Avatar was in the making for quite some time. James Cameron really waited for the right moment to start working on this movie. The making of Avatar was a hard process for both James and his crew. One company had to work harder then others. Weta Digital which was responsible for most of the visual effects had to really turn itself inside out to adapt for Avatar.

Lord of the Rings was a first step. This movie gave great hopes for James Cameron. When James first saw the movie, he knew it is time to start making the Avatar. Weta’s research and development crew worked all these years on unique technologies for character animation. Another part of R&D was focused on making digital plants and forests become reality.

When Weta Digital finished polishing their skills, it became a reality that Avatar can be made. Movies like Lord of the Rings and King Kong really brought this company on the top of the iceberg of visual effect industry! James Cameron had unique world in his mind. This world was populated with creatures, called Na’vi. They are much taller than human, and had to be done digitally. Golum from The Lord of the Rings was a thing of a past, Weta utilized this technology and enchanced it to help making of Avatar to become reality. Success of making the Avatar possible was very dependant on technologies. How well Weta would be able to deliever James’ ideas was a big stepping stone for the whole movie production.

To capture actor’s performance Weta had to come up with new ideas. Video capture of actor’s faces was a new technology for facial performance data capture. This was achieved through the use of a head rig. This rig was essentially a helmet with a small camera. Camera was placed on a special rig. It was placed just a few inches from the actor’s face. This gave tracked data for those dots. When actor performed, all their moves were captured with the camera. This way Weta had the date for each actor’s tiny move in time. While chooting the performance, actor’s faces had to be marked with small dots. Those were painted directly on actor’s faces. Then small digital camera was used to capture every inch of movement to gather all the data required to have full picture. Weta developed new 2D tracking and solving software. These small dots on actor’s faces were then used in a special software. The software would drive the facial rig to bring in real performance to the world of computers. The rig on the other hand drove virtual muscles. This technology really helped in the making of Avatar. You may want to check out these two making of’s.

20 minute making of Avatar
45 Minute Exclusive Making of Avatar
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