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IA : The dragons were part of one of the key scene of season 3. How Pixomondo have been involved in the scene ( I try to avoid spoilers, but it’s quite hard ! 🙂 )
SM: It’s always tricky to deal with various elements in a scene and when there is a connection between actors and virtual counterparts. This time we could use a lot more real fire elements which Joe Bauer, production visual effects supervisor, shot on set. This was great to use, because you get all the fine detail, smoke and interaction for free. In this particular scene they shot a plate with the actor playing getting burned, then a similar plate with a stuntmen getting really getting grilled by a flame thrower near the position the dragons head will appear later. These plates got combined with an invisible wipe, were re-projected simple geometry to unlock the camera and got finally the cg dragon added.
IA : Can you give us details about your internal pipeline ?
All creature work is done in Maya, while the set extension are build in 3dsMax.
Sets an environments are a combination of 3DSMax renders and projected matte-paintings created in Photoshop. Most of footage was acquired on a photo safari in England which resulted in tons of hires images of old castles, walls and landscapes. As with the creatures the idea was to start first with a real castle rebuild and then changing or adding elements and pieces which shifts the design into the world of Westeros. For our water simulations we use Naiad in conjunction with Krakatoa an Thinking Particles. Both 3DSMax and Maya is connected for rendering in Vray.
The dragons are created within our Maya pipeline which relies heavily on a department structured workflow with specialist on each task. To fulfill the needs of a tight TV schedule, all departments can work parallel and submit their latest version to the next artist while still refining the work. So after the match move, while the animation is still ongoing, the lighting artist can prepare the virtual lamps while there are still new features are build into the rig by the TD’s.
IA : Have you develop some special scripts, can you speak about the R&D done for the movie ?
SM : To bring in as much as possible naturalistic complexity into the dragons, we tried to find a good balance between technique and visibility. Only what is really visible on screen in the end was put in, and this was still more you can normally do on a television series. The skin for example has all the stretching and squashing which is calculated by a plugin but is not simulated like a cloth object, where the result is hardly predictable. You should never lose the control to make sure hitting the next deadline.
Most of the crowd shots where done the ‘traditional’ way replicating the extras into the depth. Due to the moving cameras this build as 3D card setup in Nuke to achieve the needed parallax. Very wide shots are a combination of plate element with the main actors, card extension to a full cg army. The final shot of the season for example starts with a top shot of Dany, a virtual camera taking over extending the height showing a crowd replication of extras near the edges which get extended by cg people filling the wide area.
IA : What was the hardest scene you’ve worked on for the new season? Why ?
SM : A tough shot was definitely the opening shot where the dragon is approaching the sail ship with Dany aboard. We had to deliver this long flight as a trailer shot and the dragon itself was not finished at this point. Beside this we had turn the linear camera path of green-screen ship element into a free flowing camera, adding bow, sails and rigging to the ship, placing it into a full cg environment with a digital ocean, foam and sky.
Another tricky shot was having all the dragons fighting in mid air about a piece of meat, tossed by Dany sitting in a tent. With having the wings expanded the dragons became quite big and it was a real challenge to make them not intersect, not strike the actors and still keep a believable flight behavior.
IA: In your opinion how would you define your work as art ?
Why would you deny someone with a pencil to be an artist? Most of our artist have a traditional background and we still use drawing on paper as the fastest way of communication. A lot of design and concept is involved in our daily work and a good understanding of storytelling is needed to fulfill these tasks. As all the others we feel as part of the filmmaking crew.
IA : Anything else ?
Thank you for your interest in our work, happening invisible ‘behind the curtain’!
