UNDER THE SKIN

Over the past few decades, Weta Digital has been continually innovating in the area of digital humans, especially digital faces. Now, with Ang Lee’s Gemini Man – which saw the creation of present-day and younger CG versions of actor Will Smith – the visual effects studio’s artists have crafted what may well be Weta Digital’s most photorealistic synthetic humans yet.

Several factors made this possible, including the approach to the performance-capture of Will Smith, translation of capture data to CG puppets, animating the character, and the rendering of the final imagery using the studio’s proprietary spectral renderer, Manuka. All of that – plus other techniques – helped Weta Digital deliver digital humans that would be shown at 4K and 120 fps, and in stereo.

In addition to this, two new developments helped in bringing the digital Will Smiths to life. These asked Weta Digital visual effects supervisor Guy Williams and head of facial motion Stuart Adcock specifically about these two innovations.