'Tron 3′ Is ‘A Done Deal’

At the D23 Expo last week, speculation ran rampant about what new films Disney would announce. Two years ago, D23 was where they officially announced Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and this year, we got the confirmation of two upcoming Pixar movies. One thing that wasn’t mentioned, at least by the Disney executives, was Tron 3, a sequel to Tron: Legacy. We know writer David DiGilio was hired to write a script but nothing is expected to be made official until the new TV show, Tron: Uprising, hits in 2012.

But while the executive were mum when it came to Tron 3, the man himself wasn’t. Bruce Boxleitner who played the title character in both movies, told a fan at the convention that the third film is “a done deal” and even dropped a release date: 2013. Don’t believe us? Watch the video yourself after the break.

Thanks to Ain’t It Cool News for the info. Here’s the video.

Now, most likely Boxleitner is referring to the writer being hired but having a screenplay does not a movie make. Is it possible he has inside info? Anything is possible, especially since the third film would have to center on his character because of the tease at the end of Legacy. Still, it’s safe to assume Boxleitner is jumping the gun here slightly. While Tron: Legacy was profitable, Disney surely wants to see if their new cartoon is a big enough hit to prove there’s an audience for the third film. If it is, and the script is halfway decent, you can bet Tron 3 will hit the grid very quickly. If not, you might want to start searching screenplay websites for an unproduced Tron: Legacy sequel a few short months later.




'Transformers' VFX Supervisor to Receive Hollywood Film Festival Honors

(hollywoodreporter.com)      

            Hollywood Film Festival founder and executive director Carlos de Abreu announced Monday four luminaries who will be honored at the fest's 15th awards gala at the Beverly Hilton on October 24, presented by Starz.

The Hollywood Visual Effects Award goes to Paramount Pictures' Transformers: Dark of the Moon and visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar. Farrar joined Industrial Light & Magic in 1981 as a camera operator on Star Trek II, got a 1985 visual effects Oscar for Cocoon and noms for The Chronicles of Narnia, Backdraft, AI: Artificial Intelligence, and Transformers.

Full article:           http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/transformers-dark-moon-tree-life-228943




James Bond 23 Art and VFX Crew Returning

(bond23.net)                   In more minor news, a couple of tips have come in from MI6 – the British Bond site – letting us know that Paul Inglis, Art Director and Steve Begg, Visual Effects, will be returning to James Bond 23 which commences shooting in November 2011.

Begg has previously worked on Casino Royale, where the VFX man was responsible famously for sinking Venetian houses.

Inglis had a hand in the 2008 adventure Quantum of Solace – designing interiors of the remote Perla De Las Dunas hotel. His current project is Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus”, which is shooting on the 007 Stage at Pinewood.




Don't Be Afraid Of The CGI

(thehorrorsection.blogspot.com)               Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was a frustrating experience. So many things about this film are top notch. Everything from the production design & cinematography to Marco Beltrami's score is exceptional. I could see Guillermo Del Toro's influence almost immediately, as it has many of the qualities inherent in contemporary Spanish genre cinema, most notably Pan's Labyrinth and The Orphanage. This movie also has a great cast – though Holmes was given little to do and Pearce even less – and considering how much of the movie was put on the shoulders of young Madison, I think she did an admirable job. The filmmakers had a good foundation built here. And then the CG creatures show up and the whole thing comes crashing down.

I'm not bad; I'm just rendered that way.

And you know, it wasn't even bad CG; it just WASN'T SCARY. To me, that's a fundamental problem when that's what I was promised. I mean, it's in the friggin' title! Too much CG kills a movie like this, but it is also how you utilize it. The Orphanage had over a hundred digital effects shots, but you barely noticed them because they were so well implemented. In Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, it seems the further the movie goes along, the more overtly they trot them out. I mean, the little guys in The Gate were scarier than these fucking things.

The frustrating thing is that Don't Be Afraid of the Dark starts out really well, with a sequence that it sure to have you cringing, but the only other effective bits were exposition scenes. Holmes is shown drawings of the creatures and those were actually creepy because they're tactile and not created in a computer. However, even when forgiving the pervasive CG, there is just an emptiness here. The Spanish efforts that I spoke of before always brought a lot of heart, and effortlessly built a connection with their audience. There was none of that here. Even with the great performance put forth by Madison, she is initially portrayed as a petulant brat and perhaps plays along with her “new friends” a little longer than she should've before realizing they didn't have her best interest at heart. And I have always liked Katie Holmes, but let's face it; she is no Belén Rueda. Lastly, I really didn't care for how things played out at the end. The characters' acceptance of the events that transpire seemed false and the last little reveal was confusing to me.

The recipe for success was there, but then someone in the kitchen decided to mix in some artificial ingredients and spoiled the whole meal. It's a shame, as I was really hoping Don't Be Afraid of the Dark was going to extend Del Toro's impeccable record.




Fincher’s ’20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ Will Differ Greatly From Verne’s Version

(slashfilm.com)                In May of last year, we started hearing that David Fincher might direct Disney’s new version of the classic Jules Verne tale 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, about three men who find themselves ‘rescued’ by Captain Nemo, pilot of the high-tech and very secret submarine the Nautilus. Several new versions have been developed in the wake of Disney’s 1954 film, and David Fincher reportedly approached Disney about taking on the film; he was officially hired last December.

The last time we heard anything about the film was thanks to brief comments from Fincher himself, who said Leagues “will be probably 70% CG.” Now the screenwriter, Scott Z. Burns (Contagion), is talking a bit about the project, saying that he and Fincher have jettisoned a good many particulars from the Verne novel.

CinemaBlend talked to Scott Z. Burns today, who said that he hopes for a spring shoot for the Steven Soderbegh-directed The Man From U.N.C.L.E. He also said that his scripts for that and Leagues are both done and waiting for the casting process to begin.

There isn’t one blockquote to throw your way, but CinemaBlend says the scale of the film is “very big,” which we expected, and that we can expect “very little” to be directly translated from page to screen. That’s an interesting point that could lead to a lot of speculation, especially given how little we know about the film in general.

Burns says his job “isn’t to turn a book into a movie, it’s to be inspired by the book and then go write a movie.”  In that sense, he and Fincher focused on three core characters: Captain Nemo, marine biologies Pierre Aronnax and harpoonist Ned Land. (So Aronnax’s faithful assistant Conseil is out?) He explains,

David and I had a really cool idea for the relationship between Nemo, and Aronnax and Land. [...] That’s really what we kind of got into. But I think it’s very, very true to the spirit of the book.




Fall VFX Movie Preview 2011

(awn.com)                   This fall we have boxing robots, ancient Greek wars, cunning detectives, super spies, 1930s Paris, singing chipmunks, alien invasions, aging-themed sci-fiers, an epic vampire marriage and two period adventures. Visual effects work range from the big to the subtle. Let's see the top 10* films on VFXWorld's radar.

10-tie. Anonymous (Columbia Pictures, Oct. 28) and The Three Musketeers (Summit Ent., Oct. 21)

Ten films were just not enough to capture the full score of the fall so the number 10 slot has two films. Both take place in the 17th century so it's fitting.

Roland Emmerich dials down from his usual spectacle work for this conspiracy thriller, which proposes that Edward De Vere, Earl of Oxford, actually penned Shakespeare's plays. Adding suspense, the film is set against the succession of Queen Elizabeth I and the Essex Rebellion. Just from the trailer we can see the extensive set and crowd work on display. Volker Engel and Marc Weigert were the lead vfx supervisors on this intriguing historical caper. Uncharted Territory was the primary visual effects house.

Paul W.S. Anderson's brings his signature action style to an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' classic adventure tale. For those not familiar with the story, the hotheaded D'Artagnan teams with three musketeers to stop a female double agent and the Cardinal from stealing the French crown. Of course there is going to be some swashbuckling going on here, but vfx augments the physical action, ramping it up to today's standards. Mr. X and Rodeo FX provided visual effects work.


9. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 (Summit Ent., Nov. 18)

Bill Condon returns for the first part of the final chapter of the Twilight Saga. Could this film feature the first major visual effects enhanced sex scene? And then there is the birth scene. We can assume that there will be more vampire-on-werewolf violence for this installment too. In alpha order, vfx come from Halon Ent. Legacy Effects, Lola Visual Effects, Method Studios, Modus Fx, Soho VFX, Tippett Studio and Wildfire Visual Effects.

8. In Time (20th Century Fox, Oct. 28)

Andrew Niccol (Gattaca) brings viewers this sci-fier set in a future where people stop aging at 25 and if you don't own time you are killed in order to control the population. After a rich man wills him a century before he kills himself, a poor young man must go on the run from the cops who believe he committed murder to extend his life. The evidence is on the young man's arm in the form of a digital clock ticking down the years. Dyspotian tales are always ripe for vfx. In alpha order, the vfx houses include Luma Pictures, Soho VFX and Wildfire Visual Effects.


7. The Darkest Hour (Summit Ent., Dec. 25)

Directed by Chris Gorak and produced by Timur Bekmambetov, a group of young Americans try to survive an alien invasion while on vacation in Moscow. The trailer gives use glimpses the vfx action we can expect. Invisible clouds turn anyone who touches them to dust. Inferred POVs from the aliens. Demonic-filled fireballs. The total shut down of the Russian capitol. You know the kind of film that puts you in the Christmas spirit. The vfx houses include BUF, Polygon Ent. and Soho VFX.


6. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (20th Century Fox, Dec. 16)

Shrek Forever After director Mike Mitchell takes over the Chipmunks film franchise from Betty Thomas and Tim Hill before her. Rhythm and Hues is back though as the lead visual effect artists. This time around Alvin, the boys and the Chipettes have a high-seas adventure on a luxury cruise. The Chimpunks of course are the center of the vfx work, but this time the ship and the island they crash on open up all sorts of vfx possibilities.


5. Hugo (Paramount Pictures, Nov. 23)
.
Martin Scorsese takes on his first family film and it's in 3-D! VFX supervisor Rob Legato had the privilege of working with the film legend in this new chapter of his career. Set in 1930s, an orphan moves into a Paris train station where he sets out to unravel the mystery of his father and the automaton he left behind after he died. The orphan becomes friends with special effects pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès, who down on his luck now works at a toy store. In addition to the magical version of Paris the film creates, the subject alone is of interest to vfx pros and fans. In alpha order, the vfx houses include Lola Visual Effects, Mark Roberts Motion Control, Nvizage, Pixomondo, Plowman Craven & Associates and With A Twist Studio.

4. Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol (Paramount Pictures, Dec. 21)

Animation vet Brad Bird makes his live-action feature debut with the fourth installment in the Mission: Impossible film series. Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) brings us the super spy action. Tom Peitzman serves as the Co-Producer/Visual Effects Producer and John Knoll is the Visual Effects Supervisor. Ethan Hunt and his new team must go rogue when the IMF is linked to the bombing of the Kremlin. From this franchise, one can expect daring escapes, secret missions and master disguises. We know from The Incredibles that Bird can direct action, so expectations are high in both the worlds of vfx and animation.


3. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Warner Bros., Dec. 16)

Guy Ritchie is back for more sleuthing action with this Sherlock Holmes sequel. In this adventure, Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson must outwit their fiercest adversary, Professor Moriarty. As established in the first film, one can expect grand period sets, explosive action sequences and those stylized slow-mo fight sequences where Sherlock thinks out every move ahead of time to beat his opponent. Chas Jarrett is the vfx supervisor. BlueBolt, Framestore, Mark Roberts Motion Control, Moving Picture Company (MPC), Plowman Craven & Associates and The Visual Effects Company provided vfx work.

2. Immortals (Relativity Media, Nov. 11)

Tarsem Singh brings his unique visual style to this fantasy-infused tale of Greek warrior Theseus as he battles against imprisoned titans. VFX supervisor Raymond Gieringer was in charge of helping the filmmaker bring his vision to life. What does this film have in store for us? Massive sword battles, flaming whips, glowing arrows, flying gods, massive tidal waves. And that's just what was in the trailer. Presented in alpha order the vfx houses are BarXseven, Christov Effects and Design, Image Engine Design, Modus Fx, NeoReel, Proof, ReThink VFX, Rodeo FX, ScanlineVFX, The Third Floor, Tippett Studio and XYZ-RGB.


1. Real Steel (Walt Disney/DreamWorks, Oct. 7)

This is Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robots on acid and Red Bull. Set in the future where human boxing has been banned and replaced with robot fighting, an ex-fighter teams with estranged son to brings a run-down bot back into fighting condition. Night at the Museum helmer Shawn Levy brings this futuristic sports flick to the screen. Digital Domain leads the effects house, which also includes Giant Studios and Legacy Effects. Can they up the ante on ILM's Transformers 3 robot? I'm sure they'll give it a fighting chance.




5 Incredible VFX Scenes

We showed you the 50 best-ever VFX scenes in the magazine, then we showed you 10 more classics online. But these clips just keep reappearing – here are five more VFX scenes that can’t be missed

District 9 (2009)

Dir: Neill Blomkamp
VFX: The Embassy Visual Effects

Killer sequence: Exoskeleton fight scene -a mutating civil servant defends his alien chum in a stonking exoskeletal Battle Suit

Why watch it?: Hapless civil servant, Wikus van de Merwe, finds himself piloting an alien Battle Suit in an attempt to protect his ‘prawn’ buddy from mercenary fire.

Weta Digital provided the mothership shots, but became swamped by the workload of Avatar. So at this point Blomkamp made the most of his meagre $30 million budget by turning to Vancouver-based facilities, with Image Engine doing the CG creature work, The Embassy on Battle Suit duty, and the province of British Columbia providing the tax breaks. The suit was built and animated in Softimage XSI, lit with HDR imagery and employed a special occlusion map to add layers of dust. The live action footage was shot handheld on a RED camera, and matchmoved in SynthEyes for compositing in Shake.

A virtual ground plane was added to most of the 100 or so shots so they could create footprints and dust clouds. District 9 is a cracking little movie, with effects that put some of the bigger blockbusters to shame.

All five:   http://www.3dworldmag.com/2011/08/30/5-more-incredible-vfx-scenes/





The Art of VFX:  COWBOYS & ALIENS: Roger Guyett – VFX Supervisor – ILM

(artofvfx.com)     

What is your background before joining ILM?
I worked in the Post Production business in London, doing computer graphics animation for commercials and broadcast TV. I then did some film work in England, just as digital FX were really taking off in the USA, and saw an opportunity to come to America. I initially worked for PDI (now Dreamworks) in California and then moved across to ILM – this was about 20 years ago.

How was the collaboration with director Jon Favreau?
Really great. He has a tremendous interest in the VFX process and is a big fan of ILM. He’s also extremely respectful of all his collaborators on the movie – he listens to people’s perspectives and is open to ideas but ultimately he’s the director. I really enjoyed working with him. He’s also a very funny man – and with the hours we work it really makes it very easy to be in his company.

What was his approach and expectation about VFX on this show?
He wanted to root the movie with a great sense of reality (as everyone does of course) but with the stark contrast in genres he really emphasized that everything must feel photo-real. This concern also came out of the fact that the final battle was set in daylight – harsh sun – and he felt it was a very unforgiving. Once he saw the first tests of the alien he was very re-assured. ILM has spent a lot of time developing their energy conservation lighting approach and it really paid off.

About the bracelet that carry Daniel Craig. Did you do something on it mainly when it expand or is it full Legacy Effects work?
Actually the props department built 2 versions of the wrist gaunlet from designs approved by Scott Chambliss (the production designer). One closed, one open. We did the transformation between the open and closed versions – we have a lot of experience with transforming-type objects (laugh). We also added the heads up display (HUD) and other smaller embellishments.

Full article:  http://www.artofvfx.com/?p=1452




Academy Exhibit Celebrates Below-The-Line Craftspeople      

(btlnews.com)                More than 115 images shot on the sets of such films as Raging Bull, Munich, You, Me & Dupree, Rendition, Salt and Superman Returns will be on display in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ new exhibition, “Crew Call 2011: Celebrating the Crafts,” opening Sept. 9, in the Academy’s Grand Lobby Gallery. The exhibition, open to the public, will run through Dec. 18. Admission is free.

Shot by 25 members of the Society of Motion Picture Still Photographers, “Crew Call 2011″ will include photographs depicting the work of numerous, and essential, below-the-line craftspeople on a movie set, from animal wranglers, puppeteers, makeup artists, seamstresses, stunt performers and prop masters to grips, gaffers and P.A.s. Several images show how production design and visual effects departments work preparing sets and staging action sequences, and provide glimpses of how the magic of the movies is achieved during long days and nights of shooting.

The Society’s previous exhibitions, “Between Takes” and “Take 2″ were on display at the Academy in 2000 and 2005.

The Academy’s Grand Lobby Gallery, located at 8949 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, is open Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and weekends, noon to 6 p.m.

Sample pics:   http://www.btlnews.com/crafts/academy-exhibit-celebrates-the-crew/





Animated or Real, Both Are Believable

(nytimes.com)                 The chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans that star in the hit film “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” are all computer animations. But they look a lot like the real thing, even to a primatologist.

“It’s astonishing how far the technology has come,” said Frans de Waal, a professor of primate behavior at Emory University in Atlanta and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory

“We have the illusion we are looking at chimpanzees,” Dr. De Waal said of the computer-generated figures. “They are remarkably convincing.”

Producing computer-animated chimps that people will accept as realistic is a signal accomplishment, said Chris Bregler, an associate professor of computer science at New York University.

“It’s easier to fool us when you animate a dragon or another mythical or fairy tale creature,” Dr. Bregler said of characters created in earlier movies using the technology, called performance capture. “But humans or their closest relatives, chimps — that’s more difficult to do. Our human eyes are finely tuned to detecting problems with those depictions, and the illusion breaks down.”

If the illusion holds in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” he said, it is because of several small but significant engineering steps that can take audiences past what is called the “uncanny valley,” the spot at which an animation loses credibility.

In particular, “Rise” uses a video system that analyzes the facial expressions of the actors playing the apes. “The system can capture every subtle nuance of expression down to the pixel,” Dr. Bregler said, “and every wrinkle. The wrinkles are especially important.”

Performance capture technology, as its name suggests, is based on actual performances by human actors. But In “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” actors playing chimps do not wear heavy makeup and wigs, as Roddy McDowall did in the 1968 “Planet of the Apes.”

Instead, they wear special electronic gear. In “Rise,” the actor Andy Serkis, who plays the chimp protagonist Caesar, wears a lightweight helmet with a video camera mounted directly in front of his face to record every nuance of expression, outdoors as well as indoors.

These cameras were also employed in “Avatar,” but were used outside for the first time in “Rise,” said Mark Sagar, special projects supervisor at Weta Digital Ltd. and an Oscar winner for his facial motion capture techniques. Weta, a visual effects studio in New Zealand, provided the performance capture technology for “Rise” as well as for “Avatar” and earlier films including the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

The technology of performance capture was well on its way when Mr. Serkis played the mythical character Gollum in “Lord of the Rings,” but facial capture then was at lower resolution and more rudimentary. “The burden was much more on an animator to craft the facial expressions frame by frame,” Dr. Bregler said. “You couldn’t track every pixel in Gollum’s face.”

Moving the technology outside for filming has been another improvement in the evolution of motion capture." You need to do a lot of new engineering to make this work outside, Dr. Bregler said, but the effect is striking. “The actors are set in a natural environment. It’s much more realistic.”

All of the motion capture footage is analyzed and modeled, becoming the basis for computer animation of the ape characters.

For example, when Caesar is called upon to frown — and Caesar does a lot of frowning as the plot thickens — the camera pointing at his face tracks the motion of his skin.

Software analyzes how the underlying human muscles move, and then translates the movement to a chimp counterpart. “For example, an ape’s brow moves in a different way than an actor’s human brow,” Dr. Sagar said.

Software may do most of the animating, but human artists still apply their skills, adjusting the rendering if Mr. Serkis’s protruding human nose is not squashed exactly as it should be to become a chimp’s nose, or if the emotional intent of the performance is not conveyed properly.

“The process is not completely mathematical,” said Joe Letteri, a four-time Oscar winner and senior visual effects supervisor for Weta.

Weta worked closely with Standard Deviation, a motion capture hardware company in Santa Monica, Calif., to design and build many of the cameras used in “Rise,” said Dejan Momcilovic, head of performance capture at Weta. Cameras from the Motion Analysis Corporation in Santa Rosa, Calif., were also used, he said.

The live action shots, combined with the convincing computerized faces of the chimps, work to increase realism, said Steven R. Quartz, a professor of philosophy at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Caesar really seems to be interacting with the other actors. It really does seem to capture subtle nuances in the interaction and the exchanges,” Dr. Quartz said, even though Caesar is artificial.

HOWEVER plausible the animation, movie audiences are not actually seeing a true representation of a chimp’s brow, or eyes either, when they look at Caesar, Dr. De Waal of Emory said. There is plenty of digital fine-tuning to humanize the apes, making them a bit more like us and a bit less like them.

“The head and shoulders of an actual chimp are more massive than Caesar’s,” he said. And Caesar’s eyes have been altered, too, for example, to add white to them.

But Dr. De Waal is glad the filmmakers used actors rather than chimps that are dressed up to play parts. The animals “have miserable lives dancing to our tune,” he said. We are very pleased there is a movie that has been able to circumvent this.”





The #1 Reason Your Render Looks Fake

(blenderguru.com)                   Whether you realize it or not, the sole purpose of all 3d art is to make something look believable.

That’s it. There are no exceptions.

If your image doesn’t relate to the real world in some way, the audience will feel disconnected and become disinterested. It doesn’t matter if your rendering an architectural fly-through of a house or an orc warrior fighting his way out of a volcano, you are still taking something that exists in your mind and producing it as a picture and hoping the audience believes it.
You’re doomed, unless…

Let’s say you spend hours intricately modeling each and every nail of a door frame, you piece together textures to create flawless materials, and you spend a solid week on the lighting setup.  Well guess what? If you hit render now your scene is still going to look fake. The reason for this is simple: You haven’t added camera imperfections.

It sounds like a joke, but it’s absolutely true. Photography is the single most important thing to understand when it comes to learning 3d, but for some reason most artists choose to ignore it.

Do I have your attention yet?

When you take a real photo with a real camera, do you realize how many flaws are being built into the photo?

Just to name a few:

    * Chromatic Abberation
    * Vignetting
    * Soft Glare
    * Light rays
    * Reflecting glare
    * Bloom
    * Lens Flare
    * Glare burnout
    * Ghost glare
    * Depth of Field
    * Motion Blur
    * Lens Distortion
    * Lens dust, scratches, sweat, fingerprints
    * Film developing artifacts
    * Color grading

Now guess how many of these flaws occur when producing a computer generated image?

NONE. ZERO. ZIP. NADA.

When you hit F12 you will produce a perfect still. Every. Single. Time.

For example, take a look at this image by the talented artist, Marek Denko:

Aside from the perfect lighting, flawless modeling and impressive materials. What else has he incorporated?

Effects. And lots of them.

    * Depth of field
    * Chromatic Abberation
    * Lens scratches, dust & dirt
    * Color Grading
    * Bloom
    * Reflecting glare

These are all things are done outside of the 3d viewport and added in post production. That means that after he slaved over every piece of detail in the scene, he flipped to the compositor and continued working. That is what pushed this scene over the edge.

Have you ever wondered how Pixar achieved that authentic film look in Wall-E?

This was actually the result of many months of work. Before they began working on the meat of the production, they focused entirely on trying to replicate the look of live footage in their 3d software. They even went as far as to consult the Director of Photography from No Country for Old Men, on tips for creating real camera and lighting setups.

    “We rented some equipment and used the live-action DP [Marty Rosenberg] who eventually shot some of the live-action elements. He helped us do some lens tests. Our depth of field, our cameras never look as we expect them to.

    “Life is nothing but imperfection and the computer likes perfection, so we spent probably 90% of our time putting in all of the imperfections, whether it’s in the design of something or just the unconscious stuff. How the camera lens works in [a real] housing is never perfect, and we tried to put those imperfections [into the virtual camera] so that everything looks like you’re in familiar [live-action] territory.”

    -Andrew Stanton


The result was a very slick, very believable environment for Wall-E to explore.

Why using the compositor is crucial to your success

The most common question people ask is, why would I want to incorporate camera flaws into my renders? After all camera flaws are exactly that, flaws. So wouldn’t an image that is clean from these flaws look better?

Nope. Let me explain why.

When you look at a white car sitting in the hot sun, your eyes expect to see a reflecting glare. When you look closely at your spoon during breakfast, your eyes expect the bowl of cereal in the background to be out of focus. And at night time when you look at a street lamp, your eyes expect to see rays of light.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

Our eyes have become so accustomed to seeing these imperfections that they have become apart of the object. And when they are missing, the viewer spots a fake.

Now don’t get me wrong, lighting, materials, textures and lighting are all important and I’m not pretending they aren’t, but until you learn how to replicate the look of a real camera in the compositor, you can kiss believability goodbye.

If you are interested in exploring this topic further, I am writing an eBook called The Wow Factor. It’s not available yet, but you can register your interest here: http://wowfactorbook.com





26th August 2011 | Industrial Light & Magic, San Francisco

Take a look:         http://www.flickr.com/photos/edgarwright/6085782173/#/photos/edgarwright/6085782173/lightbox/