FXGuide has a great in-depth look at the new vampire flick “Priest”, featuring some great new ideas for vampires and some great tech on how to bring them to life.
To create the drone pods, Spin carried out some tech development to generate crowds and the squirming movement for within the pods. “The tech solution for the pod movements was very similar to bone and muscle simulations,” says Campbell, “except that the skin membranes had more elasticity. We used a cloth envelope with rigid bodies that could be deformed with the vampire drone rigs. Then we would just simulate this solution over the animation of the rigs.”
Maya was used for animation, led by Peter Giliberti, with the pod fluid that gushes out completed with RealFlow. Muscle and skin movement for the drones relied on solid skin enveloping and corrective blend shapes, with rigging lead by Glen Chang. The final shots were rendered in RenderMan.
