Weta Digital spent four years in their part of the making of the movie, during which time they produced new software and opened a new division based on what they learned.

As one of my friends told me recently, Avatar is the Star Wars for the new generation. Winning a Golden Globe for Best Picture isn’t the half of it when you consider the research and development time, the technologies used, and the evolution of special effects that went into its making.

In my conversation with Joe Letteri, VFX Supervisor at Weta Digital acknowledged that a short article in Entertainment Engineering could never begin to explain the advancements that went into this movie. Nonetheless, I plan to mention what, to me, were the highlights of our conversation.

Weta Digital was involved in every scene where an alien character was...read more