Weta Digital
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| Public | |
| Industry | Visual effects, CGI animation |
| Founded | 1993 |
| Headquarters | Wellington, New Zealand |
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Key people
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Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, Joe Letteri, Eileen Moran, Wes Takahashi |
| Website | www.wetafx.co.nz |
Weta Digital is a digital visual effects company based in Wellington, New Zealand. It was founded by Peter Jackson, Richard Taylor, and Jamie Selkirk in 1993 to produce the digital special effects for Heavenly Creatures. In 2007, Weta Digital’s Senior Visual Effects Supervisor, Joe Letteri, was also appointed as a Director of the company. Weta Digital has won several Academy Awards and BAFTAs.
Weta Digital is part of a number of Peter Jackson co-owned companies in Wellington which includes Weta Workshop, Weta Productions, Weta Collectibles and Park Road Post Production.
The company is named after the New Zealand weta, one of the world's largest insects.
To date, Weta Digital has won five Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), King Kong (2005), and Avatar (2009).
Weta Digital has developed several proprietary software packages to achieve groundbreaking visual effects. The scale of the battles required for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy led to the creation of MASSIVE, a program which can animate huge numbers of agents: independent characters acting according to pre-set rules. To recreate 1933 New York for King Kong, Weta created CityBot, an application which could "build" the city on a shot by shot basis.
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