Editing The Matrix Reloaded (section)

===Visual effects===
Following the success of the previous film, the Wachowskis came up with extremely difficult action sequences, such as the Burly Brawl, a scene in which Neo had to fight 100 Agent Smiths. To develop technologies for the film, Warner Bros. launched ESC Entertainment.<ref name="Wired VFX" >{{cite magazine | url=https://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/matrix2_pr.html | title=Matrix<sup>2</sup> | magazine=Wired | access-date=December 25, 2012 | author=Silberman, Steve | archive-date=January 15, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130115105744/http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.05/matrix2_pr.html | url-status=live }}</ref> The ESC team tried to figure out how to bring the Wachowskis' vision to the screen, but because bullet time required arrays of carefully aligned cameras and months of planning, even for a brief scene featuring two or three actors, a scene like the Burly Brawl seemed almost impossible as envisioned and could take years to composite. Eventually [[John Gaeta]] realized that the technology he and his crew had developed for ''The Matrix''{{'}}s [[bullet time]] was no longer sufficient and concluded they needed a [[virtuality|virtual]] [[camera]] (in other words, a [[simulation]] of a camera). Having before used real photographs of buildings as texture for 3D models in ''The Matrix'', the team started digitizing all data, such as scenes, characters' motions, or even the reflectivity of Neo's [[cassock]]. The [[reflection (computer graphics)|reflectivity]] of objects needs to be [[Bidirectional scattering distribution function|captured and simulated adequately]] and [[Paul Debevec]] et al. captured the reflectance of the [[human face]] and Borshukov's work was strongly based on the findings of Debevec et al. They developed "Universal Capture", a process which samples and stores facial details and expressions at high resolution, then capture expressions from Reeves and Weaving using [[Motion capture#Markerless|dense capture]] and [[multi-camera setup]] (similar to the bullet time rig) [[photogrammetry|photogrammetric]] capture [[Art techniques and materials|technique]] called [[optical flow]].<ref name="Deb2005">{{cite book | last = Debevec | first = Paul | author2 = J. P. Lewis | chapter = Realistic human face rendering for "The Matrix Reloaded" | pages = 13–es | publisher = ACM | year = 2005 | chapter-url = http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1198593 | doi = 10.1145/1198555.1198593 | access-date = 2013-08-10 | title = ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Courses on - SIGGRAPH '05 | isbn = 9781450378338 | s2cid = 53235122 | archive-date = July 15, 2017 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170715075820/http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1198593 | url-status = live }}</ref> The algorithm for Universal Capture was written by George Borshukov, visual effects lead at ESC, who had also created the photo-realistic buildings for the visual effects in ''The Matrix''. With this collected wealth of data and the right algorithms, they finally were able to create [[virtual cinematography]] in which characters, locations, and events can all be created digitally and viewed through virtual cameras, eliminating the restrictions of real cameras, years of compositing data, and replacing the use of still camera arrays or, in some scenes, cameras altogether. The ESC team rendered the final effects using the program [[Mental Ray]].<ref name="Wired VFX" />