| Realization of a 3D rendering accompanied by animations and visual effects of an Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora poster.

🎬 Audiovisual production: https://www.carlierjulien.com/gallery/avatarfop

Overview 🔎

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an action-adventure video game based on the universe of Avatar (movie) whose release date is scheduled for the end of the year 2023. This one will offer players to explore a part of the world of Pandora in first person view through a Na'vi. The game is published by Ubisoft and developed by Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney.

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The will at the completion of this project was to render animated the official poster of the game using animations and visual effects, and thus offer a glimpse of the living and immersive world of Pandora.

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Process 🛣

In order to realize this project, I went through several well-defined stages.

 1. Realization of the scenarios (3D, VFX, Animations, Editing) in order to clarify the direction of the project and to know all the elements to be produced.

 2. Creation and configuration of the composition within After Effects: dimensions of the production (1920x1080 px), choice of the number of frames per second (60 FPS), duration (34 sec.).

 3. Cutout of all the elements of the poster through After Effects in order to constitute the plans of the 3D part. Deletion of elements, additional adjustments and retouching were necessary to perfect the plans, using Photoshop.

 4. Insertion of the plans previously cut in the 3D space, and configuration of the camera and its path.

 5. Creation of the various animations.

 6. Design of the visual effects (VFX) using plugins.

 7. Editing of the production: Intro & Outro, color corrections and details enhancement.

 8. Assembly of the production on Premiere Pro: Insertion of the composition, research, addition and editing of the soundtrack and sound effects (SFX).

 9. Production export (H.264): 1 video file (.Mp4); 2 cover pictures (JPG & PNG).

Audiovisual production details 🎞 

🎞 Composition

  •  Dimensions: 1920x1080 px.

  •  Frames per second: 60 Fps.

  •  Duration: 34 seconds.

  •  Editing: 3D editing with a shot by 2-nodes camera.

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The original dimensions of the poster have been readjusted in order to correspond to the 1920x1080p resolution. On the other hand, the principle of the "looped video" has been established in the architecture of the composition.

🪄 Photo retouching

   ○ Noise reduction

   ○ Deletion of the title

   ○ Deletion of the flying entities (mountains, machines and creatures)

   ○ Reconstruction of certain parts hidden by elements as part of the realization of the various plans for the completion of the 3D rendering

When making the cutouts in order to obtain the different plans to create the 3D part of the production, it was necessary to proceed retouching to faithfully reconstruct the plans behind each cut element.

✂ Cutouts (from the foreground to the background)

    1.  The title

    2.  The Na'vi and its Ikran in the foreground

    3.  The mountain range in the foreground in the lower right corner

    4.  The mountain on the right

    5.  The mountain pillar on the left

    6.  The set of flying entities (machines and creature) distributed between the foreground and the background

    7.  The flying mountains on the left

    8.  The valley below (plan A)

    9.  The valley below (plan B)

    10.  The flying mountains on the right

    11.  The sky

✨ Effects & Elements

   ○ Transitions

       • Intro in the clouds

       • Outro in fade to black

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   ○ Motion Design

       • The title

   ○ Color grading

       • Color corrections

       • Slight details enhancement

   ○ Visual effects (VFX)

       • Appearance of the title and clouds during the intro

       • Sunshine

       • The different waterfalls

       • The flames, embers and the smoke released by the helicopter falling on the left

       • The combustion and the smoke released by the missiles fired by the helicopter coming from the right

All the elements and effects were made in After Effects by hand and using plugins.

⚙ Animations

   ○ Camera

   ○ The Na'vi and his Ikran (Banshee) in the foreground

   ○ The helicopters and missiles

   ○ The Na'vi and his Ikran, appearing on the right

   ○ The stationary Ikran on the left

   ○ The Ikran in the background on the left

   ○ The Tetrapterons

   ○ The creature at the edge of the mountain on the right

   ○ The flying mountains

   ○ The bird in the background

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All the animations were made by hand, some of which required additional cutouts in order to animate a very specific element without hindering other elements (eg: the Na'vi and his Ikran in the foreground).

🎚 Sound effects (SFX)

   ○ Wind blowing

In order that the production appear more immersive, I deliberately added a slight sonority of the wind blowing at altitude.

🎵 Soundtrack

"Happiness Is Simple" from Simon Franglen | From Avatar: The Way of Water.

Takeaways 📣

This project is one of the most ambitious I have worked on. I deliberately sought to make the original poster as vivid as possible through this production and according to the hardware limitations (PC) that I face.

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To do this, I dedicated a lot of energy to the achievement of the retouching and reconstructing the environments. The is the most delicate and important step because it represents the basis of the production: it allow the 3D part to be set up as well as the complex animations.

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In addition, the completion of this led me to create new visual effects such as waterfalls, smoke trails and flames. Also, in order to make my effects ever more realistic, I tried my hand at real-time fluid simulation software EmberGen in order to create the fire effect that I was looking for. On the other hand, the results obtained were not convincing and my hardware limitations do not give me good technical conditions to use this type of software.

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Finally, the cuts relating to the implementation of the animations were particularly demanding within this composition, in particular those linked to the Na'vi and his Ikran in the foreground, as much as the quantity of animations created. In return, they were necessary to both separate the different parts of the entities body and then obtain a certain fluidity in the movements.

Julien Carlier Productions

2023