Jedi Starfighter Cockpit, Improved Fire and Smoke, Part 2

Brad's hard at work designing and building the Jedi Starfighter cockpit set. It will be our first (and perhaps only) real set in the entire movie -- everything else is a digital/CG set. I can't wait to see it, and I'm especially excited to see our final footage on this set. It will DEFINITELY elevate the realism of our movie.

On the CG side, I stumbled across some stock footage of real fire. Brad did a great job creating CG fire and CG smoke, but our goal is to create the best looking movie possible. So... I composited the fire elements onto a background plate of the Carinda homestead to see how it would look. Here's a side-by-side comparison:

The picture on the left shows Brad's CG fire and CG smoke.
The picture on the right shows composited fire and smoke.

It's a tough decision because I know Brad spent a ton of time figuring out CG fire and smoke. But, as mentioned earlier, our goal is to create the best looking movie possible, even if that means tossing hours and hours of hard work. I know the feeling -- we've discarded hundreds of hours of my work in favor of better-looking images. It's tough to see that much hard work go to waste, but ultimately it's worth it when our movie looks one step closer to a real "Star Wars" movie.

Later,
Bob