STACK #128 Jun 2016

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MADE TO MEASURE

W hen it comes to 3D and clunky glasses and the visual images that appear to fly off the screen towards you. But there is another 3D revolution underway and in its own quiet way, it’s transforming the way films look on screen. These days physical props and costumes can be produced by 3D printers, and at the forefront of this new production technique is New Zealand company Weta Workshop, whose most recent project Chappie arrives this month on DVD and Blu-ray. Directed by sci-fi maestro Neill Blomkamp, the film tells the story of a police droid who develops a mind of his own when he is reprogrammed by his creator, but inadvertently ends up in the hands of some small-time crooks. The task of bringing ‘Chappie’ – as he is dubbed by his new owners – to life fell to visual effects giant Image Engine and Weta, with the two companies working together to seamlessly blend the digital and physical. That’s where Lans Hansen comes in. An industrial designer, he has run Weta Workshop’s 3D department for the past two years and has been responsible for the department’s increasing utilisation of 3D printing technologies. movies, most people would immediately think of the

Hansen had previously worked with Blomkamp on Elysium and District 9 , but with Chappie , the use of 3D printing technology was taken to a whole new level. “We first started using 3D printing five or six years ago,” Hansen explains to STACK from his Wellington office. “Back then it was so expensive we would only print little bits and pieces – for example, we might print the scope of a gun. But when we got to Chappie , there was nearly 200 parts that all had to There is another 3D revolution underway and in its own quiet way, it’s transforming the way films look on screen. fit perfectly. We realised that 3D printing was the only way we could pull this off. We actually printed the entire robot – every single part was printed and then molded. This was a huge leap for us. The printed parts that came out were extremely accurate and just snapped together. It actually made the whole process far more streamlined than if we had used our previous techniques.” Blomkamp came up with the original design of Chappie, which Image Engine then turned into a detailed digital model that would be used for the animated sequences. It was then up to Hansen and

his team to come up with a physical representation of the robots; a job which ultimately involved creating 12 droids. “There were different levels of detail,” he says. “There were six ‘hero’ droids, and six background droids – those are the ones you see in the factory and being set on fire. But there was also added complexity because as Chappie goes through the movie, he gets hit by poles, he gets set on fire, spray-painted, etc. So we had to have updates for the physical models to reflect what is being animated.” Like Chappie’s fictional creator, Hansen is very proud of what the team achieved in building the droids; for him, it’s up there with the Green Goblin suit he developed for The Amazing Spider- Man 2 – “that was incredibly complex, because it had so many moving parts and the stunt actors had to do back flips wearing this suit” – another job which required heavy use of 3D printers. And Hansen has no doubt that the use of the 3D printing technology is the way of the future as far his job is concerned. “I believe the next Star Wars film in London is going to have a lot of 3D printing,” he says. “It seems it is becoming a lot more commonplace. We had one 3D printer five years ago, now I have got 10 machines and they are

running almost 24 hours a day at the moment. It is going to become an integral part of the process.”  

• Chappie is out on June 18

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