Post Magazine

March 2015

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www.postmagazine.com 13 POST MARCH 2015 the scene off to the 3D team. "We actual- ly have a huge library of 3D blood that was created using Realflow," says Lopez. "If they need something a little more spe- cial, we can go back into our RealFlow and create a special blood element." According to Lopez, "After we've tracked our 2D elements, and we start erasing parts of the zombie's body, like arms or heads, we have to create 3D models of that. To be honest, I would say a good 50 or 60 percent of that work is done by our 2D compositors. They've gotten exceptionally good at taking an arm and making it fly off. It's pretty quick. So that happens without ever having to go into the 3D depart- ment. When it becomes something more extensive, closer to camera or slow motion, you have to get 3D involved. For instance, a few episodes ago they went into a high-speed, slow-motion spot, and the zombie was moving right towards the camera. It got shot in the head from behind and the head just came apart in the camera. When you do something like that, you bring it to 3D so they can create a proxy model of the face and start to figure out how they want it to come apart. We usually try to do style frames before we go too deep into the artist time, which can get done in one of two ways: We can either get our matte painting department to do a style frame — and they always check back with 3D first to make sure that what they present in the matte/style frame can actually be done in 3D — or we'll do a wire frame out of Maya or LightWave. Then, we go ahead and show how we would take the face apart [to the produces] and we get feedback on that. They're very involved in the process on big shots like that — we're sending Victor our work in progress. It could either be a wire frame or grey scale, and then he sends that up the ladder to the people who will ultimately say yes or no, and that goes back and forth a few times with notes, and then we're kind of there." Aside from Maya and LightWave, which are key tools for Stargate's work on the series, the studio also uses Zbrush for 3D, Photoshop for the matte paint- ings, Mocha Pro for compositing when they do tracking, and V-Ray for render- ing. "We've never looked back since we went with V-Ray," says Lopez. "We got really good at using Mental Ray," adds Cook. "We could optimize scenes like crazy; we had the render times down. But honestly, the amount of time we spent optimizing stuff in Mental Ray — V-Ray just let us work on the creative aspect and visual quality. It just took all of the hand-holding manage- ment side of it out and just let us work." The series, which is shot on-location in Atlanta on 16mm film for a grainy, unique look, also stars Andrew Lincoln as lead character Rick Grimes, and Norman Ree- dus as Daryl Dixon, who have all become master zombie killers since the pandemic occurred. "I know the amount of kills and the type of kills has expanded [since the show first premiered in 2010]," says Lopez. "I know we're killing more zombies, in general, every episode. The zombies have been dead for five years and there's a theory that they are a little bit more like butter. They can be cut up and damaged a lot easier this season than they have in the past, so it gets a little bloodier and we can do more damage to the zombies as we progress over the seasons. I think if you look at the first few seasons, [the characters] didn't have a lot of weapons at their disposal. But they've picked up an arsenal along the way and they've become more creative on how to kill zom- bies. They've learned to use bats, blades, pick axes and whatever else is available, so they're always able to do a kill." "It seems like Season 1 was a little more conservative with their kills," adds Cook, "whereas now, the kills are much more complicated." Speaking to the show's enormous popularity, Lopez says, "we work on a lot of different projects, but they're not [phenomenon], like The Walking Dead. It's really great to work on a show with such high ratings, is so well-written and is so well-done. We do a lot of CG work on this show and nobody knows. That's probably the most rewarding thing. That means we're doing our job right." PRIMETIME Stargate also creates set extensions and digital crowds. Limb removal can be a 2D or 3D process.

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