Oblivion Stills

I had the opportunity of working on one of the coolest sci-fi films ever. It is hands down the coolest thing I've ever touched. Thank you to all of the team at Digital Domain for doing their part in this stunning masterpiece. I did lookdev, lighting, and some generalist work on this film. I can only hope to work on something as epic as this again!

I was a lucky guy to have landed this monstrous shot on my lap. Grateful to Eric Barba (VFX Sup) and Christopher Nichols (Lighting Sup) for letting me do my thing and light this 417 frame shot! This is an ALL CG shot.

Lighting.

This shot I did was used on chaosgroup’s front page.

I did some texturing and shaders on the environment on top of what the modeling/texturing dept gave (didn't touch the props much).

There was so much FX integration to be done. Each muzzle flash, laser shot, explosion, sparks, etc. was utilized on my end so that I could illuminate the scene with the chaos around it.

Believe it or not, I used absolutely zero Global Illumination. Render times were a concern, but I also felt the mood was a lot grittier this way, and that GI would've softened the look too much.

In the end there were about 80-ish render passes from me handed over to comp. Kurt Williams, the compositor on this shot, absolutely rocked it.

I spent a butt-load of time on the ground shaders and textures to make sure it really played its part in the madness. Catching highlights and cool reflections. I received some help from one of the texture artists on getting some awesome wet masks.

At the time there was no Vray Volume Grid, so I had to improvise a lot on a case-by-case basis to make sure I could sync up my lighting, spec, and reflections with the elements provided by the FX team.