Building detailed fractal sets for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2"

Abstract

Building the digital sets for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 presented a unique challenge for Animal Logic's asset and FX teams. The creative brief involved two separate alien environments made from complex mathematical shapes, with an unprecedented amount of detail. As an additional challenge the environments had to match the look and feel of specifically styled concept art with a grand, monumental design. To meet the artistic requirements required a high level of creative control and manipulation of set elements that were to be rendered alongside many other highly detailed objects, and propagated quickly through the pipeline for fast feedback iterations. The team used a novel approach to modelling fractal objects using point clouds, taking advantage of pipeline capabilities to integrate FX objects with environment set-pieces. Additionally the team, leveraged instancing and high levels of geometric complexity using the in-house renderer Glimpse.