Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1277231
10 cgw e d i t i o n 2 , 2 0 2 0 more extensive environments, such as the town and port of Hawksbridge, where Nimue tries to catch a boat while fleeing from her village, but meets Arthur instead. "It involved a lot more work than what you see," says Houghton, describing the environ- mental extension for Hawksbridge as quite an undertaking. As Houghton explains, first, the locale was surrounded by trees that all had to be removed in comp, with DNeg building out the town and port from the existing set. Using art department drawings and period reference, the studio added CG churches, houses, huts, a bridge, and a plethora of objects, such as carts and wagons, barrels, fish netting, and so forth. As the village set was built nowhere near water, DNeg further craed moving boats and dynamic sails, as well as a jetty at the port, and even added the sea itself. Everything within the surrounding harbor wall was a practical set with a large 40-foot-high bluescreen where the sea was to be. DNeg added the town beyond the wall, enhanced the set, extended the jetty by 90 feet into the sea, and added the water and majority of the ships and boats. "The most difficult aspect was getting the layout right for all of the various angles, be- cause we started off with the widest angle of Nimue and [her friend] Pym approaching Hawksbridge on horseback, which shows the spread of the town. But then there are other scenes that feature that same environment and were filmed from several different angles," says Sulé Bryan, DNeg VFX supervisor on the series along with David Sewell. "We had to make sure we had the correct layout to keep all those individual shots composed correctly so we didn't have to tweak each one individually." "On one side we had to replace fields of trees with the city beyond the set wall, and on the other side, the sea port side, we replaced a huge bluescreen with an ocean, boats and ships, and so on," he adds. For the construction, the artists used Autodesk's Maya for modeling, Adobe's Substance Painter and Pixologic's ZBrush for texturing, Isotropix's Clarisse for rendering, SideFX's Houdini for effects and simulations, and Foundry's Nuke for compositing. DNeg also built the large set extension for the village of Gramaire, the seat of power for Arthur's uncle, Sir Ector – a site that ap- pears in several sequences throughout the series. According to Bryan, this environment extension was more straightforward but still required a high level of detail. As was the case with Hawksbridge, Gramaire required the artists to remove many trees from the set, but not all of them – "these trees really became an issue," he adds. Similarly, the art- ists built an environment extension beyond the limits of the physical set, which included churches, towers, rooops, and so forth. The sets for Gramaire and Hawksbridge consisted of the large town squares, a number of side streets, city gates, and the port area of Hawksbridge. DNeg extend- ed the towns above the nearest rooops; they also created a vista of the entirety of Hawksbridge as seen when Nimue and Pym first approach and for the distant Gramaire as Arthur rides towards the town. "Like Hawksbridge, [Gramaire] is a location that is used several times across the series, and had to remain consistent while being used again and again," Bryan notes. This build included construction of Ector's castle by DNeg, as well – an all-CG set seen in both the background and in close-up. Achieving the right scale for the castle was difficult because it was always visible in shots, which at times required some slight cheats. An especially complex environment build was required for Nimue's village, which is sacked by the Red Paladins, who slay or burn the Fey inhabitants, along with the village itself. "Our brief was to convey an engulfing sense of death and destruction," says Bryan. To this end, DNeg had to greatly enhance the amount of flames as only minimal SFX flames where allowed at the location, and added other effects such as ash and smoke throughout the sequence, where the shots ranged from wide to close-up. The artists also added 2D crowd elements shot against bluescreen to increase the number of Pala- dins and villagers seen in some shots. In a 70-second Steadicam shot, we see Nimue running through the village during the chaos, trying to reach a young Fey boy. "There's nowhere to hide with a shot like this. Usually when you have this sort of shot, you can get away with certain things in between the cuts. But when the shot is over a minute long from start to finish, everything has to work perfectly," explains Bryan. "It's probably the equivalent of about 15 visual effects shots all in one. There are multiple huts on fire, the added effects of Nimue entangles a Paladin in practical vines interwoven with CG versions. DNeg built and animated a demon bear that attacks the young Nimue.