How This Software Helped Make the Best Animations | Facets

in avatar the navi people inhabiting the planet Pandora were created using a combination of live-action performance capture and digital animation but there is one secret software or system that was used by water digital to create and animate the Navy's characters facial expressions and movements making them appear more lifelike and expressive one notable example in action is the character of natieri the female lead of Avatar played by actor Zoe Saldana so using motion capture data of Saldana's performance combined with manual animation and certain algorithms while the digital was able to create a highly detailed and realistic digital version of nahiri that accurately conveyed her emotions and expressions throughout the whole film which helped make the movie a huge success so what is this system that what a digital used to capture facial expressions how it was created and how it pioneered many other similar technologies that movie makers and Via FX Studios used today for many decades in 3D animation and VFX movies capture realistic and expressive facial expressions was a struggle and creating believable characters was the biggest challenge especially when it comes to facial animation this is the case because the tools that were available for this task have often fallen short of expectations from clunky workflows extensive post-production fixes filmmakers and VFX artists have long struggled to achieve the seamless authentic facial expressions that audience is grave but most importantly a performance that audiences can believe take for example what is considered the worst VFX shot in the 2001 movie The Mummy Returns the BMX artists spent a lot of time and effort to make the Scorpion King's facial expressions look good but they just didn't for many reasons a couple of years later what a digital the masterminds behind some of the biggest Blockbusters in recent history such as Avatar Lord of the Rings The Hobbit trilogy Tintin and the Planet of the Apes trilogy started developing their tools to address these challenges before we continue if you are interested in learning more about how to learn 3D modeling and animation I recommend you try skillshare you may know skillshare for photography video editing and illustration classes but it actually has many animation game development and VFX focused stuff for example at real Engine 5 for beginners by Jordi vanderput is one of the best classes out there it will help you get up and running with Unreal Engine 5 and all its exciting new features by learning how to build realistic Landscapes and interior scenes as well as the fundamentals of visual production you can also find many classes about blender Maya 3ds Max Cinema 4D After Effects and much more but the great thing is you can access thousands of classes every month for less than it will cost you to just get one out there the first 1000 people to click the link in the description will get a one month free trial of skillshare Premium membership so back in 2006 after it was confirmed that they will work on Avatar when I was looking for better and more effective facial capture Solutions compared to the ones that were available at the time back then as previously mentioned actors were required to capture the movement of the body and the face separately which was quite difficult and only a few and select actors could do it so in a movie like Avatar a CG production that relies heavily on facial capture to portray emotion it was pretty much impossible to finish the film within a reasonable time frame especially considering that workflow and thus what I started developing facets to solve that issue and that process took them around 8 months as you might know James Cameron the director of Avatar is not the easiest person to impress especially when it comes to this type of work so this was an opportunity for both James and Warren to push their boundaries in this groundbreaking project so what a digital went to work using their previous knowledge and experience in previous projects like King Kong and Lord of the Rings to develop passage which is a highly Advanced facial tracking technology that says allowed them to capture the facial expressions of actors and then using that data as animation on digital doubles or characters for a variety of VFX Productions it goes without saying how powerful fast sets is and we could at the very least say it has revolutionized the way we capture facial expressions and there is for a plethora of different reasons with this new system the process of capturing facial expressions has been taken to new heights because in traditional methods actors capture body movements first and facial expressions later often months apart which is anything but intuitive so instead or as an alternative the facet system uses a camera that is attached to the actor's face to capture the Expressions while filming or capturing the body motion which is smart allowing for a seamless and natural end product instead of awkwardly filming the face later which doesn't seem right this Innovative approach has revolutionized the way we create visual characters making it possible to capture and produce results that are genuinely lifelike in addition to being compelling additionally it can translate facial expressions onto creatures with non-human features opening up Limitless possibilities this technology later on was used in some of their other movies such as Tintin The Hobbit trilogy and of course the planet of the a franchise where actors were able to bring their characters to life with unparalleled realism and were able to convey Deep Emotions for me personally the Planet of the Apes was just mind-blowing so after that what a digital continued to use this technology with avoid versions of acids that were made throughout the years which can only be a testament to the ability and reliability in addition to the impact on the tool on the VFX industry at Large some other Studios were able also to make their own tools similar to facets and this democratized this type of technology in film Productions the use of assets can significantly enhance the realism and emotional impact of a scene by analyzing the facial movements of actors filmmakers can smoothly translate the emotions into the imaginary characters the intention isn't to copy the actor's Expressions into the creature's face rather it is to suddenly showcase emotions through the data for example when the actor Andy circus's face was used for Caesar the main character from The Planet of the Apes the idea wasn't to have Caesar look like Andy but for his skull and muscle sad to interpret the emotional performance of the actor it is also used to fine-tune and enhance the immersiveness of a movie Universe by being able to capture facial expressions of multiple actors at the same time which offers the possibility to create fantasy worlds where the characters can naturally interact with each other and the best example of this would be Avatar we all know that other VFS companies such as digital domain have their own motion capture technology go check the video we created about it if you are interested the question is what what makes facets so unique for starters it uses Eric based solving approach which allows them to capture even the tiniest details of an actor's facial performance simply put it works by attaching what we can refer to as markers or sensors to specific points on the actor's face and tracking their movement while performing facets can then generate high quality animations based on the actor's facial expressions but that's not what sets fastest apart from the competition with this tool you can capture facial expressions in real time meaning you can see the result instantly and fix them on the spot by capturing the actors again without any need for post-production this means you can spend more time creating and less time editing but if ever needed it also has a powerful noise removal feature that cleans up capture data without sacrificing quality in addition to offering animators full controls of the generated data as they can be easily edited and let's not forget about the facial action encoding system also referred to as facts it is basically a system that breaks down facial expressions into individual muscle groups and then uses the data to capture the facial movements of actors which is one of the reasons that enable the software to have great Precision in addition to accuracy in the facial capturing process while the two offers artists at what are specifically the ability to edit and capture data it should not be seen as a quick fix for facial animation as much as it is simply a solution to smoothed animation curve and performance issues and so the actors can either make or break the animation so if the Expressions the actors performed were not accurate the best solution is shooting again which might be time consuming and especially tedious but when we consider all the problems the fastest fixes in my opinion it is worth the struggle additionally it agrees the tool into existing pipelines presents several challenges and problems that must be addressed to ensure smooth and efficient workflows one of the main challenges is the need for compatibility with existing software in addition to the hardware of course ensuring the facets can work seamlessly with careful planning and testing I hope you guys found this video useful and informative if you did please subscribe to this channel to see more content like this you can also check some of our previous videos thank you very much for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: InspirationTuts

Views: 12,246

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Id: MIZbIb24Lt4

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 18 2023