Making of Jame’s Cameron’s Avatar
The process of making the Avatar took years of James Cameron’s life. James Cameron really waited for the right moment to start working on this movie. James and his production crew had hard times making the Avatar. No wonder for such a huge movie to have so many breakthroughs as the making of Avatar was a true unique process. One company had to work harder then others. Weta Digital which was responsible for most of the visual effects had to really turn itself inside out to adapt for Avatar.
It all started several years ago with Lord of the Rings. When James first saw the movie, he knew it is time to start making the Avatar. Weta’s research and development crew worked all these years on unique technologies for character animation. Secondly, research and development had to focus on another task. Creation of digital plants and forest was a real hard task to accomplish.
After polishing their skills on movies like Lord of the Rings and King Kong, it became evident it is time to start! James Cameron had unique world in his mind. This world was populated with creatures, called Na’vi. They are much taller than human, and had to be done digitally. Golum from The Lord of the Rings was a thing of a past, Weta utilized this technology and enchanced it to help making of Avatar to become reality. The successful making of avatar was dependant on how well Wete would be able to do those creatures.
Weta had to come up with some new ideas. Performance capture was not a new technology, but it had to be brought on a new level for Avatar. New technology was developed on set to capture close up video of the actors’ faces. This was achieved through the use of a head rig. Helmet with a small camera was all there was to the rig. It helped to capture every small detail on the actor’s face. Camera was placed on a special rig. It was placed just a few inches from the actor’s face. This gave tracked data for those dots. When actor performed, all their moves were captured with the camera. This way Weta had the date for each actor’s tiny move in time. While shooting the actor’s performance, Weta’s crew had marked faces with small dots. They were used for tracking purposes mostly. Cameras would capture the movement of each and every dot to bring the data firther in pipeline. Weta developed new 2D tracking and solving software. Those dots were very useful. Their position and movement in time and space would the drive the facial rig. There was enough data to reconstruct every subtle actor’s face movement. This facial rig was linked with virtual muscles on 3d models. This technology really helped in the making of Avatar. You may want to check out these two making of’s.
Original Making Of Avatar
45 Minute Exclusive Making of Avatar
