Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/815991
26 cgw m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 7 real cities in Europe, complete with realistic road systems that we were then able to populate with bespoke buildings based on fixed parameters, such as four-story build- ings on main roads, two-story buildings in working- class areas, and so forth." Signature buildings, such as churches and domes, were added, as well as a com- pletely hand-built Emerald Castle, inspired by Gaudi's Parc Guell architecture, and a highly detailed CG giant complete with computer-generated greenery growing on it. All of the trees and foliage in Emerald City were full-CG, as well. Emerald City's design was loosely based on the city of Dubrovnik. The areas were zoned based on proximity to the harbor (commercial), castle (high end), wall (poor), high streets (shops), and so on. Dif- ferent facades were then used to populate the floor plan. "We studied plans of similar hilly cities such as Greece and even used them as templates for certain areas," says Paul Simpson, VFX supervisor for Freefolk. "The overall feeling was that of a working city that had then transformed at the arriv- al of the wizard." Due to the procedural approach to the construction and layout of the city, the scene file was massive and required a huge amount of optimization in order to render effectively. Also, both the CG giant and Em- erald Castle were modeled and rendered at an incredibly high level of detail due to the camera passing close to both of those objects. "For us, designing and building the city it- self was the single biggest task," says Simp- son. "All of Emerald City was CG. We used some photogrammetry for the landscape, but apart from that, everything else was modeled, textured, and finished in 3D. This was necessary as the city was a character itself, which was to be featured through- out the entire season." With such a fantastical theme, one would expect there to be a good deal of greenscreen shots in the series. But this was not the case. "Tom Horton with Tarsem [Singh, director] wanted to use as much live action where possible. This had the advantage of grounding the look with pho- tography," explains Simpson. The team of artists at Freefolk de- signed and built Emerald City with more than 8,000 individual and unique houses arranged in the districts, each one having its own design, character, and architec- tural style. TDs wrote a procedural system capable of assembling a building using a construction kit of facades with bolt-on features, such as windows, doors, and oth- er dressing. The roofing system was created using a skeletal structure, to ensure that each roof looked the same as those built in real life. For close-up shots, each tile was a sep- arate instance, leveraging the features in a commercial soware package. "Without that, we would have been stuck building the city with the old 'building block' style, where you can see repetition," says Simp- son. "The effort was worth it, as it allowed us to see the city from any viewpoint." Freefolk also designed and built the wiz- ard's castle in very high resolution, to allow for close-ups on the top of the castle. The town itself was surrounded by a fortified wall, built on a natural rocky elevation lead- ing down to the sea. The city wall and sur- rounding rocks were built using photogram- metry from photos Simpson took while sailing in Dubrovnik harbor. Towering above this all was the stone giant, frozen in place just as he's about to strike the underground witches' temple, an asset that was built in 3D, enabling the artists to see it from any angle and at any time of the day. EV CITY According to Horton, the full-CG city of Ev was by far the most challenging of the two to create. In contrast to Emerald City, it was built using a projection approach supple- mented by some fully-CG features. Given that the design of the Ev City buildings and the bridge at the base of Ev Castle were based on production-approved Budapest USING A PROCEDURAL SYSTEM, ARTISTS AT FREEFOLK CONSTRUCTED THE BEAUTIFUL EMERALD CITY, HOME OF THE WIZARD OF OZ. THE CITY CONTAINS MORE THAN 8,000 UNIQUE HOUSES ARRANGED IN DISTINCT DISTRICTS.