District 9 Aliens & BodyPaint 3D Maxon's Cinema 4D and BodyPaint 3D play starring role in Peter Jackson's District 9.

Vancouver, Canada-based visual effects studio Image Engine delivered 311 of the 600 visual effects shots in the sci-fi thriller District 9, including a community of entirely CG aliens that inhabit a section of Soweto, South Africa, called District 9, as well as the alien mothership, digital helicopters and digital troop carriers. The company worked in collaboration with four other Vancouver VFX houses, including Goldtooth Creative Agency, Animatrik Film Design, The Embassy and Zoic Studios, along with New Zealand's Weta Digital.

Image Engine used Maxon's BodyPaint 3D software solution to paint complex textures that blended dirt, dust, paint and stickers that cover the aliens' bodies (there were hundreds in all) giving each a distinctive, insect-inspired look that seamlessly integrated with the characters in the gritty South African ghetto setting. Anna Ivanova, a texture artist at Image Engine, noted the ease with which she could move back and forth between BodyPaint 3D and Adobe Photoshop and rework shots to accommodate the director's requests.

"Most of the aliens had seams all over their bodies, some in difficult places such as the UV's in the aliens' necks," Ivanova said. "BodyPaint 3D allowed us to easily move from one seam to another with a projection brush and blend space between the creatures' shells and soft-skin shaders, which helped solve a lot of problems. Additionally, we took the 3D model (imported from Autodesk Maya) and painted random brush strokes directly on the bodies, then added at least three different texture variations."

James Stewart, Image Engine's creature supervisor, added that BodyPaint 3D was a necessity when it came to creating the aliens. "Besides developing custom shaders to layer the creatures' bodies with dust and dirt, each alien was adorned with different variations of paint splotches and stickers. Both the paint and the stickers were worn in an attempt to fit in with the humans around them. Eventually, we came up with a library of 20 different variations of paint splotches, splatter and stickers that could be used interchangeably on any alien, which saved a lot of time in the workflow process."