Terminator Vision by Imaginary Forces

Imaginary Forces sits down with FXGuide to talk about how they built the computer vision sequences, the Terminator’s eyes, in Terminator Salvation.

fxg: What techniques did you end up using for the final shots?

Jeremy: The initial tracking of all the shots was done in PFTrack and Boujou. We did this to every shot that we could. We then brought that into Cinema 4D which is our primary 3D program. Often we would rebuild the set or do minimal construction of elements in order to have a surface to create these point clouds.

In most cases we would render a depth map out of Cinema 4D of this crude scene and then bring that into After Effects. We used a plugin from Trapcode called Form, which essentially creates a grid of particles whose Z position can be determined in space based on the depth map. So we could line up the particles with the original shot. Then almost the entire interface animation was done in After Effects.

via fxguide – vfx knowledge – Behind the Scenes of Terminator: Imaginary Forces.