Davy Jones never had it so good.

While tooling around the ILM website, I found a section of website that they had dedicated to the last Pirates of the Carib. More specifically, on the creation of Davy Jones and his crew. You can go to the whole website and learn from it...there's even a short movie on the creature creation where it shows them working in zbrush.

They have a cool part where you have this see-all lens that acts as a way to see the characters acting in their mocap suits or the exact same spot in the finished movie. What they did was they gave everyone visual pajamas with painted triangle squares belts and created a computer program to read those in the footage afterwards. In this way they were able to shoot on location which I believe is a supposed first (no green screens).

Characters were first designed and illustrated in the computer between the concept artists and the Art Director, then approved by the Director. Many of Davy Jones' crew were created so that it would be impossible for a human character to just be in makeup. Photoreal illustrations were then created for the 14 characters. They were then modeled in 3d, including facial expressions with emotional targets. Only the bodies were mocap'ed, facial expressions were all keyframed animated by artists.

These are the steps taken during the filming process.

step 1: Shot on location
step 2: Shot is matchmoved.
step 3: Run through iMoCap to get the mocap data.
step 4: Adjust Data Parameters
step 5: Animator tweaks, animates faces and additional motion
step 6: Use simulations for cloth, chains, swords, hands and tentacles
step 7: Light/Render
step 8: Compositing

My favorite is seeing Davy Jones' eye makeup because they thought they would have to cut out his real eyes and put those into the film, but instead they were able to make 3dgenerated eyes that looked amazing! I still cannot get over that. Just think that the actor had to wear makeup for the entire film for nothing!


http://www.ilm.com/theshow/


-jake