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Rivenaleem writes:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/vfx/cg-actors-logan-never-knew-149013.html

A long article going into great detail about how they staged, shot & digitally manipulated scenes in the movie Logan replacing the faces on stuntmen with the respective actor. When I watched the movie, I knew that X-24 had been de-aged and touched up a bit, but I never noticed any of the other scenes, in particular the Limo scene they describe in the article that was heavily modified.

While Hollywood has been relying on digital doubles for many years, the work in Logan is particularly seamless, even if the scenes are relatively brief and do not involve an avatar delivering any dialogue. It's perhaps another example of where things are headed with digital actors and how they can be used to help tell the stories directors are wanting to tell. Cartoon Brew sat down with the studio behind the digital Hugh Jackmans and Laura, Image Engine in Vancouver, who worked under overall vfx supervisor Chas Jarrett, to discuss how the the cg 'digi-doubles' were brought to life.

After being given the task of re-creating cg heads for Keen and Jackman, Image Engine's team immediately knew what it was up for. "Everyone knows Logan, for instance, and that's the biggest challenge," Image Engine visual effects supervisor Martyn Culpitt told Cartoon Brew. "We're literally looking at a real Hugh and a digital Hugh side by side in some shots."

The studio had completed plenty of digital human-type work before, but mostly as either human-esque creatures or as cg stunt doubles – never full-frame actors intended to be indistinguishable from the real actor. That meant Image Engine had to ramp up on their digital human pipeline, while also capitalizing on work they'd previously done in the area. "We basically had to build the whole system from scratch," said Culpitt.

Of particular note, their lighting software is open source.

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