In one scene, artists created an effect where a character
causes an apple to slowly vanish through the power of his mental energy.
"We used a volumetric rendering technique coupled with a fluid simulation
to produce the main element," recalled Luma Pictures CG supervisor Vincent
Cirelli. "The end result is an apple which disappears dimensionally towards
its core."
A more complicated effect involved a character using super powers to
repair a spaceship engine. "We needed to convey the concept that the
spaceship engine is not operating properly in the beginning of the sequence due
to a misconfigured reactor," Cirelli explains. "To illustrate this,
we designed a series of geometric interlocking cylinders that could only fit
together if rotated in a specific way. The design of this puzzle presented many
challenges in that we needed to allow clearance between the shapes to rotate
and translate precisely into place in three dimensions."
A third sequence involved a paint ball fight. In that scene,
a group of characters comes under a paint ball barrage and Luma's role was to
create the colorful balls in CG so that their flight paths could be
individually controlled.
"We realized early on that the paint balls
would need a special compositing treatment to make them visible during the
dynamic lighting scenarios encountered throughout the sequence," says
Cirelli. "To accomplish this, we assigned a shader that allowed us to
select and change specific balls on a case-by-case basis very easily. When you
watch the sequence, you accept the balls as real."