X-Men Origins: Wolverine
This sequence from Fox production Wolverine shows Wolverine and his cohorts flying in to Lagos, Nigeria. The action cuts between dialogue inside the plane and dramatic shots of the plane swooping through the clouds, past the camera, and towards its landing site.
Cinesite created intercutting, entirely computer generated shots for the production in only a 5 week time frame.
The clouds were created in Houdini as full volumetric renders. This allowed for the plane to fly through the layers of varying thickness, from dense to wispy, and for shadows to be cast realistically through them.
The plane, a military version of an American Golf Stream business jet, was entirely computer generated and built from scratch. Details right down to the interior of the cockpit, strobing navigation lights, landing lights with interactive glow on the clouds, heat haze and vapour trails were all added to ensure absolute accuracy.
The starry sky and panoramic nightscape of Lagos were both created as digital matte paintings. The geography of the city was researched on the internet and via photographic sourcecs and matched as closely as possible in the finished sequence.
Nuke was used to export the camera information and environment geometry from Maya. This gave a 3-dimensional impression to the matte paintings, and a realistic sense of parallax.
