Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1234746
28 cgw e d i t i o n i , 2 0 2 0 The Cinesite team also created the se- quence with the golden dragon in the cave. As Pejic points out, the scale of the dragon was limited by the physical location. The cave interior was shot at a location close to Budapest, and the exterior shots outside of the cave entrance were filmed in the Canary Islands. "We followed the storyboard design and pre-production, although the look of the dragon changed significantly during produc- tion," he says. The golden dragon needed a regal and majestic bearing, Pejic says; he has a birdlike beak and golden, metallic skin with touches of rust. The animators initially concentrated on a set of poses, which fitted the creature's regal attitude and gave a sense of how imposing he was. These poses set the basis for the animation. "The clients wanted a different drag- on look. They didn't want a robust battle dragon; the golden dragon is thinner, more elegant, with a longer neck. But he can still be aggressive, he can breathe fire," says Pejic. "We went through several iterations to get the look that the clients felt was right for the character." FIRE IN THE FOREST Cinesite was also charged with the sequence at the climax of the series involving the creation of a massive fire by Yennefer, spread magically and engulfing a nearby forest. "It involved CG fire on a massive scale, which took a couple of months to create, with the first month spent entirely on shot setup," Pejic points out. "FX TD Evrim Akyilmaz did a great job. That solid foundation was vital and meant that making changes later on was much more straightforward. The second month was spent adapting the speed and look of the fire, as the client required." The fire progresses very quickly, spread- ing through magic, but it had to be realistic and convincing. This effect was generated in Houdini by creating a CG forest and di- viding it into sections – manageable chunks that were further subdivided into even smaller clusters. Burn simulations were run on each cluster incrementally, reducing the overall render time and allowing the fire to spread from cluster to cluster in a convincing (although magically accelerated) way. There was the background, midground, and foreground; the midground and foreground were divided into seven sections, and each of these was further divided into three to seven smaller clusters, depending on how many trees the section required. The fire started in the middle of the forest, burning outward into the foreground and background. "Breaking the simulations down made rendering much quicker. Changes could be requested by the client and reviewed the fol- lowing day," says Pejic. Rendering was done in Autodesk's Arnold. – Karen Moltenbrey STAR TREK: PICARD (CBS ALL ACCESS) The new series Star Trek: Picard is an hour- long sci-fi program starring Sir Patrick Stew- art, who reprises his iconic role as Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, which he played for seven seasons on Star Trek: The Next Generation. Picard follows the iconic character into the next chapter of his life as a retiree from the Star Fleet, as nagging memories about a galactic event, and its subsequent repercus- sions, haunt him. Paul Ghezzo is creative director/VFX su- pervisor at Technicolor VFX in Los Angeles, which has done the post work on the series since Episode 5, and contributed to all of the subsequent episodes in Season 1, conclud- ing with Episode 10. Multiple vendors provide visual effects for the series, including Pixo- mondo, DNeg (all 10 episodes), and Cray Apes (1,200 shots – 140 on the pilot alone). Ghezzo is one of two VFX supervisors who oversee the show for Technicolor. Most of the work at Technicolor evolves around set extensions (digital matte paintings or full-3D set extensions) and some props for the show. For instance in Episode 5, which features a puzzle box that emits a toxic gas, the group animated it but also came up with the design, the functionality, how the box opens, and how the gas is emitted. Much of Technicolor's set extension work has been based around inside the Borg Cube, an incredibly large alien spaceship (miles in diameter). "A lot of our work goes into extrapolating on the set pieces that they built on stage, and then we build in a ton of depth," says Ghezzo, noting that if a character were to fall over a handrail, the Yennefer ignites a massive fire that spread via magic, thanks to VFX. Although slim and regal, the golden dragon is nonetheless aggressive.