Digital Environments and Costumes in Star Wars: Episode II

In previous films, ILM's software team and digital artists have created computer-generated characters and environments which matched the visual quality and physical realism of their real-world counterparts. For Star Wars: Episode II "The Attack of the Clones" we pushed this technology further, producing computer-generated characters which re-created well-known real-world performers, and complex environments which seamlessly incorporated real-world and digital elements. Developing the systems & techniques to achieve these results for such a large film presented many new challenges.

In this presentation, we'll look at some of the new technology which was developed for Episode II. The techniques and applications include: layout & animation of complex mechanical environments, digital reconstruction of real-world elements from photographs ("photomodeling"), and physical simulation of digital costumes.