In the new movie “Black Swan”, Natalie Portman dons feather-laden wings to performce in the ballet, showing beauty and grace with the unwieldly rig. Or did she? Much to my amazement, it seems the wings are actually digital constructs mapped onto a motion-tracked Portman instead.
New York-based Curious Pictures erected a motion capture set-up on the college location, using 24 Vicon cameras to film a professional dancer carrying out the moves. “It was a little bit of a jerry rig to get a sound stage set up with a motion control rig onto a location,” said Schrecker. “That meant we did have to augment our motion capture data with some hand-tracking, but it was important to start with that basis as far as the actual ballet dance.”
For the wing’s feathers, Look crafted simple models in Maya made up of curved planes for the barbs and cylindrical geometry from extruded curves for the rachises, or shafts. “Each feather has a deformer rig to add bend in two directions and also to allow growth from the rachis outward,” said Look 3D artist Shawn Lipowski. “The body feathers were simplified and usually didn’t contain rigs or separate rachis geometry.”
I have to admit, I am dumbstruck. I never would have guessed those were fake. A few scenes it’s obvious there are CG effects (feathers sprouting out of skin and such), but I really thought that was a physical rig she was wearing. Simply amazing.
