3D Animation

How 3D Made The Dark Knight's Gotham Come To Life

September 18, 2008 I finally joined the rest of the civilized society and went to see The Dark Knight recently. (If you haven't seen it in IMAX, go. Right now.) Yes, the movie is as good as everyone has told you, and yes, Heath Ledger is as great as everyone says he is. But just as impressive is the technology that was used to create the visual effects; not just the obvious stuff, but the city of Gotham itself... at a ridiculously high 3D resolution of more than 8,000 x 6,000 pixels. 

www.studiodaily.com/filmandvideo/currentissue/9703.html

First of all, kudos to Christopher Nolan for keeping to the ideal that realism is key. Not real as in a caped billionaire can save the city (although, who knows?), but that the effects must serve the story and look like they’re supposed to be there, as if there were no CG at all. There are too many special-effects movies nowadays that rely on smoke and mirrors to carry a bad story, or obfuscate the very action that should be drawing you in. Nolan managed to make an action movie that feels gritty and real, only using CG where there was no other alternative.

Gotham was based on Chicago, but the city was entirely re-imagined in 3D by several VFX post-production teams, including Framestore CFC and Double Negative. New DSLR cameras were used to capture even more information than the 1 million pictures used for the first Batman movie, making the city look fantastic at any time of day. All digital doubles were hand-animated, proving once again that a good animator still beats motion capture any day. Even the Batpod and the ferries were modeled from scans and hundreds of images of the real deal.

The attention to detail and hi-res compositing made the entire movie feel that much more “real” -- and that should be the goal of any movie, no matter how fantastic the circumstances or the story.

The pencil trick was pretty neat, too.

Leave a Comment

Name (required):

Email (required):

Website (optional):

Comments (required):

Please help us fight Spam by typing what you see into the box below: