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VFX FOR TV www.postmagazine.com 24 POST APRIL 2016 feeds off energy and evolves as it learns about the universe. It was predominantly created with Side Effects' Houdini. "There was some concept art, but we did a lot of concepting on our own, particularly in the final episode where there's a big reveal of what it is becoming," says Menzies. Spin also created the environment for two big scenes involving the reac- tor room onboard the mystery ship the Anubis. The team built a full 3D spherical reactor room and core first glimpsed in Episode 1 and seen in more detail later when the crew of the Rocinante restarts the reactor and the inert protomole- cule comes back to life. "It's a dark and spooky scene," says Menzies. "There was only a door and a platform on the set, the rest is our 3D environment. We composited the actors and the dormant protomolecule into the scene and lit the environment as the reactor powers up." Additionally, Spin provided on-set location capture and 3D body scanning services exclusive for the series while shooting in Toronto. The studio's 12-cam- era photogrammetry system was used for the actors' head and full body scans as well as key props. The Civetta camera system captured HDRI and photogram- metry of select sets and locations. Bob Munroe calls the Canterbury, a retooled colony transport, "one of the most detailed and dense assets I've ever seen." Tom Turnbull, president and VFX supervisor at Rocket Science VFX in Toronto, says the studio "knew going in that the Canterbury would be a com- plicated model. It needed a lot of detail all over for wide shots and close ups — there's not a single surface you don't see up close in a shot where the camera is rotating around it. As we went through the process and kept upgrading shots, the Canterbury grew into an enormous- ly-complicated asset, beyond what we expected: tens of millions of polygons, unique textures, displacement maps. We established a logistics and management process to keep it all on track." The dramatic Canterbury explosion — which takes viewers by surprise only 40 minutes after they first see the ship — needed to demonstrate "correct physics," Turnbull says. "There is reference footage of what a nuclear explosion looks like in space; the Americans and Soviets each did a nuclear explosion in the 1950s. It's a very surreal looking thing combining the look of what you think of as a nuclear explosion and the look of a nebula. It's uniquely different from other sci-fi explo- sions, which are either a bright light in a ball or a terrestrial explosion with no real effect of gravity on it." The vintage American reference mate- rial became the design basis for Rocket Science's Canterbury explosion, whose particle work was done in Houdini. Turnbull says the physics-based reality of The Expanse gives its own aesthetic to the show. "The physics has a beauty to it that makes you want to step back and admire it. It requires a longer look and an appreciation of what you're looking at." Rocket Science created the Rocinante, a ship stationed as a fleet escort ves- sel and torpedo bomber that appears throughout Season 1 and into Season 2. The studio also crafted the Tycho space station run by the Belters and the giant interstellar generation ship, the Nauvoo. Switch VFX in Toronto created all the stealth ships for the show, as well as the Scopuli, the derelict Martian light trans- port freighter left as interplanetary bait. Vancouver-based Atmosphere Visual Effects handled all the Manhattan set extensions and modeled The Knight, the Canterbury's surviving shuttle. Keyframe, Spin VFX (bottom right), Rocket Science VFX, Switch VFX and Atmosphere all contribute to The Expanse.