Creating Gollum - deleting Andy Serkis out of the shot

[dbates]

That was an interesting "making of" DVD, wasn't it? I'm not sure how they did some of the shots myself, but I think they always filmed a clean plate (without Serkis). They could use that to clone the background in around Gollum. But if the clean plate didn't match up perfectly--well, lots of roto and paint work, I suppose. It worked out beautifully, whatever they did!

[IestynRoberts]

Hey there dbates, yeah an awsome Making of, really lookin forward to seeing the all (starting from the 1st and working myself through them you see). Im curious as to how the replaced Andy with Sean Austin's cape, surely they did'nt paint in the cape did they? It looks friggin' awsome.

Iest

[Dutchman]

Interesting case indeed! Some time ago I also have had sleepless nights about that stuff! :scream:

After lots of reading about all different CG/VFX projects and keeping motivated, I think I'd know they answer now! ;)

First of all:
Also. is the camera on a crane that moves the same way all the time for that shot?
That's called 'Motion Controlled Camera'.

http://www.turnerstudios.com/images/miloall2.gif

For more info about this one: CLICK! (http://www.mrmoco.com/index2.htm?sidebar.htm&/Products/Rigs/milo.htm)

Rotoscoping always sounds to be an in-effective process ('I used to think it's always far better to just use blue/greenscreens and key the stuff out'), but at the end often it's far more effective than other tricks.

I think they shot the shot with Andy and the other 2, saved the cameramove, removed the same way (> cleanplate). Then imported the footage to the compositing application, and replacing all Andy-stuff with the clean-plate (by rotoscoping). Then they will use the version wíth Andy as reference, but rendered it out on the cleanplate.

This is just 'basicly' how they will have done it: I tried to make it sound 'easy'! ;)

By the way: they also told that they even could motion-capture on set, when they were further in production. Would they have taken their complete Vicon-outfit and equipment out to the wild?! :twisted:

Gollum keeps amazing...! :bounce:
-Gijs

[IestynRoberts]

Hello there Gijs, he he, it's not very nice tossing and turning in your sleep over stuff like this is it? I'd love to know what sort of articles you read to figure out this sort of stuff. That's an excellent breackdown you've given me here, that camera kick ass! How much would something like that be?
One thing that still buggs me, is that when they 'painted' out Andy and replaced him with Gollum, how did they fill in the difference between the two on e.g Sam's cape? Did they digitaly paint in the cape frame by frame??
Awsome stuff Gijs, i'm starting to get a better picture of how this is working now, i think i must learn a bit about roto.
Thanks a lot, and i'd love to know more about the articles you read :-)
Iest

[hiphopcr]

I don't know the answer, I haven't seen the documentaries or anything, but I do know is that us roto and paint artists and compositors can paint back anything.

[IestynRoberts]

Hi there hiphopcr, You guys rule!

Any decent books or anything on the subject?
Thanks
Iest

[dprgb]

First off, they didn't motion control most of the shots - its vvvveeeerrrryyyy expensive, very complicated to set up and use, and oftentimes slows shooting down from what I understand. I've watched those special features and from what I could see the cameras were either Steadycams or tripod/dolly mounted. There's some newer products now, but remember this was filming begain in the late 90's.

They shot all the passes, and probably had 'clean plates' with no actors and the camera trying to replicate the move. Then, the compositors could take the clean plates and warp them to match up with the plate with Andy, and use the clean footage as a mask. You can also take the previous/post frames and use those as guides and mattes to block out Andy. Takes quite a bit of time.

One of the special features on kongisking.net discusses the rotoscoping done in that movie, with some shots of things like roto'ing around foliage and hair.

http://www.kongisking.net/kong2005/proddiary/

It's the '16 weeks to go' video.

[IestynRoberts]

Hello there, waw, that was an awsome video there wasnt it? That pretty much says it all. Thank you very much for the link dapeter. It showed them as well 'painting' out objects they did'nt want in shot, so that was cool to see.
Those matchomve cameras sound like hasstle, but it's nice to know how people go about doing this sort of stuff.
I hope i can get the Kong box set here in Wales!
Thanks for your comments man
Iest

[taffy77]

Hey

Ok so yep there is Motion Control but we didnt uses that for many shots, PJ likes to use very crazy wild camera moves that dont lend themselves MoCo. Generally we did lots of paint work and roto.

THe animators tried there best to lineup gollum to andy but as someone pointed out andy is a little larger thatn gollum. This limited the paint a great deal. As for the cape i cant remember exactly the deal but i am sure we painted in some of it. For some of those shots we got an extra digital sim cape rendered that we could paint back through and add gollum interaction.

Alots of the clean plates were painted up by hacking stuff out of plates and tracking them back in. We have a great paint team here that really help us guys in comp.

THe Weta Comp Dungeon

[IestynRoberts]

Hello there, thanks a lot for replying taffy (your not Welsh are you?) i'm getting a much clearer picture of how these things are done now, what software do you guys use to make this sort of stuff? If the cape was a sim, then that's pretty awsome, but i understand how someone would paint it back in now, which sounds pretty cool.

Im lookin forward to buying the making of King Kong, i've seen the some of the diary's and the roto one was pretty cool.
Thanks for your time
Iest

[Dutchman]

Iest: that King Kong diaries are just ADDICTING! :twisted: I downloaded them all... Now I have a making of of 5+ hours... :twisted: And also I check KongisKing.net every day for updates... Really cool! ;)

I also used to think that roto was a very big deal also, but when you know the techniques to make it more effective (you don't really have to paint out things frame-by-frame... Often it are inbetweened movements of masks), it isn't a big deal anymore. I don't know how experienced you are yourself with After Effects or so, but if you practise it a bit, you'll really understand the basics of VFX much better! :)

Cool to see you guy from 'the Weta comp dungeon'! :twisted: You guys work out most stuff in Shake, isn't it? And so you also have flows that look like THIS ONE (http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=932) (comes from Hellboy: VFX-Talk-thread (http://www.vfxtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2921))? I am very often very interested in the compositing from Weta, but even the PD-diaries don't reveal much about it... :shrug:
Cool to hear you even did do some digital cape 'extension'! :) That sounds like a 'nice trick'!
Does working with a 'fake-cleanplate' work good? Do you get good results by time-warping an mesh-warping to get a good cleanplate out of it?

Iets: good luck with learning new stuff! I'd say to check VFXBlog.com every day for new interviews, and read them all! :scream: If you do that (and check all the Production Diaries of KongisKong on the postproduction), you'll know all tricks soon, I think! :bounce:

Greetz!
-Gijs

[IestynRoberts]

Hey Gijs, thanks a lot for your comments, yeah ain't it pretty cool Weta answering my post!
Thanks for that website, i'll be sure to check it out, yeah it's cool that you don't have to do for every frame, just the 'in-between' movements, which sounds a lot more promising than painting all those frames!
I'm not that experienced with After effect, i have'nt got a 24/7 access to it, but i'll definatly look into buying somehting similar, i'll look into Shake also.
I'm gonna get me those PD Dirays, the box set comes out on the 5th, so i'll be up for buying them.
Cool man, take care
Iest

[taffy77]

For comping we mainly use Shake, for roto on LOTR we used a package called commotion and we now use Silohette and other tools.

For roto you can just do inbetween frames but when u have to free paint that it is a frame by frame process, but sometimes u are able to setup procedural paint using shakes quickpaint.

[IestynRoberts]

Excellent stuff mate, thanks a lot for the info. I'll have a look at this Shake program.

Thanks for your help!
Iest

[thatoneguy]

This was illustrated really well in one of the DVDs, I forget which DVD it was on, but they had a shot w/o Gollum and wherever Gollum was they just left in Andy Serkis.

In short, no trick, just a lot of work. Hats off to the Roto and Paint departments of the world, I feel for you.

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