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Avatar - Motion Capturing the Na'vi
By James Emery Vigh of profbruno.com
James Cameron created his epic Avatar using motion capture and CG technology to create the Na'vi and the world of Pandora. In preparation for the filming, all actors (human and Na'vi) underwent professional training specific to their roles in archery, horseback riding, firearms,and hand-to-hand combat. They also received language and dialect training in the Na'vi language. The cast was then sent to a jungle in Hawaii to get a feel for a rain forest setting before shooting on the soundstage. The live action for the humans was shot in Los Angeles and New Zealand. But most of the action was filmed on a performance action stage called "the volume". The volume for Avatar was a large sound stage surrounded by 120 stationary video cameras which could film all of the actors on stage at the same time in 3D. Data from these cameras was streamed into special software which translated the actors movements into digital characters in real time within a low-resolution computer generated environment. So riding a fake banshee mockup on stage instantly translated to CG footage. Because the volume captured the action from multiple angles at once, Cameron could digitally render whatever angles and shots he wanted for the scene. The Na'vi actors wore motion capture body suits with reference markers and stripes. They also wore special cameras aimed at their faces. That camera tracked green ink dots that were painted on their faces giving Cameron close-up level detail of changes in facial expressions which could be mapped to the actors' CG faces. To get from the CG produced on the set to the world of Pandora, the raw footage was sent to Weta Digital in Wellington, New Zealand. There, special effects programmers used a facial solve program and facial action coding to translate the actors' every minute muscle movement including blinks, twitches, and frowns to believable expressions for the CG Na'vi. To film the shots where the Na'vi interact with humans, a special camera was used to shoot the live action with the CG superimposed over the live action. A monitor was set up so that Cameron could instruct his actors how to react during the shot.
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Contributor's Note
In my intel that reviewed the movie Avatar, I referred to the Na'vi as being 10 feet tall. I was wrong. They are 12 feet tall.
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James Emery Vigh Personal Blog
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The volume
Riding a fake Banshee in a motion capture body suit
Final rendering
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So that's how they do it. Interesting, I've yet to see the film.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Oh... you should see it. It's wonderful.
Sounds complicated but I enjoyed the movie like no other, I could watch it over and over again because the landscape was so breathtakingly beautiful... :)
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February, 2012
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