Ice-scape: James Bond dodges icebergs as well as bullets in Die Another Day. (Film).

Bond is back. Prom Asia to London to Cuba, the debonair spy James Bond, aka Agent 007, returns to the big screen in an action-packed adventure as he hunts clown another megalomaniac while attempting to prevent a cataclysmic war in Die Another Day. In typical Bond fashion, the film features fast cars, beautiful women, incredible scenery, high-tech gadgetry, hair-raising chases, and an abundance of special effects. This time, though, a substantial number of the effects are computer-generated rather than practical. In fact, Die Another Day features more digital effects shots than any other Bond film to date. Cinesite, a London-based studio, was responsible for the majority of those sequences.

In all, Cinesite completed approximately 480 digital effects shots, the most complicated of which appear in a chase sequence on an ice field in Iceland. In the scene, Bond speeds across a glacier in a dragster, eluding villains shooting at him with a laser. As he approaches the edge of the glacier, he releases a parachute and grappling hook to slow him down before toppling over the ice cliff. As the super spy is dangling precariously in the air, the bad guys continue to fire at him, causing the wall of ice and Bond to collapse into the water. This, in turn, sets off an 80-foot-high wave that bears down on Bond as he bobs offshore. He emerges from the wave, then dodges icebergs while maneuvering to safety at the opposite end of the bay.

The biggest challenge for the Cinesite team was re-creating the scale and natural phenomena of the sequence, which involved a massive expanse of CG water, foam, ripples, and spray within a 1-square-kilometer virtual environment; 250-foot-high computer-generated cliffs; and approximately 200 digital icebergs. Initially, the group spent three days filming water elements, but in the end, only about 20 percent of those were used. The remaining water environment was generated from a program developed in-house by Jerry Tessendorf at Cinesite's Los Angeles location. Alias|Wavefront's Maya, Pixar Animation Studios' RenderMan, and Side Effects Software's Houdini were also used to generate particles for some of the water spray.

Cinesite's water-generation tool, which is based on the studio's procedural water-simulation program, was adapted for the specific needs of the icebergs sequence. Originally, the software was used to generate smaller segments of water, but for this film, the group needed to show the entire bay, says Dottie Starling, sequence supervisor. Therefore, programmers Peter Yesley and Andy Whittock had to revise some of the processes in order to handle the large data set by creating displacement maps within the shader to make the small and medium-size waves. In particular, R&D was required to develop deformations for the larger waves, and shaders to handle ripples and smaller wave movements, as well as textures for the various elements (such ...