Computer Graphics World

to stress was the subtlety of performance. It was cool. And, challenging." A Thousand Lights On Set e decision to create Dr. Manhattan in CG freed the director to cast any actor he wanted in the role; he didn't need to pick a large, muscle-bound, supersized actor. In- stead, Snyder cast 5-foot-8-inch Crudup. On set, Crudup wore a white suit designed by Chris Gilman of Global Effects that was covered with approximately 1000 blue LEDs and a handful of tracking markers. e soles of his shoes had blue LEDs baked into them so Crudup would emit light un- der his feet as he walked. He also wore a hat and gloves covered with LEDs. Techni- cians could dim and turn on and off all the lights remotely. "e LEDs were bright, but they didn't encumber the suit," Travers says. "Without them, we would have been guessing in ev- ery shot how the character emitted light and how that light affected the environment. He looked like a walking discotheque, but in scenes where he makes physical contact, the lights were really important." at was especially true for a love scene. "He sticks his thumb in a girl's mouth, and there's blue light everywhere," Travers says. "We see localized light moving across her face, pinpoints of light. It's like they are making love in a tanning booth." First You Take Manhattan To capture Crudup's performance, Image- works placed tracking markers amidst the LEDs attached to his suit, two-inch squares with unique black and yellow patterns for manual and procedural tracking. ey also sprinkled dots on his face. "e movie is close to three hours long, so Zack [Snyder] did a lot of quick shoot- ing," Travers says. "He's notorious for being really good and really quick. We couldn't drag in a big motion-capture set; we had to get what we needed, but stay out of the way. And, I wanted to make sure we didn't sacrifice Billy's performance for the sake of motion capture." us, rather than setting up motion- capture equipment, the Imageworks crew filmed Crudup's performance with HD witness cameras and derived motion data from the digital video as well as the pri- mary film camera. "ere was a moment on set, maybe a week or two in, when Billy was getting familiar with the suit," Travers says. "He walked over to me after a take and said, 'I think I was slouching. Can you take my slouch out?' I said, 'Of course we can.' And he said, 'is is great.' at was a moment. He opened up after that." In addition to the performance capture during shooting, the crew put dots on Crudup's face and captured data with six March 2009 33 Character Creation n n n n Images courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures.

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