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" Roland Emmerich is no stranger to cinematic disaster. The director froze New York City in The Day After Tomorrow and blew the White House to bits in Independence Day. So he wasn&amp;#039;t sure about directing 2012. The movie is based on the idea that the end of the Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012, portends a global apocalypse. &amp;quot;When I realized how much disaster was involved, I got a case of cold feet because I&amp;#039;ve done that, you know?&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;So I said, &amp;#039;Okay, I&amp;#039;m going to make this the mother of all disaster movies.&amp;#039;?&amp;quot;  More than 100 artists created 2012&amp;#039;s 1300 visual-effects (VFX) shots, including volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, floods\u2014and a massive earthquake that rips California apart. In this three-minute sequence, failed science-fiction writer Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) drives through Los Angeles as the city crumbles around him. In the past, Emmerich might have filmed on location and swapped in CG crumbling buildings, but that approach didn&amp;#039;t make sense for 2012 because every edifice had to be destroyed. Instead, artists at the VFX company Uncharted Territory built a 3D photorealistic version of several city blocks using 60,000 high-dynamic images as a reference. Then they made every mailbox, tree and building shake and crumble.  As animators molded the virtual city, Emmerich was filming his actors in front of a blue screen. He put the actors on a &amp;quot;shaky floor,&amp;quot; an 8000-square-foot steel platform on airbags. Special-effects coordinators jiggled the bags with pneumatic pumps to inspire authentic reactions from the actors. &amp;quot;It was the most complicated scene we created,&amp;quot; Emmerich says. &amp;quot;And it&amp;#039;s one of my favorites.&amp;quot; Below, Marc Weigert and Volker Engle, co-CEOs of Uncharted Territory and visual-effects supervisors on the new movie, explain how they put the apocalyptic effects together.  #1 STORYBOARD    Every sequence in the movie begins as a storyboard, or a rough, comic book-like version of the film&amp;#039;s action. This particular sequence, which depicts Curtis Jackson (John Cusack) rescuing his family and driving them to the Santa Monica airport, lasts three minutes and was initially just &amp;quot;15 to 20 quick drawings,&amp;quot; says co-VFX supervisor Volker Engle. #2 PRE-VISUALIZATION After the storyboards are done, VFX artists move to a stage called pre-visualization. &amp;quot;I describe it as an early form of a CG version of a sequence, with video-game quality [visuals],&amp;quot; Engle says. A crude version of the action, pre-vis includes every part of the scene, up to camera angles and early sound effects. &amp;quot;I think that&amp;#039;s really the future of filmmaking,&amp;quot; says co-VFX supervisor Marc Weigert. &amp;quot;That almost every movie will be entirely done in the computer first so you can find out if a scene will work before you shoot it. Every shooting day is extremely expensive\u2014about $300,000. So if you can spend fairly little money compared to that to actually build all this first in the computer, edit this, find out whether there is anything you don&amp;#039;t even need to shoot because, you know, it doesn&amp;#039;t work anyway in the movie.&amp;quot; #3 LIVE ACTION PLATE    Director Roland Emmerich shoots the limo against a massive blue screen in Vancouver, Canada. The shot, called a live action plate, looks like this before any virtual elements are added; Emmerich filmed the scenes with a Panavision Genesis digital camera. #4 MATCHMOVE VFX artists identify points in the plate that can be tracked over all frames of the shot. Using that information, software calculates the exact movement of the original live action camera and re-creates that movement inside the computer.  #5 SCENE ASSEMBLY/LAYOUT    The various elements of scenes, known as assets, are created by many different artists simultaneously. &amp;quot;Even a single asset like an airplane will most likely be created by several artists: a modeler, a rigger, a texture artist and a shading artist,&amp;quot; Weigert says. When all the assets are completed, animators assemble the entire set in the computer, just like production artists build a live action set. &amp;quot;As soon as it&amp;#039;s assembled, we usually do a test render to make sure all the assets work correctly\u2014that there are no holes left,&amp;quot; Weigert says. #6 SIMULATION (Cars) After VFX artists build 3D models of the elements of the scene\u2014cars, parking garages, roads, street lamps and trees\u2014they break them apart. &amp;quot;The 3D model has to be cut apart into pieces based on the different material parameters\u2014this is partly done manually, partly with automated tools,&amp;quot; Weigert explains. Animators separate the object into its different parts: metal structure, concrete pillars, glass windows, etc. This way, &amp;quot;glass breaks into shards, while concrete breaks into chunks, and metal bars twist and bend before breaking,&amp;quot; Weigert says. &amp;quot;Every material making up an object has different behavior in real life, and we have to simulate that.&amp;quot;  #7 SIMULATION (Dust)    All the pieces and materials go through simulations that are run separately and often interact with each other. &amp;quot;We tell the computer the original state of an object. That means a building, even though already cut into pieces, is intact in the beginning, meaning in the computer it will look like a finished 3D puzzle,&amp;quot; Weigert says. &amp;quot;Then, we apply external forces to that object.&amp;quot; In the case of this particular sequence, it&amp;#039;s an earthquake that shakes the ground, but VFX artists could also apply higher gravity force or strong wind. Based on that external force, the computer makes physically accurate calculations for what will happen to that object. &amp;quot;The pre-cut pieces will break apart from each other, interact with each other and the ground,&amp;quot; Weigert says. To animate, artists used 3D Studio Max; for the crumbling buildings, they used a program called Thinking Particles. The custom tools developed by the company that owned Thinking Particles took over a year to develop.  #8 SIMULATION (Parking Garage) Typically, Weigert says, each material has to be simulated separately. Sometimes, there are simulations on top of simulations. &amp;quot;For example, to break a high-rise building, at first there would be a structural simulation that mimics the behavior of the metal structure of the building and shows how the building moves, leans, and how each floor collapses,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Then, there&amp;#039;s a sim based upon the previous one that shows the concrete pillars and floors breaking apart into chunks and falling down. On top of that, there&amp;#039;s another sim for the sand-like concrete sulfate that appears when chunks of concrete break apart.&amp;quot; #9 SIMULATION (Parking Garage and Cars)    Other types of simulations show cars deforming as they hit the ground or crash into objects, trees swaying or toppling from the shaking ground, asphalt ripping open, lawns and grass moving and ripping apart\u2014what&amp;#039;s known as a cloth sim\u2014power lines swaying, power poles falling over, the freeway buckling and crumbling, and on and on. &amp;quot;But, on top of all that,&amp;quot; Weigert says, &amp;quot;since a physically accurate simulation isn&amp;#039;t necessarily always doing exactly what the director would like to see or what&amp;#039;s needed to tell the story of a certain shot, there&amp;#039;s a lot of manipulation by the artists necessary to make the objects behave in a way we want them to\u2014which, in movies, is a lot more important than physical accuracy.&amp;quot; #10 RENDER (Background) Every layer of the scene must go through a render, which solidifies its appearance for the final shot. &amp;quot;The render passes depend on the complexity of the shot and how much we think we need to manipulate the rendered pieces later, where everything is put together to create the final shot,&amp;quot; Weigert says.  #11 RENDER (Freeway and Cars)    Renders include: diffuse pass for general lighting pass in color; shadow pass; the RGB lighting pass, which shows different light sources as red, green or blue light, so the lighting can be manipulated later in the 2D compositing stage; the spec pass, which has only the specular highlights; reflection pass; a pass for blurry reflections, the soft reflections of color and light from one object onto another; and matte, or holdout, passes, which allow animators to separate objects later in 2D composition and manipulate their color, lighting and positioning.  #12 RENDER (Street) &amp;quot;All of those passes would be rendered for each segment of a shot, meaning the shot itself would be cut up into several pieces, like picture left, right, foreground, background,&amp;quot; Weigert says. &amp;quot;This is done to save render time per frame, or to have more control in the compositing stage.&amp;quot; According to Weigert, the average render time was 20 hours per frame for all passes. The earthquake sequence has over 7000 frames; the total render time was about 141,120 hours\u2014or 16 years, if it had been rendered on a single machine. #13 DOUGHBOY RENDER    &amp;quot;This is a test render that does not show any textures or colors but shows all lighting, shadows and bounce light and usually has a lot of render settings at lower quality than a final render does,&amp;quot; Weigert says. &amp;quot;We use it to make sure the scene assembly and lighting settings all look correct before setting off a full render.&amp;quot; Full renders can take anywhere from a few hours to several days\u2014the longest single-frame render in 2012 clocked in at five days\u2014&amp;quot;so we better make sure it comes out right!&amp;quot; Weigert says. A doughboy render, meanwhile, takes just a few minutes per frame.  #14 FINAL SHOT After rendering, the virtual assets and live elements of a scene are composited together on the live action plate, giving the appearance of a single shot that has been photographed live.       "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/movies/a12339/4336701/>