The remarkable visual
effects in
The Hobbit: The Battle of
the Five Armies
Though the movie wasn’t nominated for
Oscars, it contains some of the most stunning
visual effects the world has seen in the year
2014.
Below is a list of some of the effects in the
movie that we believe deserves a standing
ovation and a mention of the technology that
went into the creation of those effects.
Massive and impressive
environments
Weta Digital used the same
crowd simulation technology,
Massive, used in LOTR to
create the stunning battle that
marks the ending of The
Hobbit trilogy.
The army manager production tool was introduced in the
production of this movie. It allowed for the visualization of the
battle scenes beforehand guiding the filming of the scenes.
This bridged the gap in real time between the previous and
final shots
The technology rightly named
as Massive, a animation and
post production tool, was then
used to obtain the final shots
of the visualized battle scenes.
It
was created in New Zealand
This film also saw the use of
the Manuka renderer
previously used in Dawn of
the Planet of the Apes. It was
used in the creation of the
fluid destruction sequences
and the digital character
work that Weta Digital is
best known for.
The most stunning of the
sequences in the movie
however was the lake town
attack by Smaug that was
made in a closed volume
created specifically for this
sequence.
The following slides explain the
correlation and the complicated
calculations that went into the
creation of the sequence.
Smaug’s wings drive the air
simulations in the closed
volume space created.
Airflow fluid simulations
driven by the air simulations
in turn drive the fire
simulations.
The fire simulation in turn drives
the detailed building destruction with the rigid body simulation.
The rigid body simulations of the building destruction
interacts with the airflow simulation causing the smoke and
steam to rise. This is seen around the wings of the dragon.
All this happens
while Smaug is
breathing fire.
Source: www.wired.com
That was their visual effects in
2014! We wonder what Weta
Digital has up their sleeve for
2015…..