⛰ Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an action-adventure video game based on the universe of Avatar (movie) whose release date is scheduled for the end of the year 2023. This one will offer players to explore a part of the world of Pandora in first person view through a Na'vi. The game is published by Ubisoft and developed by Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney.

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The will at the completion of this project was to render animated the official poster of the game using animations and visual effects, and thus offer a glimpse of the living and immersive world of Pandora.

In order to realize this project, I went through several well-defined stages.

Realization of the scenarios (3D, VFX, Animations, Editing) in order to clarify the direction of the project and to know all the elements to be produced.

 Creation and configuration of the composition within After Effects: dimensions of the production (1920x1080 px), choice of the number of frames per second (60 FPS), duration (34 sec.).

Cutout of all the elements of the poster through After Effects in order to constitute the plans of the 3D part. Deletion of elements, additional adjustments and retouching were necessary to perfect the plans, using Photoshop.

Insertion of the plans previously cut in the 3D space then configuration of the camera and its path.

Creation of the various animations.

Design of the visual effects (VFX) using plugins.

Editing of the production: Intro & Outro, color corrections and details enhancement.

Assembly of the production on Premiere Pro: Insertion of the composition, research, addition and editing of the soundtrack and sound effects (SFX).

Production export (H.264): 1 video file (.Mp4), 2 cover pictures (JPG & PNG).

Dimensions: 1920x1080 px.

Frames per second: 60 Fps.

Duration: 34 seconds.

Composition: 3D editing with a shot by 2-nodes camera.

The  original dimensions of the poster have been readjusted in order to correspond to the 1920x1080p resolution. On the other hand, the principle of the "looped video" has been established in the architecture of the composition.

Noise reduction

Deletion of the title

Deletion of the flying entities (mountains, machines and creatures)

Reconstruction of certain parts hidden by elements as part of the realization of the various plans for the completion of the 3D rendering

1. The title

2. The Na'vi and its Ikran in the foreground

3. The mountain range in the foreground in the lower right corner

4. The mountain on the right

5. The mountain pillar on the left

6. The set of flying entities (machines and creature) distributed between the foreground and the background

7. The flying mountains on the left

8. The valley below (plan A)

9. The valley below (plan B)

10. The Flying mountains on the right

11. The sky

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Camera

The Na'vi and his Ikran (Banshee) in the foreground

The helicopters and missiles

The Na'vi and his Ikran, appearing on the right

The stationary Ikran on the left

The Ikran in the background on the left

The Tetrapterons

The creature at the edge of the mountain on the right

The flying mountains

The bird in the background

 

 

Wind blowing

In order that the production appear more immersive, I deliberately added a slight sonority of the wind blowing at altitude.

"Happiness Is Simple" from Simon Franglen | From Avatar: The Way of Water.

This project is one of the most ambitious I have worked on. I deliberately sought to make the original poster as vivid as possible through this production and according to the hardware limitations (PC) that I face.

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To do this, I dedicated a lot of energy to the achievement of the retouching and reconstructing the environments. The is the most delicate and important step because it represents the basis of the production: it allow the 3D part to be set up as well as the complex animations.

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In addition, the completion of this led me to create new visual effects such as waterfalls, smoke trails and flames. Also, in order to make my effects ever more realistic, I tried my hand at real-time fluid simulation software EmberGen in order to create the fire effect that I was looking for. On the other hand, the results obtained were not convincing and my hardware limitations do not give me good technical conditions to use this type of software.

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Finally, the cuts relating to the implementation of the animations were particularly demanding within this composition, in particular those linked to the Na'vi and his Ikran in the foreground, as much as the quantity of animations created. In return, they were necessary to both separate the different parts of the entities body and then obtain a certain fluidity in the movements.