Avatar The Way of Water VFX Breakdown: Dive in with Wētā FX

Can’t wait until 2025 for more from Pandora? Join us as we dive into Avatar: The Way of Water’s visual effects with Sam Cole, Sequence VFX Supervisor at Wētā FX. In this VFX breakdown, Sam explains how the studio used Foundry tools to deliver the film’s Oscar-winning effects, using Mari to texture assets, Katana to light the project’s 3,200 shots, and Nuke to bring it all together. You’ll also hear fascinating insights on the challenges of merging plate-based photographic water with CGI water for the film’s breathtaking aquatic scenes.

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[peto]

"The Metkayna village - it's 66 billion instances." Forget polygons or data structures needed to efficiently access correct instance when rendering. I can't even imagine storing position, rotation and scale for 66 billion of something. Developing software for render-farms must be fun.

[Davvechan]

Great to see some more in-depth breakdowns of Avatar! From the great team at Weta!!

[michaeldevlin]

Stunning. Incredible. I’m gobsmacked by the level of craftsmanship on display here.

[arnavpandey]

thumbnail looks like that one nirvana album cover

[FREDDYMAZENGE]

Whenever l see a notification about Wetta I'm like 🥳

[onlythemarkk]

only one more yeaar until the road of avatar 3 is here
my theory is we will either get a trailer at the end of this year or recieve a trailer in spring of 2025 april or may same time it released in 2022

[shivangipriya]

Which program that use in this video Please for FX and the render ?

[Newgear]

@Foundry what is the music used in the first 19 seconds of the video? Couldn't shazam it with all the talking.

[bradfab_fx]

Foundry? You mean the creators of that one camera tracker plugin?

[df]

What is going on with the avatar franchise. This movie came out two years ago and you just got around to doing a vex breakdown?

[joelchamp]

Ol' James Cameron always brings out the best work in people, including studios. So cool

[KaiserSaucy]

I feel a bit embarrassed that Godzilla Minus One took home the Oscar for vfx watching this now. 😳

[incrediblesarath]

Hi, The render engine is 3Delight or something else?

[M_k-zitn]

They used a million gigs of space! WHAT!!

[kurtdewittphoto]

Unbelievable visuals, I just wish they hadn't gone with that variable frame rate. It ruined what would have been an incredible experience.

[arturkre]

yea lets upload a video about visuals in low bitrate 1080p on youtube. That will work great for sure

[yahu]

there are playstation 3 games that look more real than this avatar way of pisswater

[lonesomealeks]

it was all wasted on a generic, very forgettable movie

[wingedhussar]

avatar 2 looked worse then the first. this 2 looks like a video game