Visual effects in Resident Evil: The Final Chapter: An interview with Mr. X studio’s VFX supervisor

Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is the third Resident Evil film that Eric Robinson, VFX supervisor at Mr. X, has worked on. ‘Having been immersed in them [Resident Evil films] for so many years, it’s cosy, like putting on pyjamas!’ he said in one of his interviews. Eric Robinson spoke to RENDERU.COM about the visual effects in the last segment of the film franchise.

RENDERU.COM: Before we start discussing visual effects, would you tell us about yourself? How long have you been in VFX for, and how did your career begin?

Eric Robinson: I've been in VFX since 2002. I studied animation and video editing at a small college in London (Canada) in the 90's, but started out in VR imaging in the real estate business before committing to a change. After some unpaid work making animations for low-budget features and shorts (simply to build a demo reel) I obtained a job at IMAX. The work at IMAX was primarily developing a 2D to 3D conversion pipeline, the result being 2006's Superman Returns, with twenty minutes of converted 3D stereo. It was the first commercial feature with 3D stereo conversion work! In 2009 I took a new job at Mr. X VFX. They were beginning work on their first foray into 3D, with Resident Evil: Afterlife and I was brought in as a stereographer for the VFX work.


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RENDERU.COM: This is your third Resident Evil film. Does it become more complicated and interesting with every movie?

E.R.: The Resident Evil movies are a lot of fun to work on! I'm a big fan of the Post-Apocalyptic genre. We are always trying to improve upon our previous work! We can rely on making things bigger; increasing the scope of the movie to give it a big budget feel. And even though the software and hardware improves, we still have to dedicate more, and more time to making it better. Every time the expectations are higher, and higher. Director Paul Anderson himself is such a fan of the games and series – he really wants to give the fans something bigger every time.

RENDERU.COM: What exactly has been enhanced this time?

E.R.: The biggest update this time was more detailed and extensive environment work. During the shoot in South Africa, we had 4 days with a helicopter; so we could shoot plates for big environment shots. In a few of those cases, the only part of this aerial photography we used was the camera move. We would track the plate, and then create an all CG shot using that camera. This was used for two of the aerials in Washington DC. It's impossible to do aerial work there now, and while we looked for stock shots to modify, we ended up going all CG.

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RENDERU.COM: Could you explain how you created the big flying creature?

E.R.: I really enjoy the flying creature fight. Paul Anderson has a great way of getting the most from a small set or location. The production team did a fantastic job enhancing a location near Cape Town (that already had a post-apocalyptic feel), by extending fencing, charring walls, piling rubble, and removing any plant life. We had burnt out vehicles, tents, and other surplus military materials. Working on the set for days was very trippy, as we couldn't see much of the world around the location, and we felt like we were living in this apocalyptic world. Alice is fighting a winged creature in this scene, eventually killing it with explosives. There is an extended chase moment, with Alice in a HUMVEE. We shot driving plates, camera arm car shots, helicopter shots, and there was even a camera mounted on a remote control car, so that it could pass under the HUMVEE. Into all of this, we were adding the massive winged creature, extending the damaged environment, adding CG Smoke, enhancing explosions, and Houdini simulations for breaking walls. So many aspects of VFX are working all in one scene!

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RENDERU.COM: What was your main challenge when working on this film?

E.R.: The final feature was almost 2000 VFX shots! So shot volume was the biggest challenge in the show. So many different types of VFX work had to be done: many assets needed to be built, and simulations run. Fortunately, this feature was a 3D conversion, rather than a natively photographed 3D. This made rendering the CG much easier to accomplish. We did have to make time to hand off Nuke scripts to Legend3D to aid in their conversion work for select shots. Coordinating with Legend3D was made easier by the fact that they were running their show out of their Toronto office, so we were able to meet often to make the handoff of VFX shots to their conversion pipeline smoother. In fact, we hosted two conversion TD's in our studio, so that they could make DM comps directly.

RENDERU.COM: How did you create the huge army of the Undead?

E.R.: The Undead were based on photo surveys of extras from the shoot in South Africa. For this instalment of the series, Paul really wanted the Undead to be gaunt, skinny, and dirty, so that they looked like they had been wandering the wasteland for a decade. On set we had up to 75 Undead extras, with different levels of makeup to work for various distances from camera. The closest were in full prosthetics. They required hours in the makeup chair at the start and end of day. These were usually stunt people, so were able to interact with the actors, do falls, get lit on fire, and etc. It was them who we made our photo surveys on, and modelled from.

As done with the extras, we had levels of detail in our CG models based on proximity to the camera. For the huge volume of Undead in the wide highway shots as they chased the Transporter, the main consideration was getting the balance of look and render ability – there were over 50,000 digital extras in the wide shots! The crowd sims were done in Massive.

We had higher detail Undead models for shots where they played closer to the camera. These were usually hand animated as their actions needed to be specific to the shot. However, we did use Xsens motion capture equipment to generate animation for both simulated Undead crowds, and hero single Undead.

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RENDERU.COM: There are many huge post-apocalyptic environments in the film. How did you create these, and which references did you use?

E.R.: Sadly, the references for destroyed environments are far too easy to find. Aleppo was used a lot for the Racoon City environment. A damaged Japanese coastline (from the recent tsunami) was referenced for Washington, and New York City. To allow for the most flexibility in camera work, we went with a fully 3D approach for most of the environments – modelling in Maya, textures in Photoshop, and Mari. Rubble and destroyed buildings were reused as much as possible, by rotating the asset to camera. Elements that didn't work were culled, out and the layers re-rendered.

The Whitehouse model was reused from Resident Evil: Retribution and then damage was added. Other than that one model, almost everything else was custom made for the movie.

RENDERU.COM: How long did you work on the show for?

E.R.: We had originally bid out the show in the spring of 2014. Production was delayed due to Milla Jovovich taking time to have her second child! We re-started in the summer of 2015. Our team was in South Africa for prep and shooting between August and December, with the VFX work wrapping in late October of 2016. Overall, it was two and a half years!

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RENDERU.COM: What are you currently working on?

E.R.: I'm currently working on an ambitious science fiction TV pilot for the Syfy network.

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