VHX Army of Soldiers in Disney’s Mulan

A recent article by Carolyn Giardina for The Hollywood Reporter describes how Disney managed to create an entire army of solders through digitization.

The movies VHX supervisor explained that they were able to use and improve upon the VHX methods Peter Jackson used in The Lord of the Rings to create an imperial army made up of real and digitized solders. He explained that they “specifically built a new photogrammetry rig of like 124 cameras that was very flexible. That allowed us to capture actors and props and extras very quickly. We came up with a system whereby we could very quickly and inexpensively go straight from that 3D scan from the photogrammetry rig into a moving character in our crowd system.”

By modeling the films massive army from 10-20 extras, the filmmakers saved on a lot of time and money in the production process. The filmmakers have also pointed out that this could be a legitimate way for filmmakers to acquire the extras they need among COVID number limitations. “In Mulan we created something that never existed, but creating digital versions of real locations is something that is becoming increasingly important as it gets harder to actually shoot in locations in a safe fashion.”

Read Carolyn Giardina’s full article for The Hollywood Reporter Here

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