HIS DARK MATERIALS PRODUCTION.
on pushing the render quality for previs and postvis. “These brand-new tools and processes had lots of exciting potential, but they were also quite buggy and time consuming as everyone was learning on the job,” he adds. “The challenge was in deciding what to integrate into production – or leave out next time. Once production mayhem kicks in, it’s very easy to revert to old work practices!” As May describes, when His Dark Materials was mid-production, everyone was talking about virtual production. But for his team, it felt slightly too early and out of reach, especially since most of the VFX spend needed to go on creatures. “It could have potentially been used for the epic Clouded Mountain scenes, but we lacked the prep time to build out all the assets in time for the shoot, as the concept of this world was in flux for some time,” he explains. “We used a lot of virtual pre-production on Season 3, as a lot of the R&D we had done in lockdown led to the discovery of VR scouting and creating what we now like to call artvis. This is, effectively, a more conceptual previs that doesn’t have to be a sequence per se, but more of a selection of cool (moving) immersive shots, selling
the world to the showrunners and the creative and production teams.” May says he is most proud of the mulefa world sequences, in which Mary discovers the enormous wheel-trees and the mulefa themselves. He was also able to put a lot of what the team learnt in lockdown to the test. “I created the tree designs using Gravity Sketch in VR, we built a nice set in Unreal Engine showing what was physically built and what could be VFX. We used photogrammetry and drone data to create the mulefa world locations, based on the real-world locations in Spain,” he adds. “We created artvis, concepts, previs and the postvis with all the lockdown skills we were able to develop – which I hope shows to great effect in the final episodes! It’s been an incredible journey!” Watch His Dark Materials on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Max in the US
PREVIS
FINAL
FLYING RIGHT The evolution of the Intention Craft imagery, reaching the high levels of realism seen in the series
SPACE AND TIME The Clouded Mountain, Season 3 episode 7, included one of the trickiest effects sequences for the team to deal with
37. JULY 2023
Powered by FlippingBook