How Weta Digital Handled Avatar

James Cameron’s Stereo-3D Epic Demanded Workflow Innovation

By Barbara Robertson January 5, 2010 Source: Film & Video Avatar, director James Cameron’s second billion-dollar baby, stretched the process of making a visual effects blockbuster as much as it is stretching the imagination of audiences streaming into theaters to revel in an alien world. To create the moon Pandora and the Na’vi who live there, Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, with help from Giant studios, created a real-time performance capture system. The system allowed the director to see CG characters in CG environments reacting in realtime as the actors climbed props representing trees, rode gimbaled machines representing horses and dragons, and otherwise moved around the stage. ...more