Transcript Legolas was originally built as a NURBS

國立雲林科技大學
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
The Visual effects that brought middle
earth to the screen
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Introduction
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Weta Digital’s work on the ”Lord of the Rings”
trilogy involved it in all aspects of feature film
visual effects.
from creature and digital double animation to
massive battle scenes , from the creation of
entirely digital environments to the groundbreaking digital performance of Gollum
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Motivation
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This course will present an insight into how
each of aspects of the production was achieved
and offer detailed breakdowns of techniques
developed and procedures used in this
milestone production.
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國立雲林科技大學
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
Gollum
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Design Process
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Working from initial sketches from the design
team , Weta Workshop sculptors began
creating physical maquettes of Gollum for
scanning.
The digital models team used these maquettes
as a basis for all Gollum work on The
Fellowship Of The Ring.
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Actor Andy Serkis performed the role of
Gollum and provided artists with detailed
reference. example
Motion capture data provided the movement to
re-create the character , and with human facial
reference to work with the animation team
could re-create expressions down to the finest
wrinkles.
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化妝
編修
動作擷取
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Andy provided facial expressions for the full range of
Gollum's emotions
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Demo1
Demo2
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Gollum and Smeagol
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The spilt between them needs to be subtle
enough to blink and miss , but also be
available to Jackson as a directable option.
Animator controlled sliders triggered the
wrinkle values to appear in his forehead , on
the sides of his nose and around the lips and
eyes.
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Skin and Bones
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Starting with a skeletal framework
Weta Digital took an inside-out approach to creature rigging .
Muscles were attached , built up into a complete form , and
then layered with skin .
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Hair
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Weta Digital examined several ways that hair
dynamics could be simulated .
Looking at some existing tools that were
already in Maya , they realized that hair has
very similar properties to small strips of cloth .
The strips were given properties to mimic the
movement of hair . Hair curves were then
wrapped to the cloth , and rendered .
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One of Maya Cloth’s limitations is that it
tangles easily with fast moving objects , and
won’t untangle .
One of the requirements of the new hair
solution was to be able to handle winds .
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Because the system was difficult producing the
results Weta Digital wanted .
They began looking at other available hair and
cloth systems . Finally , they find that “Syflex”
could potentially solve some of the problems
they had with Maya’s cloth simulations .
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Using Syflex allowed breaking the solution down into
smaller and smaller strips . The final solution was to
have one strip of cloth driving each bundle of hair ,
giving more independent movement .
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國立雲林科技大學
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
Other creature
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One of things that made the project unique was
the number of digital creatures that were
required to operate at the “hero” level .
See the movie
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國立雲林科技大學
National Yunlin University of Science and Technology
PELENNOR FIELDS
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Massive
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Weta Digital’s crowd animation software “Massive”
was specifically designed and continually developed
for The Lord Of The Rings films .
Massive uses aspects of artificial life to procedurally
animate individual agents .
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Each agent has a “brain” and a network of
fuzzy logic switches giving them a primitive
sense of sight and hearing .
They can react to their immediate
surroundings , and each others .
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The “brain” result in complex emergent
behaviour . Very quickly there is a sense that
each agent is an individual doing their own
thing .
This supports a much higher level of realism
than traditional .
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Blue screen
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Massive
Final screen
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Digital Doubles
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Nearly every lead character had at least one digital
double .
Legolas is a good example of how the digital doubles
evolves over the course of the Trilogy .
Legolas was originally built as a NURBS model . But
over the course of the films was rebuilt into a mostly
SubD model .
His shaders were rewritten for each film ,
incorporating advances in our shader libraries to try
to meet the increasingly demanding shots of each
film . For example , Gollum’s skins shader .we folded
these new functions for digital double .
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MAYA建模目前一共有三種, 依發展順序分別為
NURBS, Polygon, SubD.
NURBS是連續的曲線，所以會比較圓滑。直角還
是得用Polygon來表現較為完美。但是Polygon也
在建模完成後可以下達圓滑功能,所以也可以不出
現太過於銳利的邊緣.
至於SubD則為最新的建模工具.他有點像是結合了
NURBS跟Polygon兩者的功能,能建立出圓中帶直
角的模具,讓建模有更多更方便的選擇.
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While we improved the digital doubles , Peter Jackson handed
over increasingly challenging shots .
Include Legolas acrobatically mounts a horse and climbs onto
the back of a Mumak .
In nearly every shot in that sequence , there was a hand-off
between Orlando Bloom and his digital double .
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The other monster in The Return Of The King
include Mumakil and Great Beast and Trolls .
See the movie .
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Conclusion
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At Weta Digital the work of the artist is paramount ,
as our work on Lord of the Rings demonstrates .
It is the work of our animators in visualizing a whole
world such as Middle Earth , placing the audience in
the middle of the battle of Pelennor Fields ,and
bringing a complex digital character like Gollum to
life that we consider to be Weta Digital’s true
strength .
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