Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/457057
16 cgw j a n u a r y . f e b r u a r y 2 0 1 5 of diagrams, so we could do a limited number of captures," Gil- man says. "We'd capture a series of movements, variation upon variation, and then we'd compile them to create the sense that there were thousands." The data from the capture sessions went to the motion editors and animators, who cre- ated master vignettes by relying on the diagrams and drawings from the art department. A custom tool dubbed Army Manager, which works within Autodesk's Maya, helped the animators create the vignettes. "Army Manager is basi- cally a previs tool that allows animators to put thousands of characters in a scene and play back a pre-existing animation, whether keyframe cycles or choreographed animation shot previously," Gilman says. "The animators work with low-poly- gon bakes, not puppets." Using Army Manager, anima- tors could create large formations with any race, equipment, and formation. "We used any anima- tion we had, placed it into artwork approved by Peter for a scene, and sent it to the motion-cap- ture stage," Gilman says. "Then we could play it back so Peter could shoot what he wanted." In other words, the animators could plug motion- capture performances, applied to thousands of characters, into a terrain and send the digital battle within the digital location to the motion-capture stage, so that Jackson could view it with a virtual camera. "Peter would play with the camera on stage," Gilman says. "He could see all these charac- ters we'd built in the master vi- gnette, and do dozens of takes. Aerial shots, dollies, tracked cameras, whatever he wanted. It was important for Peter to make the battle feel violent and not staged. You can storyboard as much as you want, but the great thing about this technol- ogy is that it allows Peter to be as organic with the process as he chooses to be. It isn't until you place a camera inside a group of 3,000 guys trying to kill each other that you get visceral, organic performances." Aer shooting the battle on the motion-capture stage, Jackson reviewed the takes with the editor and selected the ones he wanted for the shots. Mean- while, the motion-edit team cleaned up the capture data, put feet on the ground, weapons in hands, scaled the data appropri- ately for the various races, and made sure the CG characters didn't intersect. When Jackson picked the takes he wanted, the motion-edit team put the corre- sponding animated characters into the shots. "And then, we made it feel violent," Gilman says. M A K I N G I T H U R T "Army Manager had to be fast or it would be pointless," Gilman says. "The animators had to move, copy, delete, and position armies quickly so we could send the vignettes to Peter in a few hours. The trade-off is that the motion was non-modifiable. We could get thousands of char- acters into Maya because we used low-res model bakes. The purpose was to have Peter give us shots. But, we couldn't raise an arm, stretch a leg, or make the battle feel more violent. The motion editors and animators needed to polish the motion." During motion-capture ses- sions, the stunt actors did their best to make the performances feel as though they were in the midst of a battle, but they could only go so far. "If you made the motion capture super-violent, you'd hurt people," Gilman says. "If I were to swing a sword at you and you knew it would gently touch you, you would amp up your reaction to have it look violent. But you're not going to really be hit, so there is an inherent anticipation that preempts the reaction. The animators had to pull all that out and speed up hits. Charac- ters would drop weapons. They wouldn't spin in reaction to the angle of a weapon. We had a huge amount of work." Moreover, it was impossible to anticipate everything during the six-week motion-capture sessions with Notary and Boswell that Jackson might want later. "They did a great job estab- lishing a foundation, but Peter wanted to invent new stories," Gilman says. "And as the battle developed, we wanted more cool things. So I spent two to three times a week getting more material. It was important to have constant access to the motion-capture stage, and we had motion-capture actors on call. It wasn't that we wanted more cycles. It was working with Peter's vision of the battle. We'd do re-shoots with weights on the actors' ankles and hands, and we weighted the weapons. We had ANIMATORS AMPED UP MOTION-CAPTURED ACTIONS AND REACTIONS TO MAKE THE FIGHTING MORE VIOLENT.