Led by VFX legend Dennis Muren and Scott Farrar, ILM sought to create the insidious Rogue City using a combination of practical and CG effects. Utilizing a commercial game engine, ILM developed the first real-time on-set pre-visualization system, allowing director Stephen Spielberg to see an approximation of the CG set in his viewfinder. The result was the expansive and futuristic world envisioned by Spielberg and the late Stanley Kubrick.
To create the half live-action actors/half CG Mecha, ILM used the Motion and Structure Recovery System (M.A.R.S.) to activate a highly automated camera tracking solution which would enable a CG camera to match its live-action counterpart.
