CIS Hollywood Creates a CG-Rich World for “G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra” Using BodyPaint 3D

BodyPaint 3D helps artists craft a realistic look for G.I. Joe’s headquarters.

Paramount Pictures’ “G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra,” a live-action film adaptation of the 1960s action figure’s evolution into a team of elite soldiers in Marvel Comics is so CG rich, it took 10 visual effects houses to make it. One of the contributors was CIS Hollywood (www.cishollywood.com), part of the award-winning CIS Visual Effects Group, which also has a studio in Vancouver, Canada. While they have worked on effects-packed shows in the past, this was definitely one of the biggest projects CIS Hollywood has tackled, says Diana Miao, who served as look development supervisor overseeing modeling, texturing and lighting. “There were hundreds of shots that included CG environments, set extensions, vehicles, props, and we also did a lot of digital doubles where we had to take live-action characters and create a CG version of them,” she explains.

CIS worked on the film for nearly a year. During that time, about 30 different artists did everything from modeling and texturing to lighting and compositing. Using MAXON’s BodyPaint 3D, Ben Dishart, CIS Hollywood’s lead texture artist, did the bulk of the texturing work while also acting as texture supervisor. “This was a fantastic project for us because there was so much painting and so many assets to work on,” says Dishart, who was trained as a technical illustrator and has been using CINEMA 4D since 2004.

CIS artists (who work on the Mac platform for BodyPaint 3D and Photoshop) used reference photos and concept artwork to create their 3D models with Autodesk’s Maya. Once the models were finished, Dishart began texturing them, going back-and-forth between BodyPaint 3D and Photoshop as he worked. “After importing the model into BodyPaint 3D I would select the view I wanted to work on and then send it over to Photoshop, where I took detail from reference photos and cloned it onto the model,” he explains.

Next, he saved his work into BodyPaint 3D so he could project it onto the geometry and change to the next view before repeating the process to cover the entire model. “There was never a question about using any other 3D paint package because BodyPaint 3D is the only one with the capability to paint on the overlapping geometry and across the UVs of multiple objects,” Dishart says. “I also like [the fact] that it’s really easy to use.”

While Digital Domain worked on the scenes in Paris and MPC’s London studio handled the underwater battles, CIS created G.I. Joe’s headquarters, located somewhere in the Sahara desert in an underground complex called “The Pit”. One of the most detailed parts of the headquarters scenes was the landing platform, which included a giant hydraulic lift used by planes doing vertical takeoffs and landings. Rendering was done with Pixar’s RenderMan, with some frames of the landing platform taking up to two hours to complete.

After receiving the model, Dishart used Maya to do the UV layout. Textures for all of the large, flat surfaces were done in Photoshop and BodyPaint 3D was used to create the dirt and grease layers on the hydraulic parts. “It was great because with BodyPaint 3D it’s so easy to just tumble the model around and paint directly on the surfaces,” says Dishart, who also used BodyPaint 3D to project the stripes on the pad so they lined up between the different pieces of geometry. Blue lights and vents around the platform’s edge were added as layers in Photoshop.

In addition to G.I. Joe’s headquarters, CIS also did several vehicles for the film. Of those, the Mole Pod, which was used by the evil Cobra organization to drill through the wall of the underground headquarters, was particularly fun to work on because Dishart and the other artists had a lot of freedom to develop the look they wanted. “The idea was that the pod itself was metal (with a composite, carbon steel drill bit) but it was covered with mud and dirt from drilling,” Dishart explains. “So we used BodyPaint 3D’s Brush tool to paint in a lot of different layers to build up that dirty look on top of clean, scratched metal.”