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DUNE www.postmagazine.com 32 POST JAN/FEB 2022 Villeneuve. Then, those sets were built in the real world, inside the various studios. Despite the size of the sets, visual effects had to extend them even farther, which meant virtual extensions. "Denis was adamant that he did not want to deviate from this," says Lambert of using CGI as a tool, rather than to drive the story. Without question, the inspiration for the VFX was realism, as Villeneuve wanted all the digital im- agery to be grounded and as photoreal as possible. "Even though we were making a sci-fi m vie, Denis never wanted any of the work to take you out of the film " says Lambert. "He never wanted the blue eyes of the Fremen to be so electric that each time you turned to character, you'd think, 'What the heck?', and it would take you out of the story. He never wanted any virtual cam- era work that you couldn't shoot with an actual camera. He never wanted you to get too close to one of the CG ornithopters. Things like that. He wanted to keep things as physical as possible, so everything was weighted with a certain amount of believability." The filmma ers also avoided using greenscreen and bluescreen. Alternatively, cinematographer Greig Fraser, Vermette and even Villeneuve pooled their collective experience to work things in-camera so they would have a solid basis for the visual effects. For instance, whenever there was swirling dust and that sort of thing, the actors all were shot in one pass, rather than in different layers — making it, in Lambert's opinion, far more believable. Despite their efforts, there were times when bluescreen/greenscreen was unavoidable. This is when Lambert came up with an alternative: a brownish-colored screen that blended with the backgrounds. Because the group knew what the extensions were going to be, Lambert suggested using the tone of all the extensions and build that instead. "So if it's an interior on Arrakeen, it's going to be an off-b own color, and we'd put in a brown color, instead of blue, up to the ceiling," says Lambert. "Rather doing a full extraction and extending that, I would just be adding texture." All the interiors were constructed this way, and it enabled DP Fraser to light his scenes without worrying about the digital world. There were even instances when the filmma ers retained the raw sand screen in the shots. Home and Away (Caladan and Arrakis) Prior to the Atreides leaving their home on Caladan for Arrakis, their flagship is sh wn slowly rising out of the water, as water runs down the sides — a scene generated by Dneg Montreal using water sims produced in SideFX's Houdini. That took quite a bit of work, trying to find eference for such a huge vessel surfacing out of the water and getting the correct scale of the water and the interactions, says Lambert. Dneg Montreal also handled the scene as the Atreides and their ships arrive at Arrakis, includ- ing the pomp and circumstance that occurs as all the foreign dignitaries arrive for the transfer of guardianship, which entailed placing digital crowds generated using Massive software. Whereas Caladan was a water planet, Arrakis is the opposite — a desert planet where most of the film ta es place. Dneg Montreal was further charged with work on the spaceport at the Arrakis capital of Arrakeen (which the team at Dneg Vancouver later blew up in spectacular fashion). "We literally created [the spaceport] from a drawing by some of the best concept matte painters in the world working under Denis' di- rection," says Brian Connor, VFX supervisor for Dneg Montreal. "We also textured it based on the textures they had used. Our CG version and the concept practically matched one-to-one." As for the digital work pertaining to the ex- pansive Arrakis desert environment and the city of Arrakeen, that was mostly handled by Dneg's Vancouver office. The city of Arrakeen was con- structed based on the premise of strong desert winds coming from the direction behind the city wall (shield wall) and up and over the wall while sand pelts the city. The Vancouver team ran an effects simulation on the city as a whole, based on that wind direction to determine the resulting buildups of sand against the buildings and in all the little pockets and crevices where it settles through- out the city. The team did some texture work, as well, to achieve the hard, sunbaked sand look on most of the structures, making them look lived-in but also quite old and well weatherworn, adds Tristan Myles, visual effects supervisor for the Dneg Vancouver team. The shots inside the city structures were filme on what Myles calls "highly detailed" sets that extended to the ceilings, with CG extensions. Meanwhile, all the aerial shots of Arrakeen were CG, while most of the exteriors were either desert plates or shot on the backlots in Budapest using the sand screens. Also affected by the strong winds are the unique-looking sand dunes on Arrakis, which con- tain some sharp peaks sculpted by the blowing air. The look is based on the dunes found in the Wadi Rum valley of cut sandstone and rock formations in southern Jordan, as well as aerial and ground plates shot in the UAE, all of which Villeneuve was determined to use. "The biggest challenge there was getting the sand to look similar to the plate and getting the topology of the dunes to match [digitally] as well," Myles says. "We couldn't generate our own sand dunes, the director wanted them to look like those in the plates, which really do have a very unique look." Once Villeneuve selected this location, a team was sent to do Lidar photogrammetry scans for the CG build. Worms and Sand Of course, the prevalent features of Arrakis are the sand and the worms. The CG worms were created from concepts by Villeneuve and Vermette, and then sculpted and modeled using Maxon's ZBrush (formerly from Pixologic) and Autodesk's Maya. Then, using Maya, the Dneg animators had the complex task of making them move. "Denis had his own ideas of what he thought Frank Herbert was aiming for with Dune and the worms," says Myles. "Obviously, David Lynch's The film made use of numerous location shoots and studio sets.