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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[@peto348]

"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!!

[@arnavpandey9437]

thumbnail looks like that one nirvana album cover

[@KillerTacos54]

LOL FAX

[@kinggreen5424]

Absolutely mindblowing

[@M.Taqi-Khan]

You guys are angels of VFX

[@dddharmesh]

Amazing work as always....

[@nonyabuiz2023]

Excellent video guys

[@sridharan5172]

18.2 Petra bytes 😮

[@mukundkm7129]

Loved it!😍

[@strukovets]

Awesome!

[@elijah9117]

Wow cool vid

[@FREDDYMAZENGE]

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

[@Newgear01]

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

[@none53]

DREAM!

[@bradfab_fx]

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

[@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

[@incrediblesarath]

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

[@pavanraju575]

renderman

[@thomascrown8194]

he says in the video: "Manuka"

[@zacksterxenres8589]

@@thomascrown8194 Weta FX Use Inhouse Render Engine

[@viilth576]

@@pavanraju575lol renderman would literally destroy their computers

[@LandHooman]

Inhouse spectral renderer called Manuka

[@dinuraj4975]

🐋Awesome🐳

[@df4196]

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?

[@edyhigher]

Make please Modo non-commercial

[@mp4frames]

18.5 petabytes. holy fuck.

[@KaiserSaucy]

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

[@tomyrose6491]

Yeah i can do that in blender

[@mamalikhakzad24]

holy sweet mother of jesus

[@M_k-zi3tn]

They used a million gigs of space! WHAT!!

[@zacksterxenres8589]

18.5 PB!! 18000 Tera Byte 💀💀

[@kurtdewittphoto]

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

[@stevemuzak8526]

It's 24fps on 4K disc.

[@kurtdewittphoto]

@stevemuzak8526 Does it lack motion blur? I saw it a second time in 2D, which was at 24fps, but it lacked motion blur and looked terrible. I cpught a few minutes of it on TV once and it looked similar.

[@Poepopdestoep]

I have seen it in the cinema @ 24fps, there was more than enough motionblur on everything.@@kurtdewittphoto

[@arturkre5793]

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

[@kavilpparwar4956]

WHAT THE HECK IS PETABYTES😢

[@sinnpause]

18000 terabytes

[@manniK]

This sounds painful, haha.

[@HyperGalaxyEntertainment]

NOW we can make this with AI

[@rawbean021]

No.

[@Awytoo]

Who "we"? You know how to code or hoping there's a ready to use AI water simulator out there? Or you mean you can composite these shots with AI? Well, you should work with them then. You'll be in high demand.

[@ario9907]

Maybe in 10+ years

[@christianstoneroussesu4584]

lmao not at all

[@zacmarion]

@@ario9907 honestly probably more like 3 at the rate things are going

[@jesperjee]

Amazing effects. Terrible movie

[@lonesomealeks4206]

it was all wasted on a generic, very forgettable movie

[@wingedhussar1453]

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

[@BlckJohnnyQuest]

Why does the first one look more real?

[@wingedhussar1453]

@@BlckJohnnyQuest imm not sure but it does less colorful like disnety movie

[@BlckJohnnyQuest]

@@wingedhussar1453 i agree, i didn't want to say anything because James Cameron seemed like he worked hard on it so i was like whatever. i wonder if Disney involvement in James Cameron movies making them less etc

[@Akash-sk7cc]

Avatar 2 looks also more real than part-1.

[@wingedhussar1453]

@@BlckJohnnyQuest probably disney wanted a more colorful childish looking movie .