Computer Graphics World

November / December 2017

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n o v e m b e r . d e c e m b e r 2 0 1 7 c g w 2 7 With the head sculpt completed, MPC began working on the character's hair and color textures. The hair was styled using MPC's proprietary groom soware, Furtil- ity, built by MPC's R&D team. The Furtility tool was used to match Rachael's hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes from her opening scene in Blade Runner. To test whether it had accomplished a perfect likeness, MPC decided to re-create three shots from the original movie using the digital character. The CG head was then composited and re-animated over top of the real footage. "We invited the filmmakers to see if they were able to identify the digital double from the real actress," says Clegg. "We knew we were on the right track as this proved difficult to do!" A CG Replicant For Blade Runner 2049, a body double acted out the performance with Harrison Ford, and MPC's job was to replace the head with its photoreal CG head. Multiple witness cameras were set up to shoot each take and used to get precise roto-animation of the body double as well as track the animated stage lighting. During the shoot, MPC's on-set team also captured videogrammetry of the performance using Dimensional Imaging's DI4D capture rig. They captured Sean Young and the body double, as both, directed by Villeneuve, reenacted the performance for every shot. At the same time, they also used MPC's FACS capture kit to acquire an array of facial poses and expressions. When it came to animating the shots, the videogrammetry data served as a valuable reference; however, the char- acter's entire performance was hand animated by MPC's artists. This anima- tion technique gave the animators more flexibility and the director more control. Hundreds of facial shapes were built, all modeled against footage of Young in order to maintain the likeness. Every detail was important to the animators, from the shapes that her mouth makes when she talks to the number of folds in her eyelids. MPC has also revealed it has a secret R&D lab, named "Shadow Lab," at its studio, developing a number of different new tech- nologies, including digital humans.

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