A look back at The Orphanage’s work on those freezing helicopters for the 20th anniversary.
Suddenly, The Day After Tomorrow is 20 years old.
There’s some incredible visual effects work in the film, especially related to water sims, twisters and destruction effects.
But one scene I’ve always loved is when the Royal Air Force helicopters are flying over Scotland into a superstorm, begin freezing and crash.
VFX studio The Orphanage was responsible for this work (VFX supervisors Remo Balcells and Jonathan Rothbart, with production VFX supervisor Karen Goulekas).
Back in 2005, I talked to Jonathan Rothbart for vfxblog about the crash scene. The interview is long lost, but I’ve been able to resurrect it for the 20th anniversary. Here’s Rothbart on the main crash challenges.
Jonathan Rothbart: I came on toward the end to help. I was primarily responsible for the helicopter crash sequence. The shots consisted of helicopters freezing and then crashing down into snowy fields below. All this work was so complex and detail oriented that we had Karen Goulekas, Mike Chambers and Roland Emmerich at the studio on a regular basis. We were in constant conversation strategizing about artistic and technical solutions for what we were creating.
HC90 was one of the helicopter crash shots where a helicopter slams into the snow and then rises back up again, much like a breaching whale. This shot was extremely complex. We had to create every element in the shot, which consisted of the falling helicopter, the storm cell in the background, the ground terrain and all of the snow simulations that occur during the crash.
We started from an animatic that was provided by the production. Since the helicopter dives beneath the snow and bursts back through, we searched for reference that had a similar look. In the end, we used footage from our compositing supervisor who is from Alaska and spends his winters jumping snowmobiles. The snowmobiles cutting through the snow and kicking up dust into the air are very similar to the effect we were trying to create. We also looked at many tapes of crash footage to get a good feel for the physics of the impact.
Helicopter-look development was done in 3ds max and rendered in Brazil. The helicopter had many layers as it got beaten up and scratched after it hit the surface of the snow. Additionally, the helicopter was freezing, which is what caused it to crash, so we had animated maps for the ice flowers covering the helicopter and making it inoperable.
The animation of the helicopter and all of the ancillary pieces that fly off were done in Maya. Because we had the animatic for reference, we were able to get a final animation take pretty quickly. We spent most of our time working on the physical simulations of the helicopter getting smashed in and glass and metal being flung off. It is always important to complete the animation before moving on with the other aspects of the shot as it drives everything else.
Once the animation was complete, we started developing our system for creating the billowy snow mist that gets created when the helicopter hits the ground. This was quite difficult as snow has a unique consistency when it is dispersed up into the air. It has several layers of weighted particulate. There is the heavier clumpy snow that stays as a solid mass and does not hang in the air. Then there is the more icy-type that flies up and falls back down at a consistent rate. All of this takes place in a misty cloud of snow that just hangs in the air and floats away. Each of the independent systems also had their own unique look-development. After establishing the simulations for each snow type, we then had to come up with a system that would drive them all from the same source, but still allow them to travel in their individual personalities. We ended up using a combination of packages to achieve the look. The secondary ice element was created with a particle system in Maya and the snow clumps were created in 3ds max and rendered in Brazil. Lastly, the cloud system was created in 3ds max using Afterburn.
All of this is happening in the shadow of a huge super storm cell in the background. The storm was a combination of particle systems, fluid dynamics and animated matte paintings. The cell is massive and had to appear menacing.
I was very happy with the way this shot turned out. I received the biggest compliment when another experienced VFX supervisor asked me about the models we used for the miniature shoot. I had to explain to him that none of the elements were real. That was very satisfying.
There’s more fun retro content on The Day After Tomorrow coming soon to the Patreon!
