Looking Outwards-05

The stunning images in James Cameron’s Titanic captivated audiences when it came out. While Cameron and his production team built half of the Titanic, for the iconic scoping shots, a 3d rendering of the full RMS Titanic was needed. Digital Domain, Cameron’s own CG company, did the majority of the effects and even went so far as to create new ones. Titanic was the first time that motion capture was used so algorithms had to be created to translate the movement of actors to the 3d animation. In addition, the full length iconic shots of the ship itself were mostly produced through animation. While a lot of the ship had been physically built, animators had to add extra sections to the ship and sometimes even render the whole ship.

I suppose that the algorithms created to produce the work dealt with looking at the movement of real ships, flags, people, etc and then animating the scenes appropriately. I don’t know how the animators would control the camera angles with the ship, but I assume that keeping the animation consistent while changing the camera angles was a big obstacle.

Titanic VFX

Behind the Scenes of Titanic

Creating Titanic