Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/711516
j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 6 c g w 2 3 a vest, and all those layers and all parts of those layers are simulated," Williams says. "We have threads hanging off threadbare clothes. We have buttons that flop around. The suspenders are rope ladders – strings with rigid bars between. It was an insane level of detail. We ran a hair simulation in parallel with clothes that have to shrink onto the characters a layer at a time. If a shirt bunches up, it pushes the suspenders' rope bridge out. It took days to do." I N S I D E A N D O U T The movie was largely shot on stages, with Weta Digital artists extending the sets digitally. "Even though we had shots on London streets, we built them indoors in Vancou- ver," Williams says. "We didn't want to put a 10-year-old girl on dark London streets. And that way we could shoot whenever we wanted. We also had second-unit footage for Giant Country." That footage was useful for elements – water crashing onto a rocky coastline – and for reference. To render the characters and the digital environments, the team used the studio's proprietary Manuka soware, a path tracer. "We were able to put pebbles on the floor between the stones in the cottage," Williams says. "We had hundreds of human-sized, itty-bitty books in the giant's cottage. Bowls full of padlocks around the room. All this inter- esting detail. Manuka just goes in and renders it no matter how much you put into it." The same level of detail extended outside. "We modeled blades of grass, millions and millions for Giant Country," Williams says. "Shrubs, abandoned cars, trees, Fer- ris wheels. We used to talk about millions of polygons. Now we're talking about tens of millions." Manuka also helped the artists create the atmosphere Spielberg wanted for these shots. "We started using creative ways to light the scenes," Letteri says. "In the past, we might have dressed fog in during composit- ing, but for this movie, we were lighting with it just like we would have on set. We'd fill an environment with smoke using volumes cre- ated by specifying a fog density. We'd hide lights in the virtual sets. The lights would light up the fog, scatter around, and light up an interior. Because Manuka is a path tracer, it interacts with everything. It was a whole different way of lighting." D R E A M C A T C H E R S During the film, the relationship between BFG and Ruby builds through BFG's ability to create dreams. "Basically, we made the dreams with light, liquid-y, particle-y light," Williams says. "There's a dream cavern in the back of BFG's cottage, and our Wayne Stables did an amazing job of rendering all the dreams, shiny objects, and glass. The dreams are almost like dust motes lit with invisible light. It's all done through 3D. The technology to create the dreams wasn't complex, but the visual storytelling was. You want to feel it more than see it, like something you see out of the corner of an eye. We tease a cloud of particles into a shape that's a little panto- mime story. You might see a glimpse of a couple holding hands, and then it explodes back into a little dream of light." The BFG gave Weta Digital artists the opportunity to flex their talents into creating environments and effects that range from wide landscapes to little dreams, and from giant characters' broad humor to BFG's subtle emotions. "I'm proud of what the team has done," Williams adds. "At one point, Steven [Spiel- berg] asked me why Weta is so good. He wondered if it's our soware. But it isn't the soware. It's the passion. These projects are made by teams, and our group is phenom- enally talented. If Mark Rylance lays himself bare, it's stupid for us to carve out the most economical way to realize his performance. We have to be as passionate as he is. We don't stop until it's right." ■ WETA DIGITAL'S MANUKA RENDERING SOFTWARE MADE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENTS WITH TENS OF MILLIONS OF POLYGONS POSSIBLE. LIGHTING ARTISTS USED FOG AS A COMPOSITIONAL ELEMENT IN MUCH THE SAME WAY A LIVE-ACTION DP MIGHT DO. Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW.