Case Study: Shark Night 3D

Exotic Matter catches up with Gregor Lakner, the VFX Supervisor on the recent horror flick Shark Night 3D, and Igor Zanic, who was the lead Naiad TD on the show.

The primary vendor on the effects work was Reliance Media Works in San Francisco, CA. A handful of sub-vendors from around the globe were also involved, directed by Gregor out of San Francisco.

Exotic Matter: How did you hear about Naiad?
Gregor Lakner: We did research and planning in pre-production of what software was available on the market. We needed a solution which would let us create extremely large splashes of water, so one could in slow motion watch individual droplets fly in stereo space. We came to a conclusion that Naiad was the best tool for the challenge we were faced up with.

Exotic Matter: How many FX shots were there in Shark Night 3D?
Gregor Lakner: About 100 complex water and shark shots.

Gregor Lakner: At the beginning we were planning to use Naiad in the two, most complex shots. However, the number of shots kept growing and at the end we used Naiad in almost 20 shots which required particles and fluid dynamics.

An 18ft Mako shark dines on a waverunner garnished with college boy. (A break-down of the Wave-runner shot can be viewed here).

Gregor Lakner: The simulation for the most complex slow-motion shot, in which an 18ft long Mako shark in a spectacular jump knocks one of the lead characters off a moving waverunner, took over a week of continuous machine crunch on a 92GByte computer to complete. [ed note: they were using Naiad version 0.3 which was much slower than recent versions]. Naiad not only offered functionality to control such complex fluid dynamics simulations but had also proven to be an exceptionally stable peace of code. This last is essential when you run simulations which take a week or more to complete and there is very little room for any kind of mistake.

Next, we asked Igor Zanic, lead Naiad TD on Shark Night 3D, some questions about his work setting up and running many the Naiad simulations:

Exotic Matter: What Naiad features did you use?
Igor Zanic: The biggest help was droplet parameter, which has enabled us to distinguish spray and droplet particles from the rest of the simulation and then to use in rendering with variety of ways.  I really enjoyed the speed, accuracy and level of control offered in Naiad, gives you the freedom to do things in a very quick and easy way.  You can make your own forces by combining few objects into one and use that as force object. The EMP (cache) files created by Naiad were also very small which helped the pipeline and workflow a lot.

Exotic Matter: How was your experience using Naiad in a big movie production?
Igor Zanic: Compared to other fluid softwares I have used in past, Naiad changed very little when you change parameters and resolution.  With Naiad, you know exactly what you get and how it will look like. Of course with more details but fluid motion remains the same.  I think this is realy important because today production is very fast and sometime you need to finish something over night and you dont want to be too surprised over the results. And also setups that you use for some shots, with simple copy paste can be used on others with same look in simulation.

Exotic Matter: What are you working on next?
Igor Zanic: I am currently working on a few projects using the Naiad, and in my spare time helping Naiad community with various tests, and of course doing my own RnD projects.

Igor's own breakdown video of his Naiad shots can be viewed here.