STACK NZ Jan-Feb #59

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“T his was a pretty special project for
me,” says ILM Visual Effects
Supervisor and Second Unit Director
on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Pablo
Helman, “because it’s all about performance
and how we get it out of the actors and into
the movie. I’m always looking for an original
idea in visual effects, and to have teenage
turtles that are mutants and ninjas is just
really cool! It is very original, and at the same
time represented the perfect opportunity
for us to develop a system that allows you
to see those performances.”
The ILM Muse, an
advanced facial capture
system comprised of both
hardware and software,
allows the actor’s
performance to be
captured on-set or in
a special stage, to be
The TEENAGE MUTANT NINJATURTLES get a photorealistic makeover
in their new 3D adventure. Visual Effects Supervisor Pablo Helman
talks about the groundbreaking performance capture technology
developed to bring the heroes in a half shell to life.
later manipulated by
the animators.
“We called it Muse because
it inspired the performances,”
explains Helman. “It’s a system
that was developed specifically
for this project precisely
because we knew we would
have to edit performances, and
that was not possible at the
time with the technology that
was around. So we put two
cameras on each
face of the actors to interpret
their expressions, knowing
that we might or might not
use it all later. And most
importantly, we had to
think about what to do
with the data from the
beginning. That created
all kinds of commitments on
set, because then we had
14 people just dedicated to
this, and it also meant that
we needed to be on location.
So, it was complicated: we
had to be on set, capture all
that data and then recover it,
translate it into a digital asset
and finally re-interpret it to
make these turtles into real
characters. It took about a
year and a half for the
system to actually work, but we are really
happy with the results. It’s awesome!
“We tried all kinds of things,” he
continues. “And after consulting with
[director] Jonathan Liebesman and [producer]
Michael Bay, we decided to come back to a
more realistic approach to these characters.
Part of it has to do with understanding where
COWABUNGA!
Pablo Helman
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