Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/884568
14 cgw s e p t e m b e r . o c t o b e r 2 0 1 7 fire elements were provided and color-grad- ed to become the ice dragon's destructive blue breath. ...and more Earlier in the season, Rodeo FX created the ships, water, fireballs, and destruction of the Greyjoys' epic sea battle in Episode 2. Hav- ing done the massive destruction of ships in the harbor during the Meereen battle scene last year proved extremely helpful for the new VFX sequence. "We've been able to train the team so they were all up to speed and able to do a lot more of this quality of work this year," says Rouleau. Rodeo FX also created the fully-CG city of Meereen for last year's battle sequence, including all buildings and props, which were modeled individually. Matte paint- ings filled in details such as skies, distant mountains, and cliffs. The studio also created Season 6's CG Dothraki horde and horses used in two episodes, as well as a 443-frame sequence revealing the fully- CG Volantis bridge. Although the season finale aired just last month, preparations are getting under way for the show's eighth and last season. "The machine never stops," laughs Bauer. "The humans may be recharging, but early previs is happening." "We're already talking to vendors," adds Kullback. "We have writers' dras for most of the season, and the art department is starting to send concepts. So we're in the earliest stages of our anxiety attack." Bauer and Kullback recently were invited to speak to the entire animation building at Walt Disney Studios. "We felt extremely unworthy," says Bauer. "Toiling in the mines, you forget that the world is watching and appreciating the show. This was a huge 'attaboy!' " The two men expect an even larger ap- petite for VFX as the show winds down next season. "We can't be harder on ourselves without going into a psych ward," says Bau- er. "The work always seems impossible, but we'll look at Season 8 as a fresh experience that continues the pattern." Christine Bunish (cbpen@aol.com) is a veteran writer and editor for the film and video industry. BUILDING THRONES VFX vendors for Game of Thrones primarily use Autodesk Maya for animation and The Foundry's Nuke for compositing. "It used to be that big houses used proprietary soware that didn't handshake with anyone," notes VFX Supervisor Joe Bauer. "But now so many fantastic tools are widely available, and there's a lot of commonality among the houses," which facilitates asset sharing when required. Rhythm & Hues does use its Academy Award-winning proprietary Voodoo soware, however. "It allows us to rig and animate faster, and is very good at efficient animation setups," says Derek Spears. "We use Maya only for modeling." Rodeo FX switched from Soimage to Maya in Season 6. This year the company moved to The Foundry's Katana for lighting, and "that's worked out really well" and helped to speed the process, says Matthew Rouleau, VFX supervisor at the studio. Rodeo FX has used Side Effects' Houdini "quite a bit for effects," including scoring and collapsing the ice wall, and it is now deploying the soware for layout, set dressing, and creature effects, Rouleau says. "That's been a big step for us. The soware is so well built and super open-ended; it's node-based, so we can ramp up recipes into easy-to-use setups," he says. The studio has also adopted Golaem, the crowd-simulation tool for Maya, to populate battle scenes and create floods of people. "For the last shot in the Season 7 finale, aer the ice wall collapses and the Army of the Dead comes flooding in, we used actors in the foreground plates, a 16k matte painting project- ed onto a 3D environment, and all the rest was Golaem," says Patrice Poissant. Both Rodeo FX and Rhythm & Hues use Solid Angle's Arnold for rendering.