Luma Pictures teamed up with Skydance Media and Amazon Studios to deliver 248 visual effects shots across six action-packed sequences in their time travel summer blockbuster, The Tomorrow War. Directed by Chris McKay and starring Chris Pratt, the film follows science teacher and army veteran Dan Forester (Pratt) as he is drafted to fight a war that takes place in the future, and the fate of humanity rests on his shoulders. Luma’s global team was called upon to bring the hero white spike creature to life as well as to build extensive distressed environments, digi doubles, and time travel effects.

Luma began collaborating with VFX Supervisor Jamie Price and Producer Randy Starr very early on, which afforded the team time to explore in-depth ideas of time travel, post-apocalyptic environments and creature battles. The client provided great references grounded in reality, and from there, it was up to Luma to evolve the concepts and propose alternate ideas.

Luma was responsible for several key sequences involving the male white spike. The asset was received from another vendor, which we look developed in a variety of controlled lighting scenarios to have parity across the sequences. A major challenge Luma needed to tackle was integrating the white spike creature into the battle scenes and having it interact with the environment. When fired upon, their upper exoskeleton would deflect bullets in an array of chipped bone fragments and puffs of fine dust, while their underside would bleed yellow or their legs could completely sever. The creature's tentacles would shoot spikes causing dust and debris on impact and leaving spikes lodged in their surroundings in each subsequent shot. Other environmental interactions included smoke and ember simulations transferred by the creatures and water ripples as they chased through the underpass.

For our post-apocalyptic cityscape, Luma utilised survey and Google Earth data of Miami and built a proxy city as a starting point. Once cameras were added, the team identified key foreground and midground buildings to create bespoke destroyed CG buildings. The team were additionally challenged with creating buildings on fire, billowing smoke, embers and even sheeting rain.