The real-world measurements just don’t matter anymore.” Even though there are hundreds of kilometers separating us from the Visual Effects Supervisor, Joe Bauer, and the Visual Effects Producer, Steve Kullback, and we’re living in different time zones, being able to talk about the same material right in front of us - it makes it feel like they’re just a room away. “With cineSync, the sessions have helped to make things so much more efficient. “When working on the same project from different parts of the world like this, it’s important to be connected, and have everyone on the same page - or frame,” says Pixomondo visual effects producer Viktorija Ogureckaja. With the Pixomondo team in Germany and the show’s production visual effects team either in LA or preparing for shoots in Northern Ireland, Spain or Croatia, the latest in technology is required to keep everyone working as a single unit. The only feasible way to create three beasts of such complexity and size was to make sure everyone was working in sync - a proposition that can be quite difficult to achieve on a project as global as Game of Thrones. Overall these kind of enhancements have been huge - in season four we had about 74 textures for the whole dragon.
#CINESYNC FOR GAME DEVELOPERS SKIN#
“For this season, all of the individual scales were modelled individually and then attached to the surface itself, meaning the animators could move the skin without them deforming. “And of course, having these digital creatures so close to the camera meant a total rebuild of the textures,” Martin continues.
“We’ve got a lot of close-ups of the dragons, especially when they’re coming into contact with Daenerys, meaning the facial performance has had to become much more evolved,” Martin says of the creatures, noting that Pixomondo has had to make extensive refinements to its facial rig. They also get up close and personal with Daenerys, demanding computational horsepower on a level not yet seen in the show. Rhaegal, Viserion, and the hulking, black-scaled Drogon are indeed huge in season five, casting dominating shadows across the lands of Meereen and Old Valyria as they thump their wings against the sky.
“With that increase in size - and they really are big this year - there’s much more screen space to cover, and that demands a much greater degree of complexity.” “The dragons started out as kitten-sized babies, then they grew to children, then teenagers - they’ve just become bigger and bigger,” says Sven Martin, Visual Effects Supervisor at Pixomondo. During the second season Pixomondo was the only vendor on the show, working on matte paintings, set extensions, dire wolf integrations and more across all ten episodes.Īs the show has grown beyond a one-vendor set-up, and those magnificent dragons have increased in both size and complexity, Pixomondo has become primarily responsible for the CG dragons, and as you would imagine, that’s no mean feat. Responsibility for the creation of these reptilian fire-breathers has been with VFX studio Pixomondo since season two. And yet for all the unfurling of dramatic tension and heart-stopping plot twists, one of the most impressive elements of the show remains its CG centerpiece - the majestic dragons that emerged with Daenerys from that smoldering pyre. Murder, intrigue, Machiavellian scheming of the highest order - we’ve seen a great deal happen in the Seven Kingdoms and beyond over the past five years. Thankfully one of the shows dragon wranglers, Pixomondo, has been on the show since season 2, and with cineSync on its side there’s no challenge it can’t tackle.
Martin’s fertile imagination from the page to the screen is no easy task - especially when that means creating three fully-grown CG fire-breathers.
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