Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1208556
www.postmagazine.com 33 POST JAN/FEB 2020 into parts of the face. As the face moved, the color flowed, and the overall compression of the skin affected the color. We ran that as a simulation, and software applied it to a shader. When I say that we put melanin in the skin, we actually measured it so it interacts correctly with light — our renderer is based on wavelengths of light, not RGB colors." This level of detail extended into the eyes. Weta Digital artists used a volumetric sphere for the eye built for previous shows. This digital eye has a cor- nea with fluid inside, an iris and layers of sclera. "It's gorgeous as is," Williams says. "But, we added a couple more things." A conjunctiva surface with pigmentation and thickness that covers the sclera put color in the corner of the eye. A choroid layer beneath the sclera created a dark ring around the iris. Oil added to the thin film of water covering the eye created a proper meniscus effect, a curve in the upper surface of the liquid, and appropriately dimmed harsh reflections. "We couldn't set a value of oil to water," Williams says. "The ratio changed from day to day. We had to modify it from shot to shot." And as the number of simulations used for Junior's face grew, so, too, did render times. "Our bakes are slow because there is so much simulation," Williams says. "But the thing that really slowed us down was 120fps. And, Ang [Lee] likes to linger on a performance. We had many shots that were over a minute long, and two that were over two minutes. Our bakes could take two weeks." Av e n g e r s : E n d G a m e a n d C a p t a i n Ma r v e l : L o l a Vi s u a l E f fe c t s Lola is famous in the industry for its artists' dig- ital cosmetic enhancements to actors' filmed appearances. But in 2006, the studio also pio- neered de-aging by creating youthful Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Professor X (Patrick Stewart) for the film X-Men: The Last Stand. So, it's no won- der Marvel Studios turned to Lola to de-age (and age) characters in two major blockbuster films this year: Captain Marvel and Avengers: End Game. (Christopher Townsend was overall VFX supervisor for Captain Marvel, with additional supervisory help from Janelle Croshaw; Dan DeLeeuw was overall VFX supervisor for End Game.) For End Game, Lola artists worked on more than 200 de-aging and aging shots. Most of the Avengers needed to appear four to six years young- er, and in the case of Captain America, young Cap had to appear with the current Cap. "Those were, I guess, the easy ones," says Trent Claus, visual effects supervisor at Lola. More difficult was removing 30 years from actor John Slattery's character Howard Stark, and changing 70-year-old Michael Douglas's character Hank Pym into a 25-year-old. (They also aged Captain America.) "That was our largest age range," Claus says of Michael Douglas's character. "It wasn't just wrinkle removal and eye-bag lifting. It was almost a com- plete facial reconstruction because his facial struc- ture and proportion changed so much in 45 years. It was a huge challenge." For Captain Marvel, the artists changed actor Samuel L. Jackson throughout the length of the film to bring a 30-year-younger version of the character Nick Fury to the screen. "It was a big step for us," says Claus. "We worked to have the actor look consistent shot by shot. It's easy to get one shot approved, but to have all the other shots in a sequence and in the next sequence and through the whole film to be consistent, is hard- er. We always wanted the character to look like Sam [Jackson] and always like Sam in 1995, no matter which angle, or lighting, or which artist worked on the shot." No He a d C a m s , No Vo l u m e s Actors in these films did not wear head cams or work in volumes. "Our approach has always been to allow the most freedom possible for the actors on set. They're in costume and makeup, and act as they always have. We like to have tracking dots on their faces, but we don't always do that. The actual de-aging (or aging) is all done in 2D by compositors." Most of the artists at Lola work with Autodesk's Flame software — 90 to 95 percent, Claus esti- mates. The studio also has Foundry's Nuke, and typical 3D software programs Autodesk's Maya and SideFX's Houdini. "We do some work in 3D," Claus says, "but that's mostly for things like set extensions and vehicles. We get questions like, 'Can you guys do a greenscreen?" and the answer is, 'Yes, we can handle that.' But, when it comes to aging and de-aging, our goal has always been to make it as realistic as possible with the least impact on filmmakers on set and to main- tain the actor's performance as much as possible." While visual effects artists are often known as digital nomads as they move around the world from studio to studio and project to project, that's less the case at Lola. "Our hero de-aging and aging artists have been here 10 to 12 years in many cases," Claus says. "They have a lot of experience and have learned what changes happen in anatomy over time." Weta Digital provided services for Gemini Man. Director Ang Lee shot the film in 4K 3D at 120fps.