Visual Effects for the Day After Tomorrow- Week 12

The visual effects for the film Day After Tomorrow were implemented by using different techniques of animation. The company Hydraulx produced the icebergs that were used for the first few minutes of the film. A sculptor came on board to create the icebergs out of styrofoam and the special effects team scanned these styrofoam images into the computer and a landscape was created out of them. The surrounding landscape also had bits of ice which was animated by hand. Dynamics were used to illustrate the collision of objects on screen. When creating animation like this, the special effects people stated that physics and the type of environment play a part. Specifically, there were character animators to animate the pieces of ice separate from the icebergs. There is a part of a scene where characters in the film are drilling into some ice and a crevasse is created. One big goal of the visual effects team that worked on the film was to produce photo realism, which I believe they accomplished. The light in a crevasse becomes darker the deeper one looks down into the earth, which is what the animators were strove to do.

The huge storm that was portrayed from space within the film, called a super cell, was modeled and animated from scratch because using photos didn't work well enough. For the LA Tornadoes, some rotoscoping was involved in which the tornadoes could be moved to different places within the frame. As a reference, the visual effects team used video of actual tornadoes in rural areas. When animating the tornadoes the setting that the tornadoes were affecting had to be animated as well with the debris and flying objects, etc. An LA street was modeled so that tornadoes could destroy it.

One aspect of a scene that was interesting, and which I had never heard of being done before, was the color grading of a live action scene instead of a green or blue screen. The advantage of doing color grading is that it only effects the color of the shot and maintains the real visual elements of the landscape. For the helicopter crash scene, photography and 3D animation were combined. I find it fascinating how some of these post-production methods are used in film.