Visual Research Work

client: 20th Century Fox

From time to time, RE:Vision provides direct services to film studios, directors, and visual effects producers often in the preproduction stage of a movie to develop particular looks or process for a project. Since RE:Vision supports a wide variety of software platforms, the work can then be carried on in post-production by a visual effects facility and the deliverable is often a combination of software plugins, instructions and support.

The following work was performed for 20th Century Fox while the movie "Night at the Museum 2" was in development. The movie needed to contain a large number of paintings in motion, along with some interaction with the actors in a live-action museum. The test work was performed by RE:Vision Effects with Michael Schmitt (mkschmitt at ymail dot com) for Fox. Some of the final work performed for the movie by Computer Cafe Group (CafeFx) under the supervision of Scott Gordon is described in this Computer Graphics World article.

The following includes test material copyrighted (2008-09) 20th Century Fox and shown here by permission and cannot be redistributed without prior arrangements with Fox.

The Effect

Different looks were developed using both live-action and computer graphics renderings. This sequence attempts to produce an animated Degas-like effect from a live-action green screen reference.

And the results needs to look like a painting on a wall like this (roll mouse over picture to view movie player controls):

Tools Used: In addition to RE:Vision Effects’ Effections plugin suite and custom plugins, Eyeon Fusion was the primary compositing package used, with some additional work done in After Effects. XSI was used to develop looks for the 3D scene elements; and the project also used Maya to prepare elements for the final effect.

Additional credits:  Ellen Sommers, visual effects producer and Dan DeLeew visual effects supervisor. Permission has been received to use Anna Lucia Tarquino’s image on this website.