Uglies

Uglies is Netflix’s 2024 sci-fi film directed by McG, set in a future where mandatory surgery at sixteen turns “Uglies” into “Pretties.” In a world that fell into chaos after exhausting its natural resources, scientists engineer genetically modified orchids as a new energy source and mandate a cosmetic procedure so that universal “perfection” will not cause further conflict — admitting the newly transformed Pretties into the City and its endless celebration.

SCANable provided 3D scans of several of the sets and actors along with aerial photogrammetry for the film, supporting its environment builds and set extensions with LiDAR and photogrammetry data.

Façades, terrain, and anything with a roof

A tripod-mounted scanner sees what it can see from the ground. For a building façade, a run of terrain, or anything with a roof, that is a partial record with the top half missing.

Aerial photogrammetry continues the coverage from above, and the two datasets register into one model of the site. The result is an environment that holds up whether the camera is at eye level or a hundred feet up — which matters on a film where flight is part of the visual language.

Designed futures still rest on real ground

Speculative production design is easier to sell when it sits on something measured. A city that never existed reads as physical when its geometry follows real terrain, real building volumes and real distances.

Building outward from scanned locations rather than from concept art alone gives environment work a foundation the audience recognizes without being able to name. The same environment sculpted from reference photographs looks right in a still and drifts the moment the camera moves, because nothing in it was ever dimensioned.

Scale and coordinate conventions

A film that combines aerial capture, ground scanning, set scanning and body scanning ends up with data from several very different instruments.

None of it is usable together unless everyone agreed on units, orientation and origin before capture began. Settling that up front is unglamorous, and it prevents an entire class of problem: the asset that arrives at ninety-nine percent of the size it should be, or rotated ninety degrees, and costs a day to diagnose.

Performers in a story about appearance

Uglies turns on the difference between a face before and after it is altered. Any digital version of that has to begin from an accurate record of the real one.

Head and full-body capture through cyberscanning records likeness as measurement rather than interpretation, and digital doubles built from it stay recognizable at the close range this material invites.

See more feature film work, or read through the full service list.