Stereographics Bring 'Ops Center' to Buzzing Life in Epic James Cameron Film

Prime Focus, a global visual
entertainment services group, has contributed a number of shots to James
Cameron’s stereoscopic 3D feature film Avatar. The movie, which stars Zoe
Saldana, Sam Worthington and Sigourney Weaver, hits theaters Dec. 18 and
features numerous stereographic and “Holotable” displays, animated
graphics, immersive environments and other visual effects created by Prime
Focus.
A team of approximately 90 was spread across Prime Focus’ Los Angeles,
Vancouver and Winnipeg facilities, with President & Senior Visual Effects
Supervisor Chris Bond and Visual Effects Producer Chris Del Conte driving
the project out of the LA office. Graphics Supervisor Neil Huxley art
directed and oversaw the design of the motion graphics elements. The bulk
of Prime Focus’ work was done for the film’s Bio lab and Ops Center, the
bustling hub for military operations and one of the key environments in the
film.

“Our experience working with stereoscopic 3D material, both on the movie
Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D and through our proprietary View-D
technology, more than prepared us for Avatar,” said Bond. “Having the
resources of our talented teams across Winnipeg and Vancouver at our
disposal and set up for remote collaboration with our Los Angeles crew also
meant we could ramp up at a moment’s notice when we were awarded additional
shots.”

Prime Focus designed displays for the Op Center’s Holotable over which the
film’s main characters discuss their missions and plans to mine a valuable
mineral found on the planet Pandora. In one key scene, the film’s
protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Col. Quaritch (Stephen Lang)
bring up a three-dimensional hologram of the “Home Tree,” where the Navi,
Pandora’s indigenous population, live.

Using the original live-action plate of a table with a greenscreen across
the top, Prime Focus modeled the hardware that went inside the table, the
projector beams, and added graphics projected above the table of the
terrain, including the Home Tree. These graphics were designed in 2D in
Adobe Illustrator, animated in Adobe After Effects, placed on cards in 3D
and rendered in Autodesk 3ds Max. Prime Focus Software’s Krakatoa particle
system was used for the 3D terrain, which gave the images a scan-lined
LIDAR-like quality, as if a satellite roving the planet’s atmosphere
captured the footage.

To make the Ops Center feel alive and bustling with activity, Prime Focus
also designed interactive stereographic displays for dozens of screens, so
every monitor screen had a sense of movement and depth. Each screen was
composed of four-to-eight layers, rendered in different passes and
composited together.

“Chris Bond and our pipeline team developed a custom graphics script we
dubbed SAGI, for Screen Art Graphic Interface,” shared Huxley. “This script
takes Adobe After Effects renders and binds them to a 3ds Max assembly
file, which would negate human error. Considering that some of our shots
had 30 screens in them, trying to work out which graphic goes into which
screen would be very time-consuming. SAGI helped us streamline this process
so if James didn’t like a particular graphic, we could easily swap it out.
This enabled us to turn around client revisions very quickly. James would
give us the change, the graphics team would address the note, render it
through SAGI overnight, re-comp the graphic in the am and then watch it
down in our Real-D theater in stereo 3D, do a quality check in stereo, and
have it ready for James to check 24 hours after giving us the initial
note.”

The Prime Focus VFX team also created displays called Immersives that
provided a 180-degree stereo perspective, allowing military personnel to
control air traffic flow in 3D. Additionally, Prime Focus contributed CG
helicopters, buildings and atmospheric elements seen from the Ops Center
and Commissary windows in several sequences.

Said Del Conte, “Much has been said about James Cameron’s incredible vision
as a director, his hands-on style and the very high bar he set for all his
visual effects vendors, so playing a part in bringing Avatar to life has
been a fantastic experience for our team.”