VFX studio Cantina Creative created hologram effects and animated monitor
screen content for close-up views of the Capitol and districts of Panem in
‘The Hunger Games’ final film.
Cantina Creative Lights Up the World of ‘Mockingjay 2’ with Cinema 4D |
Visual effects studioCantina Creativein Los Angeles created 120 visual effects shots and 30 motion graphics shots including holograms, animated posters, monitor and UI graphics that appear throughout the movie‘Mockingjay Part 2’, the final film in ‘The Hunger Games’ series. |
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The Capitol Close-upVenti Hristova said that their main task in the previous film had been to generate interactive on-set monitor graphics that would stream live during shooting. This time, the work also involved the creation of two hologram effects and compositing hero monitor screens that required story specific information and animations to help progress the story through some of the key sequences. |
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“Although the director and producers at Lionsgate had very clear ideas about the look of each environment, our collaboration included opportunities to experiment with style and feel. We used a pipeline based onMAXONCinema 4D, which allows enough flexibility to explore and tweak storytelling notes throughout some challenging design sequences. In combination withAfter Effects CC, which was used for compositing, we generated External Compositing tags and compositing project files throughout the hologram sequences, for example, to help improve efficiency.” |
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Strategic Hologram“One of our holograms represented the 'Nut', a strategic military compound located in an underground mountain bunker that houses all the military equipment for the Capitol.” This hologram required a detailed, photoreal 3D mountain range, with only a single 2D matte painting to use as reference. 3D artistJayse Hansenwho worked with Cantina in preproduction and on location, designed the initial hologram concept including the entire interior encompassing the crew quarters, armory, hovercraft hangars and other elements. |
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Organising Layers“Thesculpting toolswere also useful for customizing and organising the project in layers, and worked non-destructively to churn out dozens of iterations of mountain topography. Then we rendered out several different passes through Cinema 4D, including variations of cel renders, layered procedural shaders and a depth map. We also exportedlightandnull datato use for other elements we added in compositing,” said Stephen. |
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“To rotate topography designs uniformly across nearly 30 shots of the mountain hologram in the sequence, thetime effectortool – which sets up transformation values for an object according to the length of the animation and loops through it over and over - was very effective for experimenting with rotation speeds and ultimately arriving at something that both the client and our team were pleased with.”www.maxon.net |