How Whiskytree created the Paris establisher in Masters of the Air. From befores & afters magazine.Amongst several sequences visual effects studio Whiskytree handled on the AppleTV+ series Masters of the Air was an establishing shot of a German-occupied Paris during World War II. This specific shot, crafted completely synthetically, is a boom up from a passing CG train that then looks out across the city and the Seine towards the Eiffel Tower.When Whiskytree received word that production would require such a shot, the VFX studio began working out what areas of Paris to show in the tilt-up. At one point, the shot was not going to go forward, but then Whiskytree showed production an early render of what they had already devised. They said, recalls Whiskytree visual effects supervisor Aidan Fraser, everyone is excited about this shot now, we want to do the shot and we want to make it longer.It became a really fun shot to work on, says Fraser, who worked with production visual effects supervisor Stephen Rosenbaum on the show. They gave us a lot of creative freedom to decide on the camera move and how to tell the story of the shot. We had a lot of time to play around with those details.The buildWhiskytree looked mostly to archival photos of Paris from that time for reference. They also consulted the limited amounts of moving footage. One thing that was particularly helpful, says Fraser, however, was referencing hours of footage of train routes from present-day Paris. We picked and chose various parts of modern Paris that would have still been there then, and then extrapolated from that all of the architecture that wouldve been there at the time.A large section of railroad track was the first part of the CG build, then the train. We started with a really close-up of the train, and so that train had to be perfect, points out Fraser. We had a train enthusiast model and animate that train. He knew the name of every part of the train.Different artists were then tasked with developing different neighborhoods of the city. We created a story that youre starting more outside where its a little more sparsely populated, and theres some industrial area, and then youre getting more into the city with those big apartment buildings that you see in Paris, outlines Fraser.The build benefited from a procedural approach. Whiskytree first consulted Google Maps and OpenStreetMap for building layout information and height data of Paris. We then populated that in Houdini with really simplified buildings for the background layer. Then you have a mid-ground where we take very simplified buildings that weve repeated, and we modify them in Houdini to build up assemblies from built assets, rather than just from boxes with projections on them, which is the farthest background. Most of what you see, though, is actually just artists building buildings from scratch.For these hand-crafted buildings, Whiskytree began with a few purchased models that were then dressed for the era. Artists added dirt, ivy and marks of war, even including Nazi flags covering buildings. Says Fraser: We covered some of the buildings with these Nazi flags to really drive the point home, and I think that really helped, to have just a little bit of waving flag there on the buildings.Its always about break up, continues Fraster. If theres something too smooth or theres something too regular, you need to break that up with texture. You have to make sure that nothing repeats too much, especially with the ground under the train tracks, making sure that that doesnt just look like its perfect gravel. So wed add bushes and things coming out that are going to really give it detail.People in the streetsWhiskytree also populated Parisian streets with digital people. The motion for them largely came from studio artists creating motion capture clips with early AI mocap tools on their smartphones.They would film somebody doing something, and then wed motion capture it, and then put it on some characters, describes Fraser. It worked for background characters. We were also downloading various walk cycles that we could find that would work for people, but making little stories, making little things happen.It was all about getting the right amount of people, doing the right things, adds Fraser. What are the crowds doing? How many people are there? Are they crashing into each other? It was not a crowd system, it was hand-placed people. You want to make it feel populated, but not too crowded.This went for cars, too. The interesting thing is that, at the time, too explores Fraser, there were only three different colors of cars that you could possibly have, and so that made it a little easier for us.Bringing it altogetherThe final Paris establisher came together in compositing, with Fraser noting that projections were a key part of completing detail. Wed go in and paint certain areas, apply textures, or in Nuke well find some detail and then just project it on there.One detail Fraser mentions that helped with the scene, but is not necessarily readily apparent, was depth hazing. I always feel like depth hazing is very much something thats to taste, because any day can have a different amount of haze. Thats something that we went back and forth on to find that sweet spot where it looks natural. There is some volume fog there, but you dont see it. You just kind of feel like its there. You just sense, Oh, yeah, that feels real, but youre not like, Oh, its a foggy day. As long as its invisible, it works.The post As long as its invisible, it works appeared first on befores & afters.