Red Cliff

 

Rif Dagher , renowned effects specialist  talks to cebas about working on the latest Jon Woo movie "Red Cliff".
Legendary action cinema master John Woo and international superstar Tony Leung reunite are some of the talents within this epic historical drama set based on a legendary 208 A.D. battle that heralded the end of the Han Dynasty. This movie is a massive hit in Asia and the most expensive Asian film production of all time, Red Cliff  is a breathtaking war epic that marks the triumphant return of John Woo.

Rif, your reference list and history in the industry is quite impressive! We learned that you have gone through several milestones in your career.

In the past you worked as F/X Artist and Technical Artist on several cinematic sequences of popular video games including Golden Eye, Medal of Honor and later as technical director  and FX lead on several major motion pictures like Blade Trinity, The Host, A Dungeon Siege Tale, Superman Returns, Ghost Rider, Spiderman 3, The Happening, Snakes on the Plane, The Mist, Street Kings, 2012 and GI Joe.

You just finished and helped on several large projects lately; especially one we want to talk about in more detail in this interview. 

Rif: Yes, I really have been so busy lately (laughs). The last year was just one ride of a roller coaster, the most prominent project I started and worked on was at Sony Pictures Entertainment\Uncharted Territory ; back in March 2008. I was there to coordinate the visual effects and decide on the people and tools to use for the Roland Emmerich block buster movie "2012". In a couple of months I was able to define a possible effects pipeline and the tools for them, as you can see from the end result - my expertise seemed to work out just fine for them! 

After that I worked on:

Red Clif 2 ( Fx Lead \ R&D )
G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra ( Fx Lead \ R&D )
Dragonball Evolution ( R&D)
Bolden ( Fx \ R&D)
Avatar ( minor R&D)
New Moon ( R&D)

 

 

 

Thanks for the insight, now lets talk about Red Cliff you have been involved in.

Question: Can you tell us how you were involved in the production of Red Cliff?

Rif: I was aproached by Jason Crosby and Chris Harvey at Siggraph 2008 about the needs for fire and crowds techniques and destructions on a John Woo show that was coming to Prime Focus in production shortly. After leaving 2012, it was a perfect timing for me to start at Prime Focus as the Fx lead on this project.

 

Question:  What Cebas software did you use in the production of Red Cliff?

Rif: After choosing the path with Cebas'  thinkingParticles and finalRender and the newly developed volumeBreaker tool, it was really just a question of assembling the pieces of the puzzle!

 

Question: How did you use our software to achieve the effects?

Rif: As I have been doing so for quiet some times now, the crowd was dealt with on a rule based instance rendering technique that only finalRender and thinkingParticles brings us really well and fast on rendering.

For the destruction sequences of the ships it was the volumeBreaker tool that prepared the pieces of wood created by procedurally ramming other boats in this shot.

Lots of smoke and fire effects have been achieved by combining thinkingParticles and FUME F/X- as they talk really well to each other. All of the rendering was done in finalRender using the advanced Render Passes System that is the only one to do unlimited Render Element at the same time - to give the Post department what they needed.

Question: What features in particular helped you achieve your goal and how?

Rif: First of all, as usual, the continuous communication and improvements between the cebas team and our team was and is always  a MAJOR must to guide everyone toward the techniques needed to be used to take full advantage of the new implementations and tools from the software development side - cebas worked with me on 2012 adding improvements and new tools and they worked on adding functionality for Red Cliff as well.   

In detail, volumeBreaker was such a helpful tool in every aspect that required breaking and destruction. Having the ability to just use a simple box, and make out of this box a base front of the ship wall, with all the wood shards tessellated details and pieces as the support fails due to the other boats and explosions ramming them down, is a huge time saver! Having all these mesh preparations been done procedurally by a clever algorithm, fully multi-threaded, also brings a huge advantage when time comes to run Dynamic Simulations to break those pieces out  - as cebas understand the voxelisation that the Shape Collision needs to provide the most accurate dynamics, the volumeBreaking inter-penetration are also not  to worry about from the artist preparation side witch also saves lots of time in a pipeline aimed for destruction.

finalRender SE itself - with its huge 3d motion blur improvements and the newly introduced Render Elements pipeline inclusion/exclusion list of scene  objects continued to be highly useful for separating passes from 1 rendered image and give everything needed to comping shots properly. Thanks to cebas' heavy improvements on lighting and GI techniques made render time really fast. There is soo much to say, but those are the most important things I can remember.

 

 

Question: What was the most difficult aspect of this project and how did you solve it?

Rif: On my side, it was the deadline.. we had lots of shots with 2500 boats and a crew of 8 to 12 peoples on each boat with masts and flags and water surfaces and interaction with explosions and debris and fragmentations  and all that had to be done in 8 weeks! The main reason why I think we managed to make it happend in such a short amount of time was the total trust of the Vfx Sup Jason Crosby in our approaches, the amazing work of Jane Sharvina and her team of compositors who saved every shot, the great help of clever people in our team such as Jeremy Buttel on the 3d side and Marion Spates on the animation side.

 

Question: Can you give us a step-by-step breakdown of a typical shot?

Rif: Yes, as you see in the videos, building up the crowds were totally procedural and all interconnected with each other, 1 boat would rock on side , carring all the barrels, the masts, the flags, the nests and peoples on it, with possibilitys for dynamics happening on hero ones.

 

Question: How did cebas software integrate into your production pipeline? Was this straightforward?

Rif: Definitely - cebas software is build and tested to be part of clever feature pipelines for years now. Using them and plugging them in.

Question: What was the most fun or rewarding part of this project for you?

RIF: The speed of execution, the happiness of the feedback from the client , the usage of new techniques and the continuation of the development of something created to do alot of those types of effects.

 

Question: What projects can we expect from you in the future? (Assuming you're able to tell us that is). 

Rif: Fortunately, the Vfx World is constantly seeking for complex and faster and more complete CG work - this brought us on many projects after Red Cliff, 2012, GI Joe and we have still plans on working on big features for quiet a while now - cebas software will definitely follow us as an integral part of my pipeline. Thanks!

No, we have to thank you for  making such great effects and driving the industry further by your way of working and asking for more and more every day!