20 Years of Spider-Man VFX – Sony Pictures Imageworks
How “Spider-Verse” forced animation to evolve
When you think of CGI animated films, you likely think of Pixar. The studio practically invented the genre with 1995’s Toy Story — the first CGI animated feature film.
After Toy Story, almost all animation studios wanted to follow in Pixar’s successful footsteps, straight down to their style. Many studios sought out “The Pixar Look”: extremely high quality, physically based, and in some cases almost photorealistic.
It’s an appealing approach that remains popular at the box office — but animated movies started looking kind of homogeneous. And while studios and independent artists tested out more stylized approaches in short films, no studio would commit to a feature-length animated movie that looked so different.
That is, until Sony Pictures/Imageworks took on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Instead of chasing the look everyone was after, the team wanted to create something visually new. They did it with “non-photorealistic rendering.”
And since Spider-Verse, non-photorealism has taken off, with almost every studio set to incorporate it in the next five years. Check out our video to learn more about how non-photorealism works.
Spider-Man – No Way Home – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Spider-Man – No Way Home – Behind the CG suit – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Spider-Man – No Way Home – Behind the CG Suit – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Spider-Man – No Way Home – Cinesite
Morbius – The Lore of Morbius
One of the most compelling and conflicted characters in Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters comes to the big screen as Oscar® winner Jared Leto transforms into the enigmatic antihero Michael Morbius. Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. While at first it seems to be a radical success, a darkness inside him is unleashed. Will good override evil – or will Morbius succumb to his mysterious new urges?
The Mitchells vs. The Machines – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Vivo – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Fyber – Hair Grooming – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Fyber was developed to address the need for a faster, more interactive, and more artist-friendly tool to generate any kind of hair, ranging from a character’s head hair to fully furred animals, with the goal to significantly lower grooming times and an easier learning experience for new artists.
As a node-based software, Fyber offers great flexibility to achieve any look an artist might desire while also providing fast visual feedback thanks to its highly multi-threaded computation graph and integrated OpenGL and Arnold viewports.
Spider-Man – No Way Home – Behind the Scenes in Georgia
Spider-Man 2 – Sony Pictures Imageworks
Spider-Man – No Way Home – Return of the Villains
Morbius – The Transformation
Spider-Man – Across the Spider-Verse – Part One
Morbius – Trailer
One of Marvel’s most compelling and conflicted characters comes to the big screen as Oscar® winner Jared Leto transforms into the enigmatic antihero Michael Morbius. Dangerously ill with a rare blood disorder and determined to save others suffering his same fate, Dr. Morbius attempts a desperate gamble. While at first it seems to be a radical success, a darkness inside him is unleashed. Will good override evil – or will Morbius succumb to his mysterious new urges?