Framestore CFC complete animation work on 'Doom'

Framestore CFC have completed work on ‘Doom’, the eagerly anticipated film version of one of the most popular video games ever created.
Starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, Karl Urban and Rosamund Pike, Doom is directed by Andrzej Bartkowiak (Romeo Must Die) and produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and John Wells. It opens in the UK on December 2, having already opened at No. 1 at the US box office in October.
The action takes place at Olduvai Research Station, a remote scientific facility on Mars, where something has gone terribly wrong. The researchers at this Red Planet station have unwittingly opened a door, and nightmarish creatures of unknown origin now lurk in every corner and stalk the countless rooms and tunnels of the facility, killing what few people remain. Arriving on the scene are a team hardened Marines. Sealing off the portal to Earth, Sarge (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson), John Grimm, a.k.a. Reaper (Karl Urban) and their mercenary team must use every weapon at their disposal - and some they find along the way - to carry out their orders: nothing gets out alive. Unfortunately, these things never go as planned…
The Doom production team had decided early on that a good proportion of the horrors on show would be created through make-up and in-camera effects, but there were certain elements and sequences that demanded digital work. VFX Supervisor Jon Farhat came to Framestore CFC for key animation and creature work, and the company created 130 shots for the movie over a period of 11 months.
Framestore CFC's VFX Supervisor for the project was Mark Nelmes. "The biggest job for us was the 'first person sequence'," he said, "Which is where the film makers wanted to take the film back to its roots - both as a tip of the hat to the gamers in the audience, and as an original way of shooting an action sequence. It was the thing that really leapt off the pages of the script at us."
The scene starts with the camera zooming in to the eye of a temporarily stunned Grimm (Karl Urban). As he regains consciousness, we are inside his head, seeing things from his point of view. We follow him as he launches himself through the corridors of the complex, encountering various horrors en route to a final encounter with a creature called 'Pinky'. What appears to be one continuous shot is, in fact, a painstakingly crafted 7000 frame long feat of assemblage.
Shot for the most part on Steadicam, the choreography of the camera moves had been carefully planned so that the individual takes could be readily combined to create one seamless sequence. Framestore CFC executed over 15 'hook-up points', using compositing, 2D paint and 3D environment techniques. The team then had to enhance, create, animate and composite the objects and creatures that Grimm encounters using a number of different approaches. These events include heads being disintegrated, scurrying CG rats, mutilated zombies, CG set extensions, bullet hits and debris, CG head replacement on one monster (as well as its atomisation via a mine blast), and CG chainsaw creation and animation. Additionally, to really give the effect of the first person POV as seen in the game, the team had to create and animate Grimm's hands and gun.
Nelmes said: "By creating in the gun and hands in CG, we could have full control over the choreography of the weapon as well as - crucially - being able to match the lighting of the background plate onto the gun, which would have been impossible using a blue screen element due to the numerous background plates that were needed to make the single sequence."
The sequence culminates in a fight with 'Pinky' - a hideous creature with huge jaws and wheels for legs - in a fully CG room. The Pinky demon was designed, built and animated by the Framestore CFC team, based on original material from the game. Again, opting for full CG (created in close cooperation with the production designers) gave the Framestore CFC team a degree of control over various elements - lighting, architecture and objects - that the CG creature needed to interact with. As a 2000 frame continuous, fully CG sequence proceeding directly after a very 2D, live action VFX sequence, the Pinky fight had to look exactly right.
The VFX for Doom were all created using a combination of Maya and Houdini, along with Renderman and Shake.
(GB)