Hello Readers, Have you thought of how Hollywood makes high quality block buster VFX movies so fast.

Well today in this blog we will try to find the answer.

Blockbuster Hollywood movies are becoming visually rich with VFX every year.

High quality VFX movies had become the popular genre of Hollywood.

Visual Effects or VFX enriches the content of the blockbuster movies.

Distinguished Hollywood Studios like Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and others are playing major role behind blockbuster VFX movies.

A VFX movie requires lot of digital CG (Computer Graphics) shots to complete the movie.

Steps To High Quality VFX Movies

Within Hollywood studios every 3D and VFX rich Hollywood movie goes through a workflow such as

• Storyboard/Pre Production
• 3D Cinematic or Pre-visualization
• 3D Modeling , Texturing or UV unwrapping
• Rigging or Animation
• Simulation, Lighting and shading
• Live action shooting
• Rotoscoping, Chroma Removal, wire removal, matte painting and over all compositing.

3D software like Autodesk Maya, 3ds Max, Houdini, Nuke plays a big role in every solo production of VFX movie.

The trick behind Hollywood’s high quality VFX movies are new age technologies.

With new age technologies Hollywood is seamlessly delivering products with great details in less time and this is the reason behind so many VFX movies so fast.

Hollywood’s New Technological Advancements

3D Scanner And Digitizers

These day real life actors are not modelled from scratch in the 3D software for digital doubles.

The actors are digitally scanned which gives high detailed 3D geometry with the skin texture details.

3D software contributes in making the 3D scanned models perfect in look.

All major Hollywood movies use digital doubles which can be achieved through this 3D scanner technique without data loss.

Through 3D scanner human character is scanned 360 degree by cameras from multiple angles.

3D modelling artist later aligns and merges the 3D scanned data to bring out realistic effect.

3D scanner is like Light Stage where the actor sits and light rig captures every detail of the actor.

3D scanner can also capture all the physical activities of the character with full body performance scanning.

It is one of the great technological innovations.

Movies in which this exceptional technology has been used are Gravity, Matrix Revolution, The Avengers and the list goes on.

3D Camera Projection

3D Camera Projection or Camera Mapping is the ultimate tool for Matte Painting Artists.

Before this technique modellers and texturing artists had to create massive work for the Computer Graphic objects.

In 3D Camera Projection technique 2D flat image is projected on 3D geometry and 3D geometry is built accurately with reference of actual width, height and depth of 2D image.

This technique has reduced time and production money.

Camera Mapping works well with irregular shaped objects.

Texture can be placed on computer generated imagery (CGI) according to the camera animation.

This technique has speed up Hollywood’s VFX post-production work; Blackmagic Fusion and Nuke are utilized mostly for Camera Mapping.

Motion Capture (Mo Cap)

In Motion Capture or Performance Capture artist wears special kind of suit equipped with sensors and markers.

With Mo Cap every action of the actor can be recorded by cameras and lighting effects directly into 3D animation platform.

To capture detailed facial expressions multiple sensors are placed on the face of motion capture artist.

This amazing technology can also be used to transfer movement of real animals to CGI animals apart from human beings.

Character Gollum from the movie Lord of the Rings was the first complete MO-Cap character of live action movie.

Film Avatar is the landmark in the field of Motion Capture.

CGI 3D Models And Assets Library

Most of the Hollywood studios make use of 3D models and assets library for their production workflow.

3D models and assets library contains numerous props like vehicles, weapons, machinery, helicopters etc.

Artists at studios create a huge collection of 3D models as per requirement and save them as Master File in the main server so that different departments can access it and reuse those 3D models in various movies to speed up the production work.

Hollywood studios have readymade 3D cities in their assets library; 3D cities of USA with exact real life city details and proper scaling.

There are several websites are available who sells professional 3D models; studios can buy required assets from such sites if the deadline is too short.

Assets library models can be reused over the period of time.

High-quality technologies like LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and Photo-grammetry are used for accuracy.

Stock Footages

VFX stock footage consist variety of options like car blast, explosion, rock debris, dust wave, smoke fumes, glass breaking, gun fire, bullet hits and many more for compositing artists.

2D plates of stock footages with manual key frame animation are mainly used to complete the shot.

Stock footages are generally filmed with black background or blue/green chroma screen; so that background can be easily removed.

Stock Footages gives high quality movie effects in low budget.

VFX stock footages are available in various resolutions and can be seen in every VFX breakdown shot.

Animatronics

Animatronics is the combination of animation and electronics.

In the movies like Jurassic Park, Jaws or Godzilla the creatures were created in full scale with heavy texture details.

Animatronics are full sized real life sculpture for convincing cinematography.

These huge puppets are operated by hydraulic system for their complete body movements.

It is a part of robotics technologies which gives great control to the director and replaces live animals from risky action sequences.

Prosthetics

This technique is used to create high quality artificial skins.

Facial prosthetic is used for wrinkle, stretching, scars etc.

Various pieces of face and body parts can be glued on actor in case of facial prosthetic.

Prosthetic make up played excellent role in movies like Mission Impossible and Charlie’s Angels.

Prosthetic technique has improved a lot in recent Hollywood VFX movies.

All the above mentioned advanced technologies are high quality cost effective solution for Hollywood’s blockbuster VFX movies.

Learn more about spectacular VFX techniques by joining our MAAC Centres.