Why planes flying at hundreds of miles an hour is really tough to pull off in VFX

Mars 13, 2025

Featured in befores & afters

Making a dogfight.

Today on the befores & afters podcast, we’re chatting to Digital Domain about Marvel’s new film Captain America: Brave New World with visual effects supervisor Hanzhi Tang and digital effects supervisor Ryan Duhaime. Digital Domain were principally responsible for the Celestial Island encounter, which includes a very dynamic dogfight featuring Captain America and Falcon.

In the podcast we talk about how DD took in the original asset of Tiamut from Eternals and actually shrunk that down a little. We also talk about building digital ocean and sky assets, plus a new cloud shader, for the sequence. And going from previs — which DD handled — through to the final VFX of the dogfight and flying scenes. All while dealing with planes that very quickly move away from the point of origin in Maya scenes, making it a tricky task to light and render.

Check out the previous coverage of Brave New World here at befores & afters, too.