James Cameron’s 3-D spectacle Avatar, featuring the blue-skinned inhabitants of the spectacular Pandora, won big at the Golden Globes in 2010 with three Oscars for Cinematography, Visual Effects and Art Direction. A seamless blend of live action and computer-generated images, the film was meant to be viewed on the biggest screen possible – and for most of us it was our first introduction to IMAX. Following its release in December 2009, it became the highest-grossing movie in the world till it was surpassed by Avengers: Endgame.
Innovations include a new system for lighting massive areas like Pandora’s jungle, a motion-capture stage or “volume” six times larger than any previously used, and an improved method of capturing facial expressions, enabling full performance capture. To achieve the face capturing, actors wore individually made skull caps fitted with a tiny camera positioned in front of the actors’ faces; the information collected about their facial expressions and eyes is then transmitted to computers. According to Cameron, the method allows the filmmakers to transfer 100% of the actors’ physical performances to their digital counterparts. Besides the performance capture data which were transferred directly to the computers, numerous reference cameras gave the digital artists multiple angles of each performance. A technically challenging scene was near the end of the film when the computer-generated Neytiri held the live action Jake in human form, and attention was given to the details of the shadows and reflected light between them.
Picture Credit : Google
