By TREVOR HOGGImages courtesy of MPC and Netflix.Setting sail on the third season of the spin-off series Vikings: Valhalla was MPC, which acted as the sole vendor, supported by Take 5 Productions in-house team. MPC facilities in Toronto, Mumbai and Bangalore provided 500 visual effects for eight episodes, with the main focus on creating CG environments that existed in the 11th century, in particular Syracuse, Constantinople, Greenland, Poland, Kattegat and Winchester Cathedral. Other significant challenges involved a collapsing cliff and a magic trick played upon villagers attempting to burn Freydis Eriksdotter (Frida Gustavsson) at the stake, instead finding their homes set ablaze.[MPC Ocean tool] gets you 80% of the way there. For the shots it wasnt working, we started figuring out, Do we tie all of these patches of the ocean? Do we create a new ocean? Do we need to add more detail or foam to help blend this into our environment? Having done water for 1,400 shots over the last two seasons, it was great to use a new tool for that and see what worked and didnt work. They had to fix and retool some things for us, if not by request, just by us breaking and using it for what they didnt think it was for.Ben Mossman, VFX Supervisor, MPCOne of the major new environments that had to be created for Season 3 was Constantinople.That was a big story point in Episode 308, where everybody thinks Freydis is a witch, and she starts lighting things on fire in the town, but in reality its the other guys who set them up, states Ben Mossman, VFX Supervisor at MPC. We did put a flame bar in front of her, but it had to be four feet out for safety so none of the actual wood caught fire. There is a fake faade of the little pile that shes attached to that we put out further. They had a flame bar that would go up when its supposed to happen, so we actually had real fire to cue it, but there wasnt much that could be done practically right around her. For the roof earlier in the sequence, we did light it on fire, but we had to add more [roof] and replace some of it. There was some practical smoke on set; however, for the rest of it, we had to add in for them to be able to run away and be included by it. It was about getting the timing down and rehearse when things are supposed to happen, like, Now, you cant see them. Now theyre running away. Because it was fire, there wasnt much else we could do! Its also fire during the daytime too, so its not like you get a big glow of interactive light. Its there in all of its brightness.It took us quite a bit to get there in terms of the timing of the animation, look, what elements do we want to see, how much of this cliff do we want to collapse, and how big are the pieces [of rock falling from the cliff onto the Viking ships]? We have water splashing the rigging and sails, and Vikings being ejected. There was a version where there were definitely more guys getting obliterated, and we doubled it back. One shot we did was full CG, but everything else had to tie back in with practical water.Ben Mossman, VFX Supervisor, MPCMost of the shot designing was determined by storyboards, with previs being done for Episode 303 to figure out how the digital extensions for Constantinople would look like with the plates captured in Croatia and where in the city to shoot. We took a model of Dubrovnik and did some fly-throughs in Unreal Engine to mock up what the extensions would be like or add an army to how see how that filled the space, Mossman remarks. One of our on-set guys, Adam Stewart, did a lot of our scanning and also had a background in animation and modeling. Occasionally, we would ask him to help us out with some previs and scouting. We were able to get an early scan of Croatia that we had purchased, so when we got there we were already able to drop cameras into a physically accurate location which was cool. That was helpful because even while in Croatia scouting, we were able to go back at the end of the day, adjust our cameras to what the directors were wanting to see, and show them a new version of some of their shots to see how they were feeling about it. The physical set for Kattegat is the same one from the original Vikings series on the History Channel, which took place 150 years earlier. Mossman notes, There were things that were legacy that were brought over, but otherwise new showrunner, stories and worlds, so we had a lot of room to depart from that.Modern-day boats had to be replaced with period-accurate vessels.No drastic design changes were made to the Viking boats over the course of the three seasons as the passage of time is measured in years, not decades. We were able to move around a lot of the boats between the various Vikings factions; however, there were different shields and flags, Mossman adds. Kattegat grows over the seasons, so we expanded the town and the same with London to give it little updates that people might notice. Characters are traveling all over the world, especially in Season 3 where they are in Italy, Turkey and Poland. There was always a big crop of environments that would come up that would change every season that we would have to figure out how to do and how extensive it was going to be. Syracuse and Constantinople were the two big new environments and were seen at a hero level. Mossman explains, Syracuse and Constantinople were historical cities that existed, so you wanted to try to figure out what they actually looked like a thousand years ago and still make it work for what we needed for the story. We looked at a lot of fortresses that were built in Spain, Turkey and the Middle East that had the same architecture as what would have been in Syracuse at the time. Constantinople was a huge a city, and pieces of it are still in Istanbul today. There were maps and lots of architectural examples from that time, which the Byzantines either took from Rome or created themselves.Bluescreen assisted in getting the proper scope for environments and the correct number of soldiers.Construction methodologies from the period were factored into the digital assets. In general, its not being machined or being created by advance construction techniques, Mossman remarks. Its all being done by hand with ropes and pullies. That goes with any of the environments that we built where you want this feel that these are trained people who are good at what they do, but there is unevenness in the bricks and not 100% precision in how everything fits together. The Syracuse and Constantinople assets were handled by MPC Bangalore. We have an amazing environments team there that we got to work with, and they were insanely fast! Work was shared all across the sites. A huge water component had to be accommodated by the pipeline. Mossman observes, The advantage that MPC Toronto had in not using the MPC Ocean tool much before was we broke it immediately, which was cool! It gets you 80% of the way there. For the shots it wasnt working, we started figuring out, Do we tie all of these patches of the ocean? Do we create a new ocean? Do we need to add more detail or foam to help blend this into our environment? Having done water for 1,400 shots over the last two seasons, it was great to use a new tool for that and see what worked and didnt work. They had to fix and retool some things for us, if not by request, just by us breaking and using it for what they didnt think it was for.There are 10 birds flying around that have a string tied to their legs with a parcel of fire on the end. The story point is Harald Sigurdsson [Leo Suter] gets these birds drunk to sedate them, so we had to figure out what does a drunk bird look like. Our technical animation department simulated the feathers on the birds as well as the string coming off them, and then effects would take over the rest of the string and fire so its interactively moving around. The fire conveniently does not quite go up the string until theyre out of the prison, but they end up lighting the whole prison on fire when going back to their nest.Ben Mossman, VFX Supervisor, MPCRocks being pushed off a cliff to destroy the invading Viking ships below in Episode 304 reads small on the page. It took us quite a bit to get there in terms of the timing of the animation, look, what elements do we want to see, how much of this cliff do we want to collapse and how big are the pieces? Mossman explains. We have water splashing the rigging and sails, and Vikings being ejected. There was a version where there were definitely more guys getting obliterated, and we doubled it back. One shot we did was full CG, but everything else had to tie back in with practical water. We had a real boat floating in this quarry lake that the set was built on, and for the collapse moment we added a second version that was already half in the water. The special effects team put in water cannons to shoot up with debris and water. It was a good blend to start with, but as the edit and look changed, we deviated further from that to get to the story that they wanted to tell.MPC Toronto broke the MPC Ocean tool when dealing with numerous shots featuring water.Traveling to England was not possible, so the art department built a floor, some pillars and a casket for the Winchester Cathedral funeral sequence while the remainder was digitally augmented. They wanted this dramatic lighting for the death of a character we have seen in the last two seasons and to fill the rest of the church with patrons to pay their respects, Mossman describes. That was a small set, so most of it was done with bluescreen. Crowds in the cities were given special attention. We had one of our mocap and animation leads in Toronto, Charlie DiLiberto, create these little vignettes of people talking and waving. That would be passed off to our crowd team working in Houdini in Bangalore, and they would incorporate it into the crowd system. If we saw that something was missing, another round of performance would be added.For Season 1, we did almost 1,000 shots, and this season was half that, but with the timelines and the complexity of the work and wanting it to look better with every season, it was just as hard to nail down some of these big environments, and we had a lot more effects-driven story points, like the rocks falling and the fire. With that comes more attention from everybody wanting it to look good and hit the beats that theyre after. It was honing in on that stuff and being able to execute it within the time that we had with our showrunner, producers and editors.Ben Mossman, VFX Supervisor, MPCThe birds flying around the fire consisted of only a couple of shots in Episode 307, but it was technically difficult to execute as several departments had to divide and conquer the sequence. Mossman says, There are 10 birds flying around that have a string tied to their legs with a parcel of fire on the end. The story point is Harald Sigurdsson [Leo Suter] gets these birds drunk to sedate them, so we had to figure out what does a drunk bird look like. Our technical animation department simulated the feathers on the birds as well as the string coming off them, and then effects would take over the rest of the string and fire so its interactively moving around. The fire conveniently does not quite go up the string until theyre out of the prison, but they end up lighting the whole prison on fire when going back to their nest.A dramatic moment in Episode 304 is when rocks are pushed off a cliff and sink an invading Viking ship.Buildings were constructed digitally, keeping in mind the tools and techniques used during the period being depicted.Landscapes were altered to give environments a more cinematic quality.Skies were replaced to make shots moodier.Clouds were among the atmospherics added to shots.Working on Vikings: Valhalla involves constructing familiar boats and creating new environments.Fewer shots and a shorter post-production period do not entirely reflect the effort compared to previous seasons. For Season 1, we did almost 1,000 shots, and this season was half that, but with the timelines and the complexity of the work and wanting it to look better with every season, it was just as hard to nail down some of these big environments, and we had a lot more effects-driven story points, like the rocks falling and the fire, Mossman states. With that comes more attention from everybody wanting it to look good and hit the beats theyre after. It was honing in on that stuff and being able to execute it within the time that we had with our showrunner, producers and editors.Working with the same client and creatives over the three seasons has streamlined the process. Mossman comments, We have been able to keep together a chunk of the team, so that helped to keep the consistency and shorthand, especially with animation and matte paintings. He says the combination of the new and the old keeps the work interesting. Its fun because we have these new things every season that we can create, and then there is the stuff we know how to do and didnt have to build new assets for. We can knock those shots out first and feel good about them while were scratching our heads over these giant environments and armies that are new to the season.