TEXTURING A FUTURE WORLD
Weathering Was the key to bringing Mortal engines’ postapocalyptic locations and vehicles to life
Since the film happens some time in the future, after a massive war and geological event, it was important for Weta Digital to reflect the passage of time in its texturing of 3D objects. The constructed sets for location shooting also provided inspiration.
“We factored into our material templates how certain types of material would corrode, which was a big part of the texturing,” says visual effects supervisor Luke Millar. “Places like London had a brown rusty oxide, while Airhaven, which was more heavily aluminium based, would have a different kind of corrosion which was more white aluminium oxide.”
Artists used Foundry’s Mari for 3D texturing, with individual look decisions based very much on the different materials of this postapocalyptic world.
Recalls Millar: “We’d say, ‘Well, this needs to be made of steel, and it needs to be painted, but some of the painting will be chipped away. The modelling and texturing teams would essentially draw down from those looks, which they had preestablished. And then it just became details on top of that in terms of what colour paint, or how much weathering, or how much corrosion was necessary.”