Avatar

Back in 1996, James Cameron announced that he would be creating a film called Avatar, a science-fiction epic that would feature "photo-realistic, computer-generated characters."
He had a treatment for the film, which already defined many things, including the Na'vi – a primitive alien race standing ten feet tall with shining blue skin, living in harmony with their jungle-covered planet Pandora. Soon after, though, Avatar had to be shelved as the technology of the time could not satisfy the creative desires of the director. The near-900 strong crew spanned across six locations are practically working around the clock to achieve what was deemed impossible a decade earlier. Weta Digital, the New Zealand studio responsible for the groundbreaking visual effects in The Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, is taking VFX to a new level of creative and technological excellence. For Avatar, the studio has created over 1,800 stereoscopic, photo-realistic visual effects shots, many of them of the Na'vi as 'hero' characters. In addition to digital characters and environments are the machines, vehicles, equipment and everything else that help blur the line between imagination and reality.
For animating the digital characters in Avatar, Weta Digital had to develop some key technologies that would simulate realism as accurately as possible. Previously, Weta used relatively simplified muscle-simulation systems to generalise how muscles deformed a character's skin. With Avatar, CG supervisor Simon Clutterbuck led the team to create a more accurate skeletal and muscle-simulation system. For the Na'vi to be believable, realistic facial animation was crucial. The Na'vi experience a wide range of emotions and the facial animation had to convey these in a realistic way.