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To gather even more references, the entire asset team went on a trip to the “Technikmuseum” in Berlin. It has lots of real airplanes and other vehicles from different eras. The texture and shading references we got there were really helpful in making the assets look realistic.
We used Maya for modeling, Zbrush for detailing the metal parts and Mari for texturing. To be able to paint enough texture details like dirt and scratches, the Vertibird model has about 164 UDIMs. In addition, we used a scatter setup in Houdini to add thousands of bolts to the panels in an efficient way so that no modeler had to deal with them. The layering concept within the USD pipeline helped a lot to keep everything lightweight, so these bolts and other details never showed up in rigging, as the scatter layer is added ontop and just moves with the parent transform of the Vertibird layer when it is animated. Last but not least, the shading was done in Houdini using MaterialX and Karma as the render engine, just like all of our show assets.
Because of its size and detail, the Dirigible is not a single asset in our pipeline, it’s an assembly of several individual assets. Basically, it is like a set, only one that can be rigged. The advantage is much better performance and the ability for multiple artists to work on those individual sub-assets at the same time. Our USD pipeline has a lot of flexibility to support assembly rigs.
3DVF: We heard that some of these shots rely on LED volume stage, plates shot in Utah as well as a practical rig: how did you work alongside the rest of the companies involved in order to create convincing shots?
Yes, basically all the vertibird shots were shot in a LED volume stage created by Magnopus. In this stage they also build a part of the vertibird on a motion base, which helped so much to get convincing lighting on the actors and reflections in the metal.
So based on those we added our CG elements to extend the vertibird to full size when it was needed. In most shots where we added the complete CG vertibird, we had a real helicopter in the plate as a reference, which was helpful for animation and integration.
3DVF: Overall, what are you the most proud of on Fallout season 1?
I’m really proud of the whole team. All the artists, coordinators, and people in other departments who helped make these amazing effects happen. It’s only when everyone in the team works well together that a shot can go from good to great. That’s why I’m so proud of my brilliant team, from the intern to supervisor.
For sure I also have a few favorite shots. Environments wise it’s definitely the Shady Sands crater reveal shot in episode 5.
I think the last episode has the best effects shots. The Vertibirds are flying the attack on the observatory, and we get to see it from inside, with Max, as the Vertibird in front of us is hit by a missile and explodes. All departments, like animation, effects, lighting, and compositing, did an excellent job on this one.
3DVF: Last year at SIGGRAPH,we sat down with Simon Ohler & Andreas Giesen (watch our video interview) to discuss your USD pipeline, as well as the way you use Houdini/Solaris. Have you tweaked the pipeline since then? If so, how?
Yes, for sure! After completing the first projects with the new USD workflow, our pipeline department started working on several updates based on the experience and feedback from those projects. Of course, documentation and artist training was also a critical part of the process. By the time Fallout launched in late 2022, the pipeline was much more refined.
The first major improvement was the Update Log. This handy tool informs the artist when new stuff is pushed while they are working on a scene. The moment updated layers are pushed from other departments, he is informed and has a clear UI to get more details about the changes, he can update to the latest version in his current session or even decide to pin it to the previous one.
Next, we now have a completely USD-based asset library that grows with each asset created during the projects. It also has a simple interface that works seamlessly with the stage manager and layout node in Solaris. Using this library really speeds up the assembly workflow.
Another handy tool we have introduced is the “Shot Preview Node” in our surface/shading scenes. It saves a lot of time and eliminates unnecessary back and forth between departments. Using this HDA it is possible to load the complete setup of any shot in the project. This includes the lighting, camera, and even the position of the asset if it has already been animated or moved around the layout. This allows surfacing and lookdev artists to review their assets under real shot conditions.
There are even more things like improved template scenes, a site-wide material library that can be configured on a per-project basis, and geometry LODs including lidar and proxy that are now available as variants in the Render Purpose.
We are also taking a closer look at XPU rendering and will be updating to the latest version of Houdini 20.5 as soon as it becomes available.
3DVF: Thank you for all this information about the Fallout series!
For our readers: feel free to check out our other content on RISE, such as our interview on the film Reminiscence with Hugh Jackman, which delves into impressive environments.
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