Friday 20 Nov 2009 - 12:02
The Vancouver studio of visual-effects house Prime Focus has completed 175 VFX shots for vampire movie The Twilight Saga: New Moon, including creating the 'diamond' skin effect of vampire Edward Cullen and others.
Prime Focus's work on The Twilight Saga: New Moon -- based on the novels by Stephanie Meyer -- includes CG water, atmospherics, CG matte painting and environment work -- including plenty of full-CG shots.
The diamond effect comes into play when Edward Cullen -- played by Robert Pattinson -- and other vampires come into contact with sunlight. Their skin appears to sparkle.
Director Chris Weitz and his visual effects producer Susan MacLeod gave Prime Focus the task of evolving this effect so that Edward’s skin refracted light as if diamonds were embedded underneath. The Prime Focus team, led by visual effects supervisor Eric Pascarelli, went through extensive look development to achieve this effect, and used as its inspiration Greek Thassos marble, a very white, translucent material with flecks that reflect light very efficiently. The team even had a slab of marble at the office for the CG artists to use as reference.
“Creating the diamond skin effect turned out to be a very rewarding experience,” said Pascarelli. “The effect appears many times throughout the film in several very different scenarios. It was challenging because the diamond effect appears in sunlight, whenever Edward’s already very pale skin is lit by sun, and on top of all of that brightness, there needs to be a convincing diamond-like sparkle."
He continues: "Film doesn’t really have enough brightness range to do this, so we had to resort to some trickery, such as lens effects, flares and light rays to give the feeling of super-bright glimmer. In addition, we needed to show the skin having a translucent glow. There was a very delicate balance of the elements that make up the effect."
The team used 3D particle geometry dispersed over a CG model of Edward's head to reflect several artificial environments in order to create the sparkles and rays.
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