Fans and detractors of James Cameron’s epic blockbuster Avatar have awaited a sequel for thirteen years. Touted as ground-breaking in 2009, Avatar’s visual effects swept spectators into a surreal marine realm.
The sequel’s release was pushed back six times in order to create the technology needed to build on the original film’s special effects accomplishments.
At the 2023 Academy Awards, The Way of Water won the Oscar for visual effects, as well as the Bafta and Critics’ Choice Awards in the same category.
Visual effects artists Joe Letteri – who already has four Academy Awards under his credit – and Eric Saindon, who helped build Gollum in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, addressed the BBC about their return to Avatar.
Catching the intricacies
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“I just loved the story, the characters, everything about it,” said Joe, reflecting back to when he was first given the script.
He and Eric believed the emotional depth of the characters and the audience’s relationship with them to be the most crucial component of the sequel.
The pair is a member of the Weta FX visual effects crew, which contributed to around 98% of the film’s scenes.
With its performance capture technology, the Weta FX team built a facial system based on neural networks to aid in the creation of photorealistic characters for the screen.
The method used a sequence of black dots on performers’ faces to help map relationships between distinct facial characteristics and muscles.
This allowed animators to replicate the nuanced expressions of performers in computer-generated (CG) equivalents.
For the film’s many underwater scenes, a camera connected to actors’ bodies during performance capture was used to record their faces, while secondary cameras filmed their bodies.
The Weta FX crew also employed depth composition to display CG and live-action objects or actors together on set.
This involved putting scans of sets, performers, and costumes into an algorithm capable of recognizing and reflecting the location and depth of their pixels in real-time.
“That’s something we had always dreamed of ever since film one, and we were finally able to get it to work on this film,” Joe remarked.
Yet despite the fact that visual effects design in blockbuster films frequently focuses on large expenditures and cutting-edge technology, he emphasized the importance of getting the smaller, more intimate moments right. This is where the viewer learns to know and comprehend the character.
Eric concurred, stating,
“You forget these are CGI characters, and you simply care for them.”
Way of water
The family film transports the audience to the planet Pandora, where the Sully family rebuilds their existence with the Metkayin, a water-dwelling culture.
A cornerstone of the picture is its watery setting, crafted by the Weta FX team.
To bring the aquatic world to life, Joe and Eric undertook their own exploration of the world’s oceans, researching water from all around the world to determine which type would work best.
Yet, they were aware that tropical water teeming with life, coral, and vibrant color would always be the chosen alternative for the marine environment.
Weta FX collaborated with professors from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, to develop new coral varieties for the film.
The researchers developed software that would allow the enhanced coral to grow and move realistically, so enhancing the realism of the aquatic environment.
It applied a similarly elaborate technique to the film’s numerous aquatic characters and monsters.
“We studied the motion of whales, dolphins, otters, and other aquatic animals to determine how they interact,” Eric explained, adding that their findings were then applied to improve the fluidity of the characters’ movements.
Joe said,
“Every day is a school day.”
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