Avatar: The Way of Water, the upcoming sequel to the 2009 box office success Avatar, boasts some truly impressive CGI judging by the trailer. However, thanks to Corridor Crew, a group of VFX artists, we got a break down of just how jaw-dropping James Cameron’s upcoming sci-fi action film really is – especially with how it handles water.
The next Avatar film will primarily be set in the ocean – a setting filmmaker James Cameron is all too familiar with, given his past experiences directing The Abyss and Titanic. In the most recent trailer for The Way of Water, we get several CGI shots showing Pandora’s vast ocean. However, in terms of visual effects, there’s a lot more going on in the details that’s quite mind-blowing.
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The hosts of VFX artists consisting of Ian Hubert, Sam Gorski and Wren Weichman, went into some details exploring Avatar: The Way of Water‘s astounding visual effects.
Hubert stated:
“The bit that I think is nuts is the surface tension in the bottom left, the way it goes into that woven bit. I don’t remember ever seeing surface tension on that complex and dynamic of a scale. As the water goes away it’s still trapped there in the little bits [of woven fabric].”
Gorski focused on Weta Digital, the popular VFX studio in charge of Avatar: The Way of Water:
“On top of that, from a visual and rendering standpoint, I don’t even know how many patents they’ve been making. But I’ve seen little blurbs pop that’s like, ‘Oh, cool, Weta’s got like 4 or 5 new water simulations patents,’ for really unique cases like this shot.”
Finally, Weichman chipped in and talked about some of the technology and tools that Weta uses, literally building them from scratch:
“I think there’s a two-stage water simulation happening here. Normally, when you do a water sim it’s very particle-based and they’re doing that first particle sim for the water. But then, when it actually interfaces with something I think what [the new patent’s] saying is it’s actually generating new particles at those actual surfaces and that’s kind of creating the illusion of that water tension that you’re talking about.[…] Weta is famous for literally inventing tools from scratch to make their movies.”
Avatar: The Way of Water releases in cinemas on 16 December 2022. Check out the full breakdown video below.
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Source: Corridor Crew
