“Um, on another note, with the current technology, we can't shoot hair. So all we can do is take reference shots, and we later punch in one hair at a time.”
Kojima described his actor scanning process: countless photos of facial expressions and the whole body, hands included; there are 3D and also 4D scans, but essentially you put the actor in the center of about 180 cameras and take a picture all at once, and from those 180 images you produce the CG figure. This is repeated for each expression (smiling, angry); they capture details such as the muscle lines in the neck when you clench your jaw and the reddening of the forehead when you get angry, and the muscle movement is calculated later by computer. He acknowledged a current limit: with present technology they cannot scan hair, so they only take reference photos and then add hair strand by strand. From the scan to a finished model takes months (about six); Shioli’s scan was like in February. The character’s clothing is also photographed—wrinkles, lighting, materials—only as reference; the real clothing is not used.
“basically, you get in the center of about 180 cameras and take a picture all at once. So then you have 180 pictures and you create a three-dimensional CGI figure from that data. […] When you clench your jaw, you know you get those muscle lines in your neck, right? We shoot those too. […] That was like February. From there, it takes months to create just the model, like six months or so. […] We look at the wrinkles or lightings or materials just for reference.”