CGI VFX Breakdowns : IronMan Hud Shot for Marvel's The Avengers

See the full article "Marvel"s The Avengers": Taking the HUD to new heights by Kathy Charneco here...
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"Stephen Lawes, creative director and co-owner of Cantina Creative, Venti Hristova, graphics and HUD supervisor, Wes Sewell, stereo supervisor, and Jayse Hansen, freelance screen designer/animator, had their work cut out for them on Marvel"s The Avengers, which premiered May 4th and has already passed the $1 billion mark. The movie, directed by Joss Whedon, features Marvel"s most popular superheroes: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, and Black Widow. For Lawes, Hristova, and Hansen, the most challenging on-screen graphics job was the creation of the heads-up displays (HUDs) in the film, used for two versions of Iron Man"s suits. The team also created the on-screen graphics to fill in countless digital computer screens throughout the movie. Here, Lawes and Hansen talk about using Adobe Creative Suite Production Premium for the project."
All images are copyright of Marvel Studios 2012.

[@deanpeng7854]

This visual effect is so amazing

[@tiffwxy]

He's such a great actor because damn can you imaging how bloody awkward it must have been for him to do that in a room alone with a massive camera in his face

[@adonis.]

That's some of my favorite stuff to see in 3D

[@aleksandrakettner905]

I adore this visual effect

[@Zamarae]

It’s cool to think he was actually in front of a blue screen. I thought they just filmed in a dark box

[@dave1812]

me too

[@aleksandrakettner905]

Here is RDJ so nice pretty

[@ZworksOfficial]

woow i like it

[@losselosse3289]

HI CGL How to making hud iron man?

[@Psychosgamers]

although it looks freaking amazing ... if someone pays attention it is really stupid..cause there is no so much fucking room in the helmet.
lets say the helmet was real and it could have a screen display, but according to the dimensions of the helmet from the outside the screen should be like 5 cms away from the eyes which is impossible for the eyes to focus in that distance
and according the dimensions from the inside view the helmet should be at least 4 times bigger than it is....
but still it looks awesome

[@TheMCricket]

+PsychosGamers its cinema dude

[@minbcraft]

The entire helmet is not a screen, the glowing eyes on the helmet parts is, and it have really high pixel density so it can display a lot of info on a small space

[@Benjamoomin64]

PsychosGamers Ah, you have a good point, however he may not actually need real depth to make it seem like his holograms have space on the Z-axis. Let's imagine, ignoring how it actually appears, that the image he sees is simply outside light entering through the eyes, and that all the HUD stuff with all his widgets and whatnot are added on top of that by his suit. (This is how HUD behave in the real world in fighter jets, typically projected on a glass screen between the pilot and the window). Now, depth is created in the brain in two main ways. First, context/memory. If we see a train track going off in the distance and see somebody standing next to it, we can roughly guess where they are based on their position relative to the track. Things going in front of or behind other things while moving is another example. However a HUD is meant to go over the environment so this doesn't do much good here, and as you pointed out, his helmet doesn't have a lot of negative space. The second, and more important way our eyes create depth is parallax. Our eyes are a few inches apart, meaning when they observe things the image they see is slightly different, and how different an object appears in two images depends on how far away it is. (For an example of this, focus off in the distance and hold a finger in front of your face, and then move it away in a straight line. If you don't focus on the finger, there will appear to be two fingers that get closer together as you move the finger away. If this explanation is weak the Wikipedia page for parallax has a pretty good graphic.) Our brains have learned to process these differences as depth. Also, since HUD are generally designed to fit over an environment without making the user need to look away from it, the focus of said displays is messed with to have a focal point near infinity (or at least where the parallax angle of the users focus is tiny). This way, a user can be focusing on something beyond the display, like a target or the scenery, and the display will still appear to be in focus. Therefore, if tony programmed his two HUD screens in front of his two eyes to produce slightly different images in a way that created the illusion of depth, and adjusted the focal point so he didn't need to look away from the environment, he might see something similar to the FX shots we see of his head, even if that volume doesn't actually exist within his helmet. Sure this would need a shit-ton of effort and design as well as some technology beyond what we have today, but in a universe where a genius billionaire made a weaponized flying tank that can catch him and build itself around him in mid-air, it's not the most far-fetched thing in the world.

[@sigelsegal2297]

That’s exactly what led me to this video. How is a small helmet with a face shield that lifts up giving you all this info like you’re in a divers helmet.

[@tonig2255]

@@Benjamoomin64 Like a really small vr or ar headset

[@VinodKumar-un8hq]

which software used ?

[@TheMCricket]

+Vinod Kumar My guess would be Nuke and/or After Effects

[@morzee94]

+Vinod Kumar The HUD scenes were all done with NUKE by the Orphanage in San Francisco

[@heliurgutierrez7457]

+LukeRM not really, in Iron Man 3 the vfx directors said they used after effects for the HUD

[@xalener]

That guy.

[@WoolySantaBoy]

now that you say it

[@nabeelqureshi5520]

whts the name of music

[@samorai9783]

Wonder world 5

[@TuralMMemmedzadeh]

coooollll ....ok..not much :)

[@DiamondDesignHD]

WTF