Aquaman 2 was an interesting project to be a part of. Using a combination of Unreal Engine and volumetric capture, we transported the actors underwater for big action set pieces.
Pre-Production
The content creation for this project was mostly done by an external vendor and then handed to us for shooting. This is always a tricky process and can cause unforeseen issues down the line. When the work was handed to us, we had to streamline the project into the sequences we wanted to shoot with. This involved some meticulous content management using perforce. We then had to prep the animated characters for the wall and had to make sure we optimised them to run at frame rate. This then led to us animating the content around our volume so the moving scene on the LED wall, lit the actors in the volume correctly. The aim of this was to use volumetric capture to take the actors underwater where they could act out the big set pieces without having to go underwater themselves.
Whilst shooting Aquaman 2, I was required to operate the sequences we had prepared for the scenes. I had to regularly adjust and re-time animation sequences, and swap character models in and out depending on who was in the volume. We worked closely with the VFX and editing teams to ensure the lighting was working correctly and the animation sequences were timed correctly.
