Watch a man turn into an ape in 8 easy steps

Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes

New Zealand special effects house Weta has been at the forefront of motion capture since it threw Andy Serkis in a white jumpsuit and turned him into Gollum. And they once again worked on the performance capture for this year's Gary Oldman-starring Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes.

Directed by Matt Reeves and written by Mark Bomback, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, the movie (the eighth cinema release in the Apes franchise) also stars Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, and Kodi Smit-McPhee. For its Blu-ray release (already out in the UK and Australia, out Tuesday 2 December in the US) GamesRadar+ got to travel to their Wellington studio to see firsthand how they turned actors into apes.

1. The Jumpsuits

Some things change, while others stay the same. While motion capture has come a long way since The Lord Of The Rings, the tight lycra body suit is a staple of motion capture.

2. Active Mocap

For Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, the team at Weta created a robust, active mocap jumpsuit. Instead of using reflective balls located around the body, it instead uses a series of infrared LEDs powered by a compact battery pack worn on the back of the suit.

3. The Reference Scan

Once the actors are all suited up, they stand on a small stage and get scanned for a series of bodily movements. These scans are recorded in real time to test the actors range of movement in a variety of poses and actions.

4. The Mo-Cap Warehouse

Wetas mocap studio consists of several rooms, with an array of special cameras carefully set up around each room. Each camera lens is surrounded by powerful infrared LED lights, which beam out invisible light that reflects off the balls on the actors lycra suit. The cameras then record that information in three dimensions in real time.

5. Crutch Walking

Because ape biology is somewhat different to human biology, what with the longer arms and powerful shoulders, for certain scenes the actors needed to walk around on set using special crutch-like arm extensions.

6. Facial Recording

What makes the Weta motion capture technology so impressive isnt just the characters movement, but the emotive performances the actors give. To capture that performance, the lead actors would often wear a head-mounted face camera, that captured every minute detail of the actors facial performance in real time.

7. Facial Modelling

Theres a lot more to creating the final apes performance than just recording the actors face though. The team at Weta create highly detailed computer models of each character, based on real human and ape biology, with the ability to control every part of the apes face.

8. Animation

Once the facial model has been completed, its up to the animators to fine-tune the end result. Often, its a case of adding imperfections to create a level of believability, from leaves and dirt in the apes hair, to developing a system to display the effects of rain on the apes face and body.