We Made AVATAR 2 Before James Cameron

Dear James Cameron, I have a proposal for you. I know you've been struggling to get the next Avatar movies out, but I think I found a solution. Let me introduce you to your new virtual. Well, you know, I think you're going to love it. Above all, it will help you finish your movie quickly to show you that it works. We're going to film a whole scene from Avatar 2 and believe me, I know we don't have the script, but I'm pretty sure. we can write it welcome to our studio now you've seen it many times on camera before but today I have something very special to show you we have a lot of big changes here take a look at what you might think is oh i I don't see anything Sam I just see a big old studio space that is empty.

You're right, we've moved all the desks to another unit, so we have VFX workstations up there and we have studio space down here, but what can you do? I don't see that behind these walls is the mystical world of Pandora, that's right, the world of Avatar, why are we talking about Avatar? Well, let me explain, as you have seen, I have been playing with a lot of unreal engines over the last few months. So I recently

made

a big promise on our website brokerdigital.com. There is an exclusive program called local xero done in virtual production, all done in real time.

What you've been seeing is me, my acting, my face, my body, etc., it's pretty crazy. and that's what makes the virtual production so special and it hasn't been greenlit yet, which is good because I'm not ready to film it. I overpromised that we can use real-time game engines to create stories you've never done before. Seen before, we still don't have the tools available to create it, I thought we did, but upon further consideration, I realize how unprepared we are to make something of that scale using virtual production tools when I

made

the characters in the videogame.

Reaction video, I recorded it in quarantine by myself, so in order to film it I had to do each process step by step. What is another large-scale virtual production project that has been completed? The first thing that came to mind was Avatar. Avatar is the perfect one. benchmark that we can reach, they have virtual cameras, virtual actors and best of all, they are all combined into one thing, so you can frame your actors in your virtual scene, so before you start creating the zero local, we have to create

avatar

two. We're talking about multiple actors, we're talking about a cameraman and somehow this all just works, we're talking about multiple shots of faces, multiple shots of bodies, we're doing camera shots, not to mention we have to design the whole scene and the characters. and the models and I just hope my computer can handle it because there's going to be a lot of data spitting it out, so let's go over everything I'm going to need to make this work, let's start with the actors, the actors.

Well, we need to capture the performance of his body and face in the past. We use xn's outfits and I love them. They are of very high quality. The only big data challenge. They are a bit expensive. I can't afford a second right now. That's why we're going to wear rococo costumes. We have two chocolate-colored suits in the studio, each now with a pair of smart gloves to play two actors. This will be our solution. The only problem is that they don't track where you are. world space and if you have multiple actors that's a big challenge, you need the actors to be able to look at each other and the models to actually line up, so to do that and achieve this, we're going to use a VR headset which is our intermediary.

We're going to put live trackers on their backs and while they're wearing the suits, the suits calculate where their arms, body and legs are moving and those with the headlights up there will make sure they're in the right place. space between each other and that's a very crucial step without this, you're literally going to have two actors in these suits, but on your screen they're going to be looking in completely different directions and it's going to look super weird, so this is going to solve the spatial continuity of the hashtag. we have two actors, boom, they're facing each other, great, they're interacting, we still have to film it, although I want to film these scenes as they happen, just like James Cameron did.

We all saw that it had a small computer monitor. There I was tracking his movements and I could actually frame a shot that could be used in the final piece and I love that ability so we have our wands live here and these are tracked in the same space as the suits are all I have to do . What I do is somehow turn this into a screen and I think I know how I'm going to do it, basically I'm going to attach a camera to the motor so that as I move this the camera matches this movement but I'm going to need more than that, how can I see it?

How I put it? I have to put a screen here somehow. For this we're going back to a slightly more traditional camera rig. I have to put this. all together somehow, so what we have here is we screw a handle on it, I have a clamp so I can hold my phone, this is working and then I want a screen, so I'm going to put a really nice monitor on it. This aperture monitor is huge. This will be my window to our virtual universe. I need to power everything like a battery. I'm not worried about how it looks because in an unreal engine everything will look really cool. record that there, I have to do wireless video from my PC to here, so I'm going to use it as a Nerius, plug this in here, oh yeah, I have to turn this on, okay, great, done, look at this, it's so professional as you can see.

I have a big budget like this and yes, mix it up perfectly, now we also have a virtual camera crew. Now all we have to do is somehow combine all of this and make it start working. This is just getting the camera to work everything. What I'm trying to do here is hold up the camera rig that I built and I want to see on that screen basically what I would see through the lens of my virtual camera. Wireless video is working. Check it. I have my own mini PC here. So there's my little PC, so this is cool, my Vive controller is on.

I'm going to turn this on and see if it's tracking anything. Okay, it's tracking on this screen, so I'm going to start this on a new one. window okay and I'm going to drag this new window over here we go it's working hey this is a piece of cake I can frame the shots and I'm like oh let's take a good photo of this table okay I can't currently pull. Focus, that's where the mapping of all these buttons is going to come into play, so I can use this and click, click, click, and I want to be able to have my controls for the camera here so I don't have to go back to the computer. every time I need to make an adjustment, but look, this is working, look at that, oh, and there's someone coming down the stairs, it's so funny, dude, I just built a portal to an imaginary universe, how crazy is this, look at this , works.

You still doubt me. Easy fact, virtual cameras, easy, I don't know, no, they don't have like a million of these on set. Come on, Jimmy, don't break it. Wow, this is literally exactly the same as what they used. on

avatar

, so what's next? Well, Peter already set up the rococo costumes with live trackers, so I'm going to save that for last. Instead I will make this camera work at 100 and get some controls like the most basic control functions. What I need and then we're going to match it with the suits. The last thing you need for this beastly feature is a cool environment and really cool, well-equipped characters, so for the environments I'm just going to compile assets from the unreal. market, but for the characters, sam lazarus, who is actually the creative director of rococo, volunteered to create some fully equipped navi aliens using daz 3d.

They have excellent materials. The combined shapes for facial expressions are really good. They look like they are ready to plug and play. The tubes are showing, man, my tubes, the cubes are, man, don't look at my tubes, never look at another man's tubes, today is a great day, today is a day that hopefully we will reach a milestone in which the virtual camera crew and the actor can cross paths. To do this, we have Peter here in a Rococo suit, a piece of technology that he is an expert in and I am not. What we have to do today is to get the suit just by working in the Rococo studio, then we have to take the Rococo studio. data and pass that to unreal where we will have a little test character.

It's very important that we put Peter's head on this model because that's the only way he'll be able to tell it's him in the computer and he won't be afraid. and I think he's like some kind of demon, so yeah, okay, I just got off the phone with Sam about 15 minutes ago and he said he's completely stuck on the technical aspects of how to get this equipment up and running and everything else. that he asked me. to step in and write the script for this Avatar 2 video, now Sam said that if I don't do it, he'll just create a procedurally generated AI script, which I don't even know what that means, but it doesn't.

Sounds good, I know this episode is sponsored by Squarespace, but I promise that it won't affect the story I'm about to tell you in any way. Tell me if you like it. One day, Jake and Terry will go hunting for big game. the moon they live on and they arrive at a clearing and what is there but a giant polished spaceship that looks like a giant cube. What is this giant square spaceship and deterioration? It seems like an all-in-one platform to me. build a beautiful online presence and run your business, and Jake says that doesn't make any sense and says, "I think you'll see that they have all the tools to allow anyone who is running a small business without any prior knowledge of web design to build a beautiful website for your business, have you seen the size of this square spaceship and Jake says we have video blocks?

That's right, you can embed videos from anywhere on the Internet into your square spaceship. She says it's a. very good idea Jake, because you know what else you can do with this square spaceship, you can create a Squarespace members area, connect with your audience and generate income through members-only content, isn't that amazing Jake, yeah. , it pretty much is, and you know what if you have a small team, you can have multiple contributors contribute different levels of access to your square spaceship and then finally what happens when we lift this square spaceship and lift it up into the sky and deteriorates, we can also use the traffic overview tools to examine. you know, key insights from our website over time, unique visitors, page views, things like that, top traffic sources and then Jake says, you know what, natheri, I love you so much and she says, I know I I love you too, let's get into the square spaceship and take. together squarespace.com broker team to get 10 off your first purchase of our website or domain and it's beautiful and take off from the moon they live happily ever after on another moon squarespace.com broker team to get 10 off discount on your first purchase of a website or domain, that's what Avatar 2 is all about.

I think it will be great. I think Sam will love it. You're free? Jake's script was pretty good. The AI ​​script generator is working very well. All we have to do. it's the feed, it tells you to continue writing the script from the end of avatar one and I'm wondering if you might want to participate, send me some pointers. I'm in, let's do it. I want to see my expectations challenged maybe before we do. Even getting into this, what is Avatar 2 probably going to be about? So Avatar 1 is just Pocahontas in space, so what's a good generic story that just needs some aliens?

Oh, my name is Julia Romeo, Juliet and Juliet, I'm up for Romeo and Juliet, okay? I think we should start writing the script. This looks like it could be very easy, so what we have in front of us is the complete script for the first avatar and the text document. Okay, copy man, so the first movie just ended with him. an alien and then it cuts to black, okay, so the next movie will probably start with oh, where are we outside Pandora's jungle? two aliens, uh, creatures are walking through the dense jungle in search of a new unobtanium, a new element that is even more powerful than fun getium what is the name of the alien jake and nathery no no no I'm not walking through the dense jungle it's a sequel we have to introduce new characters jake it's not jake it's jorbot we don't want to get sued jorbot and willis jorbon willis walks through the dense jungle when suddenly a spaceship flies overhead and lands, they discuss what to do next, it's okay, so this is what we have to film, yes, you discuss what to do next here, you will be, you will be jorbot, I will be willis. take cover and shoot when you see the ship uh no unless you're ready to fight us sir an unarmed nurura is no threat toHow will we know when it's ready?

Just keep going. I'm on the edge of my seat, how long will we last? I know you're ready to ask the question. I guess you could say we'll know when it starts getting warm. Long break or it's hot. We are already in the next scene. Exterior of the ship. There is a small fire for cooking in the center of the ship. From the Gentroni's point of view, it appears to be larger than their spaceship, a perfect square, it is the mirror image of the navigation ship. Jake inspects it now that they've ever seen anything like it.

What do you suppose it is? He is definitely not human. Without lights. A black block. gray box with a door inside the word not sulu is written in navi characters this is getting good this is mysterious nathiri is going to open the hatch new character apparently named ali she burst out hey girl where are you going hey terry there's no way to get in that way come on come on nick theory close the hatch this is cool jake and deteri rush and then pull out a gun hey back out jake get out of the way hey breathless oh uh-oh uh-oh now introducing star brian where is he going? this gets us off to a pretty good start which is crazy it really has the feel of the original movie you feel this is the sequel you want to see that's the power of AI today is the big day after weeks of work , I've gotten things like 80 good, that's enough, okay, you guys are my motion capture actors, emotion capture, I think you got it right. two brothers to do that, here's the script and I'll tell you guys your characters, uh, jake sullivan or whatever his name is, okay, I'll do it, you're jake, okay, okay, you're uh, you're nakiri, me too wait.

Am I Sigourney Weaver? No, the main alien. Make sure you deliver all of this with a very feminine tone that will be easy for me. The question is who will be the best improv artist. Can Peter do this? Can Peter do this? Give me something. give me some crab peter crab toaster that was pretty good that was pretty good a little bit of the plan here today first I think we should do a quick read here like a table read is a nine page script and that's a little intimidating considering I'm going to film this in a few hours.

My relationship with the character of Peter. We are friends? It seems that you are lovers. We are lovers? We probably are. There are several times in the scene where we look deeply into each other's eyes. You get a little jealous when this when um Holly gives me her heart, man, honestly, are you like that in my heart? I know I have nothing to worry about because you will love me until the end of time, yes, still like my primitive brain. like me that other alien is kind of hot and I don't know yeah that's what personally made me a little jealous just a little bit once we're done with that and we're familiar with the scenes we'll put our We put on the suits and we're going to do the scenes and hopefully this won't take all day.

I don't think that's the case because unlike a normal film set, I'm only going to capture one angle of each scene and add the rest later because of that, I think things will go a little faster than your traditional nine-minute script. pages. I hope to have a super super sweet avatar two scene that makes people satisfied after watching it, people have been waiting for years to take a look at Avatar 2. So it will put a rocket on the moon and everyone will say: "Great job, but someone did it first, you know, and those guys are people who are really rooted in history, so I thought things were going well." Psychologically, things haven't really gone well, this is that part of the video, okay, you know the part of the video where Ren hits his head on a table and goes silent, you get a wide shot of him like I was really depressed, that's where I am right now I'm at my lowest point we did our mocap session clinton peter we're doing mocap everything that could go wrong went wrong the data every screw and bolt that could come loose came loose the rococo costumes are cool but right now, where they are, they don't seem like the best option for doing this style of motion capture once you have two actors in your scene and you're doing this virtual camera and all the spatial data and the smart gloves that link together. live the process you are streaming data to unreal depends on the frame rate your computer is running at and when I have a whole scene open with characters and the frame rate is inconsistent the motion capture data sucks on this moment. all the scenes are set up but look like absolute garbage because the rococo app can't stream the data at a high enough frame rate to make it look remotely smooth.

I don't even want to show you what it looks like, right? now because it's so far from where I hope it can be like I'm okay with some nonsense here I am I'm okay with some screwups but it's at a point where if you looked at it you would just see pure incompetence and I feel like we can do a little bit better That at the end of the day I was like I gave up guys, let's put the camera down, let's record them doing their performance, let me see them like a director should. without worrying about all these things, let's get what we need from you guys and get on with it, let's call it that, it's an avatar 2, Sam's best learning experience, actually, what did I learn well when I came into this project?

I thought having a virtual camera with these virtual actors would be something that would help unlock more creativity, but when doing this I realized that it is actually the opposite, it hinders it. I mean, well, if you're working with a small team, it's a lot of extra technical stuff. Large productions have several teams. members and technicians and all that, and I'm trying to find that nice, streamlined process, like, what can three people do with two actors and a director? The beauty of all this is that I can always add the camera later, it sure is cool.

It's novel to be able to see a person in a mocap suit as their digital self, but that doesn't really make for a better piece, that's what it boils down to: I can move the characters wherever I want after what I built them for. the camera. It's still going to pay off, but the whole process of directing and capturing a virtual production performance just doesn't feel like the camera is a necessary part. You listened? Now it's time for the Honey Tear community to judge me. I don't like this whatever you do it's time it's time it's time it's time it's time it's over I can't wait to see my favorite characters jake sully and nathiri those two characters I can definitely name I don't have enough dimensions to describe my expectations right now i'm fine there's a lot of people i didn't need everyone to see it so welcome to the screening of avatar 2. we did it we beat

james

cameron

it took us 10 years to produce anything necessary it took three weeks to produce this we basically made an ai read the script of the original avatar and then gave us this masterpiece.

Yeah, Sam, I wrote the script and gave it to you like last week there was too much stuff, we didn't have the resources. to produce your vision, so who cares here we go three two a world premiere. What made me most anxious about this project was releasing it so close to another virtual production that's on our website that people have put their producer points towards you. I know it's not a free product and I want to make sure it's really good, so I'm looking forward to what it's going to look like and how that potentially casts a negative light on what the next project will be like, but believe me, when I say I'm aware of the issues. that we ran into and I'm going to solve them well.

In fact, I honestly think that after this, any chance of ever speaking to James Cameron will be gone. What kind of thing is that? Something about the ginger honey. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. What do you think it is? He is definitely not human. I don't want to scare you, but if there's something that's not in this dimension, it's probably a passenger. Why would they need a passenger? They could throw it into the boat. The capsules are no larger than a hatchback. Jake. Well, let's go back and ask. Hey girl, where are you going?

There's no way to get in here. Hey, come on, come on, come on. What if it's a girl? They're probably just a bunch of hillbillies because of the color of their skin, maybe, but maybe it's not something that's not right, come on, come on, I sure would like to know what it is about, hey, get out of the way, hey. Back, what the hell was that? Hey, what is this? Hey, hey, wait, we're not going to leave you here. Jake, come on, hey, oh, come on, oh, he thinks he knows and he's not afraid anymore. Yes, maybe, so Pandora brought me here from within. your planet and the tree gave me life it protected us here and now we are ready to get pandora back this mineral may seem strange but it has an even more powerful magic inside it even more powerful than unobtanium it changes everything we touch if we touch it fire and it touches our hands if it touches our feet we will burn we are a weapon that can destroy but only if we stay in contact when we touch it we lose our magic it can't be in both hands it has to stay in one I guess that means you're going to show us how to get out of here with one hand I carry a gift with the other I have the power of destruction just like uh I'm giving you my heart oh I can have it no Yes, it's okay, I only have a little time left.

Every moment is precious. I give you this, please use it to protect the tree. Then Celia tells him that she will never wear a mask again and that she will never fight to protect the planet. a beautifully flawed twist at the end that I couldn't have seen coming, so it felt good to finally have people see the video I've been working on for so long and we had a good laugh most of the time. The laughs were just the text I put on the screen and not the video itself, but yes, the piece is flawed, but I'm happy to have gone through this experience, discovering these things, trying new hardware here, really trying it out with a workflow because, regardless.

There are a lot of really good learning experiences that I was able to go through. Rococo costumes are really cool, but you know, they haven't been tested in a production environment yet and that's what we finally created here today. You know, everyone, including the makers of These Suits are trying to figure out what are the best practices and what are the best ways for people to do this because the real potential here is that we're on the verge of being able to make animated movies with actors and human animators and human cameramen, the technology is almost there, that's what's still very exciting in the future here, like local zero or other virtual production pieces, we're going to have to find another way to get there, fortunately, still There are a million ways to go in the meantime.

Let's find out which one is next best if you enjoyed this video and want to see some other wacky motion capture experiments. Subscribe to this channel. Also if you want to see the anti-circus Olympics using motion capture technology, let us know. the comments