How Disney used geometry and AI to rejuvenate Indiana Jones

It was (relatively) easy to make Indiana Jones look young again. The hard part? He does the same with his newest enemy, a Nazi scientist played by Mads Mikkelsen.

“We didn’t want him to necessarily look like a young Mads Mikkelsen,” says VFX Supervisor Andrew Whitehurst. reciprocal.

As we all know, Mikkelsen has established himself as one of Hollywood’s greatest villains (he’s played villains in every movie, from Marvel and DC to Harry Potter and James Bond), but he’s always been so stereotypical. It didn’t look like the type of evil. The actor started his career with good looks as a model, indiana jones and the dial of fate In the opening scene of a film featuring a young Harrison Ford fighting Nazis in the 1940s, he still had to look demonic.

“So we did a lot of concept art and testing to see what a young Jürgen Vohrer would look like. [Mads Mikklesen’s character] It doesn’t try to look like Mats, it looks like it,” says Whitehurst, who spent three years on the film. “It was a slightly different approach, because we weren’t really trying to match anything from the past exactly. I was trying to achieve

Origin of ILM FaceSwap

This is just one example of how Disney, Lucasfilm and Industrial Light and Magic have pushed the boundaries of special effects technology. indiana jones and the dial of fate. Along the way, they invented a new type of technology the company calls his ILM FaceSwap. How it works (and to know a few more secrets of its creation) Indy 5), reciprocal We spoke with Whitehurst, along with ILM’s VFX Supervisor Robert Weaver and Senior Public Relations Officer Ian Kinzl. Here’s what we learned.

First, ILM FaceSwap is more than just a button you press in Photoshop. It’s a whole set of artistic and technical tools, put together in a movie like: indiana jones and the dial of fate. “It’s a very broad term,” says Weaver.

“There have been some FaceSwap terminator 2”

Many of these tools have been around for decades.

“In fact, we’ve been doing this for over 30 years,” says Kinzl. “There have been some FaceSwap terminator 2and there was a face-swap sequence Jurassic Park. (Specifically, this technology was used in the following areas) Jurassic Park To switch the stuntman’s face in the scene where Rex Murphy (Ariana Richards) falls from the ceiling. “It was used informally internally for a while,” added Kinzl. “But this is the first branded version of his ILM feature.”

The difference of indiana jones 5According to Whitehurst, the film’s 25-minute flashbacks use nearly every tool at a studio’s disposal, from CGI to “photo-derived geometry” to machine learning, and combine them all in each shot. It was said that it was necessary. “We knew that we had used and intended to use all the techniques we had produced so far and whatever we could develop for this piece.”

Make Indiana Jones look young again

FaceSwap requires a small army to be successful (the work was completed by “hundreds of artists,” according to Weaver), but thankfully they’ve got a little help. I was.

“We were very lucky to have Harrison Ford, he was a really great guy,” says Whitehurst. “He’s got incredible physical ability, so his physicality wasn’t the issue.”

“It was my first time dealing with machine learning.”

However, there was still much work to be done. To capture all the necessary data, the main camera used to shoot the film was equipped with an “additional camera” to capture additional data on everything from lighting to details on Ford’s face. was

“We scanned every environment to know where everything was physically in space,” says Whitehurst.

Artificial intelligence also played a key role in this process. “It was my first time working with machine learning,” says Weaver. Specifically, ILM used computers to analyze “everything in the past.” Indy Create a “film” and create a baseline version of FaceSwap that VFX artists can use to weigh the pros and cons of different techniques. The team also provided an easy way to grab reference images from old Indiana Jones films and other material to match each shot. fate dial.

Once the film has been shot and all the references have been analyzed, the hard part begins. It’s the work of going shot by shot and using FaceSwap to make Harrison Ford look younger.

“Every shot has its own set of challenges, and it’s a journey of looking at the shot and going, okay, this is not quite right,” says Whitehurst. “Maybe that laugh isn’t quite right. Maybe he’s not cocky here yet.”

What is one of the most difficult parts of the face in FaceSwap? Eyes. “It’s always very difficult because the eyes are always the focal point and the window to the soul,” says Weaver. In some shots, I left the original eye completely intact. It may even be full CGI. “Even when you’re standing still, your eyes always express a lot of emotion,” he added. Just blink once in a while, largely impossible.

Ultimately, however, Weaver stresses that no matter what VFX tools and tricks are used, now or in the future, nothing is possible without the people behind ILM FaceSwap.

“I want to emphasize that no matter how advanced our technology is and how we are constantly evolving, it’s all for nothing if we don’t have the talented artists behind the scenes who creatively use these tools. is.”

indiana jones and the dial of fate is currently in theaters.