Kong: Skull Island roared into theaters this past spring bringing an updated-yet-retro take on the famous movie monster. Besides being an action-packed genre romp, Kong featured some beautiful visual effects from Industrial Light and Magic using our Academy-award winning SpeedTree Cinema modeler.
ILM’s latest Behind the Magic video is a compelling breakdown of the hazy Vietnam-tinged VFX work created by their San Francisco and Vancouver team. It features deconstructions of the Island’s South Asian jungle environment created with SpeedTree as well as stunning environment work, explosions, water simulations, and incredibly hyper-real gorilla fur.
Industrial Light and Magic, one of our first major VFX customers, has used SpeedTree extensively since first adopting it for James Cameron’s Avatar in 2009. As their environment supervisor whose team recently completed work on Star Wars: The Force Awakens said:
“Anytime a tree moves, we created it in SpeedTree so we could animate it,”
Check out the breakdown reels below and keep an eye out for more SpeedTrees the next time you’re at the movies.