Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1144162
66 cgw s u m m e r 2 0 1 9 in Weta's facial animation pipeline, using Deep Shapes, which enable the animators to procedurally add more fine-level detail to the facial performance. "When Thanos's facial performance changes from one expression to the next, we're not changing either of those end points of that transition. They're still stay- ing exactly the same. "That's important be- cause we like our facial animators to have complete control over the shape of Tha- nos's face so we can control the facial per- formance at a very high level," says Aitken. "But, we wanted to add some complexity to that transition itself, so we're modeling a little bit of inertia so that where the tissue sits on top of the bone in the head, de- pending on the depth of that tissue, there's maybe some inertia, a little bit of fine-level detail, shape. It's not something you would necessarily consciously be aware of when you're looking at Thanos, but it's something we feel adds more natural movement to his facial performance and, therefore, makes him more believable." The Thanos model, however, is pretty much the same as it was for Infinity War, though he is dressed differently, this time in armor. In addition, he is a bit younger, having come from four to five years in the past. "He's younger, more agile, and more powerful," Aitken says, requiring keyframe animators to dial in his movements on top of the motion captured from Brolin and the motion captured from a stunt performer whose actions are driving the character in the fight scenes during the end battle. How- ever, Thanos is eight feet tall, and keyframe animators had to reflect that scale and mass within the captured motion. "We wanted people to immediately rec- ognize that this is the same Thanos from In- finity War, but also that he's subtly different," explains Aitken of the age differential. PA S T S E LV E S Aer Scott Lang (Ant-Man) escapes the Quantum Realm, where he was stuck for five hours, he learns that five years have ac- tually passed, leading Smart Hulk and Tony Stark to uncover a way for the Avengers to time travel. Three teams are sent back to various time points to retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos grabs them and unleashes his destruction with his snap. For fans, the sequence re-introduces scenes from past films and memorable characters from the first Avengers to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1. "We went back and unarchived the origi- nal shots, but because we're at [a different aspect ratio now] compared to the first Avengers, we had to recompose those shots for Endgame," explains DeLeeuw. "Some of the work was seven years old and used older technology, so we had to take the original plates prior to the DI and convert them into our code base." In one scene, Nebula and Rhodes travel back to Morag 2014 and steal the Pow- er Stone before Peter Quill does so in Guardians; the current visual effects team re-created the set. During the scene with Quill dancing, the team began to intercut the shots with those from Guardians, timing it to the beats of the song to the point where they are back in their present day. A similar technique was used for the sequence in New York City, where Bruce Banner and his team head to collect their stone. In another time-heist scene, Banner, Lang, Rogers, and Stark travel to NYC 2012. ENDGAME'S FINAL BATTLE FEATURES MANY CHARACTERS WHO RETURN TO DEFEAT THANOS. ILM GAVE THE CG SMART HULK MORE HUMAN-LIKE QUALITIES THAN EVER BEFORE.