Visual Effects Houses Use Eyetronics Scans on "Blade: Trinity"

By Crispin MacIntosh
Dec 17, 2004, 0:1!
Gone are the days when vampires simply poof away with a fabled stake through the heart.
Sometimes deadly viruses cause their skin to bubble, blister and disintegrate other times
bullets or trusty stakes ! still the weapon of choice on occasion ! cause them to combust into
bits and vapori"e away.
#t least that$s what happens when vampires are van%uished in &ew 'ine Cinema$s (Blade)
*rinity,( thanks to scanning technology from
Eyetronics and visual effects artists from Giant +iller ,obots, Cafe-., and /igital
/imension.
*o create the desired effect for both the vampire death scenes and the action se%uences,
filmmakers turned to three different visual effects houses) Giant +iller ,obots for the high!
resolution stunt effects of the main characters, Cafe0--0C*S for the boiling effect on the
vampires$ skins 1both inside and out2, and /igital /imension for the traditional (ashing( ! or
breaking down of vampires into tiny particle pieces when they$re van%uished.
*he actors were scanned with 0yetronics portable scanning system, which enabled the
company to take their technology where it was needed and make it available at a moment$s
notice. 3ith hundreds of e4tras, and without knowing e4actly who would need to be scanned
when, sessions sometimes happened on an ad!hoc basis fle4ibility was essential.
In si4 visits, technicians captured about 56 full!body scans of
3esley Snipes, +ris +ristofferson, *riple 7, and vampire e4tras.
8f the 56 scans taken, 99 were selected by Conmy to be processed by 0yetronics using its
proprietary ShapeSnatcher software.
ShapeSnatcher turns the :/ grid information captured by ShapeCam into ;/ models. It
enables 0yetronics to automatically stitch together the different ;/ perspectives, blend them
into a smooth model, and output them in common animation formats. *he ;/ models for
Blade)*rinity were output as high and low!resolution ;ds ma4 files for /igital /imension, and
as #lias Maya files for Giant +iller ,obots and Cafe-..
,egardless of the visual effects each was going for, having the ;/ scan data saved all three
facilities a great deal of time. 3hile difficult to estimate <ust how much, /omenic /iGiorgio of
Cafe0--0C*S says the alternative would have been to obtain the re%uired ;/ geometry
data of the actors by cyberscanning or modeling them by hand from reference photos.
Instead, Cafe0--0C*S used a multilevel matchmove rig with the 0yetronics scanning
system to capture detailed scans of the actors$ heads and bodies. #rtists then used
'ightwave ;/ to apply a decaying skin effect onto the actors$ digital models. 8nce lit and
rendered as multiple elements, compositors integrated the effect onto the original footage.
*he processes for the other two visual effects houses were similar.