As the reviews keep coming for Avatar: The Way of Water, pressure is on for the movie to live up to both its hype and its budget.
Its 2009 predecessor, Avatar, held the record for the highest-grossing film ever for around a decade, and Director James Cameron’s latest film has an estimated production cost of $350million, making it one of the most expensive movies of all time, in part thanks to a huge investment in CGI and special effects.
Tech & Science Daily has spoken with the team behind the visual effects for the movie, Weta FX.
Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Saindon revealed that the technology is “always getting better”, and admitted that the team have continued to upgrade their tech, even since the beginning of the year.
A major element of the Avatar sequel was water, and Eric told Tech & Science Daily all of the water in the movie is CGI, along with most of the characters.
In this episode Eric describes the challenges of making water and other effects so realistic, and how they overcame them.
Plus, Animation Supervisor Daniel Barrett describes the facial animation technology, and how they used a neural network to determine the correct facial movements for each scene.
Listen here or here:
