The Avengers breakdown

Ever since seeing this breakdown I have always been wondering what those silver "balls" were in the fourth scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yxYgkAy8kY


anybody know??

As far as I'm aware, (and maybe someone involved with this show could clarify), the silver balls are just a visual representation of the hundreds or possibly thousands of spherical HDRI's captured around New York that were later used to texture all the buildings. Whether the buildings were textured with the lighting baked in from the HDRI's, or whether the various texture maps were created from these individually and then lookdev'd per shot / scene, I couldn't say...

One thing is for sure though, ILM really know how to do sexy looking breakdowns!

Yes, I think this is to mark all the location where people shoot the HDRI Spherical Stich.

Yes...I think....It's almost certain that is used to illumination and reflections of objects in 3d enviroments.