SCAR OF TRANTOR

ORIGINALLY, A MINIATURE WAS BUILT TO CREATE THE DEVASTATION CAUSED BY THE TETHER BEING SEVERED FROM THE STARBRIDGE AND CRASHING TO THE SURFACE OF TRANTOR…

In order to have more control over the devastation caused by suicide bombers, Rodeo FX was recruited to produce a CG version. “Trantor is basically a city like Shanghai or Hong Kong in its architectural density, but that spreads over the full planet surface, then layered in depth of about 200 city levels of approximately the same urban density,” explains Arnaud Brisebois, VFX supervisor, Rodeo FX. “The task was to basically tear a giant gash in it. We would get a collection of building builds from DNEG. For each of those buildings, we generated five destruction variants, from barely wounded to completely collapsed. We generated shading attributes through FX’S destroyed areas which would be picked up in look development to give various areas of each building’s destruction its own age, or effect from destruction either partial or full. We built a megafloors [city levels] collection the same way. We spent a lot of time and effort working on single assets, making them highly detailed. You could drop a camera anywhere, near or far and it would still look awesome. I remember David Goyer’s comments coming in after seeing our early assemblies of the shots. ‘That's AWESOME! Like a spaceship Hindenburg!’ It’s the type of tone we’d get from David. Always excited, positive and fun to read.”