Avatar 2 animators tricked James Cameron into believing some shots were practical

Date:
Fri, 20 Jan 2023 18:48:30 +0000

Description:
Daniel Barrett, Senior Animation Supervisor at Weta FX, explains how he and his team tricked Avatar: The Way of Water director James Cameron.

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Much of Avatar: The Way of Water s rub-your-eyes-in-disbelief magic stems
from its ability to convincingly blur the practical and the digital and the animators at Wt FX did such a good job in that department that director James Cameron was often duped into approving entirely computer-generated shots.

In an exclusive interview with TechRadar, Daniel Barrett, Senior Animation Supervisor at the New Zealand-based visual effects company, revealed that he and his team were sometimes forced to side-step Camerons desire to keep
things as practical as possible in order to maintain the realism of certain shots.

Theres a lot of interaction between [Navi] characters and Spider [played by Jack Champion] in The Way of Water, Barrett explains, and getting the kind of contact accuracy that you need in a stereoscopic film can be a real
challenge. The planning on set was done to such a high level that many of those shots worked. But there were also times [when they didnt].

If you think of those shots where Quaritch is carrying Spider to the drop
zone that was all shot practically, but we realized pretty quickly that
there were elements of Jacks body that we needed to replace with a digital
one to make sure we could get all of that contact done. Our digital doubles got to a really high level. We had plenty of situations on the film where we tricked Jim [Cameron] where he thought we were practical, and we were in
fact digital. Jack Champion's Spider interacts with Na'vi characters in Avatar: The Way of Water (Image credit: 2021 20th Century Studios. All
Rights Reserved.)

We would make the decision: which is the path of least resistance to give Jim back his plate exactly as he shot it? And sometimes the savings were too
great not to go digital [...] But obviously there was still a lot of work to be done there. For the camera team to create matchmoves that are accurate enough to hold up in 3D movies, theres a real challenge in that. And they did amazing work on this film to reconcile some of those situations for us. Animation 101 with Wt FX

As someone whose team was largely responsible for everything that moves in
The Way of Water, Barrett is among the few people who can give an informed answer to the question: how the heck did Cameron pull this off?

If youve seen any of the films behind-the-scenes featurettes, youll know that the processes involved in bringing the entirely fictional world of Pandora to life on screen must have been mind-bogglingly complex. So, naturally, we
asked Barrett to explain in layman's terms how Wt turned the likes of Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaa into 10-foot Na'vi. Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis,
Zoe Saldaa and Sam Worthington on the set of Avatar: The Way of Water (Image credit: 20th Century Fox/Disney)

The way we broke it up, he begins, there were certain teams for certain sequences, but we also have specialist artists. So, for instance, we have a facial team, who did the lion's share of the facial work, and they sit as a separate department. We have a motion edit team whose starting point is the performance capture data obviously, they did a huge amount of work on this film. Then we have the animation team, who do a little bit of everything theyre responsible for all the creatures, vehicles and things like that. And we also have a crowds team, who deal with the bigger crowd [animations], whether it's fish or birds or Metkayina at a village. So all of those groups of people, in those departments from what we call the motion realm, totalled about 150 at our peak.

So the motion capture is captured the bulk of that was done at Lightstorm [studios] and [the footage] is then selected by Jim, whatever he likes, Barrett continues. Then itll be turned over to Wt, where it comes through the motion capture team. The data tracking is done at Lightstorm, but we like to re-track it to make sure we maintain all the fidelity and detail of the performances. That will then go through to the motion edit team, who begin work on the bodies and theres sometimes a bit of cleanup involved in that [stage]. The motion edit team also sometimes the animation team will deal with the bits and pieces that you dont get to capture," Barrett explains, giving Navi fingers and tails as examples. Image 1 of 2 Ronal and Tonowari in Avatar: The Way of Water (Image credit: 2022 20th Century Studios. All
Rights Reserved.) Image 2 of 2 Initial Metkayina concept art for Avatar: The Way of Water (Image credit: 2021 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.)

We like the bodies to be pretty much done before we move to facials and on that note, theres a huge amount of attention paid to what the head is doing, because your facial animation will fall over if you dont have a very accurate version of the performance. Once thats done, we move to facial [animations] although sometimes, if we realize weve missed something with the head, we
have to push it back one step. And thats pretty much the process for performance capture, [with regards] to the motion team.

Obviously, beyond us, Barrett adds, theres an awful lot of work done prior in terms of the models, the rigging of the characters, the shading and the textures. But once the motion is there, the footage goes through the
creatures team, who simulate cloth, costume and hair. And then of course weve got a very clever lighting team who work their magic, which is always such a wonderful thing. To see these characters finally rendered oh, its just such a thrill. To have been working on something that looks a little cartoony and then see something that looks like the real thing. Its such a pleasure, such
a gift.

Judging by The Way of Waters near-$2 billion global box office receipts, audiences are enjoying the pleasure, too.

Avatar: The Way of Water is now playing in theaters worldwide.



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/avatar-2-animators-tricked-james-cameron-into-b elieving-some-shots-were-practical


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