A Look At The Software Used In AVATAR

[Sadao]

A Look At The Software Used In AVATAR

By AVATAR on May 29, 2010 3:39 AM 1 Comments
AVATAR is a film that was created by technically complex software. There were more than half a dozen pieces of software used in AVATAR. Several thousand shots were created with the software. Here's a look at the software used to make the movie.
Guest post by Ty Wingfoot
AVATAR is by far the most expensive, technically challenging and visually stunning film to date.
AVATAR has raised the bar on what is possible from an effects perspective and of course, most of the work and money was because of the software. Weta Digital is the New Zealand effects company that James Cameron used to bring AVATAR alive. Weta Digital also worked on other visually awesome films such as King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Weta Digital used more than just one software package. They used half a dozen pieces of software to make AVATAR, as well as some custom built software and applications of its own. Much of the work went into building the virtual world of Pandora, and Weta had to create a virtual camera for James Cameron to use to scout locations and film in the virtual world.
Here we take a look at the software that was used to make the movie.
RenderMan
One of the pieces of software used in AVATAR was Renderman, which is an application created and sold by Pixar. The software is used for rendering 3D animation and visual effects. According to Pixar, Renderman has been used on every visual effects Academy Award winner for the last 15 years. Renderman comes in several varieties from standard to RenderMan Studio and Renderman for Maya.
Zbrush
Zbrush is another piece of software used in AVATAR in the concept designs to do such things as create the look of the Na’vi people and the head of the Banshee. Xbrush is kind of like a digital sculpting tool that works in real time with 2D and 3D effects. Zbrush also lets you paint images with color, material and textures, and allows you to change the canvas. Zbrush is good for post-production work, but is more widely geared for pre-production to allow for the viewing of changes to models, props, sets and costumes quickly and easily.
Autodesk Maya and More
Autodesk Maya, often referred to as just Maya, is software that is used for 3D animation, 3D modeling, rendering and more. Maya was not the only Autodesk software used in AVATAR. According to the Autodesk website, MotionBuilder, Mudbox, Softimage, 3ds Max and Flame software were also used. These applications were used by fourteen different effects companies including Weta Digital in the making of the movie. MotionBuilder is what helped put the characters in the environment. According to James Cameron, “You're creating a kind of live video game of the performance of the scene."
Massive
Massive is software used in AVATAR to do things like create the ground cover. This allowed the effects team to grow plants from digital seeds and the forest to grow in real time. They grew big trees and then smaller trees. The big trees would affect the growth of the smaller trees and in the end, the environment simulated a real forest. Massive is traditionally used to generate and visualize crowd behavior. More specifically, Massive is used to control agents, which are characters who perform on their own.
Putting It All Together
The software and computer programs used to make AVATAR were more than just the sum of each part. It wasn’t just one software package used for one aspect and another program used for another aspect. Software was used for various parts and rolled into other aspects and programs were created within these programs to do just what was needed. All of the software used in AVATAR came together to create the world James Cameron wanted. Making a movie, especially a computer graphic intensive movie, has many steps and likely has used many applications along the way. There were probably lots of other software used in AVATAR in addition to the ones above, but not mentioned by the production team as they are considered basic tools of the trade or played smaller roles in the development of AVATAR. Sponsored by Panasonic VIERA. Return to the world of AVATAR in stunning full HD with the Panasonic VIERA HD TV.
What digital effects impressed you most in AVATAR?

[sunux]

wow, it really feed my sight on

[Av Daedric]

Wowza, That's crazy. Ive used maya before. I enjoyed.

Read the comment in the blog. I'll quote! "I've read that Weta Digital actually employed 900 people to work on Avatar at one time and used a 10,00 sq ft server farm. Creating the Na'vi and Pandora took a petabyte of digital storage (That's a quadrillion bytes). It took a lot of memory to make this film."

A petabyte is 1024 terabytes, and a terabyte is 1024 Gigabytes. That's enormous! I'm a pure geek....

[Trivial]

Maya is truly amazing software.

A relative of mine does a lot of computer stuff (beyond my comprehension... and I thought I was smart ). He's showed me some stuff that he has put together in Maya, truly mind-blowing.

[edplane]

RenderMan... why not V-Ray? lol. I use Cinema 4D personally, I think it's interface is a little easier to use. But that list can't be complete. I'm sure they used some custom software for motion tracking. I wish I had motion tracking software and equipment.. :(

[Tìrol]

I think the server farm they used ran on Ubuntu, which is what I use on my laptop and desktop at home.
35,000 Core Ubuntu Server Farm at Weta Digital | Ubuntu Tutorials

[edplane]

They did run on Ubuntu. I want to make my own render farm run on it as well. Ad with them, 4000 servers at 2500 dollars each, do they really want to PAY for a software license? I know I wouldn't. And what if Windows were to crash in the middle of rendering a frame? That would really suck..

[Tìrol]

I doubt Windows HPC Edition is up to the task either. I am glad they went with Ubuntu. If professional companies rely on it, then what they contribute will trickle down to me. :D

[edplane]

Well, personally, I would us Mac OS X Server, but your only 'legal' options are Apple's U1 rack mount server, or the Mac mini, and I would like something custom. But for simple tasks, like rendering, using it as a storage node, hosting a website, ect, Ubuntu and just about every other form of Linux will do the job. I just find them harder to admin, so for extensive admin use, OS X FTW! But who is going to admin a server? We admin the whole thing from a remote computer, and that remote computer can run about any OS you want... So as long as you have the programs on Ubuntu, no problem...

That was a little long.

[Tìrol]

Pity Macs are so restricted I would not use them but more people could use the platform they like. Though you could just go to the source and use the Mach Microkernel and then compile your own software for it. I would actually think Ubuntu Server might be more up to the task than you think. It has a throughput optimized kernel, full 64-bit support, community and pay tech support, cloud and infrastructure management. It is pretty cool.

Though my only use of it is I installed it on an old desktop machine. I kept a gui though I use the server optimized kernel. I use it for converting video, downloading/uploading, and control it remotely from my laptop. Then I upload the results to my cloud server to download elsewhere.