The tech of ‘Terminator 2’ – an oral history – vfxblog
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Visual effects and animation journalist Ian Failes
The tech of ‘Terminator 2’ – an oral history
Illustration by Aidan Roberts.<br>" data-large-file="https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2_bars_v1.jpg?w=1200" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6524" src="https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2_bars_v1.jpg?w=1200&h=675" alt="T2_BARS_V1" width="1200" height="675" srcset="https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2_bars_v1.jpg 1200w, https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2_bars_v1.jpg?w=150&h=84 150w, https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2_bars_v1.jpg?w=300&h=169 300w, https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2_bars_v1.jpg?w=768&h=432 768w" sizes="(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" />Illustration by Aidan Roberts.<br>Ever since James Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day was released in 1991, I’ve been reading about the many ways ILM, led by visual effects supervisor Dennis Muren, had to basically invent new ways to realise the CG ‘liquid metal’ T-1000 shots in that film, of which there are surprisingly few. Tools like ‘Make Sticky’ and ‘Body Sock’ are ones that I’d heard referenced several times, but I’ve always wanted to know more about how those pieces of software were made.
So, over the past few months, leading up to the re-release of Terminator 2 in 3D, I’ve been chatting to the artists behind the technology who were there at the time. This was when ILM was based in San Rafael, and when its computer graphics department was still astonishingly small. Yet despite the obvious challenges in wrangling this nascent technology, the studio had been buoyed by the promising results on a few previous efforts, including Cameron’s The Abyss, and by the possibilities that digital visual effects could bring to modern-day filmmaking.
For this special retro oral history, vfxblog goes back in time with more than a dozen ILMers (their original screen credits appear in parentheses) to discuss the development of key CGI tools and techniques for the VFX Oscar winning Terminator 2, how they worked with early animation packages like Alias, and how a selection of the most memorable shots in the film – forever etched into the history of visual effects – came to be.
Gearing up the computer graphics department
Tom Williams (computer graphics shot supervisor): I actually worked full-time for both Pixar and ILM for most of T2. Then I realised that was really dangerous. I would fall asleep, driving home once, and freaked myself out and realised you can’t really do that. So towards the end of T2 I went over to ILM full time. The way I got there originally was, I got invited by [visual effects producer] Janet Healy and [visual effects supervisor] Dennis Muren because I had worked at a company called Alias, which did modelling and animation tools.
This still from the documentary ‘Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible’ shows ILM crew members at work on Terminator 2.<br>" data-large-file="https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2cgteam.jpg?w=500" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6648" src="https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2cgteam.jpg?w=500&h=276" alt="t2cgteam" width="500" height="276" srcset="https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2cgteam.jpg 500w, https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2cgteam.jpg?w=150&h=83 150w, https://vfxblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/t2cgteam.jpg?w=300&h=166 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" />This still from the documentary ‘Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible’ shows ILM crew members at work on Terminator 2.<br>George Joblove (computer graphics shot supervisor): Each single gig at ILM was a small step above what we’d done before. And we were fighting with the limited computing resources we had at the time. We had done The Abyss which was a big step forward in a couple ways. First of all, in demonstrating what was possible and achieving it. Second of all, working for Cameron who had that great vision for how it could be used in The Abyss. With that film, had we not been able to pull it off, there would have been ways to work around it. But I don’t think there was any such opportunity in T2.
Eric Enderton (computer graphics software developer): Terminator 2 was my first big movie. I saw The Abyss in the SIGGRAPH film show and thought: I want to work for those guys. Fortuitously the CG group had decided to hire their first tools writer. They had lots of software but it was all being written by the same people who were doing the shots. I was the first ‘software-only’ person in ILM computer graphics, which obviously was a huge learning experience and just an amazing time.
Jay Riddle (computer graphics shot supervisor): I was working at ILM for several years and had learned how to animate by sitting with John Lasseter when he was in the Graphics Group, which was part of the Computer...