Digital Domain delivers infinity in the mirror room sequence and headquarters destruction scene. The collaboration was a once in a lifetime opportunity to work on a truly great movie. I grew up with the X-Men, reading the comics, learning to draw the characters and watching them come to life with amazement in cartoons and movies my whole life. I have also wanted to work at DD since I was at SCAD. Here's a movie review and links of interest.
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/x_men_first_class/Kevin Bacon, Shaw, destroys an atrium, an environment augmented by DD with fully CG explosions, debris and fire. “Our atrium explosions were led by effects animation supervisor Brian Gazdik,” says Kalaitzidis. “We used Houdini to break things and add fire on top of that. It included desks, and ceilings and windows and even typewriters on the desks. In the past we’d use real pyro elements but I felt like this was one of the shows where we didn’t need to do that for CG fire. And not only did we have CG fire but all the characters shooting at Shaw from the top of the atrium were all CG and mo-capped.”
http://www.fxguide.com/featured/making-mutants-for-x-men-first-class/
After attempting to draw the nuclear power of the submarine, Shaw is confronted by Lensherr in a ‘mirror room’, an environment shot completely against greenscreen. Once filmed, DD assembled some rough post-viz to help establish the key beats and rudimentary, but multiple, reflections. “That was approved by John Dykstra and then we came up with a look-dev for the mirror room,” says Kalaitzidis. “We used reference from Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, in the mirror maze. That showed the imperfections and the hues and mutual density that we needed to add in.”
Witness-cam footage of Shaw and Lensherr, again, was used to copy their performances via roto-mation. “Using this animation,” explains Kalaitzidis, “we reflected CG doubles into the mirrors themselves. They’re fighting each other and there’s breaking glass which was done with Maya and Houdini, and then composited in Nuke.”
