ILM’s Visual Effects for ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’

ILM’s Visual Effects for ‘Star Trek Into Darkness’

Star Trek Into Darkness was a lot better than J.J.‘s first film in this new, rebooted universe in my opinion, but man holy cow! there’s a lot of CGI in it.

ILM has released to videos to showcase the work they did on the film. The first is really a sort of visual effects reel of the overall film. The second features commentary from Roger Guyett, Visual Effects Supervisor, and Paul Kavanahg, Animation Supervisor. They talk about all some of the things that went into making the red planet look as it did.

“Star Trek Into Darkness” contains over 1600 visual effects shots, created by Industrial Light & Magic, Pixomondo, Atomic Fiction and Kelvin Optical Inc. In this reel, we’ll take a look at ILM’s work which encompassed virtually every tool and discipline in our effects arsenal.

The opening sequence sequence of “Star Trek into Darkness” is a great example of the varied visual effects challenges faced by ILM: large digital environments (with plenty of organic elements), creatures and digital doubles, animation, ships and a tremendous amount of simulation work (lava, smoke, water, etc.) Here we explore what it took to create the “Red Planet”, Nibiru for “Into Darkness”.