#Will smith movie gemini man cast skin

Through the use of a mesh, this is how they created wrinkles. “By simulating the pores and growing them properly, we finally had the true curved shape of the pore so that it never flattened out at any point,” Williams said.

Then, they used flow fields to help the pores move along the face. It poked little holes and then used connecting cables to create the pores.

#Will smith movie gemini man cast skin

Therefore, one of Weta’s shader writers came up with a program for simulating the skin as pore sites. A lot more sophistication was needed to pick up the true shape of tiny pores. Weta couldn’t just paint texture maps into a subsurface model and call it a day. The other critical breakthrough was in the area of skin pore simulation. We used this info to create a slight yellowing toward the corner of the eye.” This kind of precision made the eyes much more realistic-looking. This causes veins to float within the conjunctiva. And we realized there’s called the conjunctiva, a very thin, very translucent membrane, which is like a jellyfish that sits on top of the eye.

And the tissue gets thinner along the back of the eyelid so that it gets translucent, and that helps with the merging. It doesn’t roll down into the eye, it rolls up and then down into the eye. “One was the shape of the eyelid is incredibly important. “We discovered all sorts of things that we rolled into our models and shading that really helped,” he continued. “Our shaders were doing the right thing, but why does a real eye look like it has a softer transition in that area?” Williams asked. If you get a sharply defined, delineation between the skin and the sclera, for example, then it starts to have that dreaded dead-eye look. Weta did photo shoots with macro lenses filling an 8K frame to view all of the available visual information, and one of the target areas explored was how the bottom eyelid meets the eye. We just deep-doved like crazy on the concept of the eyes.” “As good as they’ve been done, even with the latest technical advancements, they still tend to be doll-like.

“The first bridge that had to be crossed were the eyes,” Williams said. “Gemini Man” Ben Rothsteinīut Weta needed to make great strides in both skin and eye animation for Junior to succeed. A few modifications were made and the animators removed wrinkles and blemishes. In terms of the body, it’s not quite the same trapezoidal shape, as it gets older. And Weta noticed that Smith had no age spots to remove. And yet the lips actually got smaller with age. By the time we did our first four or five passes and got to the point where we were happy with the Junior model, we then compared it back to the old model, and, with no textures on it, you were hard pressed to tell the difference.”Ĭonstants, such as bone structure, became evident along with subtle changes to the chin, jaw, and cheek. He didn’t have that many wrinkles that we had to iron out. “But the nose and the ears are supposed to get bigger with age, and they didn’t really change that much on Will. “We expected things to change, like the cheeks don’t sag as much, creating jowls,” Williams added. This was an important foundation for the animation. Weta began by making a current Will Smith CG model and then bent that down for the younger version. So we had to do a really deep dive into understanding what youth really means.” There are not a lot of anchor lines to scream at you what is young about him. “That was exceptionally hard because Will Smith has aged so well. Lee joked to the crowd of exhibitors, “If you’re a director and you get to work with Will Smith, you should consider yourself lucky - and thanks to new technology, I get two.‘Gemini Man’: Ang Lee On the Challenges of Making His ‘Will Smith Clone Movie’īut it also required radical innovations to meet the scrutiny of high-frame rate: “Part of the challenge was the youthification of Will Smith,” added Williams. Smith explained the new technology saying, “I’m 50 years old now, and I don’t know that I would have had the experience to play a 23-year-old me. The studio first teased footage of “Gemini Man” at CinemaCon, the annual trade show for theater owners. “Game of Thrones” creator David Benioff co-wrote the script with Billy Ray and Darren Lemke. Lee, the acclaimed filmmaker of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Life of Pi,” directs “Gemini Man.” The cast also includes Owen, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and Benedict Wong. We have to end this right now,” Smith’s character explains to his younger self. “They chose me because there’s never been anyone like me. The actor pulls off double duty, playing both the 50-year-old and 23-year-old version of himself in “Gemini Man,” thanks to stunning technology that de-ages Smith nearly a quarter of a century.