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www.postmagazine.com 15 POST JULY 2016 Summer B L O C K B U S T E R S T wo superhero sequels and a long-awaited debut are among the blockbuster movies lined up for summer. Technological advanc- es make characters more real, more in-the-moment than ever before as the X-Men, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the world of Warcraft ex- plode onto big screens. WARCRAFT Based on the hugely popular video game series and novels, the Warcraft film portrays the initial encounters between humans and orcs. The orcs are forced to leave their dying homeworld, Draenor, and set out to conquer the lush kingdom of Azeroth. One of the lead concept designers from Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment designed all the characters; the film's orcs were all based on motion capture. While the orcs were uniquely built for the film, one actual game asset — a half-frog, half- fish character called Murloc, which fans love — was used in a shot. "We are very proud of the perfor- mances we were able to get with motion capture," says Bill Westenhofer, the film's VFX supervisor. Director Duncan Jones was interested in capturing performances 'in situ,' how- ever. "He wanted to make the process of acquiring the motion capture feel as much like a live-action film experience as possi- ble and not have separate motion-capture shoots. This wasn't a blind capture where you'd see the results later. We wanted to see the performers as their digital orc counterparts on-set, in realtime. We didn't quite know how hard that would be, but maybe if we were more conservative we wouldn't have achieved as much success." A number of collaborators came together to pull off the motion capture process. Animatrik Film Design provided the hardware and on-set volumes. Profile Studios (formerly Giant Studios) brought its technology and expertise in body solving and on-set realtime visualization. Animatrik also collaborated with Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), doing 2D dot track- ing for facial capture and body capture done in Animatrik's own volume. "On-set, realtime playback of the orcs was overlaid on both the camera oper- ator's viewfinder and Duncan's monitor, which enabled them to see if the perfor- mance was working," explains Jeff White, one of a trio of ILM VFX supervisors on the film with Jason Smith and Nigel Sumner. "The camera operators could catch a lot of things as they were hap- pening; that meant a lot less keyframe fixes and the ability to go into a scene shooting motion capture of nine orcs in realtime. We could also shoot coverage without the actors just using motion capture playback of the orc characters in the viewfinder so we could get perfectly clean plates, which was exciting." Westenhofer says that "once the A camera operator, Peter Wilke, saw what this system could do, it was groundbreak- ing. He helped sell it to production. Being able to frame fully-digital characters properly and film them as you would a live-action character was a winner." Most of the motion capture was done on-set at stages in Vancouver. ILM (www.ilm.com), under facial capture pipeline lead Brian Cantwell, deployed its proprietary Muse software to capture facial expressions. Muse can track 150-plus dots on actors' faces. "The orcs have just as much dialogue as the humans," notes Jeff White. "We didn't have the time or budget to hand keyframe everything. The facial capture had to be solves, not just reference footage." Early test footage of the orcs with facial capture applied drew praise from the director and actors. "Performance really matters," says White. "Duncan saw he could direct the actors and get the performances he wanted. Facial capture Warcraft (left and above) made use of motion capture tech- niques. ILM's 'Haircraft' helped with the orc's hair and braids.