{"id":305302,"date":"2026-02-19T02:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T02:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305302\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T02:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T02:26:09","slug":"fire-and-ash-vfx-team-created-water-simulations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305302\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire and Ash’ VFX Team Created Water Simulations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJames Cameron\u2019s \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash<\/a>\u201d picks up where \u201cThe Way of Water\u201d left off. The Sully family is hiding as they deal with the loss of son Neteyam (Jamie Flatters). When they take Spider (Jack Champion) to live with the Wind Traders, Varang (Oona Chaplin) leads the Ash People in an ambush on the convoy. The ilu, a sea creature that is ridden by the Na\u2019vi, is also employed in the action sequence. In all, \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d needed over 3,000 visual effects shots.<\/p>\n

\n\tWeta FX senior visual effects supervisor Eric Saindon breaks down how some of the key scenes
came together.<\/p>\n

\n\tKiri, Spider and the Ilu<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tVFX Progression Frames from \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Studios<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur live-action plate of Jack Champion was filmed in a shallow pool in New Zealand. The actor was seated on a camera-ready saddle, while the ilu\u2019s motion was performed by our stunt team in blue suits, LED screens were reflected into mirrors to project the surrounding environment and reflections onto the water surface,\u201d says Saindon.<\/p>\n

\n\tExcavators were operated with slightly offset timing and fitted with practical paddles designed by Steve Ingram\u2019s SPFX team to generate gentle, overlapping waves characteristic of a protected bay.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cUsing our in-house live depth compositing tools, James Cameron was able to view a real-time
composite of the live-action and CG worlds. The same setup also allowed us to generate per-frame geometry of the water surface, which was used to drive the FX simulations,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor the final composite, rotoscoping was used to extract Jack Champion and all water interactions from the plate. The matched FX simulation was then combined with a CG lower half for Jack and the underwater elements. The full CG environment and Kiri were added and composited together, with depth-based haze and physically accurate depth of field applied.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTulkun Council<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the Tulkun council scene, the animation team animated the Tulkun \u2014 huge, whale-like sea creatures \u2014 rising through a blocking simulation of the water surface. The simulation calculated momentum and volume displacement as the Tulkun ascended and broke through the surface.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs the Tulkun breaks the surface and displaces water, the resulting volume is coupled into the simulation, generating bulk water motion and splashes that affect the surrounding ocean surface,\u201d Saindon says. \u201cThin-film simulations were used to model water running along the Tulkun\u2019s surface and reintegrating into the bulk water simulation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe notes that water shed from the Tulkun\u2019s head transitions from the bulk simulation into splashes, mist and atmospheric spray, driven by velocity and prevailing atmospheric conditions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor the final composite, our in-house renderer was used to compute physically accurate atmospheric haze. Depth of field was set based on the lens data, and all compositing was performed using deep data,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"James Cameron\u2019s \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d picks up where \u201cThe Way of Water\u201d left off. The Sully family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[32160,93,61,60,270],"class_list":["post-305302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-avatar-fire-and-ash","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}