Peter Jackson's Weta given taxpayer funding for research partnership

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 12:00a.m.

Weta Digital has been given $5.8 million in Government funding for a research partnership.

Science and Technology Minister Wayne Mapp said Weta's investment would be on a basis of at least two-for-one.

"It's about growing new products and processes for export."

The joint partnership with TechNZ - the business investment programme of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology - was intended to accelerate the growth of New Zealand's strong creative digital industry.

"Weta Digital has been at the forefront of positioning New Zealand as a creative and inn ovative country that can re-imagine reality on a global scale," Dr Mapp said.

"Through the magic of the movies, billions of people throughout the world benefit from their expertise."

Weta Digital was founded by director Peter Jackson and Richard Taylor in 1993 and runs its own set of supercomputers.

Earlier this year it launched a working group, Transfx, to bring advanced research together with movie production.

The group is headed by Sebastian Sylwan, who said one goal was get computer graphics "closer to reality while maintaining artistic control".

Many visual effects were cobbled together with improvised solutions that looked good in that "shot" but couldn't be re-used on other shots, said Sylwan, head of Weta's research and development.

Transfx would look to find techniques that could be applied more generally in things such as simulations of fire and water.

The group would also work on speeding up rendering and on digital capture.

Weta was reported to be expanding its team writing computer programmes for visual effects to about 20 people - including advanced computer graphics researchers and students - with about half of them will be recruited specifically for the new work.

The Transfx group will work directly on Weta's films, including Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones.

Sylwan previously led work on stereoscopic 3-D United States software developer Autodesk.

NZPA

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