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Encyclopedia > Weta Digital
Weta Digital
Type Subsidiary
Founded 1993
Headquarters Wellington, New Zealand
Key people Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor
Industry Visual Effects, CGI animation
Parent Weta Workshop
Website www.wetadigital.com

Weta Digital is a digital visual effects company based in Wellington, New Zealand, an offshoot of the Weta Workshop physical effects company. Director Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor and others founded Weta Digital in 1993 to produce the digital special effects for Heavenly Creatures, working with just one computer on that film. The company has grown immensely in size and complexity since then. Their most powerful computer is listed at #157 at TOP500 for June 2006 [1]. It is a popular visual effects house due to its popular films that achieve cult status. Image File history File links Weta-logo. ... In business, a subsidiary is a company controlled by another company or corporation. ... // March 31 - Actor Brandon Lee is accidentally killed during the filming of The Crow. ... Alternative meanings at Wellington (disambiguation) A view of Wellington from the top of Mount Victoria. ... Peter Jackson CNZM (born October 31, 1961) is a three-time Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA winning New Zealand filmmaker best known as the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which he, along with his long time partner, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens adapted from the novels... Richard Taylor, 2003 Richard Taylor is the creator and head of New Zealand movie prop and special effects company Weta Workshop. ... ... The seawater creature in The Abyss marked CGIs acceptance in the visual effects industry. ... Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of 2-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. ... A holding company is a company that owns enough voting stock in another firm to control management and operations by influencing or electing its board of directors. ... Weta Workshop is a physical effects company based in Miramar, New Zealand, producing effects for television and film. ... A website (or Web site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet. ... A digital system is one that uses discrete values (often electrical voltages), especially those representable as binary numbers, or non-numeric symbols such as letters or icons, for input, processing, transmission, storage, or display, rather than a continuous spectrum of values (ie, as in an analog system). ... Visual effects (vfx) is the term given to a sub-category of special effects in which images or film frames are created or manipulated for film and video. ... Alternative meanings at Wellington (disambiguation) A view of Wellington from the top of Mount Victoria. ... Weta Workshop is a physical effects company based in Miramar, New Zealand, producing effects for television and film. ... Peter Jackson CNZM (born October 31, 1961) is a three-time Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA winning New Zealand filmmaker best known as the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which he, along with his long time partner, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens adapted from the novels... Richard Taylor, 2003 Richard Taylor is the creator and head of New Zealand movie prop and special effects company Weta Workshop. ... Heavenly Creatures is a 1994 film directed by Peter Jackson, based on the true story of the infamous Parker-Hulme murder in Christchurch, New Zealand. ... The website TOP500 (www. ... Cult film is a colloquial term for a film that has accrued a devoted group of fans. ...


Despite its name, it has no connection with WETA-FM-TV in Washington, D.C., but is in fact named after the male wellington tree weta. WETA is a noncommercial, public radio station located in Arlington, VA whose signal (90. ... WETA-TV is the PBS station serving the Washington, D.C., area. ... Nickname: DC, The District Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Location of Washington, D.C., in relation to the states Maryland and Virginia Coordinates: Federal District District of Columbia Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) City Council Chairperson: Vincent C. Gray (D) Ward 1: Jim Graham (D) Ward 2: Jack Evans... The weta family comprises around 70 insect species endemic to the New Zealand archipelago. ...


Weta Digital has been considered by some to be one of the best visual effects studios in the world.

Contents

Achievements

The American film industry recognised Weta Digital for its outstanding effects for the Peter Jackson's film trilogy based on The Lord of the Rings by presenting it with Academy Awards for visual effects for its work on The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), and King Kong (2005). The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by English academic J. R. R. Tolkien. ... The references in this article would be clearer with a different and/or consistent style of citation, footnoting or external linking. ... The Academy Award for Visual Effects is an Oscar given to one film each year that shows highest achievement in visual effects. ... King Kong battles a pterosaur in the original 1933 version. ...


The scale of the battles required for The Lord of the Rings trilogy led to the creation of MASSiVE, a program which allows the animation of huge numbers of agents: independent characters acting according to pre-set rules. MASSiVE can be seen in action in the prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring, the Helm's Deep battle sequence in The Two Towers, and the Battle of the Pelennor Fields in The Return of the King, and in other recent films. While in the first film mainly background shots were possible, later developments allowed the generation of foreground shots using much higher detail 3-D models. The Massive user interface A battle simulated using Massive Massive (Multiple Agent Simulation System in Virtual Environment) is a high-end computer animation and artificial intelligence software package used for generating crowd-related visual effects for film and television. ... Simple reflex agent Learning agent In computer science, an intelligent agent (IA) is a software agent that exhibits some form of artificial intelligence. ... In J. R. R. Tolkiens fictional universe of Middle-earth, Helms Deep was a large valley in the north-western Ered Nimrais (White Mountains). ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ...


Another significant contribution to the Tolkien trilogy was the effort and technology applied to render Gollum, a hobbit-like creature corrupted and deformed by the power of the One Ring, very realistically using a combination of motion capture from actor Andy Serkis, key frame animation and subsurface scattering rendering technique which enabled the first completely convincing portrayal of an animated humanoid in a feature film. This process has also been utilized in King Kong. This article is about the fictional character. ... The One Ring, also known as the Ruling Ring, the Great Ring of Power, or Isildurs Bane, is an artifact from J. R. R. Tolkiens fictional Middle-earth universe. ... Motion capture, or mocap, is a technique of digitally recording the movements of real things — usually humans — it originally developed as an analysis tool in biomechanics research, but has grown increasingly important as a source of motion data for computer animation. ... Andy Serkis (born April 20, 1964) is a British actor and director. ... In animation, key frames (also keyframes) are the drawings which are essential to define a movement. ...


Since November 2003, Weta Digital's Supercomputers have been listed on every Top500 list of the fastest computers in the world (Weta sometimes appearing as many as 4 times on a single list [2]). Weta's Supercomputers are IBM BladeCenter clusters, each blade server with 2 Xeon CPUs and most of them running Linux. They are housed at the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre in central Wellington [3]. Big Blue redirects here. ... The IBM BladeCenter is IBMs blade server architecture. ... Linux Cluster at Purdue University. ... IBM HS20 blade server. ... Xeon logo as of 2006. ... Linux refers to any Unix-like computer operating system which uses the Linux kernel. ...


Other movies that were worked on by Weta Digital were Robert Zemeckis's Contact (1997), starring Jodie Foster, and Alex Proyas's I, Robot (2004), starring Will Smith. Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an Academy Award-winning American movie director, producer and writer. ... Contact DVD Contact is a 1997 film adaptation of the science fiction novel Contact by Carl Sagan. ... Jodie Foster (born November 19, 1962) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress, director, and producer. ... Alex Proyas (born September 23 , 1963) is an Australian film director, writer, and producer. ... I, Robot is a science fiction film filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, but produced in the United States released on July 16, 2004, attributed to Isaac Asimovs Robot Series, especially a short-story collection of the same name. ... Willard Christopher Will Smith, Jr. ...


Weta's latest project was the visual effects for Peter Jackson's King Kong. It was released in December 2005, and also won the Academy Awards for visual effects. King Kong is the 2005 remake of the original 1933 King Kong film about a fictional giant ape called Kong. ... The references in this article would be clearer with a different and/or consistent style of citation, footnoting or external linking. ... The Academy Award for Visual Effects is an Oscar given to one film each year that shows highest achievement in visual effects. ...


Weta Digital will also be working on the live action adaptations of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Halo. This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Halo is an upcoming film based on the video game series Halo, developed by Bungie Studios. ...


The new Walt Disney Pictures logo that premiered with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest was animated by Weta Digital. [4], [5] Walt Disney Pictures 2006 - present logo. ...


Special effects filmography

  • Avatar (2009) ... Visual Effects Company
  • Halo (Cancelled) ... Visual Effects Company
  • Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) .. Creating The Silver Surfer
  • Eragon (2006) ... Visual Effects Company
  • X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) ... Visual Effects Company
  • King Kong (2005) ... Visual Effects Company (digital special effects)
  • I, Robot (2004) ... Visual Effects Company (digital visual effects)
  • Van Helsing (2004) ... Visual Effects Company (visual effects)
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) ... Visual Effects Company (digital visual effects)
  • Game Over (2003) (TV) ... Visual Effects Company
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) ... Visual Effects Company (digital visual effects)
  • The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) ... Visual Effects Company (digital visual effects designer and creator)
  • The Price of Milk (2000) ... Visual Effects Company (cgi)
  • Contact (1997) ... Visual Effects Company
  • Tidal Wave: No Escape (1997) (TV) ... Visual Effects Company
  • The Frighteners (1996/I) ... Visual Effects Company (creature and digital effects)
  • Forgotten Silver (1995) (TV) ... Visual Effects Company
  • Heavenly Creatures (1994) ... Visual Effects Company
  • Hercules: The Legendary Journeys - Hercules and the Lost Kingdom (1994) (TV) ... Visual Effects Company (creature, makeup and digital effects)
  • Jack Brown Genius (1994) ... Visual Effects Company
  • Loaded (1994) ... Visual Effects Company (bird sequence)

Avatar or Project 880, as it was first known, is one of four films James Cameron is attached to direct. ... Halo is an upcoming film based on the video game series Halo, developed by Bungie Studios. ... The Silver Surfer is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero. ... Eragon is a fantasy/adventure movie based on the novel of the same name, by author Christopher Paolini. ... King Kong is the 2005 remake of the original 1933 King Kong film about a fictional giant ape called Kong. ... I, Robot is a science fiction film filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, but produced in the United States released on July 16, 2004, attributed to Isaac Asimovs Robot Series, especially a short-story collection of the same name. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... // Synopsis When a super computer is linked to a video game network, the computer programmer who designed the game must enter the virtual reality world of his fantasies and defeat the computer befor it causes worldwide chaos! (Source: DVD cover) Cast Doug Abrahams - Mr. ... The Price of Milk is a 2000 film from New Zealand. ... Contact is a 1997 science fiction film adapted from the novel by Carl Sagan. ... For the Matt Helm spy novel by Donald Hamilton, see The Frighteners (novel). ... Forgotten Silver (1995) is a New Zealand film mockumentary. ... Heavenly Creatures is a 1994 film directed by Peter Jackson, based on the true story of the infamous Parker-Hulme murder in Christchurch, New Zealand. ... Hercules: The Legendary Journeys was a television series produced from 1995 to 1999, very loosely based on the tales of the classical culture hero Hercules. ... Loaded may refer to: Loaded, an album by The Velvet Underground Loaded language Loaded, a British mens magazine Loaded, a novel by Christos Tsiolkas This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

See also

Digital film refers to cinema production and performance systems which work by using a digital representation of the brightness and colour of each pixel of the image. ...

External links


  Results from FactBites:
 
09-07-98: Weta to Spend $10 Million on Computer Systems (0 words)
Miramar-based Weta Digital is a key player in bringing the J R R Tolkien fantasy classic stories to screen.
Weta Digital is a Silicon Graphics facility, running Indigo2, O2 and Octane workstations along with several four-processor Origin 200 servers, a single processor Origin 2000 server, and an eight-processor Onyx super-computer.
Weta Digital was created to provide special effects for the 1993 film Heavenly Creatures, and is the reason for Weta's existence, Mr.
NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Weta Digital (1981 words)
Weta Digital is a digital visual effects company based in Wellington, New Zealand, an offshoot of the Weta Workshop physical effects company.
A digital system is one that uses discrete values (often electrical voltages), especially those representable as binary numbers, or non-numeric symbols such as letters or icons, for input, processing, transmission, storage, or display, rather than a continuous spectrum of values (ie, as in an analog system).
Weta Digital has been considered by some to be one of the best visual effects studios in the world.
  More results at FactBites »


 

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