In the film “Knight & Day”, vfx house Rhythm & Hues got the job of creating a herd of stampeding bulls in full CG, and adding them to several chase scenes in a variety of environments including a stadium, the city streets, and eventually some traffic. Over at FXGuide they discuss the process in-depth, including their own custom little gadget, the HDReye.
“We have a little box called a HDReye, a little cube that has a camera on each side that we developed about 5 years ago. It takes bracketed photography in about 30 seconds to give out a whole HDRI. Because the environments were so diffuse on this show, it worked out well in terms of not having a 4K HDRI. It was more about 2K.” Standard gray and mirror balls were also used, as well a mock-up of a bull with horns. “And of course we had the real bulls in the shots,” added Steele. “For about 3 shots, we augmented the shots with CG bulls so they were right next to real ones. It was really huge just to have that. How dark the bull skin gets in the shadows, the brightness on the horns, how much spec you get on the tip of the nose.”
