Prime Focus’s Vancouver studio also collaborated with its Digital Matte Painting department in Los Angeles (headed by Ken Nakada) on recreating the movie’s Forks High School, as well as craggy cliffs overlooking the ocean and other 100-percent CG environments depicting the movie’s Washington State locale. Chris and Susan loved what we came up with very early in the process, which ended up being one of the happy surprises during production.” We used 3D particle geometry dispersed over a CG model of Edwards’ head to reflect several artificial environments in order to create the sparkles and rays. There was a very delicate balance of the elements that make up the effect. In addition to all of that, we needed to show the skin having a translucent glow. Film doesn’t really have enough brightness range to do this, so we had to resort to some trickery, such as lens effects, flares and light rays to give the feeling of super-bright glimmer. It was challenging because the diamond effect appears in sunlight, whenever Edward’s already very pale skin is lit by sun, and on top of all of that brightness, there needs to be a convincing diamond-like sparkle.

“The effect appears many times throughout the film in several very different scenarios.

“Creating the diamond skin effect turned out to be a very rewarding experience,” says Pascarelli. The team even had a slab at the office for the CG artists to use as reference. The Prime Focus team, led by visual effects supervisor Eric Pascarelli, went through extensive look development to achieve this effect, and used as its inspiration Greek Thassos marble, a white, translucent material with flecks that reflect light very efficiently. Key effects included creating apparitions of the Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) character and custom designing the “Diamond Edward” effect, whereby Cullen’s skin sparkles when coming into contact with sunlight.ĭirector Chris Weitz and his visual effects producer Susan MacLeod tasked Prime Focus with evolving this signature Diamond Skin effect so that Edward’s skin refracted light as if diamonds were embedded under his skin.

Prime Focus’s newly expanded Vancouver studio, which has become the VFX hub for the company’s North American operations, handled the bulk of the work on The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which was shot on location in British Columbia. Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner and hit theaters Nov.

Popular series of novels by Stephenie Meyer. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is based on the Prime FocusĬontributed a majority of the film’s most frequently featured visualĮffects, including CG water, atmospherics, CG matte painting, andĮnvironment work, and the “Diamond Skin” effect on Edward and the other Twilight Saga: New Moon directed by Chris Weitz. Visual effects shots for the Summit Entertainment release, The Prime Focus VFX Adds Sparkle to The Twilight Saga: New MoonīC - Prime Focus VFX, formerly Frantic Films VFX, has completed 175

Why do the vampires in twilight sparkle