Two*8

WRITTEN COMPONENT ENTRY Avatar VFX notes.

According to James Cameron (& colleagues), Avatar is a game-changer for the way that VFX movies are made, watched, discussed and written about.

The virtual cinematography workflow which allowed Cameron to directly observe how an actor’s CG performance would interact with the CG Pandora environments in realtime on an LCD monitor (on-set), furthered the process infinitely. Rob Legato developed the workflow, and it is revolutionary due to its allowance for the firector to interact with CG elements as if he/she were shooting live action. The arts of digital and live action movie making, as well as the ideas of pre and post-production are becoming more and more merged. The paradigm of “5D” apparently a reality.

The ability to make key creative decisions within the digital environment is something that will alter the industry and its roles for the next few years. The access to ‘explore’ this digital realm, which he was responsible for, allowed Cameron to use his filmmaking practically in a virtual set, which is something, which has not been possible before Avatar. Cameron scouted these virtual sets, as he would have a physical environment.

Rob Powers was responsible for the development of the virtual environment; allowances for Cameron to alter foliage layouts, day/night shifts in the moment. Another technique allowed for the creation of an environment ‘sphere’ which contained a never-ending environment which was set to a certain radius so that the rendering demands on the software were not excessive – so the realtime render engine could keep up with matte paintings, and the organisation of all these elements was completely configurable.

Creating such a reality was only possible through the precise manipulations allowed by a computer. Such creatures and world were simply not possible any other way because they could not exist in reality, or be expressed as efficiently though the use of prosthetics or the like.

A new compositing system was devised for 3D; placing depth information on everything that was being rendered, which will become the standard for compositing because of the flexibility it allowed for, according to Joe Letteri “Even if you’re doing a non-stereo movie, it’s just easier to composite in 3D than in 2D”.

One breakthrough that is highlighted in the article (aside from those already mentioned) was the explosions. The need for the explosions to interact with CG objects required that the explosions themselves be CG. Chris Horvath (who was instrumental on the fire fx in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) was responsible for the shading. The explosions used the same fluid simulation engine used for ‘The Maelstrom’ in Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End. There were modifications to the engine so that it behaved appropriately.

Letteri states that there will be a lot learned from the experience(s) of Avatar, “I think what everyone discovered as you went along is that if you’re going to put a virtual stage together like a live-action shoot, then this becomes the front end to a visual effects piece. Because you not only start thinking in terms of takes and selects, but as shot design. You have to be able to switch from one to the other. And it requires a level of infrastructure for the whole thing that I think is going to benefit everyone if we can come up with some system across the board to make that easier”.

http://www.awn.com/articles/visual_effects/avatar-game-changer/page/6%2C1