"Machine vision", in the Terminator franchise, is the point of view of the machines. So, every time you see something through a machine's eyes, it's treated in that way. Back in the original Terminator, these images would be tinted red and have a grid, and maybe have some DOS prompt language. We tried to update that idea using technical references of today's machines and technology.
What really fascinated us was using data from depth cameras. They basically measure depth and distance from the camera. You can take that data and turn it into a point cloud and start to make images with that. One thing that's really interesting about that is you get these natural artifacts. The images are not perfect. You can program it and script it so you can get 3D images, but they kind of fall out in certain places, in a way that's really hard to do when you're hand-animating. We didn't actually shoot with the depth camera's for the film, as we originally had planned, but used it as a reference for how the machines would be taking in images.
CREDITS
Creative Supervisor/Designer: Karin Fong
Lead Animator/Designer: Jeremy Cox
Producers: Cara McKenney, Kathy Kelehan
Project Manager: Steven Giangrasso
Machine Vision Animation: Chase Massingill, Josh Van Praag
Editor: Danielle White, Joe Denk
Inferno Artist: Rod Basham
Coordinators: Heather Dennis, Kim Dates
Lead Animator/Designer: Jeremy Cox
Producers: Cara McKenney, Kathy Kelehan
Project Manager: Steven Giangrasso
Machine Vision Animation: Chase Massingill, Josh Van Praag
Editor: Danielle White, Joe Denk
Inferno Artist: Rod Basham
Coordinators: Heather Dennis, Kim Dates