Alexis Wajsbrot

Alexis Wajsbrot is a technical film director specializing in the simulation of  movement of  fluids and textiles.

Sound sexy so far?

Well, here’s some of the projects Alexis has worked on:

• Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince
• Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix
• Tim Burton’s Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
• Prince of Persia
• GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra
• Your Highness
• Red Balloon

Here’s a Vimeo link to some of Alexis’ film effects.

Alexis approximates a moving fluid or textile  by a large number of particles  in a 3-dimensional co-ordinate system.

The software he uses allows him  to choose how the particles move in space – controlling their speed and acceleration.

Another way Alexis simulates a fluid is to dissect  the region of the fluid into a 3-dimensional grid of  voxels (from  volume & pixel). He then uses the mathematics of fluid dynamics to calculate the velocity in each voxel at each time step, to create a realistic fluid motion.

More details of Alexis’ work and Quicktime movies of his simulations can be found at +plus magazine, from which this information was taken.

Finally, here’s Alexis describing some of his work on Red Balloon (en Francais):