Duncan Jones, who rose to fame directing the small budget sci-fi film Moon in 2009 and expanded it into the Hollywood volume Source Code in 2011. While directing this magical adaptation of an epic MMORPG is still a big jump, it’s not a surprise. While Duncan 61 Jones is also a huge World of Warcraft player, he was faced with not only the huge fan base of Warcraft, but also getting audiences who aren’t gamers to want to shell out money to get into the cinema. This is no easy task, just look at Prince of Persia, Doom, Streets of Blood, Bloodline, Ironwing Commander …… (all of the above are film adaptations of games)
The team has also put a lot of effort into restoring this magical world. The special effects part of the film was undertaken by Industrial Light and Magic, with Animatrik Studios providing the motion capture and facial capture technology. Facial capture of the orcs
On the surface, the story of the film World of Warcraft is simple: the Orcs arrive on the tranquil continent of Azeroth from a barren planet through the Dark Gate with the intention of conquering and colonising it, but the humans and other races that inhabit the continent disagree.
To capture the feel of the Orcs in the game, Duncan Jones and company realised that special effects make-up alone was not enough, so ground-breaking facial capture technology was used to create the Orcs. Special effects director Jeff White and the team used the same facial capture technique used on the Hulk in the first Avengers film (the orcs were also said to be partly inspired by the Hulk). Director Jones explained that they needed to maintain close-ups of the orcs, something that special effects make-up could not do.
It’s been over 20 years since the World of Warcraft game was created, and the earliest designs of the orcs and other creatures reflect not only the era in which they were created, but also the video game itself.
Wang Wei, a Chinese Warcraft fan who speaks no English at all, started submitting original player artwork to Blizzard years ago. In 2010, Nick Carpenter (Blizzard’s Vice President of Art and Film Development) approached Wang Wei and asked him to draw an illustration for World of Warcraft, and it was this drawing that laid the foundation for the Warcraft movie art. Later in 2013, he started working on Duncan Jones’ Warcraft movie as Characterdirector.
Hair technology is one of the most difficult technologies, and World of Warcraft is full of them. The orcs have long, intricate braids that are constantly whipped when they walk around. To solve this problem, the crew designed a new software called “haircraft” that can differentiate between the softness of hair, the degree of curl, the different ways of braiding and how tightly the ponytail is tied, and even create hair that can flow with the body and wind. Another program developed for the film is the “muscle meter”, which is used to solve the muscles of the Orcs. And the tuskdeformer, powered by Pixar, made the long teeth protruding from the orcs’ mouths more realistic (some of the actors wore special instruments on set to anticipate how their mouths would move if they had teeth, and then added them later). How to create a large group of orcs
More than half of the actors in the film are orcs. The concept of the orc tribe during filming was based on a selection of photographs of real tribes. Fifty-two of the unique Orcs were created (including the nine core characters), while hundreds of others were computer-generated. The designers have designed a program that allows an untold number of helmets, shoulder pads, chest protectors and other clothing and equipment to be placed inside, mixed and matched at random. Each of these hundreds of Orcs is distinctive in its own way and stands up perfectly to close up and close up camera scrutiny. Each tribe has a distinctive character
The designers have tried to create a realistic society for each Orc tribe, not just with just scarred warriors, but also women, teenagers and older people. Each tribe is distinguished by different colours and distinctive features. The Frostwolf tribe, led by Durontan, has a dominant colour of blue and wears a lot of fur, reflecting the cold region they come from. The armour and weapons of the Blood Ring clan are more primitive and crude, with many made from bark and twigs. The Mockingjay Clan uses a lot of bone in their equipment and clothing. The Blackrock clan has a red and black theme, using metal in their clothing, and is the most high-tech of the four clans.
Jones kept the orc actors’ performances as real as possible, even if they were covered in digital technology later on. Special cameras were used on set so that the director could see the orcs in real time where the actors were standing and get a rough idea of how the final film footage would look. They were able to adjust and even change the composition of the shots without having to rehearse the scenes or call the actors back. Jones says, “We can play back the actor’s previous performance in low resolution so that the camera assistant can recompose the shot through the viewfinder.” Jones insisted on not editing different shots of the performance together, but instead using as much footage as possible from one camera, with CG, and then applying animation to fill in the remaining ten percent …… Animation supervisor Hal Hickel said we tried to bring the motion capture performance to the level of a live action performance. Physical training instructor Terry Notary
You may not know who Terry Notary is, but you’ve seen him before. Notary is a very famous motion capture director and choreographer in Hollywood, having previously choreographed the action for Rise of the Apes and Lord of the Rings. Notley trained the lead actors to perfect the physical movements of their orcs, while performing Grom’s “Hell Roar” himself.
For a film that relies on live action and special effects, the actors’ working environment is not as small as you might think. Art director Gavinbouquet built several complex and huge sets (many of which were digitally expanded in the film) at the behest of special effects director Jeff White, such as some giant doors to give the actors a sense of the correct size. One shot was shot over several months
It all started with the motion capture of the actors on set. Next came the orcs themselves, the skeleton created from the computer, then gradually the muscles, fat and flesh were added, followed by veins, tattoos and scars, then the facial features, the long teeth and the hair, and finally the clothes, the decorations and the weapons. Things like the construction of the face, how the eyebrows move, are all part of the daily decisions that need to be made.
The final shots presented in the film were rendered in full resolution over a period of months. A few seconds in the film could have taken months in reality. This is why it took Jones and the Industrial Light & Magic team three years or more to complete the film. Animatrik’s motion capture and virtual cinematography
According to Brett Ineson, CTO of Animatrik Studios, Warcraft was the company’s largest virtual production ever, using eight different stages (roughly 300 feet long), even outdoor stages, and taking about five months to shoot. The animation and actors are brought together. Animatrik used cameras from NatualPoint and Vicon. They have set up what they call an ‘outside-in’ real-time synchronised camera system to see the effects on the actors in sync; or ‘inside-out’ to see the background effects. “We’ll set up a small capture camera on top of the big camera,” Ineson explains, “and this camera can be fused with the SolidTrack system to target every pixel it sees and calculate the 3D position of the real world around it. This way we can use it to neutralise the synchronised view between these two cameras.
“The technology helped us a lot with things like composition. Because the orcs are 12 feet tall. Knowing this information, the cameraman was able to find the best angle and compose the shot. In short, it allowed the crew to shoot the film as if it were a normal movie. This greatly reduced the burden on post.” The crew also had to shoot a lot of outdoor action. To remove light pollution and the obstruction of rain, they used moving marker sets (developed by Standard Deviation) fitted with LED lights. the LED lights were triggered in sync with the motion capture camera and did not interfere with the main photography. Another important task for Animatrik was to capture the facial movement expressions of the orc actors. A helmet camera system developed by Technoprops was used here, transmitting two video signals simultaneously to capture extremely small facial expressions. “What Animatrik does is actually post-camera data tracking.” Ineson explains. “The dual cameras allowed us to capture the data in 3D rather than 2D. we would track the facial markers in 3D and then send the data to a VFX terminal and then Industrial Light & Magic would make them into the right facial expressions.”
“There’s a lot of R&D involved in Warcraft, and a lot of things that had to be individually customised to meet the needs of the film.” He adds. “Our services really help with this and we now have more experience in this challenging industry environment.”
