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Theyre light brown and catch the light, highlighting their amber specs.
Theyre not flat and passive like the visual effects eyeballs of years past.
They look hopeful, scared, confused, alert.
They look like eyes.
Eyes are among the hardest visual effect to perfect.
Best-case scenario, they look something like Caesars in thePlanet of the Apestrilogy: vivid, emotional, alive.
Worst-case, they look likeThe Polar Express: passive, doll-like, dead.
But it was quite simple geometry, Saindon said.
ForAlita, the geometry is far more detailed across every layer of the eye.
With Alita, we have moved further by replacing the textures with actual geometry for the depth and shadowing.
We actually had to [scan in] Salazars eyes, Saindon said.
You always could feel the emotion through the eyes, because its Rosas emotion on the CG character.
Wetas designers use their own patented process to scan human eyes.
Gollums eyes used 50,000 digital polygons.
Alitas, by contrast, have 9 million polygons in just one iris the rendering is exponentially more precise.
We could only do so much in the concept art form.
We went through a number of things where we were getting shots back and seeing her come to life.
(Flat eyes that dont sparkle with life are easier to produce and copy across characters.)
But when they do, it increases the vividness of the final image.
Whats best, Saindon says, is always to have an actor perform the eyes.
To get the subtleties of the detail from an actor, it will always be the key.
They always have that little bit of extra motion that you dont even notice.
The next challenge was mastering how light is reflected in the eyes.
The caustics always change the lighting as it goes through the fibers, Saindon said.
Its a really hard math problem to get right.
Even harder are the tears, and Weta is working to streamline how theyre created and incorporated.
We have to do it very manually right now, Saindon said.
Landau recently screened scenes fromAlitafor an audience and was impressed by their reaction.
Thats a testament to where Weta was able to take the eyes and the whole performance.
