The Challenge
Charged with creating fully accurate human and mythical characters for every frame of Beowulf, the Sony Pictures Imageworks animation teams took nothing lightly. Using a combination of Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder, more than 250 artists contributed to the project. Maya was used on all animation shots, while MotionBuilder was used for all motion capture editing, blending, and camera layout. The Imageworks teams also relied on Maya to previsualize and build the film’s strikingly realistic 3D imagery and characters. With help from Autodesk Consulting, Imageworks customized Maya to enable its animators to view a virtual world in stereo.

The team created elaborate facial rigs to handle the painstaking and unforgiving detail required to replicate increasingly complex expressions of male, female, and monster faces. Muscle systems were developed to give Beowulf a realistic physique. Using MotionBuilder, the technical animation team provided director Robert Zemeckis with fully textured and lit scenes from which he chose the most appropriate camera angle or shot sequence.

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