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VFX Artists React to Bad & Great CGi 19

Feb 23, 2020
So these are all miniature environments that were filmed. Really Gollum, his facial acting was completely keyframed. The water in the intake blew me away. There are a couple of big trailers we made for this movie. Thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. Stay until the end to see how. you can save 10 on your first purchase Hello, what's up? Welcome back to another episode of VFX Artist Reacts today. We have a very special guest that you may have seen in our previous episode talking about in the game. We have Matt Akin with us today. Matt joins in. us from weta digital in today's episode, i think we want to talk about some of the older films that you've worked on and some of the advancements that weta digital has made over the course of the last 25 years, when you started working on weta.
vfx artists react to bad great cgi 19
It's basically just you and one other person doing the effects correctly, yes that's right, so you're as good as they come. I've seen many different variations along the way, since the early days of the company. The film project that already put us on the map was The Lord of the Rings. The work was in many ways much more difficult because there was a lot more character work. One of the things I found fun when looking behind the scenes of The Lord of the Rings. the rings was how much entertainment Peter got from turnovers when he gave you guys a really tough chance to find out, oh yeah, present these shots and see how many jaws can come out of one of these turnovers.
vfx artists react to bad great cgi 19

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vfx artists react to bad great cgi 19...

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must suffer from psychological problems. What I think about Peter is that he created Weather Digital because he knew from the beginning that it was going to be a really useful tool for him to make the kind of films he liked to make. true, they always had a big visual effects component, he never really felt like a stranger to us, he's always been part of the process, yeah, what do you think was the biggest generational leap between lord of the rings gollum and the hobbit golem? the facial performance was completely keyframe like we didn't have any facial motion capture when it's smeagle chatting with gollum and he comes and goes, yes everything is hand animated to match andy circus performance, there are no automated tasks, 132 different controls that It's just key frames, you know, between zero and one, the facial component would take a good two weeks to make, maybe a two second shot, you know, two and a half seconds is typical, so that there is a lot of painstaking work being done there, where are you creating?
vfx artists react to bad great cgi 19
Andy will have been on set with these guys climbing around. He is very athletic. We paint Andy in every shot that Gollum is in, which is meticulous, yes, because Andy tends to stick out around the edges of Gollum. You know, Andy to capture motion. in a motion capture set at a separate time that we incorporated into these plates, it must have been very difficult for Andy in Lord of the Rings to do all this work on the motion capture set when Elijah wasn't there and he was. We basically worked with an audio track, but when we got to the hobbit we were able to do the motion capture simultaneously with the live action photography, including facial motion capture, it was a much more actor-friendly approach - the world premiere of the third Mr.
vfx artists react to bad great cgi 19
Rings movie was actually in Wellington, New Zealand, where we are. We had a big party afterwards, then I checked my inbox and then Peter had a King Kong meeting scheduled for 8 o'clock the next morning. He said: Yes, let's continue. Keep going like half the party, yes, you're going to sleep until the next day. We were on board. We wanted to continue too. Well, King Kong was like a really fantastic project to work on. Actually, the CGI of this movie. It looks like a movie 10 years after its time, I mean there are a couple of big trailers that we made for this movie, we got to work, that was one of the big challenges, we hadn't really done skins at this level before and We were doing facials. motion capture for the first time, so Andy Serkis, who did the baseline performance for Kong, as opposed to Gollum, here we're actually driving Kong's facial performance, which was one of the biggest challenges you guys faced in this sequence Well, that's where I start looking back.
About this, what occurs to me? You know, back in the days of Hong Kong we couldn't do the complex natural environment of an island jungle, we couldn't do it on the computer, so these are all miniature environments that were filmed. Actually yeah, it's okay with the motion control camera moves because these are some quick camera moves. Yes, no, because we have a motion control camera. We can repeat the camera movement on the thumbnail over and over again with multiple passes. Key light passes. Fill light passes. fog passes, oh interesting, um, so you guys can modify them after the fact, um and since light is additive, you know you can take those passes and add them into your composition, it's as simple as putting them in announce mode and calling. getting as much flexibility as we can from the settings, so there's a lot of compositing work in this, yes, even just getting the environment before placing the creatures, so you have to deal with casting a shadow of the cg characters on this real environment.
Trying to make them feel like they're really connected exactly, we've laser scanned the miniature, so we have that geometry that we're using as a reference, like when Kong is hanging off the cliff, we need to know where the miniature is. We're using the same meat packaging scanner, yes, more or less, and then there are particle simulations for the interaction with the leaves and some of them are based on elements and some of them are based on simulations. I think we should talk about Kong's death, so another spoiler alert at the end of this. movie, another character dies, sorry people, one of the ways we work very hard to make our characters look alive is by the way we light their eyes, we'll make sure we get a nice glow in the eyes and that's often It is a deceived light. that we have to bring in, we had this moment where Kong dies and one of the ways that we subtly let the audience know that he has really died is by turning off all those light passes and I think if you know that, that's that's that's happening, you can really see it, oh yeah, there goes the cute little highlight, yeah, it's like his eyes are drying out, so I don't know if people are aware of that, but I think they will respond emotionally to what that, what that. means that's really fascinating.
I always get excited when there is an effect that is something anyone can do and brings with it emotional power and King Kong themselves, there are hair simulations and motion capture of skin ceilings, but the reflections in the eyes disappear, that's the clue. to the shot, I think that's what really makes it, yeah, do you have any more favorite characters, like dying, that you want us to rewatch with effects of those moments? We could talk about Spidey's bluff at the end of Infinity War, if you want. To try hard enough and you want to see more of these videos consider subscribing, that's the best way to make sure you don't miss any episodes.
They're fun to make and I bet they're fun to watch. It's an opportunity. inspired you or a shot you like, you're like, how do you do this? The particular scene that sticks in my mind is the Jurassic Park t-rex in the rain, it still holds up, you know, it's an amazing job, so they We're using a really clever shader to simulate the flow of water from the back of the T-Rex. Here a shader describes the interaction of light with the surface of an object, whatever the material, so the fact that the surface of this T-Rex looks like wet reptile skin, that's shadow making. that.
I was doing my master's degree in computer graphics when Jurassic Park came out and I went to that with my wife and I got a good friend and they were like, "Oh, that was cool." Funny, I thought: Don't you realize what we just saw? Everything has changed. Speaking of amazing visuals, do you have one you want us to take a look at? Leave a comment below, we'll read it and maybe in the next one. episode, we'll take a look, so what's up with this one, run, don't run, what run, definitely run. Avatar was the highest-grossing movie of all time until your most recent movie came out.
I think we did about 90 of the shots that I helped with in a pre-production context, so the world was built, all the jungle environments in Avatar were with cg, yeah, and no miniatures were shot for um for Avatar, which represents a big change in the way filmmakers generally approached it because it was not just us, it was all of us making the same transition at the time. This shot right here. I talked about this. Another visual effects artist

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ed. The water in the intake blew me away when I saw this. I've never seen water like this before.
It was without a doubt the best water we have ever made. I think we continue to improve on these things. Everything is done in CG. The simulation includes foam passes. It includes a sensation of aeration that is microbubbles in the water so that that type of foam is obtained. and the cloudiness of the water, so it's not just like a clear volume that really helps it look like real water, so I have one scene in particular from Avatar that blew me away; It's one thing to have digital actors interacting. with real actors, but the Na'vi are very tall, they are much taller than humans, so she is interacting with real game photography of Jake Sully here and maintaining correct eye lines by putting things on her face .
This may be one of the scenes that we filmed with a system we call simulcam where we have motion control on a set separate but adjacent to the live action set at the same time as early so Jim can see on a monitor, he can see Zoe playing Nateri. She could have like a scaled down version of jake as a doll that she holds, you'll have grabs or specialists, you know, move jake, move sam like jake and he can frame them both because he has a monitor that combines the cg natairi that's Being driven in real time by Zoe's performance, meaning that shots can feel very natural, as if he were actually there filming and could give them both notes at the same time.
Some of this is probably digital jake too. Yeah, like his hand, it's probably digital, I think it would have to be yeah, to get that level of interaction, are you guys currently working on the next Avatar movies? Can they even talk about it? I think I can, I think I think I can, um, the first one. two sequels, they're focusing on those two now, so avatar two and avatar three um, we're also working on the films in a pre-production context at Weather Digital developing revolutionary things, actually, which I don't think I can. It goes in, I think it's probably fair, people should be on the lookout because there's some pretty amazing stuff, very high-level new stuff for these movies.
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Just go to squarespace.com chord or group and remember that with squarespace there is always hope for your website. Don't worry mate, they'll come, don't worry, it's okay Matt, it's been an absolute pleasure and an absolute honor to have you here with us. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing some of your knowledge and experiences with everyone, and it's due. to people like you who have these incredible images that we can see on the screen and these stories that take us to worlds that we would never otherwise be able to see. Thank you very much for taking the time to come here to stop us. next to ourlittle studio and sit on our green leather couch, uh, yeah, it's a pleasure, man, yeah, yeah, I feel like we got just a small fraction of some legitimacy by having you here on the couch, okay, I'm glad to contribute one of the things I love.
This field and one of the reasons I think I'm still working in it after 25 or 30 years is that it's constantly evolving and it's constantly evolving, but also the field is constantly changing and we're developing new techniques and somehow I I like to think that we're getting better at what we do and that filmmakers are always sending us new challenges, so it's constantly stimulating and interesting for me.

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