Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1518753
www.postmagazine.com 13 POST MAR/APR 2024 Dneg (www.dneg.com) drew upon its global network of studios to complete its visual effects contributions to Masters of the Air. According to VFX supervisor Xavier Bernasconi, as many as 400 artists across studio locations in Sydney, India, Prague, London, Montreal and Vancouver, all had a hand in delivering nearly 2,000 shots for the series, spanning Episodes 1 through 8. Bernasconi says he joined the show back in April of 2021 and spent close to six months with the production while it was shooting in London. Dneg's work focused on the series' aerial sequenc- es, which feature B-17 bombers, P-51 Mustangs and the German Luftwaffe. The studio also contributed to the show's virtual production, recreating previs content at a high level of detail for partner Lux Machina (www.luxmc.com) to display on the pro- duction's LED volumes. "Basically, The Third Floor did the previs, and then gave it to Dneg Dimension to recreate to make it as high quality as possible, considering the limitation of the hardware," notes Bernasconi. "And then, Lux Machina was responsible for putting [the content] on the screen…The Dneg Dimension team was responsible for the motion capture of the gimbal, as well as preparing any scene that was coming (up) next." The studio's aerial work spanned takeoffs and land- ings at the airfields, as well as in-air battle sequences. "It was a big undertaking," says Bernasconi. "As soon as we finished the shoot, we went into asset production, starting to work on the B-17s, all the planes, all the environments. That was until 2023, when we delivered the last few." The virtual production shoot served as a start- ing point for the visual effects process, acting as a low-resolution reference from which to gain direction. "At some points we had like five hundred B-17s, or three hundred German fighters. Not all of them were super high resolution because the highest resolution was millions and millions of polygons. We went down to the single rivet in terms of (the) model, so it was super, super heavy." Bernasconi continues, noting that there is a 'Holy Grail' concept, where the same asset can make its way through previs, all the way to final picture, but that often doesn't work out. "The needs for any stage of the production are slightly different. Previs is about being faster (and) able to iterate. You don't want to have very heavy scenes, so your assets are a little bit lower reso- lution…I think that what was very good about the previs in the [virtual production] is that it informed us so much about what was coming. We knew the extensive amount of work." Bernasconi adds that they rarely had a clean shot, with so much camera gear and lighting ap- pearing in the frame. In addition, the cloudscapes were all designed and directed later, and in much greater detail. "Everything was CG," he says of the aerial se- quences. "The production team, the art department and the production design team did an amazing historical research job. For each mission, we had what we call a 'mission book.' Every mission book had visibility parameters throughout the mission. So at every moment in the mission, we knew what was the visibility distance. Because of that, we knew we had to reproduce it very accurately. We couldn't just improvise or make it up. So what we did was, create what I called a 'cloud atlas.'" The cloud atlas had reference images that he would show to VFX supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum, who would then pick the atmospheric needs for each mission. "Then, what we did was created those images," says Bernasconi. "We sculpted very simplistic 3D representation of the clouds. Once we had that, we'd run simulations inside each of these little vol- umes. How gas and water act and change." When they achieved a desired result, they would freeze it in time, and then create clusters of clouds, and ultimately mega clusters that the planes would fly through. They also employed proprietary tools that were developed for Dune, which could recre- ate the scattering of light at certain angles based on the horizon. "You could say it's 3 o'clock, and it's this partic- ular latitude and longitude, and you get the right (lighting)," he explains. The planes themselves were based on LIDAR scans taken of actual World War II aircraft on dis- play at museums. "We had very high resolution reference models, (but) unfortunately, when you use LIDAR scans, the way that the model comes in is not really friendly for final images, so we needed to basically recreate them and then texture them, and then do the shading." Bernasconi says the B-17s were particularly chal- lenging because of their camouflage matte paint. "The B-17 was so difficult to recreate because of the specularity," he recalls. "It was very matte…but a very broad specular, and it was almost like a very fine line between looking plastic (and not) exactly the right metal. Stephen is extremely detail oriented and really pushed us to be as accurate as possible." In addition to its proprietary tools, Dneg relied on Autodesk Maya for modeling, Adobe Substance for texturing, SideFX Houdini for effects, Clarisse for rendering and Foundry's Nuke for compositing. Bernasconi points to the mission in Episode 103 as a highlight of the studio's work. In it, the 100th Bomb Group is called on to destroy aircraft manufacturing plants deep within Germany. The mission covers such a great distance that the bombers wouldn't have enough fuel to return to their base. Instead, they fly on to an Allied base in North Africa. "It was so, huge," he recalls of the sequence. "We traveled from England (to) Germany, Italy and then Algeria. We covered thousands of kilometers — big air battles. (It was) very complex and we had to choreograph it with Stephen. I think Episode 103 was the biggest one from my point of view." DNEG Dneg VFX supervisor Xavier Bernasconi A look at the LED volume used during the shoot. Detailed VFX were added in post.