All fired up for a night on the town

Aug. 18, 2005
Without dousing a young actor in a flammable liquid and setting him on fire, Montreal-based Meteor Studios needed to create the appearance of a man consumed in flame.

The Human Torch (Chris Evans) becomes a human fireball thanks to 100 artists and BlueArc's Titan Storage System.


Without dousing a young actor in a flammable liquid and setting him on fire, Montreal-based Meteor Studios needed to create the appearance of a man consumed in flame. The studio pulled it off for Fox's "Fantastic Four" with the help of the Titan Storage System of BlueArc Corp., San Jose. The same system also made possible the film's action sequence on the Brooklyn Bridge. More than 100 artists using Windows and Linux workstations running Alias Maya for the 3D work were involved in the project. The BlueArc system is capable of 250 to 300 Mbyte/sec throughput and up to 80 Mbyte/sec on individual workstations. Meteor used the 10-terabyte hard-drive array to create more than 240 shots for the superhero flick including this one of the Human Torch (Chris Evans) blazing the night skies over New York City.

Images of the Human Torch were made by a CG firm called Giant Killer Robots (GKR) and the images of the Brooklyn Bridge were created by Meteor Studios.

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