“This cant look fake”

For the season 4 finale of Castle we were tasked with a cliffhanger. The main characters are pushed over a dock into the water.

“Due to the overbearing Actors Guild we couldn’t drowned the cast, pfft!”

The scene required a lot of attention. First we were going to be very close to the Police Interceptor. So any damages and/or scuffs needed to be added on to the 3d model. Next was how to make a blue car look good underwater. The answers were bubbles…lot and lot of bubbles.

“Just keep compositing”

The bubbles were created using both Real Flow, Thinking Particles and Basic 3dsMax Particles. All together comp’d in Nuke.

Each scene involved around 5 passes of bubbles: Tiny, medium, large, truck gap, window and frame leaks .