Our VFX team brought to life the incredible concept art for these robots. The director and DP directed actors Erik and Neva to capture live action footage of the automaton couple, whose movements our VFX team matched with CG later on. This allowed them to use the actors’ performances to give the behavior of the robots an uncanny human-like quality.
“Our CG modelers designed and assembled the CG robots in a similar manner to how you would in the real world,” explains one VFX Supervisor. “We modeled all of the bolts, hydraulics, sculpted panels, support structures and wiring so that the robots would move and articulate realistically. We also pushed the rendering using a lot of translucent and refractive surfaces to show off the internals ”
The director's designs had amazing translucent and refractive paneling that showed off some of the complexity of the robot's internals. There were many different kinds of materials all reflecting off one other, either glowing or bouncing light around, while also being refracted through the exterior panels - something that has always been extremely difficult to create in CG but so rewarding when achieved.
The comp team seamlessly integrated the CG robot renders into live action back plates and made them the life of the party, explains one VFX Supervisor “We wanted to preserve as much as we could of the actors’ performances, while still maintaining the visual design and concept of the robots. Our comp team used a combination of Flame and Nuke software to carry out the CG integration and 2D clean up. The new Flame UV tools were especially helpful for the fine-tuning and locking of performance lineup to the CG.”