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j u ly . a u g u s t 2 0 1 7 c g w 1 3 a blue sky. Knowing that Besson would want to art direct the cloud placement, the team created a bank of clouds in different shapes and colors rendered from different perspectives. "We passed that on to Hybride," Rebours says. "They created the background for most of the shots in the desert world." However, for the merchant world, there were no practical sets. "That's what scared me the most," Rebours says. "Oen you think of set extensions. Here, we didn't have that foreground. We had to have a fair amount of stores looking quite realistic in this universe, so we had to add little elements and a fair amount of texture. Every time Valerian is on a street or in the canyon, we had to create that environment, and most of the time the camera saw 270 degrees or 360 degrees." The environment artists used Isotropix's Clarisse to manage and render the insane amount of geometry. To help the postproduction crews, overall VFX Supervisor Scott Stokdyk and Besson sent photos of shots filmed on set. "I felt it was important to see how the DP lit the sets for all the sequences to get a feeling for the look of the entire movie," Rebours says. "With full-CG shots, you can go anywhere and the artwork doesn't provide the DNA of the movie. So, we got about 150 photos that gave us what Thierry [Arbogast, cinematographer] was doing and what Luc was looking for." In addition, Stokdyk provided color look-up tables (LUTs). For the stores, the artists built a library of awnings, columns, store- fronts, and so forth to create multiple variations. Besson shot the sequence early in his shooting schedule and edits at the same time, so ILM received the shots quickly. "Also, we had the student previs that gave us an extremely good indi- cation of his way of shooting," Rebours says. "We knew his point of view on each environment. So, instead of saying we have 225 shots with X amount of assets, we would say, OK, first we need a camera layout, then we need the environment, and then we can start shooting in the virtual set. We based our schedule on the set schedule." The crew took the same approach one would use on a practical set. "You place all the cameras, then you set dress the environment using small assets until it's properly dressed," Rebours says. For flythroughs, they would populate the environment using a particle system. For crowds, the animators used ILM's Vignette system to control characters animated with cycles of 1,000 frames or so. When the cam- era was close, animators would hand place characters they gave specif- ic actions. All told, the artists created approximately 90 characters. "We had humans, bipeds, quadrupeds, flying creatures, insects, creatures that look like ocean creatures," Rebours says. "For the human tourists, we shot extras on set, then, in cooperation with Hybride, created 100 different costumes with designs based on those the extras wore." For the hero character Igon Sirrus, the riggers added a simplified muscle system for his face and fat neck. "I wanted a muscle system like we have on the body to add second- ary animation when he's speaking," Rebours says, "a jiggle to his face." For the holograms, Rebours worked with ILM's Bianca Draghici, who served as VFX art director on the film. Draghici created the specified 2D treatment: A grid moves with the characters to which additional elements can be applied. "I think the main challenge was the huge amount of variety we needed to create and then making sure we were telling the story – that we were having the audience look where we wanted," Rebours says. "This is a very complex, diverse, colorful world. If Luc is happy with the action on the shots, he's not nitpicky on the details. He leaves a lot of freedom. But on the other hand, he definitely knows what he wants. He goes in one direction. He would never say he wants to try some- thing on the le, then try right, then try le. That was good. It was a great experience. The entire team enjoyed the collaboration." Barbara Robertson (BarbaraRR@comcast.net) is an award-winning writer and a contributing editor for CGW. The Converter Sometimes found riding on a Pearl's shoulder is another alien species, an odd little orange and aqua lizard-like creature named Melo. "He's is a cuter version of a lizard, with an expressive face and nose, which made animating him interesting," Story says. "We referenced puppies and kittens." Melo has a particularly helpful character- istic: He's a Mül Converter. "When you feed him, he poops out tons of whatever you fed him," Reynolds says. Melo can duplicate pearls from the sea, and these pearls are the energy source that fuels the planet. "He's the MacGuffin of the movie," Reynolds says. That is, Melo is a plot device, a story motivator that doesn't care whether the villain or the hero does the motivating. Doghan Daguis Unlike the Boulans and Pearls, the oppor- tunistic Doghan Daguis weren't based on motion-captured performances; anima- tors keyframed these strange-looking bipedal creatures because they have non-human proportions. Born as triplets, the Doghan Daguis are so connected they divide their sentences into three parts. The hairy-headed, lizard-skinned, elephant-trunked characters speak 1,200 extraterrestrial languages and more than 500 computer languages. "They're just in it for the money, you un- derstand," Reynolds says. Besson filmed actors on their knees so he could frame the shots. "The actors wore suits with markers so we could have an idea about posing," Reynolds says. "But they were all key- framed. He always shot three of them together – it takes all three to get a point across. But, it was hard to know which one was delivering the dialog." To help the audience follow the three- part dialog, animators would dial down performances for the two Doghan Daguis that weren't speaking. "We had the eyes of the speaker pop open a lot more to draw your eye to that one, and we had the others look over to him," Reynolds says. When the speaker passed the next part of a line to another, the