American Cinematographer - March 2003 - 54

The lidar system

could incremen¬

tally laser-scan
where

a set - such as a bar
Daredevil defeats several

brawlers

by using his radar sense -
resulting data,
Rhythm & Hues' artists generated a 3-D
digital model of the environment and
every object in it. Best of all, says
within hours. With the

Thorne, "Lidar can work in the dark, and
once

each set's in the computer, we can
our version of soundwaves

bounce

through it."
After creating a 3-D digital model
of the bar set, the effects team then
unleashed volumetries - scads of CG

particles

into that environment to
impact of soundwaves.
"We used Houdini's new Image 3-D tool
set for generating and rendering volu¬
metric elements extensively," says Caleb
Howard, Rhythm & Hues' digital-effects
supervisor. "In Houdini, we built a Cloud
Tank tool set, comprised of a previsual¬
ization tool for rapidly developing the
character of volumetric elements using
hardware OpenGL shading. We used
-

visualize the

These frames
illustrate
Daredevil's POV,
effect dubbed

an

"radar sense."

While trying to visualize Daredevil's
unique

superpower

of "radar

sense," director Mark Steven

Johnson realized he had
common

something in
was flying

with his hero: he

blind. He and the film's visual-effects
team had to create a credible visualiza¬

tion of

a

blind man's world via sound¬

waves

bounced off of

how

bat

objects, similar to
navigates in flight.
In the original comic, Daredevil's
radar sense is crudely depicted as radar¬
like circles superimposed over an
image. "It has a dated look," Johnson
acknowledges. "I put so much pressure
on myself to honor the comic, and I
a

worked

with

this

basic

concept:

supervi¬
Enemy Lines).
The two men quickly discovered that
every in-camera process produced
imagery that was the antithesis of blind¬
ness. Thorne explains, "Anything you
shoot is a product of light, and the
minute you start seeing the way light
bounces and [produces] shadows, it
doesn't look right. We opted to go with a
CG approach to visualize soundwaves
bouncing off of objects in Daredevil's
sor

Rich Thorne (Behind

environment."
Thorne and Johnson needed to

accomplish the seemingly impossible:
they had to photograph environments,
objects and even actors without light.

Daredevil is blind, but he can see sound.

Thorne dubbed the effect he

Any sound creates a soundwave that
illuminates objects for a flash. In visual

ing "Shadow World," noting that "it's
product of light. You never see
objects, you only see their shadows."
Devising imagery that depicted
not objects but their radar-like shadows
was like playing a digital game of BlindMan's Bluff. Although several visual-

terms, that means we start with a frame
of blackness, which is Daredevil's POV,
and
we

though we don't see what happens,
see

the soundwave the action

creates. So if a gun

fires, you hear the
bang, and the soundwaves create a

was

seek¬

never a

effects houses submitted Shadow World

funnel cloud that illuminates the barrel

concepts, only Rhythm & Hues, whose

of the gun, and

artists tackled most of Daredevil's 515

sound the bullet makes,"

away the camera. As Thorne recalls,
"We said, 'Guys, get a lidar laser scanner

through that funnel you
see a stream representing the bullet.
You don't see the bullet, you just see the

radar
50 March 2003

Johnson enlisted visual-effects

In his quest to bring Daredevil's
sense to the silver screen,

effects shots, had the answer: throw

to shoot Shadow

the

World, because that's

only place it exists.'"

that tool to 'cook' the volume out to

a

file

disk for

multiple applications, from
rendering cloudy objects to providing
global illumination for scenes, and finally
[employed] an adaptive ray-marcher to
render the final images. The Cloud Tank
software allowed us to build complex
volumes to simulate many effects in the
film, including lighting effects, fog
effects and fluid dynamic effects.
Shadow World was rendered exclusively
on

with Houdini v5.0.152

on

Linux boxes

running Red Hat 7.2. A great deal of the
final effect was created by compositing
artists who used Inferno and Icy, which
allowed the client to take

an

assortment

of 3-D volume elements and

quickly
composition."
When the CG particles collided
with objects in the scene, their edges
were "illuminated" by Daredevil's radar
sense in a form of digital acoustic
mapping. "The concept was seeing the
particles, which represent the sound¬
waves, bouncing off of objects as
opposed to seeing the objects them¬
selves," says Thorne.
arrive at their desired

Johnson,

however,

wanted

H8Rhuocyetcusrmft.esy
Phot s
American Cinematographer - March 2003

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