Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/65901
vfx for tv that model, they then build all of the creatures. The character can morph from a 3D human to a 3D creature. It allows us to have a lot more control over how that morph happens." Rarely do they work with gr ee n scr e en footage. Instead they shoot the actors on-set under normal light- ing conditions. "While we are there we'll take little dots and mark key places on their face for tracking and refer- Hive FX provides Grimm's visual effects. Miller. The two have worked together for 13 years, initially in Santa Barbara, and ultimately set up shop in Portland four years ago. Hive FX is a 6,000-square-foot facility that con- tributes to both spots and television series. The studio uses Maya for modeling, rigging and animation, and ZBrush for facial sculpt- ing. Hive also calls on Maxon's Cinema 4D V.13 for creating hair effects. Maya and V-Ray are used for lighting and rendering. Compos- iting is performed using After Effects and Mocha Pro. All compositing and editorial is performed using Macs. The studio has 40 quad-core processors in its renderfarm. A typical episode of Grimm could involve 40 effects shots and each episode could introduce as many as five new characters. "We mostly do characters," says Clark of their work on Grimm. "That's mostly what we are known for, especially characters with hair." Clark says when the studio initially began working on the series, they would create a two-dimensional morph to change the human characters into their creature perso- nas — a process that Clark says was very complicated. "Now, the process is so much faster," he notes. "We take photographs of the actors on set and our 3D sculptor builds the actor in about two days. From ence, and then the first thing we do is paint out those dots," he notes. "A lot of the time we'll paint out the entire head and upper body and replace it entirely with the CG version." DAMAGES, ROYAL PAINS The Molecule (www.themolecule.net) in New York has been around for approxi- mately seven years. The studio was founded by a team of freelancers, including VFX supervisor/COO Luke DiTommaso, each of whom brought a different skill to the table. Working out of a 2,600-square-foot loft in Soho, The Molecule also recently opened an Los Angeles office, and has been busy con- tributing visual effects to a number of televi- 'Fringe' effects HOLLYWOOD — Dilated Pixels (www.dilatedpixels.net) produced over 60 visual effects shots for a recent episode of Fox's series, Fringe. For the "End of All Things" episode, Dilated Pixels produced a virtual set with visuals representing the creation of the universe. The studio also worked on flashback effects that worked with the episode's storyline. In-house VFX supervisor Derek Smith led the team, working directly with show's VFX supervisor, Jay Worth. "I threw a bunch of new ideas for our mythol- ogy at them," says Worth, "going inside the mind of one of our characters, seeing galaxies, the big bang and finding an interesting visual representation to display memories is not an easy task in less than three weeks. And of course the shot count went up by 50 percent... and the team nailed it on every front. The results were awesome and remarkable." Dilated Pixels relied on custom-built Windows workstations and Supermicro render nodes and servers, all running Windows 7. The studio used NewTek's LightWave and Adobe's After Effects for VFX work and SynthEyes for camera tracking. Thinkbox's Deadline handled renderfarm man- agement. The studio also uses VFX Nexus for project management and tracking. The studio has approximately three weeks to work on each episode. "The only reason we were able to take Grimm on was that we put a really smooth pipeline in, even on a low budget," says Clark. "You'd be surprised how low budget a series like this could be. In a feature you might have three times the budget and about three times as much time. incredible rate of delivery." It's an Visit us at NAB - Booth SL2325 34 Post • April 2012 www.postmagazine.com