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By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of Netflix, K&S Films & Boat.The K&S Films and Netflix adaption of the iconic Argentinian graphic novel The Eternaut, which consists of six episodes created, directed and written by Bruno Stagnaro, provided a global showcase for Latin America visual effects company Boat. The major tasks for Boat were 120 days of on-set supervision and utilizing 70 artists in Buenos Aires and Montevideo to create 360 shots and 40 assets that turn Buenos Aires into a wintry, apocalyptic environment during an alien invasion. The production company had storyboards and concept art, but the director also worked with the art department to develop an in-house team to make previs and postvis of each sequence, states Guille Lawlor, VFX Supervisor at Boat. That was a good base to start from as we were not working from scratch.Reflections in the masks had to be painted out and reinserted to avoid taking away from the facial performance.One of the things that Boat is known for in Latin America is crowd simulation expertise. For this project, the challenging thing was trying to connect and render our Houdini crowd tool in Unreal Engine. The running characters are digital, but we also added a lot of dead extras on the ground; that was an Easter egg for us because we scanned ourselves!Guille Lawlor, VFX Supervisor, BoatBecause of the scope of the project, significant alterations were made to the pipeline. All of the CG and set extensions were done in Unreal Engine, which made things a lot easier, Lawlor remarks. There were no big issues with the render farm because Unreal Engine specializes in giving you fast renders. We have since adopted the Unreal Engine technology in other shows. The real-time renders have changed everything for us. USD was another significant component. The backbone of the 3D pipeline was USD, which makes it easy to share assets and scenes between different software. All of the set extensions were made in Unreal Engine, but all of the simulations and effects were done in Houdini. We used USD to share and connect every step of our work, Lawlor says.A major logistical and technical challenge was turning Buenos Aires into a wintry city through practical and digital effects, given that it never snows there.A massive effort was made to have a practical foundation, which meant constructing 15 main sets, bringing in 500 tons of artificial snow and having a 2,000-square-meter warehouse covered in greenscreen that allowed for digital extensions. It was good to have the artificial snow because you get real reactions from the actors, Lawlor notes. Principal photography went on for eight or nine months, starting in the winter and ending in the summer. The thing is, in Buenos Aires, it never snows. We had to deal with 360 shots, and in every one we had to do snow simulations. We ended up having four independent visual effects team that had a supervisor, coordinator, Unreal Engine leader and 10 compositors. One specific team worked on matchmoving and another only on visual effects simulations, which were fed to the other compositing teams. I was the overall supervisor, and it was a big challenge coordinating all of the teams together.The wheels of vehicles were digitally replaced to get the proper interaction with the artificial snow.All of the CG and set extensions were done in Unreal Engine, which made things a lot easier. There were no big issues with the render farm because Unreal Engine specializes in giving you fast renders. We have since adopted the Unreal Engine technology in other shows. The real-time renders have changed everything for us.Guille Lawlor, VFX Supervisor, BoatSnow continuity was a major issue. The snow and storm are like characters in the story, Lawlor states. In each episode, we have a different mood for the snow and storm. The snow starts falling quietly, then the storm gets higher and higher. At some point, the storm ends and the residents can go outside and breathe fresh air. Reality, at times, served as an inspiration. We had a couple of artists living in Nordic countries who shot their own reference. Snow had to interact with gunfire. The effects team delivered almost 100 shots of bullet hits in the snow, and we did everything in Houdini.A city block and three houses were constructed at a studio backlot.Much of the footage was captured in the studio backlot. That backlot represented a specific street and corner of the city, Lawlor explains. We scanned the real locations and matched everything together because the director wanted anyone from Buenos Aires watching the show to go, Hey, thats my place! I know this corner. We used a lot of Google Maps and local reference. Theres also a ton of advertising in the city, and the production decided to keep everything like it is in the real world. Iconic shots were recreated from the graphic novel. Lawlor explains, There is a lot of recreation of the graphic novel in the show. When the main character goes outside for the first time and the shot of the two characters going to the harbor looking for a specific yacht only to find that water doesnt exist anymore; that sequence changed our relationship with the production because once the director saw it, he said, I trust them. Afterwards, we started receiving an insane number of shots, and thats why we had to quickly scale up our team.That backlot represented a specific street and corner of the city. We scanned the real locations and matched everything together because the director wanted anyone from Buenos Aires watching the show to go, Hey, thats my place! I know this corner. We used a lot of Google Maps and local reference. Theres also a ton of advertising in the city, and the production decided to keep everything like it is in the real world.Guille Lawlor, VFX Supervisor, BoatAn iconic moment from the graphic novel was recreated by turning a harbor with boats into a frozen wasteland.Vehicles were shot at the studio. We did a matchmove for each car and simulated the wheels and their interaction with the snow because the actual set floor was salt, which doesnt react in the same way, Lawlor reveals. We had to clean up the tire tracks from previous shots and from the production guys on set. At the end, we developed a Houdini tool to do our own wheels and footprints, which was easier than having to work by hand. Reflections were equally important to get right. For all of the shots captured at the studio, we had to replace the reflection of the ceiling and add extra ones in our CG environments to give them more realism. The tough thing was replacing the reflections on the mask; and in three or four shots that took the mask off, as it was a closeup and you want to look into the eyes of the actor. It was a huge thing dealing with reflections, especially in the faces of the actors.One of the tools being utilized was virtual production, which included work by the K&S Inhouse team.Digital doubles were not utilized for the main actors, but crowds were added in the background during the shootout to get the desired scope. One of the things that Boat is known for in Latin America is crowd simulation expertise, Lawlor states. For this project, the challenging thing was trying to connect and render our Houdini crowd tool in Unreal Engine. The running characters are digital, but we also added a lot of dead extras on the ground; that was an Easter egg for us because we scanned ourselves! Having Boat colleague Bruno Fauceglia on set streamlined the process. I dont know how the other vendors did the work, because one of the most important things is all the information that we have from set, notes Onset VFX Supervisor Fauceglia. Most of my on-set relationships were with the art department and DP. You have parts of the scene in virtual production, in the studio with bluescreen and on location. Most of what you see in the final picture is the combination of that.A train is surrounded by a digital environment.Another vendor captured the LiDAR and photogrammetry, which was then processed by the virtual art department. I did photogrammetry myself when we had to improvise the data set for a location, object or character in order to have that information in post, Fauceglia remarks. The most important thing is to have the layouts of the scenes and to communicate that information to post-production. You have a lot of data to collect from the position of the camera in order to be able to create various scenarios. Also, you have to communicate the vision of the director six months later in the post-production. For the production company, my job was to make sure everything was done properly and that we had the resources in the future to make it happen. We were at four studios at the same time, so we could build up a scenario in one, shoot in another, then a few weeks later go back to the previous studio and continue shooting. We had a studio with the virtual production on a small stage, another studio had a bigger stage, a little studio had some set decorations, and studio outside the city where we built one block of a neighborhood and three houses.A combination of bluescreen and greenscreen assisted in getting the required scope for environments.500 tons of artificial snow were shipped in and digitally augmented.A partial train-track set was built on the virtual production stage.There is a lot of recreation of the graphic novel in the show. When the main character goes outside for the first time and the shot of the two characters going to the harbor looking for a specific yacht only to find that water doesnt exist anymore; that sequence changed our relationship with the production because once the director saw it, he said, I trust them.Guille Lawlor, VFX Supervisor, BoatAlong with the harbor scene, the shootout at the shopping mall was complex to execute. We had 60 to 70 shots, and that action sequence had to have perfect continuity, which meant having to fix all of the location issues, Lawlor states. The production company only got permission to shoot in one specific place of the location. Then we had to offset that set and cover the whole parking lot with different angles and have everything make sense. People who know that shopping mall understand the continuity, it was a huge layout problem. We spent a lot time trying to figure out how to build the sequence. Shots were digitally altered to make it appear as if they were captured in different areas of the parking lot. That scene was challenging because you go from this storm, which helped to disguise the background, to this clean, pristine set that is obviously fake because it was a sunny day in the summer. Fauceglia remarks, It had that innate look of something that is not real, which we had to alter. Another difficulty was to have the right look for the snow. We were working on set until the last day, understanding how this snow will look in the future. The first month of the process was spent trying to achieve the right look, which we could then replicate for the rest of the show.Assessing the footage captured at the virtual production stage.Filming could only take place in one particular area of the parking lot, complicating the shopping mall shootout.Aliens were not the only threat; so were other humans, as demonstrated by the shopping mall shootout.Watch Boats dramatic VFX reel for The Eternaut, showcasing the companys amazing environment work and dedication to matching the beat of the action and heightened realism of every scene. Click here: https://vimeo.com/1082343152?p=1tBoat was one of 10 studios working on The Eternaut. Other vendors around the world contributing VFX, collaborating and sharing assets include K&S Inhouse, CONTROL Studio, Redefine, Malditomaus, Bitt, PlanetX, Scanline, Unbound and Important Looking Pirates. Watch four brief VFX breakdown videos from CONTROL that show the impressive work done in different stages and most of the assets vendors received for The Eternaut. Click here: https://controlstudio.tv/portfolio/el-eternauta/
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