What is the visual revolution that created “Avatar: The Way of Water”? Approaching the latest technology (Part 2)

Wētā FX rendering technology

The reality is also due to significant improvements in rendering technology. What made this possible is a physically-based ray tracer called MANUKA developed by Weta Digital. Previously, like other VFX productions, they used RenderMan, developed and sold by Pixar Animation Studios. However, there were many complaints that the function was insufficient for expressing realistic creatures, so we proceeded with in-house development and started using it from `` The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies ' ' (2014). ' From then on, it came to be used across the board.

MANUKA's feature is that it calculates light not as RGB, but as a spectrum of wavelengths. As a result, skin color is determined not by conventional subsurface scattering, but by differences in the amount of absorption by pigments, such as the blue skin texture of Na'vi and the translucent invertebrates in the sea. I was able to express this naturally. There is also PhysLight, which records the lighting used by the cinematographer during live-action shooting and lights the CG based on the image. By using spherical harmonics , they are able to speed up numerical calculations and significantly reduce the amount of data. The work procedure is to test using Gazebo, a real-time renderer developed in-house, and once the approval is received, high-resolution images are rendered using MANUKA.

“Avatar: The Way of Water” (C) 2022 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Furthermore, in composite technology, we have developed a technique called Deep compositing . This allows each pixel to have multiple samples of color information, relative depth from the camera, transparency, etc., allowing for translucent elements such as water and flames, as well as volume-rendered objects such as clouds and smoke. This technology allows you to adjust the composite later without re-rendering it. Although the amount of data is considerably heavier than the conventional composite method, it greatly improves flexibility and operability. As you can see, WoW is definitely packed with 13 years of technological advancements.

Review of “Avatar: The Way of Water”