Hollywood legendary director

Los Angeles, digital headquarters.

After the three founders of the company had two unintentional management, all the burdens fell on Scott Rose.

In order to prevent the company from falling into the dangerous situation of bankruptcy, after reaching an agreement with the board of directors, the entire special effects team not only kept receiving orders, but also continuously streamlined team members and cut some unnecessary technology research and development.

Then, after Lehmann returned from France with the financing funds, he took a rest and immediately visited the digital field.

After all, the special effects work of "The Mist" is still contracted in the digital field, and we need to see how it works.

In the face of many troubles, Scott Rose also took the initiative to meet Lehman and his party at the headquarters.

"...This is Benjamin Joseph, the president of Firefly, and this is Director Lehman..." Following the introduction of the receptionist, several people made a polite approach to each other.

"Mr. Lyman, I was not in Los Angeles last time for some trivial matters. I'm sorry to see you now."

At this time, the digital field attaches great importance to every single business that can be obtained.

"It's okay, Mr. Rose, I think, let's take a look at the work entrusted to your company first."

"Of course, we are almost done. Please..."

A group of people came to a compartment in the warehouse, and Scott Rose personally demonstrated the created special effects scene.

On the screen, a thick mist rose from the lake, slowly spreading, spreading, and then spreading until it covered the entire town...

In the dense fog, monsters resembling giant praying mantis, four-winged flying birds, terrestrial tentacles, red-eyed migratory locusts...

Quite a kind of strange world creatures rush to the feet, of course, this is very foggy.

The overall need is not much different from Lehman's requirements, and the texture is more refined.

It is worthy of a big price. It really pays for what you pay for. It does not have the cost-saving plastic flavor of the original version. It is much more real than the model.

However, there is still a distance from perfection...

Lehman watched it several times, but couldn't help but frowned and said, "Mr. Rose, how come all the monsters in the screen have the same facial expressions, don't they have any emotional changes? It's too rigid, can you change it? ?"

"Um..." Scott Rose said with some embarrassment: "We can only be similar in appearance but not in spirit."

"Why, isn't the Guru in "The Lord of the Rings" expressive? What I need is similar agility."

Scott couldn't help explaining this kind of layman's question. After all, the big benefactor hadn't paid the final payment.

"...The technique of capturing facial expressions is very difficult. As for the Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings", Andy Serkins first went to the studio with the actors and then returned to the motion capture studio of Weta Studio. Perform it again by one person. Even if it is so troublesome, the animator draws the facial expressions one by one, and the mapping data is re-modeled..."

All in all, according to Scott Rose, in addition to the technical achievements of "The Lord of the Rings", the grunt part of "The Lord of the Rings" is more of Andy Serkins. The outside world said "Owes him an Oscar statuette" because The motion capture performance at the time was that he was too open.

For the same scene, he had to perform two matching actions on the set and the studio, and he had to be consistent.

Moreover, the strength of the digital field lies in large-scale scene rendering, such as the process of dense fog diffusion, not how powerful the motion capture technology is.

The really awesome one is Weta Digital.

It is also worth mentioning that the director of "Forrest Gump", Robert Zemigis, has also become a big fan of motion capture, and he cannot extricate himself from entering the technical circle.

In 2004, the "Polar Express" produced by his studio ImageMoverDigital announced that it was an animation that could be filmed entirely with motion capture technology.

Of course, the facial expression problem is still a big problem, but Zemigis has made a great contribution to the promotion of motion capture technology. If he developed the technology, the original "Star Wars 1" would not be spent on a single motion capture. Over 10 million, the cost of technology application is greatly reduced.

Moreover, motion capture can only be carried out in a dedicated studio. The sensitivity to light is too high and the equipment will be interfered. In this regard, it is the strength of Industrial Light and Magic. Their iMoCap system can be used in complex outdoor environments. Work under the circumstances, but still unable to solve the facial expression problem, the later stage of data processing requires a lot of manual intervention, cost a lot, and the effect may not be very good...

In other words, everyone is stuck in the improvement of facial expression technology. Also, the reason why the digital field was eliminated later is that it was a clean loss in this technology competition because of the management and funding. There hasn't been much development in technology research and development, but it has been surpassed by countless younger generations.

When Lehmann heard these internal news, Vita was the first thought.

Because the perfection of the technical reserves of "Avatar" in the future is the barrier that Cameron commissioned Weta Digital to build together, and this barrier was not broken by Industrial Light and Magic until 15 years...

Since it couldn't be improved, or it was hard to please, Lehman didn't ask for much.

In these scenes, except that the monster is stiff and slightly flawed, the others are pretty good.

Moreover, if everyone is not good enough, the audience will not have much comparisons and will not care too much.

Furthermore, after the footage has been edited, there will be fewer faces showing up, and the scene material will be sufficient for the needs of "The Mist".

The same is true, Lehman was very happy to accept the results, and did not say anything about rework.

Then, the next thing is much simpler, the contract has been signed and the balance paid to the digital field.

In the relaxed mood of everyone, Lyman stopped Scott Rose who was about to leave and offered dinner.

"Mr. Rose, I remember you just mentioned using capture technology to shoot animation? Are you optimistic about this market?"

At the table, Lehman said in a chatty tone.

Scott shook his head, "I don't understand the animation industry, but there is no doubt that it will be the future of 3-D animation computer production. Motion capture technology should still be placed on live action movies."

The digital field is just like its founders. They have never participated in animation production, and they are not very attractive. However, the path of motion capture in animation production is really too narrow. Scott did not see this point. wrong.

For cash cows like Pixar, Lehman has been greedy for a long time, but unfortunately he can't afford it at all.

After all, Pixar's market value is over 5.5 billion, close to two Firefly Pictures.

But this does not mean that he has no idea about the animation field.

Layout early will reap...

Of course, the focus now is to hold a considerable asset in the future wave of motion capture special effects...

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