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MASTERS OF THE AIR Headquartered in Montreal, Rodeo FX (www.ro- deofx.com) completed work on 404 shots across eight of the series' nine episodes, with Episode 9 being its largest contribution. Patrick David is a VFX supervisor at the studio and recently shared insight into the studio's work on Masters of the Air. Patrick, can you give us some insight into Rodeo FX's VFX contributions? "Our main body of work was on the three different POW camps our pilots encountered in the story: Stalag Luft III, Stalag Luft XIII and Stalag Luft VII. We were responsible for all those environment extensions, as well as the digital crowd to populate them. In Episode 109, Stalag Luft VII is liberated by an advance of American tanks, assisted by a P-51 strafing the camp. We handled all of the action in that sequence, including firing tanks, advancing American infantry, P-51 planes, tracer fire, explo- sions and destruction. In addition, we created the opening sequence in Episode 108 involving the re- nowned Red Tails bombing an Italian outpost while flying their four P-40 aircraft at night. We also contributed to some sequences at Thorpe Abbotts airbase involving taxiing B-17 aircraft preparing for takeoff, and many smaller one-off environment and FX shots throughout the show, such as an exten- sion of a heavily-bombarded Nuremberg, snowy environments during the Long March sequence, and a line of flak guns firing at approaching B-17s in Holland." What were some of the VFX techniques used to complete the shots? "For the POW camps, production had built around five real buildings with some fencing in an airfield in England. As these camps were all real places that we needed to extend and recreate in VFX, we were provided extensive reference and story- telling queues by the show's overall VFX super- visor, Stephen Rosenbaum. He provided detailed 'bird-eye-view' plans and photographic period references of each of the real camps that our team used to accurately depict the size and conditions there. Although production probably had around 100 extras on-set, we needed to create digital crowds of POWs and German guards to populate the background environments with hundreds to thousands of prisoners, depending on the camp and the progression of WWII. Digital assets were created of each of the different POW costumes and accessories, such as coats, shirts, pants, boots (and) hats, which our crowd system, driven by Golaem, could mix and match to create unique individuals for shots that required thousands of digital extras. Bespoke mocap performances were acquired in our studios using two Xsens suits. "We captured performances…of POWs shiver- ing, walking exhausted, warming their hands. We also took care to capture the performance of two characters interacting with each other so that we could have more realistic and natural behavior in the background…For a night scene where German guards search for a radio, we attached a digital flashlight to our mocap guards so even our [back- ground] guards were searching as they walked. "Our CG camps were also built to match summer conditions as well as snowy winter state, complete with icicles and snow drifts on the barracks' roofs. In Episode 9, Stalag III is set ablaze by retreating German guards as the POWs begin the 'Long March' towards another camp. Production shot many elements of some of the real structures burning, which we combined in comp with FX sim- ulated fire and thick smoke plumes emitting from the camp's barracks." How about the Red Tails sequence that opens Episode 8? "We were provided excellent air-to-air reference plates of real P-40s and P-51s to study lighting and airplane dynamics. Great care was taken to use the correct plane serial numbers, nose art and markings that the real Red Tails flying this mis- sion would have used. Digital matte sky and environment paintings, and a digital version of an Italian outpost were built and used as backgrounds. Our an- imation team carefully recreated the air flight characteristics spotted in the reference, such as buffeting, banking and how pilots used different flaps to pilot the air- craft. We also paid particular attention to respecting the fighter flight formation for the approach and to show how the fighters would 'fold' together to form a single line for the bombing of the outpost. To clarify the speed and distance of the planes in our full GC shots, our FX team laid out several layers of wispy clouds in each shot in order to create a paral- lax effect. Buildings were built by our assets team to have wooden support beams, rock walls and stucco layers to provide different layers and scales for our FX team to destroy." What tools does Rodeo FX use for its VFX work? "We use a lot of industry standard tools, such as Maya for animation, Katana for lighting, Arnold for rendering, ZBrush, Substance Painter/Designer, Golaem for crowds, Houdini for our FX simulations, Clarisse for our CG environments and set dressing, Photoshop for digital matte-painting work and Nuke for compositing. For our mocap we used Xsens suits, which capture the performer's motion without needing a large optical mocap stage, since sensors are placed at different joints in the suit to capture motion." Which shot would you say was the most challenging? "The last shot of Episode 6 is a long, craning shot that pans off a group of POWs arriving at Stalag Luft III and reveals a very wide angle of the greater camp for the first time. This shot was challenging for its length — several seconds — and the amount of digital crowd in-frame that we needed to blend in side-by-side with real extras. Since the shot rises up so slowly and lasts so long, you have a really good look at everything in the frame. Great care was taken to vary the performances to not spot any two POWs doing the same action." RODEO FX Rodeo FX VFX supervisor Patrick David Rodeo FX's Montreal space includes this theater.