Avatar

Avatar, director James Cameron’s blockbuster, is a technological breakthrough. Weta Digital, the Wellington company responsible for the groundbreaking visual effects in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, took the process to a new level of creative and technological excellence. Weta Digital was tasked with building effects sequences with as many as 800 fully computer generated characters in highly stylized digital settings.

For Avatar, Weta Digital created over 1,800 stereoscopic, photo-realistic visual effects shots, many of them of the Na'vi as 'hero' characters. For the Na'vi to be believable, realistic facial animation was crucial. Those characters experience a wide range of emotions and the facial animation had to convey these in a realistic way.

Weta Digital used a variety of innovative techniques to make the facial animation realistic including facial motion capture. Using a high-definition video camera attached to the face of an actor and markers on the face, Weta Digital's in-house software was able to map out which muscles in the face were moving. The company’s software then translated the data and applied it to a facial-animation system.

In addition to creating the digital characters and environments, Weta Digital also integrated the visual effects footage with the live-action filming - the company’s work blurred the line between imagination and reality.