Journey’s end
Trevor Hogg spoke to Weta Digital to discover the incredible artistry needed to make War for the Planet of the Apes believable for the latest installment of the Apes saga
Weta Digital look back at how the Planet of the Apes films have evolved, and the technological advancements that enabled the team to push 3D boundaries in War for the Planet of the Apes
Answering the question of how primates came to conquer the Earth in the 1968 sciencefiction classic, Planet of the Apes, is a prequel trilogy that features Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) and War for the Planet of the Apes (2017). The three movies introduced the world to a genetically modified chimpanzee named Caesar who left behind his lab experiment origins to go on to become a powerful leader. The films also propelled Weta Digital to the forefront of being able to convey emotion through entirely synthetic characters.
“When we did Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Caesar was being created for the first time,” states Weta Digital Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri, who has received Oscars for his work on The Lord of the Rings, King Kong and Avatar. “We were trying to walk the line between an ape that looks like an ape and an ape that starts to show leadership and human intelligence. We were broadening that out on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Caesar becomes the leader of this group of apes out on their own. We started having to introduce the idea of language and apes speaking, and tried to keep that believable. On War for the Planet of the Apes, we were past those hurdles. We’re in the heart of the story and looking at what that leadership means for Caesar within his own group and how that plays out against the remaining humans in the world.”
Technological revolution
In addition to the evolution of the character, Weta Digital has been constantly adapting and developing technology.
We’ve been pushing the technology to the point where it becomes the same kind of tools as if you were making a live-action film” notes Joe. “When we did Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the techniques that we had for lighting fur
“We’ve been pushing the technology to the point Where it becomes the same kind of tools if you Were making A live-action film”
Joe letteri, Weta Digital senior Visual effects supervisor
were approximate. Now we have pushed that all into the software, which behaves as if you were outside in the real world photographing nature.” The Jungle
Book provided an opportunity to field test proprietary renderer Manuka, which marked a transition from spherical harmonics to ray tracing. “Often when fur is backlit you get sparkly glints as the flex and imperfections in the hair pick up little micro reflections of sunlight,” states Weta Digital Visual Effects Supervisor, Dan Lemmon, who won an Academy Award for his contributions to the live-action adaptation of the Disney animated classic. “That was something that our hair simulation didn’t model correctly. At the beginning of War for the Planet of
the Apes, we completely rewrote our hair shading model and went to a dual core shading model. It models the cuticle but also the medulla inside hair follicles, allowing us to get a more realistic specular breakup.”
“On the first one it was hard enough to do the fur and get the simulations, interaction and reaction to the skin and lighting
in those kinds of environments,” remarks Joe. “Caesar was at home, in an office building and outdoors for a little bit. On the second film Matt Reeves [Let Me In] pushed it. He took it out to the wet forest. We had to deal with the water interaction and more elements. In this third film, Matt took it as far as he could. This is a harsh environment. We were shooting out in the snow and looking at what that’s doing to the actors and thinking how are we going to transfer that to the behaviour the apes need to have and how that snow cumulates with the fur.”
Over half of War for the Planet of the Apes takes place in snowy environments. “It’s a big technical challenge because of the complexity of the fur system,” remarks Dan. “Each ape has millions of individual hairs on their body and in some cases as much as five million to 10 million; that’s a whole lot of processing you have to do to make each of those hairs move around and dynamically adjust to the wind, motion of the ape, pick up snow and release snow.” Snow can be powdery, wet, heavy, sticky, and crusty. “Often times you’ll get mixes of different kinds of snow within the same environment,” explains Dan. “You might have a great setup that does a particular kind of snow but having to match into the live-action footage means that you need to
make your snow look exactly like what is already there.”
Believable TRAITS
With each film, the apes develop more human traits, which presented its own set of challenges. “For us, the difficult trick played out over the course of three films is the idea of introducing language,” notes Joe. “In the first film, Caesar has only one word. By the second film there was more of it and by the third film there was more. It became part of the natural progression of the story that the evolved intelligence of the apes would involve speaking.” A new character voiced by Steve Zahn called Bad Ape took some time to work out in terms of his speech. “Part of the challenge with apes with their bigger muzzles is when they would articulate as much as the actors, it meant that the lips moved at a greater distance,” explains Dan. “It looked like the lips were moving faster than they physically could. That was something we had to tone down. Steve does a great job on him.”
As important as speech is, eyes are fundamental in making CG characters believable, as Joe observes: “It’s not just the detail of how much is in the structure of the eye, it’s also the detail of the movement of the eye and how that is coordinated with everything else that is going on in the face. Because that’s where you get your clues as to what the character is thinking. Then of course, the lighting plays into that because eyes are incredibly complex. They’re like little jewels and you have to understand the subtle shading of light within the eye amplifies all of the subtle movement and detail that you’re looking for to give you those ideas.” Dan adds, “If the eyes work you can forgive a lot of other things. That’s why we spent more time redesigning the way the eyes and eyebrows work, particularly on Caesar. We snuck bits of Andy’s anatomical details from his eyes, eyelids and eyebrows back onto Caesar to help us to more closely match the same facial expressions and shapes that he makes.”
“Quite a lot of this movie was filmed practically and that grounds the movie,” notes Joe. “But we bookend it with the Hidden Fortress situated behind a giant waterfall where we have to do a lot of that digitally because it’s impractical to find a location like that to shoot in. As we get to
the prison camp, that landscape is all built out digitally as well.” LIDAR scans were taken of anything that was physically built. “We photographed everything to understand the materials and shot a lot of lighting reference to understand how the lighting affects those materials. Then we created a digital version of whatever we had in live-action.” Battle scenes were a mix of practical and digital elements. “Matt wanted to be gritty but to also have that sense of bows and arrows versus heavy artillery. There were a lot of practical effects and those gave us the basis for the kinds of digital effects that we needed to augment it.” A huge challenge for the team was the avalanche that crashes down through the mountains, knocking over trees and covering the entire prison camp. “An avalanche isn’t something that you get asked to do on every film so it required research as to what an avalanche looks like and what are the components that we want to hit,” notes Dan. “There are a lot of different avalanches out there so what does ours need to do? Figuring out the character of the avalanche and then trying to get it to behave in the way we wanted it to behave was difficult.” To make a success of the challenge, the proprietary tree system software had to be revamped. “Lumberjack constructs growth patterns and branching structures that closely mimic a tree in the real world. It builds a simulation system at the same time, soas branches grow they start to be affected by gravity and begin to droop.”
“there is some fantastic Acting that the performers did on-set And the Animators At Weta digital Were Able to carry Across onto the digital characters”
Dan lemmon, Weta Digital Visual effects supervisor
Building CHARACTER
But however incredible the environments, the apes are the vital component. “This is a characterdriven story,” observes Joe. “It always comes down to those small moments where you understand the fate of the apes and where the story is going can change based on what a character is thinking. We’re always trying to look for the ability to read that thought process in the character so you can be right there with them as the story happens.”
“There is some fantastic acting that the performers did on-set and the animators at Weta Digital were able to carry across onto the digital characters,” remarks Dan. “It’s a real testament to their craft and artistry that those scenes work as well as they do.” Joe concludes, “It has been fantastic to be able to take Caesar from this innocent little baby chimp all the way through to this leader with such a burden on his shoulders, and having to understand and face up to the responsibility of what is happening in the world.”