How Wt FX delivered invisible effects for the gripping boat sequence. From befores & afters magazine in print.In episode 3 of the Steven Zaillian Netflix series Ripley, based on the novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, the deceitful Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) beats his friend Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn) to death with an oar on a small boat off Sanremo.Later, he ties the deceased Dickie to an anchor and dumps the body overboard.This all plays out, in black and white, in open water off the Italian coast.However, the scene was in fact largely shot in a small tank, with Wt FX tasked with creating the water digitally, extending the environment and sky, and also dealing with some digital doubles, fire elements, blood splatter and other augmentations for the sequence.The state of waterCertainly, Wt FX is well-versed in simulating water, particularly with recent experiences on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Avatar: The Way of Water. The VFX studio has solved water on projects such as those with many physically-based approaches, including its Loki state machine which has a unified approach to the many states of water.Theres these principles of water that we try to get as realistic as we can, notes Wt FX visual effects supervisor Christopher White, who oversaw the studios work on Ripley. It can be many things that you mix in different combinations to get a very different look. Avatar: The Way of Water was all about the caustics. Wakanda Forever was all about the turbid water. Ripley was all about highlights and salinity in the water. We try to be as realistic as we canwe learn all the rulesbut then we often break them to tell the story.The boat shots in the sequences included motoring along, as well the boat being stationary amongst the waves. As noted, this was filmed on a small tank, necessitating the replacement of that tank water with coastal water and the surrounding environment, while retaining the actors and the boat (and sometimes replacing it). Sometimes the boat would be static in the tank for a shot that would eventually need to see it motoring along. That was some of the trickiest work, shares White.Since most of the movement in the plate was put into the camera while the boat remained static, the challenge was adding a sense of travel to the boat and movement from the waves. We would add in some additional boat rocking, in addition to our CG water, and try to make it all move through a true dynamic space.In fact, Wt FX set up the scene so that the animators would animate the boat which would in turn drive the water simulations. The animators could set the path of the boat and what its motion is and then there were some quick dynamics in there that we know will fit into the final water simulation, outlines White. The chase boats that are filming these are also dynamic boats as well. So it feels like youre looking from one boat zipping along next to it. That just adds the sense that its being filmed for real.We also have a system set up, continues White, so that the simulation artists who might be working on very similar types of shots can pick up the animation and be able to run all the sims. It lets you consistently look at runs of shots and compare them and have a foundation to it, instead of having to chase the solution on every shot.The look of waterWhile its existing tools were certainly utilized to simulate water for this boat sequence, Wt FX had to nevertheless deliver water that fit into the particular aesthetic of the show (White says this was to have some movement to the water, but to not be too choppy.) Another example of this was achieving a certain look of highlights on the water surface. We were able to make it work great for where there really would be highlights, but they liked them so much, remembers White, that they wanted them in every shot. So, there is a little bit of cheating. Each frame needs to look beautiful, and as long as it doesnt jar for the audience, it works.Another kind of look in the water, for when salt water meets fresh water, was something the visual effects studio needed to achieve. Its this phenomenon where fresh water goes into salt water and it creates a different pattern, describes White. Once you notice it, you notice it everywhere. It helped to add in a little bit of variation and breakup to the water shots. For this in particular, we ended up developing a technique where we rendered fresh water and salty water and had the compositor place where those things took place.Wt FX further faced the challenge of a constant overcast sky in the scenes. Notes White: Completely overcast sky can look very boring on the water. A lot of our work was just trying to figure out, how do we keep the water looking interesting with the somewhat simple sky? The director really wanted these little hits of light and sunlight that wasnt necessarily representing the sky. So, what we actually had were multiple suns set up in our scenes to achieve this.Under the waterThe camera goes under the water, too, for views looking up at the boat from underneath, and for when Tom himself falls overboard and at one point gets hit by the anchor being dragged along. This required some digi-doubles for a handful of shots. They shot stunt performers doing the whole sequence which gave us good reference for what happens underwater, discusses White. That was extremely helpful in putting this altogether.For the underwater shots, too, Wt FX implemented the Snells window look. This is a phenomenon where someone underwater can look up to the sky and appear to see a hole through the water to the sky. What happens is, explains White, the light can get through the water at a certain point, but because of the difference in index of reflection between the two materials, some of the rays dont actually get out. They bounce back down. So you can see the reflection of the pool or the underwater surface on the sides.The team would invoke that effect to, for example, match director notes where they might be a call to see more of the sky from under the water. We would change the internal reflection of the water to expand and contract this to make a composition that was pleasing, says White. It meant we had these controls to hit the aesthetic notes.Fire and blood and the use of practical elementsIn addition to digital water and environment work, Wt FX was responsible for tackling a fiery moment in the boat sequence, when Tom uses gasoline and his lighter to try and burn the anchor rope. Here, practical fire elements were a key part of the VFX mix.We could have gone with digital fire, but our team suggested we do a practical fire element shoot sets out White. They built part of the boat, and then tried different fuels including petrol and gel to get a library of elements for the rope burning. I always enjoy elements shoots because you can iterate for a while on the computer, but an element shoot can also give you great reference and happy accidents and things you wouldnt expect.Similarly, practical blood elements helped with the moment Tom begins attacking Dickie with the oar. I wanted the blood splatter to have the correct physics, states White. Instead of us guessing at how it would hit the sleeve, our art director Gino Acevedo and his team here got a mannequin with the shirt and replayed the strikes. Gino also made some scars on the face and would work out how that might drip on a shirt.Then I built these keynotes that I put forward to the client so that they could see that we had thought through each of these events and how they all build up. And, of course, you do a little bit of embellishment to make more blood as you go along, but then all the events on his clothing made sense.The final blood additions were tracked in and composited by Wt FX using smart vectors in Nuke. Back in the day, tracking on clothing wouldve been a nightmare, says White. But some of these more recent tools help quite a lot.Read the full invisible effects issue of befores & afters magazine.The post The way of water (in Ripley) appeared first on befores & afters.