Computer Graphics World

March 2009 35 is indigo, but his internal structure, that is, his internal light source, is cyan. e color matched how the LEDs on Crudup's suit responded to light. "We tried to match the real lighting in spirit with our fake lighting," Travers says. Most of the time, the superhero is bright, and the lighting artists could take lighting direction from the environment. "When we looked at the plates, they weren't quite good to go because we had to remove Billy, but the lighting was incredibly effective," Travers says. "We got all that emitted light and the reflections for free." When the lighting artists needed to simulate the lighting in the environment, when a scene called for the character to light himself, and when he was in a CG en- vironment, they would cover the CG char- acter with 10,000 point lights. His eyes are also a light source. ey don't have irises or pupils; they're white with a soft gradation from a pupil area to the edges, to make eye movement noticeable. When he blinks or closes his eyes, the lights turn off. e effect of the white eyes against a blue face that closely resembles Billy Crudup on a glowing blue body filled with swirling gases is dramatic. Dr. Manhattan may be one of the weirdest members of the digital human family tree, but he's successful. "We were sitting in the truck one day watching dailies, and Zack [Snyder, the di- rector] pipes up with, 'What the hell are we watching? is is the strangest thing.' But, he always says that if it's really strange-look- ing, then it's right." n Barbara Robertson is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for Computer Graphics World. She can be reached at BarbaraRR@comcast.net. Actor Billy Crudup wore a suit fastened with a thousand blue LEDs to cast Dr. Manhattan's blue glow on his fellow actors. Animators at Sony Pictures Imageworks began with data captured from Crudup and applied his performance to the CG character. Character Creation n n n n High Performance Camera Tracking 5SE 3YNTH%YES FOR ANIMATED CRITTER INSERTION FIXING SHAKY SHOTS VIRTUAL SET EXTENSIONS MAKING $ MOVIES ARCHITECTURAL PREVIEWS ACCIDENT RECONSTRUCTION VIRTUAL PRODUCT PLACEMENT FACE AND BODY CAPTURE AND MORE 32-bit only $399 Windows-32 / Windows-64 / OS X-32 / OS X-64 3EE WHATS NEW AT .!" "OOTH 3, W dows-32 / n i W - dows-64 / OS X- n i W -64 OS X- -32 / CGW_Half_HOR:CGW_Half_HOR 3/6/09 7:08 AM Page 1

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