Character and Narrative: Potential of 3D Modelling

Not everything about Maya is so negative, despite what my previous posts may have suggested, and not all animations produced using 3D software is uncanny. Infact there are many examples of animated films using these methods that have been incredibly successful. A good example is Avatar.

Theatrical Poster

Avatar was directed, written and produced by James Cameron and it was released in 2009. The estimated cost of the film was around $300-500 million, but it was worth the time and money as it was a huge success. The film received many positive reviews and also broke several box office records during it's theatrical run, becoming the highest-grossing film of all time. Avatar also won three Acedemy Awards including Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects.

Though the film was not produced completely in Maya as that would have been very impractical (also due to the film having a mixture of acting and Computer-Generated Imagery), Maya certainly played a huge role. Performances that were made by live actors were applied to digital ones, where the digital characters were seen within virtual environments which had been prebuilt in Maya, which was also used for final scene creation and finishing. Nolan Murtha, the digital effects supervisor at Lightstorm Entertainment, stated "what we were able to do with the Autodesk software is to make technology an enabler and we were able to do a movie that we could not otherwise do."