*Clint and Wren screaming*
One thing they could have done -
*Excited Wren noises*
This is so good!
You just touched on a VERY hard thing about doing the effects for this movie.
Hi, hi doggie! Welcome back to another episode of VFX artists react!
We got some great things to look at today and I'm looking forward to seeing Clint's reaction to it all.
I can't wait to reAAACT!!
Whoa dude..
Okay, so this I remember really taking me off guard,
cause it's like, he's missing half his face and it looks incredibly realistic.
[Clint] The small detail with like the blood on the left side of the pillow... (yeah) is so disgusting.
[Niko] See up into this point, you know if you wanted crazy makeup effects you could add it to somebody's face.
But you can never subtract from somebody's face.
[Wren] And that's what makes this so jarring is because you can actually see inside of his cheek.
So... but, yeah. Look at his eyeball; look at the underside of this eyeball.
You never see an eyeball just exposed like that.
It emits this visceral reaction of like "UUGHRR!"
[Niko] Dude, you can see his tendons, like, going across his face there.
You've got a little bit of like his bone, yeah poking
I'm also noticing - they're doing this very cleverly too - they're hiding most of it most of the time.
A lot of people like to say that Christopher Nolan does not like visual effects; he only ever does practical effects.
But that's a misnomer. He's actually a huge fan of visual effects. He just uses them very specifically.
Two of his movies have won the best visual effects Oscar!
In the 90s when people started doing animation, it's like
"Oh, I can just make a 3D model and I'll put bones underneath which'll morph and stretch and move the model."
Simple enough, right?
Well, once we tried starting to make things photorealistic, we suddenly realized that that didn't look real.
Because that's not how our skin moves; our skin doesn't just slide around.
We have muscles underneath our skin and the muscles, when they're tight, they're gonna bulge out.
And when they're loose they're gonna sag, they're gonna cause wrinkles and our skin is just on top of this...
Web of muscles and tendons that are pulling things around.
So for something like Two-Face, you need that complexity of the muscles underneath pulling.
And you can actually see the tendons sliding against each other - and it's all hand animated by the way.
It's just a testament to us starting to understand how to animate humans and human faces.
What did they have like any tracking markers? What do they do there?
[Niko] So Christopher Nolan likes to shoot his movies with a lot of darkness, right?
And you've probably seen facial tracking where they have little black dots in the face.
You're not going to see the black dots on his face when he's in shadow.
So they're using little white markers, but even then those are in shadow, right?
They fall into shadow and you lose them.
So what they're actually doing to track his face - it's not the main camera that's tracking his face.
They actually have other cameras on set.
And they have little ring lights around them that are very very faint - and that's all retro reflective material.
All those other cameras are seeing nice vibrant bright dots even when it's in shadow because of the retro reflective material.
But the main camera isn't seeing that at all.
It's a really ingenious way to have motion tracking dots that you can see with multiple cameras, but not with the main camera.
Another cool thing is when you're using multiple cameras
You can triangulate the positions of those dots and get 3d motion tracking data out of it
So that's how they're tracking his face to put the 3d model on it.
[Two-Face] It's not about what I want. It's about what's fair?
Spoiler is he pr- Hopefully you've seen the movie by now: he dies
In the scene where he's dead and like the rocking his face back and forth his resting expression
He looks like he's smiling even though he's just blank. There's happy. There's happy Harvey Dent was like wait, that's no good
He's supposed to be sad now
[Wren] Really? What?
[Clint] You're always sad when you die, so...
You know Mortal Kombat was one of the better video game movies that came out
*Screaming*
Dude, what if that was your yearbook photo
Like, what if that was you
Usually when you do a morph, you try to pick
Landmarks that stay the same, like his eyeballs would morph toward the dragon's eyeballs are
but instead his eyes turn into teeth
[Wren] OH! They do!
So this came out a year after Independence Day
It's a low-budget video game movie.
It is I suppose that is true, but here's the thing
There's a big difference between bad visual effects and old visual effects and with bad visual effects
Its artists dropping the ball producers getting too in the way of artists trying to do their thing, but with old visual effects
It's just the limitation of the technology at the time
So like there's a technology thing, you know, you got more so you got your basic transitions
You can't really get too crazy with particles because you didn't have the computer power for it back in the day
especially in the budget
But, one thing they could have done, is added a light that flickered at the same rate as the lightning.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, look at that like everything is super bright except for him. He doesn't flicker at all
That would have taken these VFX shots to the next level
It's a t-rex thing from Jurassic Park
Like they didn't have the fancy lighting technology for that either
what they did to make up for it was that they had very specific lighting situations that you could replicate in a computer and they
Had that same thing going here
But they didn't follow through on it
Had they just had a directional light source that matched the Lightning it would have really made a blend with the footage one thing about
Mortal Kombat though. It's a fun movie and at the end of the day, even if the visual effects are bad
It doesn't actually matter that much if it's a fun movie. Yeah. Yeah, this is very true
He's making me cry.
We're looking at Captain America - the First Avenger - look at him he's right there so skinny
This is like the perfect example of their effect working great of making Chris Evans skinny
Chris Evans was ripped during all this - Super Ripped! -
Yeah
Cuz he was playing the final version of himself and they didn't have the time from be like skinny down and then buff up so
All these shots of skinny Chris Evans are actually totally buffed out Chris Evans. Wait, are you for real?
It's not just a skinny guy and then they're putting Chris Evans face on the skinny
Yes
And no when they're actually shot the movie
They would shoot three different takes and so they would shoot the original shot with Chris Evans buffed out Chris Evans
So they would shoot a second time with an actual actor who was a tiny dude
but the effects company would basically just use him as Reference and only reference and then they would also do a third take with knowing than the shot at all like a clean plate.
Plate hell. Yeah, they feeling in all the all the space that Chris Evans is including behind him
So first things first like this scene right here that you're seeing the split screen
That's a straight up liquify and distort and shrinking everything down like making his arms skinny making us chest skinny and just straight up
Distorting your frame that seemed that where he goes and talks to the the doctor for being recruited
That's a body double and so times one is just like skin and he's not wearing a shirt. That's the double
Basically, this is an example of where they used the smaller actor in composite in Chris
Evans's face on top of his they just do a head replacement here
but he's still I've actually even skin a fight they made him even skinnier because
Apparently a small Steve Rogers is still several inches shorter than the small actor they used on set
This is all 2d compositing they used a program called flame for all of it
The same flame that was first used in the Super Mario Brothers movie. Yes
So the company that does this visual effect is called Lola visual effects
I think they're in London, but they're responsible for all of the de-aging effects
You've seen in Marvel movies, you know, you have Kurt Russell, Michael Douglas,
younger Tony Stark.
They really specialized in trying to like figure out what parts of the body sag
And so that they know what parts to like soften up and smooth out.
You definitely notice in this shot here of Sir Patrick Stewart
When they smooth him over it definitely kind of gives them that smoothed look
it kind of looks less real because it is so
Artificially smooth and you lose some of the detail in the highlights, you can still see the wrinkles there.
[Niko] That reminds me actually of something that was really unique about the Steve Rogers
skinny Steve Rogers so we have texture on our skin, you know?
You have skin plates, you have hair follicles, basically grain, right, detail. What happens when you take something
that's this big and you scale it down? What happens if you take a big picture you scale it down? - it gets sharper
Right, it gets crisper
So all of that gave them a problem. When when they started shrinking him down, all the texture on him started getting really crisp
and tiny compared to everything else and on a movie screen you can see it
So they actually had to then after they shrink him down. They had to basically de-noise his skin, and then re-add
Grain, and noise back to his skin at the correct scale.
Another layer they had to add on top of that was de-shadowing his chest.
Because shadows are what we use to cue us for like shape and volume
Exactly!
So a big dude with giant pecs casts shadows on his body
and then we take- we move his pecs. It's like what are these shadows coming from?
No, they would de-shadow the shot. Kinda lift the shadows
everywhere, and then they would shrink it down. Cuz if they-
Yeah, like you're saying if they just shrink it down with the shadows. It's like
Where did those shadows come from?
It was a tremendous amount of work
No wonder Marvel movies and movies like these have so many VFX artists working on them.
For sure, and like this is true mastery of like the human form.
If you ever wonder why Leonardo da Vinci cuts open cadavers,
if you can understand the anatomy and the muscular structure
Then you know what to draw when you're drawing something from reference and from your mind
So as you know
You can always leave a comment down below to help inspire us as to what we should react to next
But if you'd like a more direct way to interact with us
We run a poll on patreon for every VFX artists react for you guys to pick one of our scenes
and skinny Steve Rogers was one of them.
So consider supporting us on patreon.com/corridordigital
or there's a link in the description below.
Alright, let's check out the next one
[Clint] Oh no... [Wren] an- AUGH
[Wren] Wh-why do you have to bait me in like this??
[Clint] I've seen this too many times man.
Why have you watched this so many times?
Cuz, it's just goofy. It's like the same reason why you watch Birdemic
There's bad that's intentionally bad
which is never good and there's trying to make it good and it turned out bad and that's
Hilarious to watch and ultraviolet is a case of the latter.
Oh man, what a mess
Look at those those particles shooting out of the side of the building there when she's goes straight up. Are they tracked?
They're not!
You're right! They just drift.
Why are they drifting?
They're not tracked!
They're just placed.
Okay, obviously physics have just been 100% ignored.
straight up
*making vroom noises*
Wiggle, wiggle
What?! what?!
Okay, hold up. What is happening right there?
Some poor artists I'm sure is having to hand track this into the shot way after the fact with no tracking data.
I think you're right Niko. I think the motorcycle is 100% real
- Yeah, I think so too -
And they're just having to deal with the footage plates of that, because everything is green screened here.
Was that an attempted retiming there too when she falls to the ground? or is that-
yeah, it's oughta be
You can see the wheel.
The motorcycles probably just like hung on wires or something like that. They're trying to mimic the perspective it will have.
Yes, which is a good idea
Honestly, it's like if you want to get these crazy motions, that's a pretty solid approach -
That's not how mirrors work!
That's not how mirrors work. The respective doesn't change in the mirror at all
It just becomes flat the whole time.
All the pyramids are just spewing out steam in the background
All the pyramids they broke are just steamin' out!
Well, whoa, that was cool - the gun -
it's too late man no coolness is gonna save this movie
Dude the smooth skin filter is killing me.
They literally took photoshop's unsharp mask filter and applied it for their look
Unsharp mask us right now. Just just make us look like ultraviolet
There you have it.
They did get one thing right.
The helicopter blade motion blur is making the blue of the sky darker, not just gray.
What? You're right! Look at that!
they're actually they -
So motion blur like that is - it acts like an ND filter.
It pulls your exposure down for things behind it.
And you're getting correct exposure adjustment on the buildings and the sky
Behind those helicopter blades. And they got that right!
How did they get that right, but they can't track in particles?
Because, you have like five VFX artists staying up 24 hours a day just trying to get this done.
Yep. Yep. Yep.
That's exactly what's going on.
By the way, guys this whole movie is gold.
Please watch this movie next time you get a chance
Watching it at one-and-a-half speed with the sound still on is the preferred way to watch it. It's way funnier
*Wren noises*
This is so good!
All of you pause this video right now and go watch this whole series
it'll take you, like 15 minutes then come back and finish watching this.
This is super cool. I love this
Dude, the way his eye cracks and the blood bubbles up.
Oh, I never noticed the blood before!
That's the thing, like I notice a new detail every time I watch this.
See I know nothing about Warhammer 40k or anything like that
I know nothing about the universe or the IP at all, but this was so cool
Yeah, everything is perfect about this, the lighting, the action, the camera movement.
wasn't this made by like one person?
That's, that's, what's incredible. All of the modeling, and animation ,and rendering, and compositing, and editing, and sound design,
and color grading and publishing.
So there's two things that really inspire me about this:
One is the fact that we've gotten to the point technologically where one guy has the tools to be able to make this.
He's able to make it look this good on his computer.
Secondly is that there's all these little details being pulled from Warhammer Lore.
D- is it pronounced to start
Tell us about all the cool details in this.
So, Niko told me about this
This is basically one of the cool things I've ever seen. I'm a huge Warhammer fan
So the great thing about these shorts is that every single aspect and every single cool action setup piece
is an actual mechanic in the game, from the weapons they use like the plasma pistol.
The plasma pistol has like a really high armor penetration, which is why it was able to get through that.
The whole like he's doing a shooting movement
and then he's doing his charge phase and then he's doing a combat phase.
like this is just like a really sped up version of playing Warhammer on the tabletop
If this guy doesn't get hired by Games Workshop and make a full-length movie, then they're messing up hard.
Thanks D
So you'll notice a lot of things in this like depth the field,
motion blur, nice lighting, good shadows.
Back in the day used to have to basically turn on all these things one by one and dial them in until they looked real
It was all just hacks
So these days if you learn a physically based rendering program like Octane or Redshift
Octane is our renderer. We love Octane
It actually makes it much, much, easier to make something like this look real
In fact, it takes a lot of the work out.
Octane, just turn it on put it in a light and it's like well that looks awesome.
It feels like cheating at first and then your, just like:
This is it
This is all I needed.
But this is like where the technology's gotten to, which is wonderful because it's all just there already
just turn it on and simulate it and that's the beautiful thing about it
It just gets technology out of the way for the artist and just lets artists create
and I think Astartes is one of the best examples of that.
You should definitely check it out. It's an amazing animation. We'll have a link in the description below
Y'all've seen that movie Home Alone.
We have this idea, what if we made home alone the rated-r version
Hello
Like what would happen if you took a brick to the face from five stories up
it would probably cave your nose in like that one scene in Pan's Labyrinth
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