The tale of the Wolfman has a rich history on the big screen. Beginning with the 1913 release of “The Werewolf” the tale of a man transforming into a ferocious beast at the height of the full moon has frightened and thrilled audiences for generations. While the general theme of these werewolf movies has remained the same, each incarnation has set out to present their werewolf with a greater level of detail and realism.

In the recently released “Wolfman”, Rhythm & Hues plays a key role in giving audiences new reasons to fear the full moon. In addition to dynamic transformation scenes and the sheer terror of a werewolf on the loose, the movie includes a pivotal scene where the Wolfman is set ablaze. For this key scene, Rhythm & Hues was faced with the challenge of creating fire effects which would not give away their CG origins.

Preliminary Planning

To create a werewolf engulfed in photorealistic flames, the team at Rhythm & Hues explored multiple research and development tracks during the initial stages of production. One idea was to shoot the fire elements practically then composite them onto plates featuring a black nomex suited stuntman. While this was happening, others in the group were looking at how they could possibly use real fire mapped onto geometry. The details in the fire had to be precise so investigating the use of real fire in a compositing scenario was an obvious move.

In these early stages the team also looked into the use of computer generated flames to enhance the real flames. The fire simulation tests showed real promise prompting them to keep pushing the resolution of the simulation until it became clear that CG fire was the way to go.

“Houdini’s fire tools proved to be a great base and we ended up taking that data into some of our own vector tools to solve the sharpness of the flames,” says Wolfman Effects Supervisor Jason Iversen. “With fancier noise advection and clever heat field re-mapping, our two sequence teams ended up matching the reference that had been shot remarkably well”

Houdini Pyro Tools

Houdini’s Pyro Tools combined with the openness of the DOPS architecture allowed them to tailor the look by modifying the setup at a low level. This was essential in helping them create photo realistic fire and effects. Once they had achieved the desired look, they wrapped the customized Pyro Tools into a digital asset and distributed it across multiple shots. All the effects elements were then rendered through Houdini’s Mantra renderer. The team was able to achieve a high level of integration with other effects elements as well as elements which were lit using Rhythm & Hues’ in-house renderer.

In all, the entire Wolfman burn sequence was generated using Houdini’s Pyro FX tools, particles and smooth particle hydro dynamics fluids. While the team had a core of experienced people there were some artists on the team who hadn’t used the Pyro FX Tools before. They were able to get fully ramped up on the tools in two weeks.

“In the end, Houdini's simulation tools helped give us the base that we needed to produce very believable flames,” says Jason. “Our greatest hope is that no one ever suspects that we added them using the computer.”

The team at Rhythm & Hues would like to give a special shout out to the following parties who helped make their efforts in Wolfman possible - Derek Spears (VFX), Victor Grant (lead), Allen Rose, Takashi Kubota and Side Effects Software for their amazing close support

Note: The images shown in this article do not contain the fire effects discussed in this article because those scenes contain spoilers. Please check out Wolfman in theaters today to see these effects in the context of the story.