Chappie is a 2015 sci-fi action film about an autonomous police android in a crime-riddled
johannesburg that after being damaged has an artificial intelligence installed that mimics
the human mind and becomes chappy the film received fairly mixed reviews some loved it
some hated it but one thing that everyone agreed on was that the visual effects were brilliant
image engine the embassy olin vfx and botvfx handled the digital effects while
weta workshop built the practical versions of both chappie and moose
contrary to the norm where the vfx team would measure and match a physical robot model in
chappie the digital version of chappie was built before the physical one weta workshop had actually
been working on chappie's character design on and off since 2010 basing the design on the director's
previous short films tetraval and tempbot once they had overall designs approved wetter sent
them to imageengine who then blocked out the models and began working on the finer details
the team really wanted chappie to look and feel like a real robot so they paid special attention
to the rigging making sure they found out how far each joint could move and ensuring that
chaby had a full range of movement without cheating and using ball joints or allowing
parts to crash into one another as long as they weren't seen once image engine was happy with
the design and range of movement they worked with weta workshop to create files suitable
for 3d printing wetter then used a project and an eden printer for the smaller parts and their own
home-built 3d printers for the larger ones almost every part of the robot was 3d printed and a total
of 19 full robots were built throughout the film chappie suffers different levels of damage he gets
shot spray painted firebombed and even blinged out so each of these 19 practical robots were
painted and damaged in different ways and then image engine applied these changes to
the digital versions the practical versions were invaluable not only because they allowed
the team to physically damage them see the true result of the damage and then transfer it to
their digital versions they also allowed the team to measure the grey levels of the robots
grey levels are values from 0 to 255 and indicate the brightness of a pixel these levels could then
be measured against the grey levels of the grey suit worn by the actor playing chappie
image engine didn't use motion capture for this film instead the actor playing chappie wore a
grey suit with tracking markers and various chests and shoulder pieces to bulk him out and provide
accurate contact points then using roto motion which is a technique for animating 3d on top of
an actor matching it frame by frame to the live action plate all of chappie's movements were 100
keyframed a painstaking and laborious process which in some cases was straightforward and
in others involved recreating actors or moving set pieces in addition to hand animating chappie
the team also had to use different shaders textures and arm and chest and head pieces
depending on what scene of the movie it was and the level of damage chappie had received
in order to streamline this process image engine created chappie as one main asset in
maya every shader texture model and rig adjustment for every change chappie went through
rode along with it then by using shotgun and their own internal database called
jabuka they could automatically toggle on and off the different configuration files
that would put chappie in the appropriate state of any given time and shot they also
used this technique to streamline chappies lip syncing and to ensure that his battery
level indicator was always at the right level for the specific place in the film's timeline
when watching the film you can't help but notice how well chappie sits in every scene
this is mainly because of the way the asset was lit typically the vfx team would have a grey
ball a color chart and a hdri to work from but for chappie they got a lot more they took dual height
hdris which allowed them to triangulate objects and light positions they also photo scanned the
set locations which together with the survey data allowed them to create a low-res version
of the set that lighting artists could then use to set up the scene and environment based
light rigs they also took hdris along the paths of movement for example in a scene where chappie
walked through a room the vfx team would follow the same route through the room taking multiple
hdris this data was then used to recreate the light there was on the physical set
and reprojected onto chappie allowing him to actually walk through the different light sources
that were on the physical set in total there were 25 scenes and 70 different environment setups by
creating these base lighting rigs they streamlined the whole lighting process allowing lighting
artists to concentrate on making aesthetic choices and really fine tuning every shot
the moose's design was refined by image engine and weta workshop but started from a rendered cg
model made by the director neil blomkap himself who actually started his career as a 3d animator
once they had settled on the design weta workshop started one of the biggest builds it has had to do
for a long time consisting of around 10 000 individual parts some parts were cast
in urethane others were steel and aluminum however not all materials used on moose were
as conventional as steel and aluminum for the cooling radiators weta found that they couldn't
just bend wires to emulate the radiator fins so instead they used ramen noodles they took
five blocks of ramen noodles painted them black and then gave them a quick spray of
silver moose couldn't be inserted into the live-action plates using the same methods as
with chappie because on the one hand there isn't an actor who is physically big enough to occupy
the same amount of frame as moose and on the other hand moose had to fly to overcome these problems
image engine used both new school and old school solutions for the shot where moose is flying
they used a drone to help with framing and to give something for the actors to react to for
the scenes on the ground a huge plywood cutout was used to give everyone an idea of moose's
dimensions and then a vfx crew member stood with a three meter pole and a tennis ball on the end
during rehearsal to block out moose's position and give the actors something to use as an eyeline
the intention was for him to be out of shot when the cameras were rolling but the actors wanted him
to stay in for reference so they ended up having to paint him out in post whether you think chappie
is a great film or whether you thought it was a bad film you have to appreciate the amount of time
skill and attention to detail that the practical and visual effects teams put
into this movie and just for that reason alone this film is worthy of admiration
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