of Marvel showing such strong box office returns, we held to the belief in large-scale film. Then COVID hit and we spent a year not being able to go to theaters – this one event massively accelerated the timeline of events. Streaming demand exploded and the difference between TV and film got even more blurred. Streamers were presenting their material at 2k, then 4k. Due to the success of the content on the streaming platforms, their budgets continued to rise, and soon, the main difference between TV and film was purely the location of the audience.

Because of this, the industry has had to shift its view on high-end content. We see content agnostically now, and we approach the work the same, regardless of the final viewing platform – it is all content. This has strengthened the VFX industry as it has democratized exceptional work. More democratized tools and more companies capable of doing great work also factor in. This is just the latest major shift, and we need to be self-aware about it.

I can get it down to two [landmark films]. Jurassic Park (1993) – I saw this movie in college. It is the reason I headed to Los Angeles to get a job in film VFX. I wasn’t the only one; the industry grew massively off the heels of this film. It showed filmmakers that anything finally was possible. Creativity, with the help of CG, could be unlimited. Avatar (2009) is special in many ways, but the idea of virtual production was proven here. Earlier movies had touched upon the idea, but Avatar was the first major success, making the concept hard to ignore. I still believe we haven’t reached the top bounds of what virtual production can do for creative content. In time, Avatar will be remembered as the first step down that path.

Richard Clarke, Head of Visualization/VFX Supervisor, Cinesite

Planning and evolving shots is nothing new in filmmaking. However, it is definitely one area that has been around since before VFX appeared and will always be a key part of the filmmaking process. These days, visualizing shots right up to the start of final pixel production is almost taken for granted. Historically, story-boarding started at Disney in the 1930s where storyboards were filmed and edited to the movie’s soundtrack. It is the predecessor of modern previsualization.

By the time VFX was emerging in the late 1980s, previsualization of shots was already part of the shot design process. Movies such as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and The Abyss (1989) were early adopters of using primitive 3D to explore shot design. However, it was not until David Dozoretz created the first-ever previsualization sequence for Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace (1999) that quick iterations of shots and sequences existed. This was the lightbulb moment for filmmakers.

Over the next two decades, visualization has become an essential pre-production planning tool, mainly using Maya and simple playblasting to build an edit. Over time, it has grown to cover many aspects of shot and sequence design, including techvis, stuntvis and now postvis. Over the last decade, game engines have become another key tool for quick iterations. They also allow real-time virtual production, with LED volumes becoming an integral part of the process. Productions can now iterate live at the shooting stage in real-time by facilitating scene editing with instant feedback. This allows filmmakers to compose and stage shots as they do with actors and physical sets.

When considering VFX [landmark] movies, the further back in time you go, the bigger and more considerable the landmark. With that in mind, one of the very earliest movies to feature CGI [is] Disney’s Tron, a 1982 movie directed by Steven Lisberger. The movie was highly praised for its groundbreaking visuals. However, it was disqualified from the Best Visual Effects category because at the time the Academy felt that using computer animation was “cheating.”

The movie features less than 20 minutes of CGI and was intercut with live action. Much of the technology we take for granted today to combine CGI and live-action did not exist back then. Computers were very primitive, with only 2MB of memory and no more than 330 MB of storage. They created “depth cueing” to fade to black as the computers could only represent limited amounts of detail. The computers could not create image sequences, so the frames were produced one by one. Some frames took up to six hours to render. Outputting the final shots was also difficult because there were no digital film recorders. Instead, a motion picture camera was placed in front of a computer screen to capture each individual frame.

Most scenes were created using a process known as “backlit animation.” Live-action scenes were filmed in black and white on an entirely black set, and negatives were placed on an enlarger and transferred to large-format Kodalith high-contrast film [created by Kodak, who went on to open Cinesite in 1991]. Many layers of film footage, mattes, rotoscopes and CGI were merged together. Color was added by using gelatin filters in a similar procedure. Some shots utilized up to 50 passes, all optically assembled by hand to create the final VFX shot.

Steve May, CTO, Pixar

I’m happy to say that Pixar’s OpenUSD is one of the most fundamentally important technologies of the last decade. OpenUSD solved a problem that faced the film industry for years – the seamless interchange of complex 3D scenes. It’s a technology that enables artists to do more by providing powerful ways to assemble, edit and view 3D content by allowing interoperability of data between different 3D authoring tools and by supporting collaboration between artists working simultaneously on the same artistic content. OpenUSD is the backbone of Pixar’s pipeline and the core of our animation system, Presto. By sharing it, OpenUSD has become the de facto standard in animation and VFX. As the Chair of the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), I’m also happy to say that the mission of the Alliance is to expand the capabilities of OpenUSD further and broaden the reach of OpenUSD into other exciting and rapidly-evolving industries, including immersive and interactive content.

Jurassic Park (1993) and Toy Story (1995) changed the landscape of film in the early to mid-1990s and sparked the imaginations of me and countless other artists, technologists and filmmakers. They both achieved what had previously been considered impossible – breathing life into photorealistic dinosaurs and creating a 90-minute computer-animated feature film. The movie industry was never the same.

Paul Silcox, VFX Director, Lux Aeterna

Combining spectacular cinematography with jaw-dropping VFX, my choice is a recent blockbuster and surely a contender for the next round of VFX awards, Dune: Part Two (2024). The experience of watching this movie for the first time at the cinema was intoxicating and demonstrated innovation and excellence across many disciplines. From the incredible score to the brutalist set design, the use of infra-red cameras or the VFX creature work, it was an immensely entertaining sci-fi spectacle.

I love the scope and the seamless blend of practical and digital FX, flawlessly executed throughout the movie. Innovations such as the inverted sandscreen, sand-colored screens used instead of the traditional blue or green, huge practical pyro FX used purely for lighting and then combined with simulated VFX explosions to machine learning algorithms augmenting the blue in the eyes of the Fremen, Dune: Part Two sets a flag in the sand for quality VFX production.

From the exciting and mind-blowing scenes of Paul Atreides riding the grandfather worm to the destruction of Arrakeen, it is a joy to take in the expansive worlds of Arrakis and a huge inspiration to keep creating cinematic VFX.