This particular shot was challenging because it wasn’t planned to be set in such a long hallway. If you look at the original plate, the perspective is much closer. We had to create an extension of the hallway and, because it was an afterthought, the depth budget that was set for stereo was already being used. That meant we had to adjust the intraocular distance of the longer hallway to be comfortable for the eye. Originally, there was extensive manipulation to be able to extend the hallway in the first place and then build in [Autodesk] 3ds Max and [The Foundry] Nuke a photorealistic hallway that matches, and this was all before we even made the ground crumble. For the ground-crumbling segment, we projected our hallway extension onto some pre-fractured geometry, and then ran multiple simulations on that geometry to make it crumble and fall into the ground. We used Rayfire, MassFX, and Particle Flow in 3ds Max. – David Lebensfeld, founder and creative director, Ingenuity Engine

Mouseover film still above to compare to original live-action plate

Creating this in stereo was the most challenging part of the project. We did traditional matte paintings in Photoshop, and from there we built out geometry to project onto, which we did in Nuke. It was pretty painstaking, because we had to look at all the edges of the labyrinth and the maze, and actually build that all out in 3D in order for it to work appropriately from eye to eye. It was a very easy gag to give away if not done properly, so we had to be meticulous when building the traditional matte painting and then extracting it out for stereo. – DL

Mouseover film still above to compare to original live-action plate

It was similar to the hallway in that it was a little underwhelming at first. So we cut the characters out and placed them into an entirely digital matte painting. The only piece we used from the original plate is the section where they are walking out of the labyrinth. All the flowers, grass, hedges, and everything else you see was created from set photos and then hand-painted. Similar to what we did with the big labyrinth matte painting shot, we approached it in a traditional way and then built out the geometry for the projection. All the projections were again done in Nuke, and then they were re-photographed with the proprietary stereo rig that we created. The rig goes very easily back and forth between Macs and Nuke, so we are able to see the work in stereo and then extend that back out to our Macs, which enabled us to see and render easily.  – DL

Mouseover film still above to compare to original live-action plate

This effect was really about adding energy blasts. The trick to creating those in stereo — like many stereo issues — was to make sure that the human eye can manage the visuals. Whenever you create refraction or bending of an image, there can be issues with seeing them properly. We had some back-and-forth iterations to make sure that those issues were managed, and that the blasts were clear, comfortable, and easily seen by the audience.  – DL

Mouseover film still above to compare to original live-action plate