Man Seeking Woman: Behind the Scenes
We recently had the pleasure of working with the good folks over at Mavericks VFX (Visual Effects) in the final season of FXX comedy television series Man Seeking Woman.
“I was over the moon they asked me to be a part of it. They came to us with three giant furry heads to 3D scan for the 3rd season episode Popcorn. Who wouldn’t want 3 disembodied monster heads rolling around their office?” – Objex Unlimited 3D Scanning Expert – Julia
[twentytwenty] 
[/twentytwenty]
Staring fellow Canadian Jay Baruchel, playing “a naïve and soft-spoken man in his 20s, who finds himself in… surreal and awkward circumstances while trying to find love” this hilarious series portrays some incredibly imaginative concepts only brought to life with the latest in visual effects and 3D scanning equipment.
To help bring some of their amazing creatures and props to life we helped this Emmy nominated studio harnessed a variety of Objex Unlimited’s in-house 3D scanning technologies. Known for some works such as 11.22.63, The One Hundred Foot Journey, and Robocop we were thrilled to hear they wanted us to help make these sense a reality.
“We are really lucky to be working with this project… its going to be insane! Using 140 cameras that all capture at the exact millisecond we are able to capture motion and emotion in our scans. ” – Selftraits Photogrammetry and Photography Expert – Sarah
Before and Afters
[twentytwenty] 
[/twentytwenty]
[twentytwenty] 
[/twentytwenty]
[twentytwenty] 
[/twentytwenty]
The Technology
Using state of the art 3D scanning technology (both photogrammetry and Artec Eva’s white light handheld scanners) we were able to create an accurate digital copy at nearly 100 microns in details.
To increase the realism of these characters – each scan was then rigged and animated by their talented CG artists. Eliminating animatronic elements and replicating their mouths, skin and eye movements in post allows for a much more fluid and believable look as “live” actors.
Check out more before and after pictures and in-depth video content with Maverick VFX.
After the success of the first few characters we were able to also contribute to the 3rd season episode ‘Pad Thai’. Scanning in a number of much smaller props using the Artec Spider from a pyramid that opens to reveals a gold cat inside to a totem that is animated to unveils a winged creature displaying secret treasure maps. Despite being smaller, these objects also had features that made them much more difficult to scan. The shiny gold paint and clear colored jewels on the pyramid and cat made the scanning more intensive (scanners don’t typically like shiny objects and basically see right through anything that is clear). Typically, we are able to use work arounds of spraying each object with a fine powder to give the scanner something to track. In this case we were able to adjust some of the new settings in the software (Artec Studio 12) to get the results we were after.
If you would like to see more of what the scanning process looks like click the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZUCyYFStuQ
More information about the scanners I used can be found here: https://objexunlimited.com/objexunlimited/3d-equipment/3d-scanners/
