LogInTo create the upcoming Avatar movie, the team has used entirely new cameras, AI, and special algorithms as well as a great deal of other new and expensive tech.
Avatar: The Way of Water, the sequel to the original 2009's film, which remains the highest-grossing movie of all time, has received a new trailer showcasing a number of stunning digital Pandorian landscapes and revealing the Avatar world even more.
Regardless of what you may think of the story of the Na’vi and human intersection, the impressiveness of the movies in terms of visuals and technical achievements cannot be denied. When working on the first movie, Avatar director James Cameron already brought a lot of innovations to the industry. For instance, he and his team built a special camera rig that allowed them to see an actor’s CG character as well as the CG environments right in the camera.
And for the sequel, the team came up with more technological advancements such as entirely new cameras, the use of AI and special algorithms, and other new tech.
Speaking to GQ, Cameron explained that the process of creating Avatar movies is quite complex and that the animation you can see there differs a lot from animation movies from Disney or Pixar. As the GQ profile noted, it "involves creating a data-rich but visually undistinguished package that Cameron calls a template – on which he captures the lighting, performances, and camera moves he wants – which then gets handed over to Wētā to apply algorithms and layers of animation to bring the template to life."
For Avatar: The Way of Water, Cameron and his team also built a new camera system that uses Sony's VENICE Camera which essentially allowed the team to create a stereoscopic 3D system that provided it with the ability to shoot with more flexibility and freedom. The team also created a motion-capture system that was able to collect separate shots from above and below water and integrate them into a unified virtual image.
According to Cameron, however, even with all this new tech, it still took a great amount of work to create the movie. For instance, the director showed GQ a single effects shot which was numbered 405 which, as Cameron said, means that "there’s been 405 versions of this before it gets to [him]."
When asked about how expensive The Way of Water was to make, considering all the new tech used to produce it, Cameron simply said it was "very fucking" expensive noting that the movie represented "the worst business case in movie history." He also added that in order to be profitable, it has to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history.
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