In Dracano, a volcanic eruption in the Pacific Northwest spews lava, steam and fire—along with eggs that hatch ancient, menacing, winged dragons that prey on man. Since similar volcanic eruptions in Russia, Japan, and other “Ring of Fire” regions are also releasing these menacing creatures into the world, scientists fear they are witnessing the start of a global dragon apocalypse. Set in contemporary times, this ambitious plotline depends upon the credibility of the dragon creatures and their appearance, movement, and interaction with people from a nearby U.S. military base who fight back.

Three visual effects animators completed the movie’s 220 visual effects shots using LightWave 11.5, which advances the features, capabilities, and efficiency of the popular LightWave 3D modeling and animation system.

“There is no other 3D animation software out there with the breadth of features and ease of use to allow us to handle all of these visual effects shots for Dracano, given the tight time and budget constraints,” said Scott Wheeler, visual effects supervisor for Dracano and president of Rogue State, a visual effects and post production boutique in Burbank, CA. In the fall of 2012, Rogue State worked closely with Los Angeles-based Remember Dreaming Productions to realize this fantasy/action adventure movie for Odyssey Entertainment in Australia.  

LightWave 11.5 was used to create all of the CG dragons, military vehicles, helicopters, and jets, as well as volcanic smoke, steam, and lava. It was also the primary tool for creating the 220 live action visual effects composites. LightWave 11.5 features like Genoma for character rigging, Soft Body Bullet Dynamics, and Motion Blur added to the Viewport Preview Renderer (VPR) system, and sped up the process and streamlined the workflow on complex effects shots by a factor of ten.

The Genoma Potential

Genoma is an intuitive character rigging system that jump-starts the 3D modeling process by providing instant rigging of legs, arms, fingers, wings, spines, and other body parts for biped, quadrupeds, and even exotic creatures, like dragons. While Genoma provides a head start in creating 3D rigs, animators can modify the rigs, such as making a tail longer, or any other creative changes they need.

“You’re basically just putting pre-programmed pieces together almost like an erector set to build your character. There isn’t a lot of trial and error because once you set-up your creature in Modeler and export it to Layout, it just works exactly the way you’d expect it to,” Wheeler said. “With Genoma, an animator can rig a creature without having to understand the underpinnings of the process.”

The Flesh of Dragons

Most of the CG dragons in Dracano are six to eight feet tall with a massive wingspan and sharp teeth. The dragons have soft flesh covering their bodies and wings that move in relation to the rigid skeletal structure underneath. Soft hanging flesh can even jiggle as the creature moves for greater realism. In LightWave 11.5, Genoma works in conjunction with another new feature, Soft Body Bullet Dynamics to produce this effect. LightWave 11.5 extends LightWave 11’s Bullet dynamics for rigid models to encompass flesh, cloth, rubber, and other soft materials that deform. A dress can blow in the breeze even if the underlying model remains rigid because Genoma and Soft Body Bullet Dynamics understand the distinction between the two materials.

“Bullet knows which surfaces to deform based on the weight maps and other parameters you set. These values are not the weight of the creature, they are values you set that define the degree of deformation you want to achieve,” Wheeler said. “It’s like mapping an object by making different areas different colors. One color denotes a rigid structure while another color means that area needs to deform and move in relation to the rigid framework underneath. Genoma works with Bullet’s hard and soft body dynamics to figure out how much each object or surface should bend, collide, flop, wiggle, wave, stretch, or any movement based on how you set it up.”

Motion Blur for a Better View

The Viewport Preview Renderer (VPR) that was introduced in LightWave 10 has also been extended in LightWave 11.5, making the rendering process much more efficient. Instead of seeing the animation as frame to frame to frame, like a stop motion animation, motion blur gives a better, clearer sense of the animated motion and depth of field without having to go through the full rendering process. Motion blur on the VPR is not a visual effect, it’s a way to preview how the animation will actually look and integrate within the scene.

With motion blur inside the VPR, the user can get a feel for the speed of something that’s moving very fast, such as a dragon swooping by, which offers a quick, accurate view of incremental creative enhancements without rendering and saves a lot of time previously devoted to trial and error interspersed with rendering. “LightWave has had motion blur available at the wireframe stage, but now its addition in the VPR makes this valuable tool even more indispensable,” said Wheeler. In the same way that Genoma and Bullet dynamics work together throughout the modeling, layout, and animation process, the VPR is also readily available at every stage of the process.

Swarms and Flocks

Prior to Dracano, Rogue State produced visual effects scenes for Dragon Wasps, including swarms of dragon wasps flying in the sky. Since hundreds of wasps had to move as an organized group, Wheeler’s visual effects team used the LightWave Flocking feature. In Dracano, many dragon creatures also take to the air and fly around or congregate in caves. But in this instance, Wheeler said they used Instancing to clone one dragon and create a group of 20 to 30 creatures.

“Flocking is best to move large numbers of creatures like a thousand wasps to form a deadly swarm. But for a relatively small number of dragons, we used Instancing to create a group. LightWave lets you vary their attributes, like size or colors, and animate them independently of each other,” said Wheeler. “Having a wide array of tools ensures that we have the right one for the unique challenges of every task.”

“In our segment of the market, creating visual effects for ultra-low or low-budget features, our visual effects team needs powerful, cost-effective 3D animation tools that get the job done quickly,” said Wheeler. “LightWave 3D helps us meet the production demands of budget-conscious producers without sacrificing the visual impact, credibility, or realism of creatures or visual effects.”         

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