Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1438374
o c t o b e r • n o v e m b e r • d e c e m b e r 2 0 2 1 c g w 3 5 Autodesk's Maya for modeling, Pixolog- ic's ZBrush digital sculpting soware, and Foundry's Mari digital paint tool. Blackmagic Design's Fusion Studio serves as the backbone of Muse VFX's 2D/compos- iting pipeline. "We used it exclusively for all of our compositing work on Y: The Last Man, including prep, de-graining, rotoscoping, keying, tracking, particle effects, and final composite," says Pienkos. Pienkos points to a particular scene in which Fusion Studio proved useful. The studio was tasked with creating an explo- sion of a house using Lidar scans and photo references that were taken on set. "No practical effects were shot on the day, and there was significant layering required to integrate the explosion of the house with the environment, as there were multiple layers of trees and bushes between the camera and the house," Pienkos recalls. "We also needed to replace several practical trees with CG. For this sequence, camera tracking, rotoscoping, digital pyro, digital debris, and digital foliage were all comp'd together in Fusion Studio, including a simu- lation to blow out a nearby car's windows as part of the explosion." Muse VFX's pipeline also includes PFTrack from The Pixel Farm and SynthEyes from Andersson Technologies for tracking, and Maxon's Redshi for rendering. Apocalyptic Scene Toronto's Switch worked on more than 100 shots for the series, creating matte paintings, set extensions, gun battles, and greenscreen composites. Pugh, tasked the studio with creating matte paintings and set extensions for the series' opening apocalyp- tic sequence, which appears in Episode 1. In one shot, abandoned cars clutter an LA highway, while debris from a plane crash cov- ers a nearby hillside, all marking the sudden and violent halt to normalcy. Hundreds of 3D assets — including cars, trucks, and the airlin- er — were created using Maya, with textures created in Mari, and modeling performed in ZBrush. Redshi was used for rendering. Each asset was then referenced into the scene and hand placed to design the crash to create a natural and realistic look. Ref- erencing the assets into the scene allowed the artists working on the vehicle models to continue to update them, as other artists continued laying out the crash. Foundry's NukeX was used to obtain a 3D camera track, along with a point cloud and guide geometry as a representation for the landscape of the shot. In Photoshop, multiple frames from the plate were used to create a matte painting for the highway without any cars. From there, the matte painting, along with other debris and smoke elements, were projected onto 3D cards in Nuke and placed where needed in the scene. Elements and plates were ultimately combined in NukeX. Ampersand Pugh called on ILM's Vancouver studio to bring Ampersand to life. The work on the digital character supports Disney's long-standing mandate that prohibits the filming with real primates. "By the end of the season, the team — myself, Associate VFX Supervisor Jesse Kawzenuk, VFX Coordinator Malorie Moriana, and VFX Editor Avi Winkler — had crashed two helicopters, blown up a house full of domestic terrorists and a subway tunnel, destroyed the medical campus at Harvard University, burned down a Price- max big-box warehouse, and killed off every mammal on the planet with a Y chromo- some," Pugh recalls. "We also provided set extensions for the Pentagon's grand hallway and rotundas, as well as a CG Pentagon exterior location." Amp, however, was the show's biggest VFX challenge. The small monkey is Yorick Brown's constant companion, traveling with him in a small crate most of the time, and occasionally riding on Yorick's shoulder or exploring new settings on his own. "His integration into the footage and his performances would need to be completely convincing or they would pull the viewer right out of the show," explains Pugh. "I talked a lot with Eli and MJ [Eliza Clark, showrunner/EP, and Mari-Jo Winkler-Iof- freda, EP] about keeping his performance grounded and organic. We never wanted him to do anything flashy or intentionally cute — nothing 'character-y.' That became my mantra, and the team at ILM embraced it." Actor Ben Schnetzer, who portrays Yorick, helped sell the visual effect through his interaction with the monkey. "The first time we got them into the iconic 'monkey on his shoulder' pose from the graphic novels was a neat thing to see," recalls Pugh. According to Karen Clarke, ILM's senior VFX producer, the studio contributed a total of 125 shots to the series, with Ampersand appearing in every shot, except one — an aerial POV where the camera gains altitude to reveal a stylized Y made out of the city streets. That shot appears in Episode 101. "Our primary commercial tools included Maya, Mari, Katana, Renderman, and Nuke," notes Bruno Baron, ILM's associate visual ef- fects supervisor. "And then some proprietary magic created by ILM for the fur and other parts of the pipeline. But the main ingredient is the amazing artistry of the ILM peeps. "One of the great things at ILM is the impressive skill set of the artists working here," Baron continues. "A lot of them had already worked on primates, so they knew what worked. We could always tap into their vast experience pool to find solutions to all the challenges we faced." Amp was challenging on three particular levels: his fur, eyes, and tail. "In all these cases, we could pick some- one's brain who's literally an expert in their respective area," says Baron. ILM was able to get access to video refer- ence of a real capuchin monkey that was the exact match for what the showrunners were aer. This greatly facilitated all of the asset creation steps, with each department able to match the reference footage. Amp appears in a number of environ- Muse VFX created this entire explosion digitally.