There are a lot of digital visual effects companies out there now a days. But there are a few that stand out more than others such as Weta Digital and Industrial Lights & Magic. Weta Digital developed groundbreaking software and hardware in the field of visual effects. The MASSIVE, a program created for the large scale battles in The Lord of the Rings trilogy films; which animates a large amount of artificial intelligent objects that react independently from one and another. Weta designed a new set of tools to create the Kong's fur for the King Kong movie. The set of tools added environmental factors like wind for each individual stand of fur. New shadow casting software was written to calculate for light and shadow passing through the stands in the fur. The company developed a motion capture technique that was use in The Lord of the Rings for Gollum and was further improved in the use of creating the Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
As the video shows, Weta went beyond the expectations of the mo-cab suit and they are using it in a new way that has not been done before. They have cameras that some capture the movement of the mo-cap suit while others capture the environmental. They have a third type of camera that is attached to the headgear, which records the facial expressions. The markers on the face are just that. They are markers used for precise camera tracking. Camera tracking is recording footage, breaking the footage down into frames and calculating the movement of the objects in the frames along with the movement of the camera. Once the camera tracking is complete then 3D models can be placed into the footage without the models sliding around in a noticeable way.
As the video shows, Weta went beyond the expectations of the mo-cab suit and they are using it in a new way that has not been done before. They have cameras that some capture the movement of the mo-cap suit while others capture the environmental. They have a third type of camera that is attached to the headgear, which records the facial expressions. The markers on the face are just that. They are markers used for precise camera tracking. Camera tracking is recording footage, breaking the footage down into frames and calculating the movement of the objects in the frames along with the movement of the camera. Once the camera tracking is complete then 3D models can be placed into the footage without the models sliding around in a noticeable way.
Industrial Light & Magic creates visual effects more for the science fiction type movies. The founder George Lucas created ILM once he began production of the Star Wars film. The company has produced special effects for about three hundred films. In the year 2000, the company developed the OpenEXR format for High Dynamic Range Imaging. This allowed for more digital imaging or photographic techniques like light from direct sunlight to the low illumination from starlight.
This video is showing scenes from the movie that the special effects artists model. The video starts with the basic wire-frame model then transitions to the mesh model and slowly adds more detail, step by step to show the video what the main steps are to make movie's graphics possible. After the model is finished then the artist move on to the environment. The rain that is added is just a particle system with water material added to the particles and a wind force modifier.