ILM's Hidden Arsenal for Iron Man

Iron Man was back in the news last week when the film received an Oscar nomination-and another handful of nominations two days earlier from the Visual Effects Society-for its stellar visual effects sequences. The Plug-In Post spoke with Mark Casey, an ILM Saber Artist (Transformers; Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest; The Chronicles of Narnia) and ILM’s Greg Grusby, Technical Publicist, about the role that plug-ins played in creating the film’s effects. Casey was one of six ILM Sabre Artists who worked on Iron Man. He said he has been using GenArts Sapphire Sparks in his suite for as long as GenArts has been making them (about 13 years, for those counting).

Though many complex animation and VFX pipelines did the heavy lifting on those sequences (read more about that here), Casey said Sapphire in particular “touched on almost every sequence” that ILM worked on. “We used the Sapphire products extensively throughout the film in the sixteen or so sequences that we did,” he said while flipping through a contact sheet of scenes. “We used them during his first flight in the silver Mark 2 suit, during the dog fights with the F-22 Raptors, in all of his flying sequences. They are a very robust and varied toolset that we draw on in many different ways and often used them in combination with each other. And because the product is so flexible and so powerful, and the controls are so intuitive, we’re able to empower our artists to make the visual effects as realistic as possible.”

Casey pointed to the flying sequences as some of the most heavily dazzled by his suite of Sapphire Sparks. “In those sequences, what we got from Sapphire were the little details that make it look photo-realistic: the glints, the glares, the glows. One, in particular, that we used extensively was Heat Ripple and Distortion. When you see Tony Stark flying in his suit, the heat is coming out of his Repulsors on his hands and feet. We needed to distort the background in a way that implies it was extremely hot.”

“Another key Sapphire sequence,” Casey said, “is when he’s testing his technology in his lab and getting all the kinks out. A lot of Sapphire effects were used in there, again, in combination with each other, to get the glows on the Arc Reactor in his chest, and again convey the heat and sputtering power as he builds out the first version of his Repulsor technology on his boots. The goal with these kinds of effects, of course, is to have it not be obvious what you’re doing in there. We always tried to use them subtly and in combination with each other, to create something unique.”

ILM uses Sapphire plug-ins for both Saber, its customized version of Inferno that the facility originally developed with Discreet, and Apple Shake.

The large full-sized Arc Reactor in the lobby of Stark Industries that explodes in the final battle sequence, sending its atom-bursting beam into the sky, was also covered in Sapphire touches. “We had to create all of the elements of this plasma-filled glass Arc reactor,” said Casey, “which was in reality just a big, blue painted set piece. We used 3D models, geometry and a whole host of Sapphire-enhanced treatments inside there.”

Added Greg Grusby, “Our artists get very creative with the plug-ins in general, and they tend to use them for not necessarily the purpose they were originally designed. Those kind of clever mash-ups happen all the time around here. When you’re an artist, you run into those kind of happy accidents that may not work for what you’re trying to do at first, but are perfect in another situation entirely.”

Kind of like Tony Stark himself.


For more details about ILM’s comprehensive VFX work on Iron Man, read about it here.