• The Hidden Tech That Makes Assassin's Creed Shadows Feel More Alive (And Not Require 2TB)

    Most of what happens within the video games we play is invisible to us. Even the elements we're looking straight at work because of what's happening behind the scenes. If you've ever watched a behind-the-scenes video about game development, you might've seen these versions of flat, gray game worlds filled with lines and icons pointing every which way, with multiple grids and layers. These are the visual representations of all the systems that make the game work.Assassin's Creed ShadowsThis is an especially weird dichotomy to consider when it comes to lighting in any game with a 3D perspective, but especially so in high-fidelity games. We don't see light so much as we see everything it touches; it's invisible, but it gives us most of our information about game worlds. And it's a lot more complex than "turn on lamp, room light up." Reflection, absorption, diffusion, subsurface scattering--the movement of light is a complex thing that has been explored by physicists in the real world for literally centuries, and will likely be studied for centuries more. In the middle of all of that are game designers, applying the science of light to video games in practical ways, balanced with the limitations of even today's powerful GPUs, just to show all us nerds a good time.If you've wondered why many games seem to be like static amusement parks waiting for you to interact with a few specific things, lighting is often the reason. But it's also the reason more and more game worlds look vibrant and lifelike. Game developers have gotten good at simulating static lighting, but making it move is harder. Dynamic lighting has long been computationally expensive, potentially tanking game performance, and we're finally starting to see that change.Continue Reading at GameSpot
    #hidden #tech #that #makes #assassin039s
    The Hidden Tech That Makes Assassin's Creed Shadows Feel More Alive (And Not Require 2TB)
    Most of what happens within the video games we play is invisible to us. Even the elements we're looking straight at work because of what's happening behind the scenes. If you've ever watched a behind-the-scenes video about game development, you might've seen these versions of flat, gray game worlds filled with lines and icons pointing every which way, with multiple grids and layers. These are the visual representations of all the systems that make the game work.Assassin's Creed ShadowsThis is an especially weird dichotomy to consider when it comes to lighting in any game with a 3D perspective, but especially so in high-fidelity games. We don't see light so much as we see everything it touches; it's invisible, but it gives us most of our information about game worlds. And it's a lot more complex than "turn on lamp, room light up." Reflection, absorption, diffusion, subsurface scattering--the movement of light is a complex thing that has been explored by physicists in the real world for literally centuries, and will likely be studied for centuries more. In the middle of all of that are game designers, applying the science of light to video games in practical ways, balanced with the limitations of even today's powerful GPUs, just to show all us nerds a good time.If you've wondered why many games seem to be like static amusement parks waiting for you to interact with a few specific things, lighting is often the reason. But it's also the reason more and more game worlds look vibrant and lifelike. Game developers have gotten good at simulating static lighting, but making it move is harder. Dynamic lighting has long been computationally expensive, potentially tanking game performance, and we're finally starting to see that change.Continue Reading at GameSpot #hidden #tech #that #makes #assassin039s
    WWW.GAMESPOT.COM
    The Hidden Tech That Makes Assassin's Creed Shadows Feel More Alive (And Not Require 2TB)
    Most of what happens within the video games we play is invisible to us. Even the elements we're looking straight at work because of what's happening behind the scenes. If you've ever watched a behind-the-scenes video about game development, you might've seen these versions of flat, gray game worlds filled with lines and icons pointing every which way, with multiple grids and layers. These are the visual representations of all the systems that make the game work.Assassin's Creed ShadowsThis is an especially weird dichotomy to consider when it comes to lighting in any game with a 3D perspective, but especially so in high-fidelity games. We don't see light so much as we see everything it touches; it's invisible, but it gives us most of our information about game worlds. And it's a lot more complex than "turn on lamp, room light up." Reflection, absorption, diffusion, subsurface scattering--the movement of light is a complex thing that has been explored by physicists in the real world for literally centuries, and will likely be studied for centuries more. In the middle of all of that are game designers, applying the science of light to video games in practical ways, balanced with the limitations of even today's powerful GPUs, just to show all us nerds a good time.If you've wondered why many games seem to be like static amusement parks waiting for you to interact with a few specific things, lighting is often the reason. But it's also the reason more and more game worlds look vibrant and lifelike. Game developers have gotten good at simulating static lighting, but making it move is harder. Dynamic lighting has long been computationally expensive, potentially tanking game performance, and we're finally starting to see that change.Continue Reading at GameSpot
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  • European Robot Makers Adopt NVIDIA Isaac, Omniverse and Halos to Develop Safe, Physical AI-Driven Robot Fleets

    In the face of growing labor shortages and need for sustainability, European manufacturers are racing to reinvent their processes to become software-defined and AI-driven.
    To achieve this, robot developers and industrial digitalization solution providers are working with NVIDIA to build safe, AI-driven robots and industrial technologies to drive modern, sustainable manufacturing.
    At NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech, Europe’s leading robotics companies including Agile Robots, Extend Robotics, Humanoid, idealworks, Neura Robotics, SICK, Universal Robots, Vorwerk and Wandelbots are showcasing their latest AI-driven robots and automation breakthroughs, all accelerated by NVIDIA technologies. In addition, NVIDIA is releasing new models and tools to support the entire robotics ecosystem.
    NVIDIA Releases Tools for Accelerating Robot Development and Safety
    NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1.5, an open foundation model for humanoid robot reasoning and skills, is now available for download on Hugging Face. This update enhances the model’s adaptability and ability to follow instructions, significantly improving its performance in material handling and manufacturing tasks. The NVIDIA Isaac Sim 5.0 and Isaac Lab 2.2 open-source robotics simulation and learning frameworks, optimized for NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 workstations, are available on GitHub for developer preview.
    In addition, NVIDIA announced that NVIDIA Halos — a full-stack, comprehensive safety system that unifies hardware architecture, AI models, software, tools and services — now expands to robotics, promoting safety across the entire development lifecycle of AI-driven robots.
    The NVIDIA Halos AI Systems Inspection Lab has earned accreditation from the ANSI National Accreditation Boardto perform inspections across functional safety for robotics, in addition to automotive vehicles.
    “NVIDIA’s latest evaluation with ANAB verifies the demonstration of competence and compliance with internationally recognized standards, helping ensure that developers of autonomous machines — from automotive to robotics — can meet the highest benchmarks for functional safety,” said R. Douglas Leonard Jr., executive director of ANAB.
    Arcbest, Advantech, Bluewhite, Boston Dynamics, FORT, Inxpect, KION, NexCobot — a NEXCOM company, and Synapticon are among the first robotics companies to join the Halos Inspection Lab, ensuring their products meet NVIDIA safety and cybersecurity requirements.
    To support robotics leaders in strengthening safety across the entire development lifecycle of AI-driven robots, Halos will now provide:

    Safety extension packages for the NVIDIA IGX platform, enabling manufacturers to easily program safety functions into their robots, supported by TÜV Rheinland’s inspection of NVIDIA IGX.
    A robotic safety platform, which includes IGX and NVIDIA Holoscan Sensor Bridge for a unified approach to designing sensor-to-compute architecture with built-in AI safety.
    An outside-in safety AI inspector — an AI-powered agent for monitoring robot operations, helping improve worker safety.

    Europe’s Robotics Ecosystem Builds on NVIDIA’s Three Computers
    Europe’s leading robotics developers and solution providers are integrating the NVIDIA Isaac robotics platform to train, simulate and deploy robots across different embodiments.
    Agile Robots is post-training the GR00T N1 model in Isaac Lab to train its dual-arm manipulator robots, which run on NVIDIA Jetson hardware, to execute a variety of tasks in industrial environments.
    Meanwhile, idealworks has adopted the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for robotic fleet simulation to extend the blueprint’s capabilities to humanoids. Building on the VDA 5050 framework, idealworks contributes to the development of guidance that supports tasks uniquely enabled by humanoid robots, such as picking, moving and placing objects.
    Neura Robotics is integrating NVIDIA Isaac to further enhance its robot development workflows. The company is using GR00T-Mimic to post-train the Isaac GR00T N1 robot foundation model for its service robot MiPA. Neura is also collaborating with SAP and NVIDIA to integrate SAP’s Joule agents with its robots, using the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint to simulate and refine robot behavior in complex, realistic operational scenarios before deployment.
    Vorwerk is using NVIDIA technologies to power its AI-driven collaborative robots. The company is post-training GR00T N1 models in Isaac Lab with its custom synthetic data pipeline, which is built on Isaac GR00T-Mimic and powered by the NVIDIA Omniverse platform. The enhanced models are then deployed on NVIDIA Jetson AGX, Jetson Orin or Jetson Thor modules for advanced, real-time home robotics.
    Humanoid is using NVIDIA’s full robotics stack, including Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab, to cut its prototyping time down by six weeks. The company is training its vision language action models on NVIDIA DGX B200 systems to boost the cognitive abilities of its robots, allowing them to operate autonomously in complex environments using Jetson Thor onboard computing.
    Universal Robots is introducing UR15, its fastest collaborative robot yet, to the European market. Using UR’s AI Accelerator — developed on NVIDIA Isaac’s CUDA-accelerated libraries and AI models, as well as NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin — manufacturers can build AI applications to embed intelligence into the company’s new cobots.
    Wandelbots is showcasing its NOVA Operating System, now integrated with Omniverse, to simulate, validate and optimize robotic behaviors virtually before deploying them to physical robots. Wandelbots also announced a collaboration with EY and EDAG to offer manufacturers a scalable automation platform on Omniverse that speeds up the transition from proof of concept to full-scale deployment.
    Extend Robotics is using the Isaac GR00T platform to enable customers to control and train robots for industrial tasks like visual inspection and handling radioactive materials. The company’s Advanced Mechanics Assistance System lets users collect demonstration data and generate diverse synthetic datasets with NVIDIA GR00T-Mimic and GR00T-Gen to train the GR00T N1 foundation model.
    SICK is enhancing its autonomous perception solutions by integrating new certified sensor models — as well as 2D and 3D lidars, safety scanners and cameras — into NVIDIA Isaac Sim. This enables engineers to virtually design, test and validate machines using SICK’s sensing models within Omniverse, supporting processes spanning product development to large-scale robotic fleet management.
    Toyota Material Handling Europe is working with SoftServe to simulate its autonomous mobile robots working alongside human workers, using the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint. Toyota Material Handling Europe is testing and simulating a multitude of traffic scenarios — allowing the company to refine its AI algorithms before real-world deployment.
    NVIDIA’s partner ecosystem is enabling European industries to tap into intelligent, AI-powered robotics. By harnessing advanced simulation, digital twins and generative AI, manufacturers are rapidly developing and deploying safe, adaptable robot fleets that address labor shortages, boost sustainability and drive operational efficiency.
    Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions.
    See notice regarding software product information.
    #european #robot #makers #adopt #nvidia
    European Robot Makers Adopt NVIDIA Isaac, Omniverse and Halos to Develop Safe, Physical AI-Driven Robot Fleets
    In the face of growing labor shortages and need for sustainability, European manufacturers are racing to reinvent their processes to become software-defined and AI-driven. To achieve this, robot developers and industrial digitalization solution providers are working with NVIDIA to build safe, AI-driven robots and industrial technologies to drive modern, sustainable manufacturing. At NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech, Europe’s leading robotics companies including Agile Robots, Extend Robotics, Humanoid, idealworks, Neura Robotics, SICK, Universal Robots, Vorwerk and Wandelbots are showcasing their latest AI-driven robots and automation breakthroughs, all accelerated by NVIDIA technologies. In addition, NVIDIA is releasing new models and tools to support the entire robotics ecosystem. NVIDIA Releases Tools for Accelerating Robot Development and Safety NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1.5, an open foundation model for humanoid robot reasoning and skills, is now available for download on Hugging Face. This update enhances the model’s adaptability and ability to follow instructions, significantly improving its performance in material handling and manufacturing tasks. The NVIDIA Isaac Sim 5.0 and Isaac Lab 2.2 open-source robotics simulation and learning frameworks, optimized for NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 workstations, are available on GitHub for developer preview. In addition, NVIDIA announced that NVIDIA Halos — a full-stack, comprehensive safety system that unifies hardware architecture, AI models, software, tools and services — now expands to robotics, promoting safety across the entire development lifecycle of AI-driven robots. The NVIDIA Halos AI Systems Inspection Lab has earned accreditation from the ANSI National Accreditation Boardto perform inspections across functional safety for robotics, in addition to automotive vehicles. “NVIDIA’s latest evaluation with ANAB verifies the demonstration of competence and compliance with internationally recognized standards, helping ensure that developers of autonomous machines — from automotive to robotics — can meet the highest benchmarks for functional safety,” said R. Douglas Leonard Jr., executive director of ANAB. Arcbest, Advantech, Bluewhite, Boston Dynamics, FORT, Inxpect, KION, NexCobot — a NEXCOM company, and Synapticon are among the first robotics companies to join the Halos Inspection Lab, ensuring their products meet NVIDIA safety and cybersecurity requirements. To support robotics leaders in strengthening safety across the entire development lifecycle of AI-driven robots, Halos will now provide: Safety extension packages for the NVIDIA IGX platform, enabling manufacturers to easily program safety functions into their robots, supported by TÜV Rheinland’s inspection of NVIDIA IGX. A robotic safety platform, which includes IGX and NVIDIA Holoscan Sensor Bridge for a unified approach to designing sensor-to-compute architecture with built-in AI safety. An outside-in safety AI inspector — an AI-powered agent for monitoring robot operations, helping improve worker safety. Europe’s Robotics Ecosystem Builds on NVIDIA’s Three Computers Europe’s leading robotics developers and solution providers are integrating the NVIDIA Isaac robotics platform to train, simulate and deploy robots across different embodiments. Agile Robots is post-training the GR00T N1 model in Isaac Lab to train its dual-arm manipulator robots, which run on NVIDIA Jetson hardware, to execute a variety of tasks in industrial environments. Meanwhile, idealworks has adopted the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for robotic fleet simulation to extend the blueprint’s capabilities to humanoids. Building on the VDA 5050 framework, idealworks contributes to the development of guidance that supports tasks uniquely enabled by humanoid robots, such as picking, moving and placing objects. Neura Robotics is integrating NVIDIA Isaac to further enhance its robot development workflows. The company is using GR00T-Mimic to post-train the Isaac GR00T N1 robot foundation model for its service robot MiPA. Neura is also collaborating with SAP and NVIDIA to integrate SAP’s Joule agents with its robots, using the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint to simulate and refine robot behavior in complex, realistic operational scenarios before deployment. Vorwerk is using NVIDIA technologies to power its AI-driven collaborative robots. The company is post-training GR00T N1 models in Isaac Lab with its custom synthetic data pipeline, which is built on Isaac GR00T-Mimic and powered by the NVIDIA Omniverse platform. The enhanced models are then deployed on NVIDIA Jetson AGX, Jetson Orin or Jetson Thor modules for advanced, real-time home robotics. Humanoid is using NVIDIA’s full robotics stack, including Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab, to cut its prototyping time down by six weeks. The company is training its vision language action models on NVIDIA DGX B200 systems to boost the cognitive abilities of its robots, allowing them to operate autonomously in complex environments using Jetson Thor onboard computing. Universal Robots is introducing UR15, its fastest collaborative robot yet, to the European market. Using UR’s AI Accelerator — developed on NVIDIA Isaac’s CUDA-accelerated libraries and AI models, as well as NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin — manufacturers can build AI applications to embed intelligence into the company’s new cobots. Wandelbots is showcasing its NOVA Operating System, now integrated with Omniverse, to simulate, validate and optimize robotic behaviors virtually before deploying them to physical robots. Wandelbots also announced a collaboration with EY and EDAG to offer manufacturers a scalable automation platform on Omniverse that speeds up the transition from proof of concept to full-scale deployment. Extend Robotics is using the Isaac GR00T platform to enable customers to control and train robots for industrial tasks like visual inspection and handling radioactive materials. The company’s Advanced Mechanics Assistance System lets users collect demonstration data and generate diverse synthetic datasets with NVIDIA GR00T-Mimic and GR00T-Gen to train the GR00T N1 foundation model. SICK is enhancing its autonomous perception solutions by integrating new certified sensor models — as well as 2D and 3D lidars, safety scanners and cameras — into NVIDIA Isaac Sim. This enables engineers to virtually design, test and validate machines using SICK’s sensing models within Omniverse, supporting processes spanning product development to large-scale robotic fleet management. Toyota Material Handling Europe is working with SoftServe to simulate its autonomous mobile robots working alongside human workers, using the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint. Toyota Material Handling Europe is testing and simulating a multitude of traffic scenarios — allowing the company to refine its AI algorithms before real-world deployment. NVIDIA’s partner ecosystem is enabling European industries to tap into intelligent, AI-powered robotics. By harnessing advanced simulation, digital twins and generative AI, manufacturers are rapidly developing and deploying safe, adaptable robot fleets that address labor shortages, boost sustainability and drive operational efficiency. Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions. See notice regarding software product information. #european #robot #makers #adopt #nvidia
    BLOGS.NVIDIA.COM
    European Robot Makers Adopt NVIDIA Isaac, Omniverse and Halos to Develop Safe, Physical AI-Driven Robot Fleets
    In the face of growing labor shortages and need for sustainability, European manufacturers are racing to reinvent their processes to become software-defined and AI-driven. To achieve this, robot developers and industrial digitalization solution providers are working with NVIDIA to build safe, AI-driven robots and industrial technologies to drive modern, sustainable manufacturing. At NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech, Europe’s leading robotics companies including Agile Robots, Extend Robotics, Humanoid, idealworks, Neura Robotics, SICK, Universal Robots, Vorwerk and Wandelbots are showcasing their latest AI-driven robots and automation breakthroughs, all accelerated by NVIDIA technologies. In addition, NVIDIA is releasing new models and tools to support the entire robotics ecosystem. NVIDIA Releases Tools for Accelerating Robot Development and Safety NVIDIA Isaac GR00T N1.5, an open foundation model for humanoid robot reasoning and skills, is now available for download on Hugging Face. This update enhances the model’s adaptability and ability to follow instructions, significantly improving its performance in material handling and manufacturing tasks. The NVIDIA Isaac Sim 5.0 and Isaac Lab 2.2 open-source robotics simulation and learning frameworks, optimized for NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 workstations, are available on GitHub for developer preview. In addition, NVIDIA announced that NVIDIA Halos — a full-stack, comprehensive safety system that unifies hardware architecture, AI models, software, tools and services — now expands to robotics, promoting safety across the entire development lifecycle of AI-driven robots. The NVIDIA Halos AI Systems Inspection Lab has earned accreditation from the ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) to perform inspections across functional safety for robotics, in addition to automotive vehicles. “NVIDIA’s latest evaluation with ANAB verifies the demonstration of competence and compliance with internationally recognized standards, helping ensure that developers of autonomous machines — from automotive to robotics — can meet the highest benchmarks for functional safety,” said R. Douglas Leonard Jr., executive director of ANAB. Arcbest, Advantech, Bluewhite, Boston Dynamics, FORT, Inxpect, KION, NexCobot — a NEXCOM company, and Synapticon are among the first robotics companies to join the Halos Inspection Lab, ensuring their products meet NVIDIA safety and cybersecurity requirements. To support robotics leaders in strengthening safety across the entire development lifecycle of AI-driven robots, Halos will now provide: Safety extension packages for the NVIDIA IGX platform, enabling manufacturers to easily program safety functions into their robots, supported by TÜV Rheinland’s inspection of NVIDIA IGX. A robotic safety platform, which includes IGX and NVIDIA Holoscan Sensor Bridge for a unified approach to designing sensor-to-compute architecture with built-in AI safety. An outside-in safety AI inspector — an AI-powered agent for monitoring robot operations, helping improve worker safety. Europe’s Robotics Ecosystem Builds on NVIDIA’s Three Computers Europe’s leading robotics developers and solution providers are integrating the NVIDIA Isaac robotics platform to train, simulate and deploy robots across different embodiments. Agile Robots is post-training the GR00T N1 model in Isaac Lab to train its dual-arm manipulator robots, which run on NVIDIA Jetson hardware, to execute a variety of tasks in industrial environments. Meanwhile, idealworks has adopted the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint for robotic fleet simulation to extend the blueprint’s capabilities to humanoids. Building on the VDA 5050 framework, idealworks contributes to the development of guidance that supports tasks uniquely enabled by humanoid robots, such as picking, moving and placing objects. Neura Robotics is integrating NVIDIA Isaac to further enhance its robot development workflows. The company is using GR00T-Mimic to post-train the Isaac GR00T N1 robot foundation model for its service robot MiPA. Neura is also collaborating with SAP and NVIDIA to integrate SAP’s Joule agents with its robots, using the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint to simulate and refine robot behavior in complex, realistic operational scenarios before deployment. Vorwerk is using NVIDIA technologies to power its AI-driven collaborative robots. The company is post-training GR00T N1 models in Isaac Lab with its custom synthetic data pipeline, which is built on Isaac GR00T-Mimic and powered by the NVIDIA Omniverse platform. The enhanced models are then deployed on NVIDIA Jetson AGX, Jetson Orin or Jetson Thor modules for advanced, real-time home robotics. Humanoid is using NVIDIA’s full robotics stack, including Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab, to cut its prototyping time down by six weeks. The company is training its vision language action models on NVIDIA DGX B200 systems to boost the cognitive abilities of its robots, allowing them to operate autonomously in complex environments using Jetson Thor onboard computing. Universal Robots is introducing UR15, its fastest collaborative robot yet, to the European market. Using UR’s AI Accelerator — developed on NVIDIA Isaac’s CUDA-accelerated libraries and AI models, as well as NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin — manufacturers can build AI applications to embed intelligence into the company’s new cobots. Wandelbots is showcasing its NOVA Operating System, now integrated with Omniverse, to simulate, validate and optimize robotic behaviors virtually before deploying them to physical robots. Wandelbots also announced a collaboration with EY and EDAG to offer manufacturers a scalable automation platform on Omniverse that speeds up the transition from proof of concept to full-scale deployment. Extend Robotics is using the Isaac GR00T platform to enable customers to control and train robots for industrial tasks like visual inspection and handling radioactive materials. The company’s Advanced Mechanics Assistance System lets users collect demonstration data and generate diverse synthetic datasets with NVIDIA GR00T-Mimic and GR00T-Gen to train the GR00T N1 foundation model. SICK is enhancing its autonomous perception solutions by integrating new certified sensor models — as well as 2D and 3D lidars, safety scanners and cameras — into NVIDIA Isaac Sim. This enables engineers to virtually design, test and validate machines using SICK’s sensing models within Omniverse, supporting processes spanning product development to large-scale robotic fleet management. Toyota Material Handling Europe is working with SoftServe to simulate its autonomous mobile robots working alongside human workers, using the Mega NVIDIA Omniverse Blueprint. Toyota Material Handling Europe is testing and simulating a multitude of traffic scenarios — allowing the company to refine its AI algorithms before real-world deployment. NVIDIA’s partner ecosystem is enabling European industries to tap into intelligent, AI-powered robotics. By harnessing advanced simulation, digital twins and generative AI, manufacturers are rapidly developing and deploying safe, adaptable robot fleets that address labor shortages, boost sustainability and drive operational efficiency. Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions. See notice regarding software product information.
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  • GameStop Buy 2 Get 1 Free Deal is Back, But There's a Catch

    On June 27, GameStop announced that its Buy 2 Get 1 Free offer on all pre-owned video games is returning as a Pro Exclusive promotion. Although the returning GameStop offer is valid on pre-owned copies of games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario 3D All-Stars, access requires customers to upgrade their accounts to a Pro membership, currently priced at per year.
    #gamestop #buy #get #free #deal
    GameStop Buy 2 Get 1 Free Deal is Back, But There's a Catch
    On June 27, GameStop announced that its Buy 2 Get 1 Free offer on all pre-owned video games is returning as a Pro Exclusive promotion. Although the returning GameStop offer is valid on pre-owned copies of games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario 3D All-Stars, access requires customers to upgrade their accounts to a Pro membership, currently priced at per year. #gamestop #buy #get #free #deal
    GAMERANT.COM
    GameStop Buy 2 Get 1 Free Deal is Back, But There's a Catch
    On June 27, GameStop announced that its Buy 2 Get 1 Free offer on all pre-owned video games is returning as a Pro Exclusive promotion. Although the returning GameStop offer is valid on pre-owned copies of games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Super Mario 3D All-Stars, access requires customers to upgrade their accounts to a Pro membership, currently priced at $25 per year.
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  • Calling on LLMs: New NVIDIA AI Blueprint Helps Automate Telco Network Configuration

    Telecom companies last year spent nearly billion in capital expenditures and over trillion in operating expenditures.
    These large expenses are due in part to laborious manual processes that telcos face when operating networks that require continuous optimizations.
    For example, telcos must constantly tune network parameters for tasks — such as transferring calls from one network to another or distributing network traffic across multiple servers — based on the time of day, user behavior, mobility and traffic type.
    These factors directly affect network performance, user experience and energy consumption.
    To automate these optimization processes and save costs for telcos across the globe, NVIDIA today unveiled at GTC Paris its first AI Blueprint for telco network configuration.
    At the blueprint’s core are customized large language models trained specifically on telco network data — as well as the full technical and operational architecture for turning the LLMs into an autonomous, goal-driven AI agent for telcos.
    Automate Network Configuration With the AI Blueprint
    NVIDIA AI Blueprints — available on build.nvidia.com — are customizable AI workflow examples. They include reference code, documentation and deployment tools that show enterprise developers how to deliver business value with NVIDIA NIM microservices.
    The AI Blueprint for telco network configuration — built with BubbleRAN 5G solutions and datasets — enables developers, network engineers and telecom providers to automatically optimize the configuration of network parameters using agentic AI.
    This can streamline operations, reduce costs and significantly improve service quality by embedding continuous learning and adaptability directly into network infrastructures.
    Traditionally, network configurations required manual intervention or followed rigid rules to adapt to dynamic network conditions. These approaches limited adaptability and increased operational complexities, costs and inefficiencies.
    The new blueprint helps shift telco operations from relying on static, rules-based systems to operations based on dynamic, AI-driven automation. It enables developers to build advanced, telco-specific AI agents that make real-time, intelligent decisions and autonomously balance trade-offs — such as network speed versus interference, or energy savings versus utilization — without human input.
    Powered and Deployed by Industry Leaders
    Trained on 5G data generated by BubbleRAN, and deployed on the BubbleRAN 5G O-RAN platform, the blueprint provides telcos with insight on how to set various parameters to reach performance goals, like achieving a certain bitrate while choosing an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio — a measure that impacts voice quality and thus user experience.
    With the new AI Blueprint, network engineers can confidently set initial parameter values and update them as demanded by continuous network changes.
    Norway-based Telenor Group, which serves over 200 million customers globally, is the first telco to integrate the AI Blueprint for telco network configuration as part of its initiative to deploy intelligent, autonomous networks that meet the performance and agility demands of 5G and beyond.
    “The blueprint is helping us address configuration challenges and enhance quality of service during network installation,” said Knut Fjellheim, chief technology innovation officer at Telenor Maritime. “Implementing it is part of our push toward network automation and follows the successful deployment of agentic AI for real-time network slicing in a private 5G maritime use case.”
    Industry Partners Deploy Other NVIDIA-Powered Autonomous Network Technologies
    The AI Blueprint for telco network configuration is just one of many announcements at NVIDIA GTC Paris showcasing how the telecom industry is using agentic AI to make autonomous networks a reality.
    Beyond the blueprint, leading telecom companies and solutions providers are tapping into NVIDIA accelerated computing, software and microservices to provide breakthrough innovations poised to vastly improve networks and communications services — accelerating the progress to autonomous networks and improving customer experiences.
    NTT DATA is powering its agentic platform for telcos with NVIDIA accelerated compute and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform. Its first agentic use case is focused on network alarms management, where NVIDIA NIM microservices help automate and power observability, troubleshooting, anomaly detection and resolution with closed loop ticketing.
    Tata Consultancy Services is delivering agentic AI solutions for telcos built on NVIDIA DGX Cloud and using NVIDIA AI Enterprise to develop, fine-tune and integrate large telco models into AI agent workflows. These range from billing and revenue assurance, autonomous network management to hybrid edge-cloud distributed inference.
    For example, the company’s anomaly management agentic AI model includes real-time detection and resolution of network anomalies and service performance optimization. This increases business agility and improves operational efficiencies by up to 40% by eliminating human intensive toils, overheads and cross-departmental silos.
    Prodapt has introduced an autonomous operations workflow for networks, powered by NVIDIA AI Enterprise, that offers agentic AI capabilities to support autonomous telecom networks. AI agents can autonomously monitor networks, detect anomalies in real time, initiate diagnostics, analyze root causes of issues using historical data and correlation techniques, automatically execute corrective actions, and generate, enrich and assign incident tickets through integrated ticketing systems.
    Accenture announced its new portfolio of agentic AI solutions for telecommunications through its AI Refinery platform, built on NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and accelerated computing.
    The first available solution, the NOC Agentic App, boosts network operations center tasks by using a generative AI-driven, nonlinear agentic framework to automate processes such as incident and fault management, root cause analysis and configuration planning. Using the Llama 3.1 70B NVIDIA NIM microservice and the AI Refinery Distiller Framework, the NOC Agentic App orchestrates networks of intelligent agents for faster, more efficient decision-making.
    Infosys is announcing its agentic autonomous operations platform, called Infosys Smart Network Assurance, designed to accelerate telecom operators’ journeys toward fully autonomous network operations.
    ISNA helps address long-standing operational challenges for telcos — such as limited automation and high average time to repair — with an integrated, AI-driven platform that reduces operational costs by up to 40% and shortens fault resolution times by up to 30%. NVIDIA NIM and NeMo microservices enhance the platform’s reasoning and hallucination-detection capabilities, reduce latency and increase accuracy.
    Get started with the new blueprint today.
    Learn more about the latest AI advancements for telecom and other industries at NVIDIA GTC Paris, running through Thursday, June 12, at VivaTech, including a keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and a special address from Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecom at NVIDIA. Plus, hear from industry leaders in a panel session with Orange, Swisscom, Telenor and NVIDIA.
    #calling #llms #new #nvidia #blueprint
    Calling on LLMs: New NVIDIA AI Blueprint Helps Automate Telco Network Configuration
    Telecom companies last year spent nearly billion in capital expenditures and over trillion in operating expenditures. These large expenses are due in part to laborious manual processes that telcos face when operating networks that require continuous optimizations. For example, telcos must constantly tune network parameters for tasks — such as transferring calls from one network to another or distributing network traffic across multiple servers — based on the time of day, user behavior, mobility and traffic type. These factors directly affect network performance, user experience and energy consumption. To automate these optimization processes and save costs for telcos across the globe, NVIDIA today unveiled at GTC Paris its first AI Blueprint for telco network configuration. At the blueprint’s core are customized large language models trained specifically on telco network data — as well as the full technical and operational architecture for turning the LLMs into an autonomous, goal-driven AI agent for telcos. Automate Network Configuration With the AI Blueprint NVIDIA AI Blueprints — available on build.nvidia.com — are customizable AI workflow examples. They include reference code, documentation and deployment tools that show enterprise developers how to deliver business value with NVIDIA NIM microservices. The AI Blueprint for telco network configuration — built with BubbleRAN 5G solutions and datasets — enables developers, network engineers and telecom providers to automatically optimize the configuration of network parameters using agentic AI. This can streamline operations, reduce costs and significantly improve service quality by embedding continuous learning and adaptability directly into network infrastructures. Traditionally, network configurations required manual intervention or followed rigid rules to adapt to dynamic network conditions. These approaches limited adaptability and increased operational complexities, costs and inefficiencies. The new blueprint helps shift telco operations from relying on static, rules-based systems to operations based on dynamic, AI-driven automation. It enables developers to build advanced, telco-specific AI agents that make real-time, intelligent decisions and autonomously balance trade-offs — such as network speed versus interference, or energy savings versus utilization — without human input. Powered and Deployed by Industry Leaders Trained on 5G data generated by BubbleRAN, and deployed on the BubbleRAN 5G O-RAN platform, the blueprint provides telcos with insight on how to set various parameters to reach performance goals, like achieving a certain bitrate while choosing an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio — a measure that impacts voice quality and thus user experience. With the new AI Blueprint, network engineers can confidently set initial parameter values and update them as demanded by continuous network changes. Norway-based Telenor Group, which serves over 200 million customers globally, is the first telco to integrate the AI Blueprint for telco network configuration as part of its initiative to deploy intelligent, autonomous networks that meet the performance and agility demands of 5G and beyond. “The blueprint is helping us address configuration challenges and enhance quality of service during network installation,” said Knut Fjellheim, chief technology innovation officer at Telenor Maritime. “Implementing it is part of our push toward network automation and follows the successful deployment of agentic AI for real-time network slicing in a private 5G maritime use case.” Industry Partners Deploy Other NVIDIA-Powered Autonomous Network Technologies The AI Blueprint for telco network configuration is just one of many announcements at NVIDIA GTC Paris showcasing how the telecom industry is using agentic AI to make autonomous networks a reality. Beyond the blueprint, leading telecom companies and solutions providers are tapping into NVIDIA accelerated computing, software and microservices to provide breakthrough innovations poised to vastly improve networks and communications services — accelerating the progress to autonomous networks and improving customer experiences. NTT DATA is powering its agentic platform for telcos with NVIDIA accelerated compute and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform. Its first agentic use case is focused on network alarms management, where NVIDIA NIM microservices help automate and power observability, troubleshooting, anomaly detection and resolution with closed loop ticketing. Tata Consultancy Services is delivering agentic AI solutions for telcos built on NVIDIA DGX Cloud and using NVIDIA AI Enterprise to develop, fine-tune and integrate large telco models into AI agent workflows. These range from billing and revenue assurance, autonomous network management to hybrid edge-cloud distributed inference. For example, the company’s anomaly management agentic AI model includes real-time detection and resolution of network anomalies and service performance optimization. This increases business agility and improves operational efficiencies by up to 40% by eliminating human intensive toils, overheads and cross-departmental silos. Prodapt has introduced an autonomous operations workflow for networks, powered by NVIDIA AI Enterprise, that offers agentic AI capabilities to support autonomous telecom networks. AI agents can autonomously monitor networks, detect anomalies in real time, initiate diagnostics, analyze root causes of issues using historical data and correlation techniques, automatically execute corrective actions, and generate, enrich and assign incident tickets through integrated ticketing systems. Accenture announced its new portfolio of agentic AI solutions for telecommunications through its AI Refinery platform, built on NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and accelerated computing. The first available solution, the NOC Agentic App, boosts network operations center tasks by using a generative AI-driven, nonlinear agentic framework to automate processes such as incident and fault management, root cause analysis and configuration planning. Using the Llama 3.1 70B NVIDIA NIM microservice and the AI Refinery Distiller Framework, the NOC Agentic App orchestrates networks of intelligent agents for faster, more efficient decision-making. Infosys is announcing its agentic autonomous operations platform, called Infosys Smart Network Assurance, designed to accelerate telecom operators’ journeys toward fully autonomous network operations. ISNA helps address long-standing operational challenges for telcos — such as limited automation and high average time to repair — with an integrated, AI-driven platform that reduces operational costs by up to 40% and shortens fault resolution times by up to 30%. NVIDIA NIM and NeMo microservices enhance the platform’s reasoning and hallucination-detection capabilities, reduce latency and increase accuracy. Get started with the new blueprint today. Learn more about the latest AI advancements for telecom and other industries at NVIDIA GTC Paris, running through Thursday, June 12, at VivaTech, including a keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and a special address from Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecom at NVIDIA. Plus, hear from industry leaders in a panel session with Orange, Swisscom, Telenor and NVIDIA. #calling #llms #new #nvidia #blueprint
    BLOGS.NVIDIA.COM
    Calling on LLMs: New NVIDIA AI Blueprint Helps Automate Telco Network Configuration
    Telecom companies last year spent nearly $295 billion in capital expenditures and over $1 trillion in operating expenditures. These large expenses are due in part to laborious manual processes that telcos face when operating networks that require continuous optimizations. For example, telcos must constantly tune network parameters for tasks — such as transferring calls from one network to another or distributing network traffic across multiple servers — based on the time of day, user behavior, mobility and traffic type. These factors directly affect network performance, user experience and energy consumption. To automate these optimization processes and save costs for telcos across the globe, NVIDIA today unveiled at GTC Paris its first AI Blueprint for telco network configuration. At the blueprint’s core are customized large language models trained specifically on telco network data — as well as the full technical and operational architecture for turning the LLMs into an autonomous, goal-driven AI agent for telcos. Automate Network Configuration With the AI Blueprint NVIDIA AI Blueprints — available on build.nvidia.com — are customizable AI workflow examples. They include reference code, documentation and deployment tools that show enterprise developers how to deliver business value with NVIDIA NIM microservices. The AI Blueprint for telco network configuration — built with BubbleRAN 5G solutions and datasets — enables developers, network engineers and telecom providers to automatically optimize the configuration of network parameters using agentic AI. This can streamline operations, reduce costs and significantly improve service quality by embedding continuous learning and adaptability directly into network infrastructures. Traditionally, network configurations required manual intervention or followed rigid rules to adapt to dynamic network conditions. These approaches limited adaptability and increased operational complexities, costs and inefficiencies. The new blueprint helps shift telco operations from relying on static, rules-based systems to operations based on dynamic, AI-driven automation. It enables developers to build advanced, telco-specific AI agents that make real-time, intelligent decisions and autonomously balance trade-offs — such as network speed versus interference, or energy savings versus utilization — without human input. Powered and Deployed by Industry Leaders Trained on 5G data generated by BubbleRAN, and deployed on the BubbleRAN 5G O-RAN platform, the blueprint provides telcos with insight on how to set various parameters to reach performance goals, like achieving a certain bitrate while choosing an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio — a measure that impacts voice quality and thus user experience. With the new AI Blueprint, network engineers can confidently set initial parameter values and update them as demanded by continuous network changes. Norway-based Telenor Group, which serves over 200 million customers globally, is the first telco to integrate the AI Blueprint for telco network configuration as part of its initiative to deploy intelligent, autonomous networks that meet the performance and agility demands of 5G and beyond. “The blueprint is helping us address configuration challenges and enhance quality of service during network installation,” said Knut Fjellheim, chief technology innovation officer at Telenor Maritime. “Implementing it is part of our push toward network automation and follows the successful deployment of agentic AI for real-time network slicing in a private 5G maritime use case.” Industry Partners Deploy Other NVIDIA-Powered Autonomous Network Technologies The AI Blueprint for telco network configuration is just one of many announcements at NVIDIA GTC Paris showcasing how the telecom industry is using agentic AI to make autonomous networks a reality. Beyond the blueprint, leading telecom companies and solutions providers are tapping into NVIDIA accelerated computing, software and microservices to provide breakthrough innovations poised to vastly improve networks and communications services — accelerating the progress to autonomous networks and improving customer experiences. NTT DATA is powering its agentic platform for telcos with NVIDIA accelerated compute and the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform. Its first agentic use case is focused on network alarms management, where NVIDIA NIM microservices help automate and power observability, troubleshooting, anomaly detection and resolution with closed loop ticketing. Tata Consultancy Services is delivering agentic AI solutions for telcos built on NVIDIA DGX Cloud and using NVIDIA AI Enterprise to develop, fine-tune and integrate large telco models into AI agent workflows. These range from billing and revenue assurance, autonomous network management to hybrid edge-cloud distributed inference. For example, the company’s anomaly management agentic AI model includes real-time detection and resolution of network anomalies and service performance optimization. This increases business agility and improves operational efficiencies by up to 40% by eliminating human intensive toils, overheads and cross-departmental silos. Prodapt has introduced an autonomous operations workflow for networks, powered by NVIDIA AI Enterprise, that offers agentic AI capabilities to support autonomous telecom networks. AI agents can autonomously monitor networks, detect anomalies in real time, initiate diagnostics, analyze root causes of issues using historical data and correlation techniques, automatically execute corrective actions, and generate, enrich and assign incident tickets through integrated ticketing systems. Accenture announced its new portfolio of agentic AI solutions for telecommunications through its AI Refinery platform, built on NVIDIA AI Enterprise software and accelerated computing. The first available solution, the NOC Agentic App, boosts network operations center tasks by using a generative AI-driven, nonlinear agentic framework to automate processes such as incident and fault management, root cause analysis and configuration planning. Using the Llama 3.1 70B NVIDIA NIM microservice and the AI Refinery Distiller Framework, the NOC Agentic App orchestrates networks of intelligent agents for faster, more efficient decision-making. Infosys is announcing its agentic autonomous operations platform, called Infosys Smart Network Assurance (ISNA), designed to accelerate telecom operators’ journeys toward fully autonomous network operations. ISNA helps address long-standing operational challenges for telcos — such as limited automation and high average time to repair — with an integrated, AI-driven platform that reduces operational costs by up to 40% and shortens fault resolution times by up to 30%. NVIDIA NIM and NeMo microservices enhance the platform’s reasoning and hallucination-detection capabilities, reduce latency and increase accuracy. Get started with the new blueprint today. Learn more about the latest AI advancements for telecom and other industries at NVIDIA GTC Paris, running through Thursday, June 12, at VivaTech, including a keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang and a special address from Ronnie Vasishta, senior vice president of telecom at NVIDIA. Plus, hear from industry leaders in a panel session with Orange, Swisscom, Telenor and NVIDIA.
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  • Blue Prince Doesn't Have A Satisfying Ending, But That's The Point

    Warning! We're about to go into deep endgame spoilers for Blue Prince, well beyond rolling the credits by reaching Room 46. Read on at your own risk.I had been playing Blue Prince for more than 100 hours before I felt like I truly understood what the game was really about.The revelation came in the form of a journal entry, secreted away in a safety deposit box, hidden within the sometimes tough-to-access vault of the strange and shifting Mount Holly Manor. Reaching the paper requires solving one of Blue Prince's toughest, most obtuse, and most rewarding puzzles, one you won't even realize exists until you've broken through riddle after riddle and uncovered mystery after mystery. It recontextualizes everything that has come before it, not only the winding and involved test of wits that is the manor itself, but the story that had to be similarly excavated along the way--one of political intrigue and family tragedy, the rising and falling of kingdoms, the stoking of revolution, and the sacrifice necessary to breathe life into ideals.Continue Reading at GameSpot
    #blue #prince #doesn039t #have #satisfying
    Blue Prince Doesn't Have A Satisfying Ending, But That's The Point
    Warning! We're about to go into deep endgame spoilers for Blue Prince, well beyond rolling the credits by reaching Room 46. Read on at your own risk.I had been playing Blue Prince for more than 100 hours before I felt like I truly understood what the game was really about.The revelation came in the form of a journal entry, secreted away in a safety deposit box, hidden within the sometimes tough-to-access vault of the strange and shifting Mount Holly Manor. Reaching the paper requires solving one of Blue Prince's toughest, most obtuse, and most rewarding puzzles, one you won't even realize exists until you've broken through riddle after riddle and uncovered mystery after mystery. It recontextualizes everything that has come before it, not only the winding and involved test of wits that is the manor itself, but the story that had to be similarly excavated along the way--one of political intrigue and family tragedy, the rising and falling of kingdoms, the stoking of revolution, and the sacrifice necessary to breathe life into ideals.Continue Reading at GameSpot #blue #prince #doesn039t #have #satisfying
    WWW.GAMESPOT.COM
    Blue Prince Doesn't Have A Satisfying Ending, But That's The Point
    Warning! We're about to go into deep endgame spoilers for Blue Prince, well beyond rolling the credits by reaching Room 46. Read on at your own risk.I had been playing Blue Prince for more than 100 hours before I felt like I truly understood what the game was really about.The revelation came in the form of a journal entry, secreted away in a safety deposit box, hidden within the sometimes tough-to-access vault of the strange and shifting Mount Holly Manor. Reaching the paper requires solving one of Blue Prince's toughest, most obtuse, and most rewarding puzzles, one you won't even realize exists until you've broken through riddle after riddle and uncovered mystery after mystery. It recontextualizes everything that has come before it, not only the winding and involved test of wits that is the manor itself, but the story that had to be similarly excavated along the way--one of political intrigue and family tragedy, the rising and falling of kingdoms, the stoking of revolution, and the sacrifice necessary to breathe life into ideals.Continue Reading at GameSpot
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  • European Broadcasting Union and NVIDIA Partner on Sovereign AI to Support Public Broadcasters

    In a new effort to advance sovereign AI for European public service media, NVIDIA and the European Broadcasting Unionare working together to give the media industry access to high-quality and trusted cloud and AI technologies.
    Announced at NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech, NVIDIA’s collaboration with the EBU — the world’s leading alliance of public service media with more than 110 member organizations in 50+ countries, reaching an audience of over 1 billion — focuses on helping build sovereign AI and cloud frameworks, driving workforce development and cultivating an AI ecosystem to create a more equitable, accessible and resilient European media landscape.
    The work will create better foundations for public service media to benefit from European cloud infrastructure and AI services that are exclusively governed by European policy, comply with European data protection and privacy rules, and embody European values.
    Sovereign AI ensures nations can develop and deploy artificial intelligence using local infrastructure, datasets and expertise. By investing in it, European countries can preserve their cultural identity, enhance public trust and support innovation specific to their needs.
    “We are proud to collaborate with NVIDIA to drive the development of sovereign AI and cloud services,” said Michael Eberhard, chief technology officer of public broadcaster ARD/SWR, and chair of the EBU Technical Committee. “By advancing these capabilities together, we’re helping ensure that powerful, compliant and accessible media services are made available to all EBU members — powering innovation, resilience and strategic autonomy across the board.”

    Empowering Media Innovation in Europe
    To support the development of sovereign AI technologies, NVIDIA and the EBU will establish frameworks that prioritize independence and public trust, helping ensure that AI serves the interests of Europeans while preserving the autonomy of media organizations.
    Through this collaboration, NVIDIA and the EBU will develop hybrid cloud architectures designed to meet the highest standards of European public service media. The EBU will contribute its Dynamic Media Facilityand Media eXchange Layerarchitecture, aiming to enable interoperability and scalability for workflows, as well as cost- and energy-efficient AI training and inference. Following open-source principles, this work aims to create an accessible, dynamic technology ecosystem.
    The collaboration will also provide public service media companies with the tools to deliver personalized, contextually relevant services and content recommendation systems, with a focus on transparency, accountability and cultural identity. This will be realized through investment in sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure and software platforms such as NVIDIA AI Enterprise, custom foundation models, large language models trained with local data, and retrieval-augmented generation technologies.
    As part of the collaboration, NVIDIA is also making available resources from its Deep Learning Institute, offering European media organizations comprehensive training programs to create an AI-ready workforce. This will support the EBU’s efforts to help ensure news integrity in the age of AI.
    In addition, the EBU and its partners are investing in local data centers and cloud platforms that support sovereign technologies, such as NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip, NVIDIA RTX PRO Servers, NVIDIA DGX Cloud and NVIDIA Holoscan for Media — helping members of the union achieve secure and cost- and energy-efficient AI training, while promoting AI research and development.
    Partnering With Public Service Media for Sovereign Cloud and AI
    Collaboration within the media sector is essential for the development and application of comprehensive standards and best practices that ensure the creation and deployment of sovereign European cloud and AI.
    By engaging with independent software vendors, data center providers, cloud service providers and original equipment manufacturers, NVIDIA and the EBU aim to create a unified approach to sovereign cloud and AI.
    This work will also facilitate discussions between the cloud and AI industry and European regulators, helping ensure the development of practical solutions that benefit both the general public and media organizations.
    “Building sovereign cloud and AI capabilities based on EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility and Media eXchange Layer architecture requires strong cross-industry collaboration,” said Antonio Arcidiacono, chief technology and innovation officer at the EBU. “By collaborating with NVIDIA, as well as a broad ecosystem of media technology partners, we are fostering a shared foundation for trust, innovation and resilience that supports the growth of European media.”
    Learn more about the EBU.
    Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions. 
    #european #broadcasting #union #nvidia #partner
    European Broadcasting Union and NVIDIA Partner on Sovereign AI to Support Public Broadcasters
    In a new effort to advance sovereign AI for European public service media, NVIDIA and the European Broadcasting Unionare working together to give the media industry access to high-quality and trusted cloud and AI technologies. Announced at NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech, NVIDIA’s collaboration with the EBU — the world’s leading alliance of public service media with more than 110 member organizations in 50+ countries, reaching an audience of over 1 billion — focuses on helping build sovereign AI and cloud frameworks, driving workforce development and cultivating an AI ecosystem to create a more equitable, accessible and resilient European media landscape. The work will create better foundations for public service media to benefit from European cloud infrastructure and AI services that are exclusively governed by European policy, comply with European data protection and privacy rules, and embody European values. Sovereign AI ensures nations can develop and deploy artificial intelligence using local infrastructure, datasets and expertise. By investing in it, European countries can preserve their cultural identity, enhance public trust and support innovation specific to their needs. “We are proud to collaborate with NVIDIA to drive the development of sovereign AI and cloud services,” said Michael Eberhard, chief technology officer of public broadcaster ARD/SWR, and chair of the EBU Technical Committee. “By advancing these capabilities together, we’re helping ensure that powerful, compliant and accessible media services are made available to all EBU members — powering innovation, resilience and strategic autonomy across the board.” Empowering Media Innovation in Europe To support the development of sovereign AI technologies, NVIDIA and the EBU will establish frameworks that prioritize independence and public trust, helping ensure that AI serves the interests of Europeans while preserving the autonomy of media organizations. Through this collaboration, NVIDIA and the EBU will develop hybrid cloud architectures designed to meet the highest standards of European public service media. The EBU will contribute its Dynamic Media Facilityand Media eXchange Layerarchitecture, aiming to enable interoperability and scalability for workflows, as well as cost- and energy-efficient AI training and inference. Following open-source principles, this work aims to create an accessible, dynamic technology ecosystem. The collaboration will also provide public service media companies with the tools to deliver personalized, contextually relevant services and content recommendation systems, with a focus on transparency, accountability and cultural identity. This will be realized through investment in sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure and software platforms such as NVIDIA AI Enterprise, custom foundation models, large language models trained with local data, and retrieval-augmented generation technologies. As part of the collaboration, NVIDIA is also making available resources from its Deep Learning Institute, offering European media organizations comprehensive training programs to create an AI-ready workforce. This will support the EBU’s efforts to help ensure news integrity in the age of AI. In addition, the EBU and its partners are investing in local data centers and cloud platforms that support sovereign technologies, such as NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip, NVIDIA RTX PRO Servers, NVIDIA DGX Cloud and NVIDIA Holoscan for Media — helping members of the union achieve secure and cost- and energy-efficient AI training, while promoting AI research and development. Partnering With Public Service Media for Sovereign Cloud and AI Collaboration within the media sector is essential for the development and application of comprehensive standards and best practices that ensure the creation and deployment of sovereign European cloud and AI. By engaging with independent software vendors, data center providers, cloud service providers and original equipment manufacturers, NVIDIA and the EBU aim to create a unified approach to sovereign cloud and AI. This work will also facilitate discussions between the cloud and AI industry and European regulators, helping ensure the development of practical solutions that benefit both the general public and media organizations. “Building sovereign cloud and AI capabilities based on EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility and Media eXchange Layer architecture requires strong cross-industry collaboration,” said Antonio Arcidiacono, chief technology and innovation officer at the EBU. “By collaborating with NVIDIA, as well as a broad ecosystem of media technology partners, we are fostering a shared foundation for trust, innovation and resilience that supports the growth of European media.” Learn more about the EBU. Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions.  #european #broadcasting #union #nvidia #partner
    BLOGS.NVIDIA.COM
    European Broadcasting Union and NVIDIA Partner on Sovereign AI to Support Public Broadcasters
    In a new effort to advance sovereign AI for European public service media, NVIDIA and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) are working together to give the media industry access to high-quality and trusted cloud and AI technologies. Announced at NVIDIA GTC Paris at VivaTech, NVIDIA’s collaboration with the EBU — the world’s leading alliance of public service media with more than 110 member organizations in 50+ countries, reaching an audience of over 1 billion — focuses on helping build sovereign AI and cloud frameworks, driving workforce development and cultivating an AI ecosystem to create a more equitable, accessible and resilient European media landscape. The work will create better foundations for public service media to benefit from European cloud infrastructure and AI services that are exclusively governed by European policy, comply with European data protection and privacy rules, and embody European values. Sovereign AI ensures nations can develop and deploy artificial intelligence using local infrastructure, datasets and expertise. By investing in it, European countries can preserve their cultural identity, enhance public trust and support innovation specific to their needs. “We are proud to collaborate with NVIDIA to drive the development of sovereign AI and cloud services,” said Michael Eberhard, chief technology officer of public broadcaster ARD/SWR, and chair of the EBU Technical Committee. “By advancing these capabilities together, we’re helping ensure that powerful, compliant and accessible media services are made available to all EBU members — powering innovation, resilience and strategic autonomy across the board.” Empowering Media Innovation in Europe To support the development of sovereign AI technologies, NVIDIA and the EBU will establish frameworks that prioritize independence and public trust, helping ensure that AI serves the interests of Europeans while preserving the autonomy of media organizations. Through this collaboration, NVIDIA and the EBU will develop hybrid cloud architectures designed to meet the highest standards of European public service media. The EBU will contribute its Dynamic Media Facility (DMF) and Media eXchange Layer (MXL) architecture, aiming to enable interoperability and scalability for workflows, as well as cost- and energy-efficient AI training and inference. Following open-source principles, this work aims to create an accessible, dynamic technology ecosystem. The collaboration will also provide public service media companies with the tools to deliver personalized, contextually relevant services and content recommendation systems, with a focus on transparency, accountability and cultural identity. This will be realized through investment in sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure and software platforms such as NVIDIA AI Enterprise, custom foundation models, large language models trained with local data, and retrieval-augmented generation technologies. As part of the collaboration, NVIDIA is also making available resources from its Deep Learning Institute, offering European media organizations comprehensive training programs to create an AI-ready workforce. This will support the EBU’s efforts to help ensure news integrity in the age of AI. In addition, the EBU and its partners are investing in local data centers and cloud platforms that support sovereign technologies, such as NVIDIA GB200 Grace Blackwell Superchip, NVIDIA RTX PRO Servers, NVIDIA DGX Cloud and NVIDIA Holoscan for Media — helping members of the union achieve secure and cost- and energy-efficient AI training, while promoting AI research and development. Partnering With Public Service Media for Sovereign Cloud and AI Collaboration within the media sector is essential for the development and application of comprehensive standards and best practices that ensure the creation and deployment of sovereign European cloud and AI. By engaging with independent software vendors, data center providers, cloud service providers and original equipment manufacturers, NVIDIA and the EBU aim to create a unified approach to sovereign cloud and AI. This work will also facilitate discussions between the cloud and AI industry and European regulators, helping ensure the development of practical solutions that benefit both the general public and media organizations. “Building sovereign cloud and AI capabilities based on EBU’s Dynamic Media Facility and Media eXchange Layer architecture requires strong cross-industry collaboration,” said Antonio Arcidiacono, chief technology and innovation officer at the EBU. “By collaborating with NVIDIA, as well as a broad ecosystem of media technology partners, we are fostering a shared foundation for trust, innovation and resilience that supports the growth of European media.” Learn more about the EBU. Watch the NVIDIA GTC Paris keynote from NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang at VivaTech, and explore GTC Paris sessions. 
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  • Plug and Play: Build a G-Assist Plug-In Today

    Project G-Assist — available through the NVIDIA App — is an experimental AI assistant that helps tune, control and optimize NVIDIA GeForce RTX systems.
    NVIDIA’s Plug and Play: Project G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon — running virtually through Wednesday, July 16 — invites the community to explore AI and build custom G-Assist plug-ins for a chance to win prizes and be featured on NVIDIA social media channels.

    G-Assist allows users to control their RTX GPU and other system settings using natural language, thanks to a small language model that runs on device. It can be used from the NVIDIA Overlay in the NVIDIA App without needing to tab out or switch programs. Users can expand its capabilities via plug-ins and even connect it to agentic frameworks such as Langflow.
    Below, find popular G-Assist plug-ins, hackathon details and tips to get started.
    Plug-In and Win
    Join the hackathon by registering and checking out the curated technical resources.
    G-Assist plug-ins can be built in several ways, including with Python for rapid development, with C++ for performance-critical apps and with custom system interactions for hardware and operating system automation.
    For those that prefer vibe coding, the G-Assist Plug-In Builder — a ChatGPT-based app that allows no-code or low-code development with natural language commands — makes it easy for enthusiasts to start creating plug-ins.
    To submit an entry, participants must provide a GitHub repository, including source code file, requirements.txt, manifest.json, config.json, a plug-in executable file and READme code.
    Then, submit a video — between 30 seconds and two minutes — showcasing the plug-in in action.
    Finally, hackathoners must promote their plug-in using #AIonRTXHackathon on a social media channel: Instagram, TikTok or X. Submit projects via this form by Wednesday, July 16.
    Judges will assess plug-ins based on three main criteria: 1) innovation and creativity, 2) technical execution and integration, reviewing technical depth, G-Assist integration and scalability, and 3) usability and community impact, aka how easy it is to use the plug-in.
    Winners will be selected on Wednesday, Aug. 20. First place will receive a GeForce RTX 5090 laptop, second place a GeForce RTX 5080 GPU and third a GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. These top three will also be featured on NVIDIA’s social media channels, get the opportunity to meet the NVIDIA G-Assist team and earn an NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute self-paced course credit.
    Project G-Assist requires a GeForce RTX 50, 40 or 30 Series Desktop GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM, Windows 11 or 10 operating system, a compatible CPU, specific disk space requirements and a recent GeForce Game Ready Driver or NVIDIA Studio Driver.
    Plug-InExplore open-source plug-in samples available on GitHub, which showcase the diverse ways on-device AI can enhance PC and gaming workflows.

    Popular plug-ins include:

    Google Gemini: Enables search-based queries using Google Search integration and large language model-based queries using Gemini capabilities in real time without needing to switch programs from the convenience of the NVIDIA App Overlay.
    Discord: Enables users to easily share game highlights or messages directly to Discord servers without disrupting gameplay.
    IFTTT: Lets users create automations across hundreds of compatible endpoints to trigger IoT routines — such as adjusting room lights and smart shades, or pushing the latest gaming news to a mobile device.
    Spotify: Lets users control Spotify using simple voice commands or the G-Assist interface to play favorite tracks and manage playlists.
    Twitch: Checks if any Twitch streamer is currently live and can access detailed stream information such as titles, games, view counts and more.

    Get G-Assist 
    Join the NVIDIA Developer Discord channel to collaborate, share creations and gain support from fellow AI enthusiasts and NVIDIA staff.
    the date for NVIDIA’s How to Build a G-Assist Plug-In webinar on Wednesday, July 9, from 10-11 a.m. PT, to learn more about Project G-Assist capabilities, discover the fundamentals of building, testing and deploying Project G-Assist plug-ins, and participate in a live Q&A session.
    Explore NVIDIA’s GitHub repository, which provides everything needed to get started developing with G-Assist, including sample plug-ins, step-by-step instructions and documentation for building custom functionalities.
    Learn more about the ChatGPT Plug-In Builder to transform ideas into functional G-Assist plug-ins with minimal coding. The tool uses OpenAI’s custom GPT builder to generate plug-in code and streamline the development process.
    NVIDIA’s technical blog walks through the architecture of a G-Assist plug-in, using a Twitch integration as an example. Discover how plug-ins work, how they communicate with G-Assist and how to build them from scratch.
    Each week, the RTX AI Garage blog series features community-driven AI innovations and content for those looking to learn more about NVIDIA NIM microservices and AI Blueprints, as well as building AI agents, creative workflows, digital humans, productivity apps and more on AI PCs and workstations. 
    Plug in to NVIDIA AI PC on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X — and stay informed by subscribing to the RTX AI PC newsletter.
    Follow NVIDIA Workstation on LinkedIn and X. 
    See notice regarding software product information.
    #plug #play #build #gassist #plugin
    Plug and Play: Build a G-Assist Plug-In Today
    Project G-Assist — available through the NVIDIA App — is an experimental AI assistant that helps tune, control and optimize NVIDIA GeForce RTX systems. NVIDIA’s Plug and Play: Project G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon — running virtually through Wednesday, July 16 — invites the community to explore AI and build custom G-Assist plug-ins for a chance to win prizes and be featured on NVIDIA social media channels. G-Assist allows users to control their RTX GPU and other system settings using natural language, thanks to a small language model that runs on device. It can be used from the NVIDIA Overlay in the NVIDIA App without needing to tab out or switch programs. Users can expand its capabilities via plug-ins and even connect it to agentic frameworks such as Langflow. Below, find popular G-Assist plug-ins, hackathon details and tips to get started. Plug-In and Win Join the hackathon by registering and checking out the curated technical resources. G-Assist plug-ins can be built in several ways, including with Python for rapid development, with C++ for performance-critical apps and with custom system interactions for hardware and operating system automation. For those that prefer vibe coding, the G-Assist Plug-In Builder — a ChatGPT-based app that allows no-code or low-code development with natural language commands — makes it easy for enthusiasts to start creating plug-ins. To submit an entry, participants must provide a GitHub repository, including source code file, requirements.txt, manifest.json, config.json, a plug-in executable file and READme code. Then, submit a video — between 30 seconds and two minutes — showcasing the plug-in in action. Finally, hackathoners must promote their plug-in using #AIonRTXHackathon on a social media channel: Instagram, TikTok or X. Submit projects via this form by Wednesday, July 16. Judges will assess plug-ins based on three main criteria: 1) innovation and creativity, 2) technical execution and integration, reviewing technical depth, G-Assist integration and scalability, and 3) usability and community impact, aka how easy it is to use the plug-in. Winners will be selected on Wednesday, Aug. 20. First place will receive a GeForce RTX 5090 laptop, second place a GeForce RTX 5080 GPU and third a GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. These top three will also be featured on NVIDIA’s social media channels, get the opportunity to meet the NVIDIA G-Assist team and earn an NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute self-paced course credit. Project G-Assist requires a GeForce RTX 50, 40 or 30 Series Desktop GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM, Windows 11 or 10 operating system, a compatible CPU, specific disk space requirements and a recent GeForce Game Ready Driver or NVIDIA Studio Driver. Plug-InExplore open-source plug-in samples available on GitHub, which showcase the diverse ways on-device AI can enhance PC and gaming workflows. Popular plug-ins include: Google Gemini: Enables search-based queries using Google Search integration and large language model-based queries using Gemini capabilities in real time without needing to switch programs from the convenience of the NVIDIA App Overlay. Discord: Enables users to easily share game highlights or messages directly to Discord servers without disrupting gameplay. IFTTT: Lets users create automations across hundreds of compatible endpoints to trigger IoT routines — such as adjusting room lights and smart shades, or pushing the latest gaming news to a mobile device. Spotify: Lets users control Spotify using simple voice commands or the G-Assist interface to play favorite tracks and manage playlists. Twitch: Checks if any Twitch streamer is currently live and can access detailed stream information such as titles, games, view counts and more. Get G-Assist  Join the NVIDIA Developer Discord channel to collaborate, share creations and gain support from fellow AI enthusiasts and NVIDIA staff. the date for NVIDIA’s How to Build a G-Assist Plug-In webinar on Wednesday, July 9, from 10-11 a.m. PT, to learn more about Project G-Assist capabilities, discover the fundamentals of building, testing and deploying Project G-Assist plug-ins, and participate in a live Q&A session. Explore NVIDIA’s GitHub repository, which provides everything needed to get started developing with G-Assist, including sample plug-ins, step-by-step instructions and documentation for building custom functionalities. Learn more about the ChatGPT Plug-In Builder to transform ideas into functional G-Assist plug-ins with minimal coding. The tool uses OpenAI’s custom GPT builder to generate plug-in code and streamline the development process. NVIDIA’s technical blog walks through the architecture of a G-Assist plug-in, using a Twitch integration as an example. Discover how plug-ins work, how they communicate with G-Assist and how to build them from scratch. Each week, the RTX AI Garage blog series features community-driven AI innovations and content for those looking to learn more about NVIDIA NIM microservices and AI Blueprints, as well as building AI agents, creative workflows, digital humans, productivity apps and more on AI PCs and workstations.  Plug in to NVIDIA AI PC on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X — and stay informed by subscribing to the RTX AI PC newsletter. Follow NVIDIA Workstation on LinkedIn and X.  See notice regarding software product information. #plug #play #build #gassist #plugin
    BLOGS.NVIDIA.COM
    Plug and Play: Build a G-Assist Plug-In Today
    Project G-Assist — available through the NVIDIA App — is an experimental AI assistant that helps tune, control and optimize NVIDIA GeForce RTX systems. NVIDIA’s Plug and Play: Project G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon — running virtually through Wednesday, July 16 — invites the community to explore AI and build custom G-Assist plug-ins for a chance to win prizes and be featured on NVIDIA social media channels. G-Assist allows users to control their RTX GPU and other system settings using natural language, thanks to a small language model that runs on device. It can be used from the NVIDIA Overlay in the NVIDIA App without needing to tab out or switch programs. Users can expand its capabilities via plug-ins and even connect it to agentic frameworks such as Langflow. Below, find popular G-Assist plug-ins, hackathon details and tips to get started. Plug-In and Win Join the hackathon by registering and checking out the curated technical resources. G-Assist plug-ins can be built in several ways, including with Python for rapid development, with C++ for performance-critical apps and with custom system interactions for hardware and operating system automation. For those that prefer vibe coding, the G-Assist Plug-In Builder — a ChatGPT-based app that allows no-code or low-code development with natural language commands — makes it easy for enthusiasts to start creating plug-ins. To submit an entry, participants must provide a GitHub repository, including source code file (plugin.py), requirements.txt, manifest.json, config.json (if applicable), a plug-in executable file and READme code. Then, submit a video — between 30 seconds and two minutes — showcasing the plug-in in action. Finally, hackathoners must promote their plug-in using #AIonRTXHackathon on a social media channel: Instagram, TikTok or X. Submit projects via this form by Wednesday, July 16. Judges will assess plug-ins based on three main criteria: 1) innovation and creativity, 2) technical execution and integration, reviewing technical depth, G-Assist integration and scalability, and 3) usability and community impact, aka how easy it is to use the plug-in. Winners will be selected on Wednesday, Aug. 20. First place will receive a GeForce RTX 5090 laptop, second place a GeForce RTX 5080 GPU and third a GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. These top three will also be featured on NVIDIA’s social media channels, get the opportunity to meet the NVIDIA G-Assist team and earn an NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute self-paced course credit. Project G-Assist requires a GeForce RTX 50, 40 or 30 Series Desktop GPU with at least 12GB of VRAM, Windows 11 or 10 operating system, a compatible CPU (Intel Pentium G Series, Core i3, i5, i7 or higher; AMD FX, Ryzen 3, 5, 7, 9, Threadripper or higher), specific disk space requirements and a recent GeForce Game Ready Driver or NVIDIA Studio Driver. Plug-In(spiration) Explore open-source plug-in samples available on GitHub, which showcase the diverse ways on-device AI can enhance PC and gaming workflows. Popular plug-ins include: Google Gemini: Enables search-based queries using Google Search integration and large language model-based queries using Gemini capabilities in real time without needing to switch programs from the convenience of the NVIDIA App Overlay. Discord: Enables users to easily share game highlights or messages directly to Discord servers without disrupting gameplay. IFTTT: Lets users create automations across hundreds of compatible endpoints to trigger IoT routines — such as adjusting room lights and smart shades, or pushing the latest gaming news to a mobile device. Spotify: Lets users control Spotify using simple voice commands or the G-Assist interface to play favorite tracks and manage playlists. Twitch: Checks if any Twitch streamer is currently live and can access detailed stream information such as titles, games, view counts and more. Get G-Assist(ance)  Join the NVIDIA Developer Discord channel to collaborate, share creations and gain support from fellow AI enthusiasts and NVIDIA staff. Save the date for NVIDIA’s How to Build a G-Assist Plug-In webinar on Wednesday, July 9, from 10-11 a.m. PT, to learn more about Project G-Assist capabilities, discover the fundamentals of building, testing and deploying Project G-Assist plug-ins, and participate in a live Q&A session. Explore NVIDIA’s GitHub repository, which provides everything needed to get started developing with G-Assist, including sample plug-ins, step-by-step instructions and documentation for building custom functionalities. Learn more about the ChatGPT Plug-In Builder to transform ideas into functional G-Assist plug-ins with minimal coding. The tool uses OpenAI’s custom GPT builder to generate plug-in code and streamline the development process. NVIDIA’s technical blog walks through the architecture of a G-Assist plug-in, using a Twitch integration as an example. Discover how plug-ins work, how they communicate with G-Assist and how to build them from scratch. Each week, the RTX AI Garage blog series features community-driven AI innovations and content for those looking to learn more about NVIDIA NIM microservices and AI Blueprints, as well as building AI agents, creative workflows, digital humans, productivity apps and more on AI PCs and workstations.  Plug in to NVIDIA AI PC on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X — and stay informed by subscribing to the RTX AI PC newsletter. Follow NVIDIA Workstation on LinkedIn and X.  See notice regarding software product information.
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  • This Week in Security: MegaOWNed, Store Danger, and FileFix

    Earlier this year, I was required to move my server to a different datacenter. The tech that helped handle the logistics suggested I assign one of my public IPs to …read more
    This Week in Security: MegaOWNed, Store Danger, and FileFix Earlier this year, I was required to move my server to a different datacenter. The tech that helped handle the logistics suggested I assign one of my public IPs to …read more
    HACKADAY.COM
    This Week in Security: MegaOWNed, Store Danger, and FileFix
    Earlier this year, I was required to move my server to a different datacenter. The tech that helped handle the logistics suggested I assign one of my public IPs to …read more
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  • BOUNCING FROM RUBBER DUCKIES AND FLYING SHEEP TO CLONES FOR THE BOYS SEASON 4

    By TREVOR HOGG
    Images courtesy of Prime Video.

    For those seeking an alternative to the MCU, Prime Video has two offerings of the live-action and animated variety that take the superhero genre into R-rated territory where the hands of the god-like figures get dirty, bloodied and severed. “The Boys is about the intersection of celebrity and politics using superheroes,” states Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor on The Boys. “Sometimes I see the news and I don’t even know we can write to catch up to it! But we try. Invincible is an intense look at an alternate DC Universe that has more grit to the superhero side of it all. On one hand, I was jealous watching Season 1 of Invincible because in animation you can do things that you can’t do in real life on a budget.” Season 4 does not tone down the blood, gore and body count. Fleet notes, “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!”

    When Splintersplits in two, the cloning effect was inspired by cellular mitosis.

    “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!”
    —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor

    A total of 1,600 visual effects shots were created for the eight episodes by ILM, Pixomondo, MPC Toronto, Spin VFX, DNEG, Untold Studios, Luma Pictures and Rocket Science VFX. Previs was a critical part of the process. “We have John Griffith, who owns a small company called CNCPT out of Texas, and he does wonderful Unreal Engine level previs,” Fleet remarks. “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.” Founding Director of Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, Victoria Neuman, literally gets ripped in half by two tendrils coming out of Compound V-enhanced Billy Butcher, the leader of superhero resistance group The Boys. “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.”

    Multiple plates were shot to enable Simon Pegg to phase through the actor laying in a hospital bed.

    Testing can get rather elaborate. “For that end scene with Butcher’s tendrils, the room was two stories, and we were able to put the camera up high along with a bunch of blood cannons,” Fleet recalls. “When the body rips in half and explodes, there is a practical component. We rained down a bunch of real blood and guts right in front of Huey. It’s a known joke that we like to douse Jack Quaid with blood as much as possible! In this case, the special effects team led by Hudson Kenny needed to test it the day before, and I said, “I’ll be the guinea pig for the test.’ They covered the whole place with plastic like it was a Dexter kill room because you don’t want to destroy the set. I’m standing there in a white hazmat suit with goggles on, covered from head to toe in plastic and waiting as they’re tweaking all of these things. It sounds like World War II going on. They’re on walkie talkies to each other, and then all of a sudden, it’s ‘Five, four, three, two, one…’  And I get exploded with blood. I wanted to see what it was like, and it’s intense.”

    “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.”
    —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor

    The Deep has a love affair with an octopus called Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton. “It’s implied bestiality!” Fleet laughs. “I would call it more of a romance. What was fun from my perspective is that I knew what the look was going to be, so then it’s about putting in the details and the animation. One of the instincts that you always have when you’re making a sea creature that talks to a humanyou tend to want to give it human gestures and eyebrows. Erik Kripkesaid, ‘No. We have to find things that an octopus could do that conveys the same emotion.’ That’s when ideas came in, such as putting a little The Deep toy inside the water tank. When Ambrosius is trying to have an intimate moment or connect with him, she can wrap a tentacle around that. My favorite experience doing Ambrosius was when The Deep is reading poetry to her on a bed. CG creatures touching humans is one of the more complicated things to do and make look real. Ambrosius’ tentacles reach for his arm, and it becomes an intimate moment. More than touching the skin, displacing the bedsheet as Ambrosius moved ended up becoming a lot of CG, and we had to go back and forth a few times to get that looking right; that turned out to be tricky.”

    A building is replaced by a massive crowd attending a rally being held by Homelander.

    In a twisted form of sexual foreplay, Sister Sage has The Deep perform a transorbital lobotomy on her. “Thank you, Amazon for selling lobotomy tools as novelty items!” Fleet chuckles. “We filmed it with a lobotomy tool on set. There is a lot of safety involved in doing something like that. Obviously, you don’t want to put any performer in any situation where they come close to putting anything real near their eye. We created this half lobotomy tool and did this complicated split screen with the lobotomy tool on a teeter totter. The Deep wasin one shot and Sister Sage reacted in the other shot. To marry the two ended up being a lot of CG work. Then there are these close-ups which are full CG. I always keep a dummy head that is painted gray that I use all of the time for reference. In macrophotography I filmed this lobotomy tool going right into the eye area. I did that because the tool is chrome, so it’s reflective and has ridges. It has an interesting reflective property. I was able to see how and what part of the human eye reflects onto the tool. A lot of that shot became about realistic reflections and lighting on the tool. Then heavy CG for displacing the eye and pushing the lobotomy tool into it. That was one of the more complicated sequences that we had to achieve.”

    In order to create an intimate moment between Ambrosius and The Deep, a toy version of the superhero was placed inside of the water tank that she could wrap a tentacle around.

    “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.”
    —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor

    Sheep and chickens embark on a violent rampage courtesy of Compound V with the latter piercing the chest of a bodyguard belonging to Victoria Neuman. “Weirdly, that was one of our more traditional shots,’ Fleet states. “What is fun about that one is I asked for real chickens as reference. The chicken flying through his chest is real. It’s our chicken wrangler in green suit gently tossing a chicken. We blended two real plates together with some CG in the middle.” A connection was made with a sci-fi classic. “The sheep kill this bull, and we shot it is in this narrow corridor of fencing. When they run, I always equated it as the Trench Run in Star Wars and looked at the sheep as TIE fighters or X-wings coming at them.” The scene was one of the scarier moments for the visual effects team. Fleet explains, “When I read the script, I thought this could be the moment where we jump the shark. For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.”

    The sheep injected with Compound V develop the ability to fly and were shot in an imperfect manner to help ground the scenes.

    Once injected with Compound V, Hugh Campbell Sr.develops the ability to phase through objects, including human beings. “We called it the Bro-nut because his name in the script is Wall Street Bro,” Fleet notes. “That was a complicated motion control shot, repeating the move over and over again. We had to shoot multiple plates of Simon Pegg and the guy in the bed. Special effects and prosthetics created a dummy guy with a hole in his chest with practical blood dripping down. It was meshing it together and getting the timing right in post. On top of that, there was the CG blood immediately around Simon Pegg.” The phasing effect had to avoid appearing as a dissolve. “I had this idea of doing high-frequency vibration on the X axis loosely based on how The Flash vibrates through walls. You want everything to have a loose motivation that then helps trigger the visuals. We tried not to overcomplicate that because, ultimately, you want something like that to be quick. If you spend too much time on phasing, it can look cheesy. In our case, it was a lot of false walls. Simon Pegg is running into a greenscreen hole which we plug in with a wall or coming out of one. I went off the actor’s action, and we added a light opacity mix with some X-axis shake.”

    Providing a different twist to the fights was the replacement of spurting blood with photoreal rubber duckies during a drug-induced hallucination.

    Homelanderbreaks a mirror which emphasizes his multiple personality disorder. “The original plan was that special effects was going to pre-break a mirror, and we were going to shoot Anthony Starr moving his head doing all of the performances in the different parts of the mirror,” Fleet reveals. “This was all based on a photo that my ex-brother-in-law sent me. He was walking down a street in Glendale, California, came across a broken mirror that someone had thrown out, and took a photo of himself where he had five heads in the mirror. We get there on the day, and I’m realizing that this is really complicated. Anthony has to do these five different performances, and we have to deal with infinite mirrors. At the last minute, I said, ‘We have to do this on a clean mirror.’ We did it on a clear mirror and gave Anthony different eyelines. The mirror break was all done in post, and we were able to cheat his head slightly and art-direct where the break crosses his chin. Editorial was able to do split screens for the timing of the dialogue.”

    “For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.”
    —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor

    Initially, the plan was to use a practical mirror, but creating a digital version proved to be the more effective solution.

    A different spin on the bloodbath occurs during a fight when a drugged Frenchiehallucinates as Kimiko Miyashirogoes on a killing spree. “We went back and forth with a lot of different concepts for what this hallucination would be,” Fleet remarks. “When we filmed it, we landed on Frenchie having a synesthesia moment where he’s seeing a lot of abstract colors flying in the air. We started getting into that in post and it wasn’t working. We went back to the rubber duckies, which goes back to the story of him in the bathtub. What’s in the bathtub? Rubber duckies, bubbles and water. There was a lot of physics and logic required to figure out how these rubber duckies could float out of someone’s neck. We decided on bubbles when Kimiko hits people’s heads. At one point, we had water when she got shot, but it wasn’t working, so we killed it. We probably did about 100 different versions. We got really detailed with our rubber duckie modeling because we didn’t want it to look cartoony. That took a long time.”

    Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton, gets a lot more screentime in Season 4.

    When Splintersplits in two was achieved heavily in CG. “Erik threw out the words ‘cellular mitosis’ early on as something he wanted to use,” Fleet states. “We shot Rob Benedict on a greenscreen doing all of the different performances for the clones that pop out. It was a crazy amount of CG work with Houdini and particle and skin effects. We previs’d the sequence so we had specific actions. One clone comes out to the right and the other pulls backwards.” What tends to go unnoticed by many is Splinter’s clones setting up for a press conference being held by Firecracker. “It’s funny how no one brings up the 22-hour motion control shot that we had to do with Splinter on the stage, which was the most complicated shot!” Fleet observes. “We have this sweeping long shot that brings you into the room and follows Splinter as he carries a container to the stage and hands it off to a clone, and then you reveal five more of them interweaving each other and interacting with all of these objects. It’s like a minute-long dance. First off, you have to choreograph it. We previs’d it, but then you need to get people to do it. We hired dancers and put different colored armbands on them. The camera is like another performer, and a metronome is going, which enables you to find a pace. That took about eight hours of rehearsal. Then Rob has to watch each one of their performances and mimic it to the beat. When he is handing off a box of cables, it’s to a double who is going to have to be erased and be him on the other side. They have to be almost perfect in their timing and lineup in order to take it over in visual effects and make it work.”
    #bouncing #rubber #duckies #flying #sheep
    BOUNCING FROM RUBBER DUCKIES AND FLYING SHEEP TO CLONES FOR THE BOYS SEASON 4
    By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Prime Video. For those seeking an alternative to the MCU, Prime Video has two offerings of the live-action and animated variety that take the superhero genre into R-rated territory where the hands of the god-like figures get dirty, bloodied and severed. “The Boys is about the intersection of celebrity and politics using superheroes,” states Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor on The Boys. “Sometimes I see the news and I don’t even know we can write to catch up to it! But we try. Invincible is an intense look at an alternate DC Universe that has more grit to the superhero side of it all. On one hand, I was jealous watching Season 1 of Invincible because in animation you can do things that you can’t do in real life on a budget.” Season 4 does not tone down the blood, gore and body count. Fleet notes, “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!” When Splintersplits in two, the cloning effect was inspired by cellular mitosis. “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor A total of 1,600 visual effects shots were created for the eight episodes by ILM, Pixomondo, MPC Toronto, Spin VFX, DNEG, Untold Studios, Luma Pictures and Rocket Science VFX. Previs was a critical part of the process. “We have John Griffith, who owns a small company called CNCPT out of Texas, and he does wonderful Unreal Engine level previs,” Fleet remarks. “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.” Founding Director of Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, Victoria Neuman, literally gets ripped in half by two tendrils coming out of Compound V-enhanced Billy Butcher, the leader of superhero resistance group The Boys. “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.” Multiple plates were shot to enable Simon Pegg to phase through the actor laying in a hospital bed. Testing can get rather elaborate. “For that end scene with Butcher’s tendrils, the room was two stories, and we were able to put the camera up high along with a bunch of blood cannons,” Fleet recalls. “When the body rips in half and explodes, there is a practical component. We rained down a bunch of real blood and guts right in front of Huey. It’s a known joke that we like to douse Jack Quaid with blood as much as possible! In this case, the special effects team led by Hudson Kenny needed to test it the day before, and I said, “I’ll be the guinea pig for the test.’ They covered the whole place with plastic like it was a Dexter kill room because you don’t want to destroy the set. I’m standing there in a white hazmat suit with goggles on, covered from head to toe in plastic and waiting as they’re tweaking all of these things. It sounds like World War II going on. They’re on walkie talkies to each other, and then all of a sudden, it’s ‘Five, four, three, two, one…’  And I get exploded with blood. I wanted to see what it was like, and it’s intense.” “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor The Deep has a love affair with an octopus called Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton. “It’s implied bestiality!” Fleet laughs. “I would call it more of a romance. What was fun from my perspective is that I knew what the look was going to be, so then it’s about putting in the details and the animation. One of the instincts that you always have when you’re making a sea creature that talks to a humanyou tend to want to give it human gestures and eyebrows. Erik Kripkesaid, ‘No. We have to find things that an octopus could do that conveys the same emotion.’ That’s when ideas came in, such as putting a little The Deep toy inside the water tank. When Ambrosius is trying to have an intimate moment or connect with him, she can wrap a tentacle around that. My favorite experience doing Ambrosius was when The Deep is reading poetry to her on a bed. CG creatures touching humans is one of the more complicated things to do and make look real. Ambrosius’ tentacles reach for his arm, and it becomes an intimate moment. More than touching the skin, displacing the bedsheet as Ambrosius moved ended up becoming a lot of CG, and we had to go back and forth a few times to get that looking right; that turned out to be tricky.” A building is replaced by a massive crowd attending a rally being held by Homelander. In a twisted form of sexual foreplay, Sister Sage has The Deep perform a transorbital lobotomy on her. “Thank you, Amazon for selling lobotomy tools as novelty items!” Fleet chuckles. “We filmed it with a lobotomy tool on set. There is a lot of safety involved in doing something like that. Obviously, you don’t want to put any performer in any situation where they come close to putting anything real near their eye. We created this half lobotomy tool and did this complicated split screen with the lobotomy tool on a teeter totter. The Deep wasin one shot and Sister Sage reacted in the other shot. To marry the two ended up being a lot of CG work. Then there are these close-ups which are full CG. I always keep a dummy head that is painted gray that I use all of the time for reference. In macrophotography I filmed this lobotomy tool going right into the eye area. I did that because the tool is chrome, so it’s reflective and has ridges. It has an interesting reflective property. I was able to see how and what part of the human eye reflects onto the tool. A lot of that shot became about realistic reflections and lighting on the tool. Then heavy CG for displacing the eye and pushing the lobotomy tool into it. That was one of the more complicated sequences that we had to achieve.” In order to create an intimate moment between Ambrosius and The Deep, a toy version of the superhero was placed inside of the water tank that she could wrap a tentacle around. “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor Sheep and chickens embark on a violent rampage courtesy of Compound V with the latter piercing the chest of a bodyguard belonging to Victoria Neuman. “Weirdly, that was one of our more traditional shots,’ Fleet states. “What is fun about that one is I asked for real chickens as reference. The chicken flying through his chest is real. It’s our chicken wrangler in green suit gently tossing a chicken. We blended two real plates together with some CG in the middle.” A connection was made with a sci-fi classic. “The sheep kill this bull, and we shot it is in this narrow corridor of fencing. When they run, I always equated it as the Trench Run in Star Wars and looked at the sheep as TIE fighters or X-wings coming at them.” The scene was one of the scarier moments for the visual effects team. Fleet explains, “When I read the script, I thought this could be the moment where we jump the shark. For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.” The sheep injected with Compound V develop the ability to fly and were shot in an imperfect manner to help ground the scenes. Once injected with Compound V, Hugh Campbell Sr.develops the ability to phase through objects, including human beings. “We called it the Bro-nut because his name in the script is Wall Street Bro,” Fleet notes. “That was a complicated motion control shot, repeating the move over and over again. We had to shoot multiple plates of Simon Pegg and the guy in the bed. Special effects and prosthetics created a dummy guy with a hole in his chest with practical blood dripping down. It was meshing it together and getting the timing right in post. On top of that, there was the CG blood immediately around Simon Pegg.” The phasing effect had to avoid appearing as a dissolve. “I had this idea of doing high-frequency vibration on the X axis loosely based on how The Flash vibrates through walls. You want everything to have a loose motivation that then helps trigger the visuals. We tried not to overcomplicate that because, ultimately, you want something like that to be quick. If you spend too much time on phasing, it can look cheesy. In our case, it was a lot of false walls. Simon Pegg is running into a greenscreen hole which we plug in with a wall or coming out of one. I went off the actor’s action, and we added a light opacity mix with some X-axis shake.” Providing a different twist to the fights was the replacement of spurting blood with photoreal rubber duckies during a drug-induced hallucination. Homelanderbreaks a mirror which emphasizes his multiple personality disorder. “The original plan was that special effects was going to pre-break a mirror, and we were going to shoot Anthony Starr moving his head doing all of the performances in the different parts of the mirror,” Fleet reveals. “This was all based on a photo that my ex-brother-in-law sent me. He was walking down a street in Glendale, California, came across a broken mirror that someone had thrown out, and took a photo of himself where he had five heads in the mirror. We get there on the day, and I’m realizing that this is really complicated. Anthony has to do these five different performances, and we have to deal with infinite mirrors. At the last minute, I said, ‘We have to do this on a clean mirror.’ We did it on a clear mirror and gave Anthony different eyelines. The mirror break was all done in post, and we were able to cheat his head slightly and art-direct where the break crosses his chin. Editorial was able to do split screens for the timing of the dialogue.” “For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor Initially, the plan was to use a practical mirror, but creating a digital version proved to be the more effective solution. A different spin on the bloodbath occurs during a fight when a drugged Frenchiehallucinates as Kimiko Miyashirogoes on a killing spree. “We went back and forth with a lot of different concepts for what this hallucination would be,” Fleet remarks. “When we filmed it, we landed on Frenchie having a synesthesia moment where he’s seeing a lot of abstract colors flying in the air. We started getting into that in post and it wasn’t working. We went back to the rubber duckies, which goes back to the story of him in the bathtub. What’s in the bathtub? Rubber duckies, bubbles and water. There was a lot of physics and logic required to figure out how these rubber duckies could float out of someone’s neck. We decided on bubbles when Kimiko hits people’s heads. At one point, we had water when she got shot, but it wasn’t working, so we killed it. We probably did about 100 different versions. We got really detailed with our rubber duckie modeling because we didn’t want it to look cartoony. That took a long time.” Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton, gets a lot more screentime in Season 4. When Splintersplits in two was achieved heavily in CG. “Erik threw out the words ‘cellular mitosis’ early on as something he wanted to use,” Fleet states. “We shot Rob Benedict on a greenscreen doing all of the different performances for the clones that pop out. It was a crazy amount of CG work with Houdini and particle and skin effects. We previs’d the sequence so we had specific actions. One clone comes out to the right and the other pulls backwards.” What tends to go unnoticed by many is Splinter’s clones setting up for a press conference being held by Firecracker. “It’s funny how no one brings up the 22-hour motion control shot that we had to do with Splinter on the stage, which was the most complicated shot!” Fleet observes. “We have this sweeping long shot that brings you into the room and follows Splinter as he carries a container to the stage and hands it off to a clone, and then you reveal five more of them interweaving each other and interacting with all of these objects. It’s like a minute-long dance. First off, you have to choreograph it. We previs’d it, but then you need to get people to do it. We hired dancers and put different colored armbands on them. The camera is like another performer, and a metronome is going, which enables you to find a pace. That took about eight hours of rehearsal. Then Rob has to watch each one of their performances and mimic it to the beat. When he is handing off a box of cables, it’s to a double who is going to have to be erased and be him on the other side. They have to be almost perfect in their timing and lineup in order to take it over in visual effects and make it work.” #bouncing #rubber #duckies #flying #sheep
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    BOUNCING FROM RUBBER DUCKIES AND FLYING SHEEP TO CLONES FOR THE BOYS SEASON 4
    By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Prime Video. For those seeking an alternative to the MCU, Prime Video has two offerings of the live-action and animated variety that take the superhero genre into R-rated territory where the hands of the god-like figures get dirty, bloodied and severed. “The Boys is about the intersection of celebrity and politics using superheroes,” states Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor on The Boys. “Sometimes I see the news and I don’t even know we can write to catch up to it! But we try. Invincible is an intense look at an alternate DC Universe that has more grit to the superhero side of it all. On one hand, I was jealous watching Season 1 of Invincible because in animation you can do things that you can’t do in real life on a budget.” Season 4 does not tone down the blood, gore and body count. Fleet notes, “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!” When Splinter (Rob Benedict) splits in two, the cloning effect was inspired by cellular mitosis. “The writers almost have this dialogue with us. Sometimes, they’ll write in the script, ‘And Fleet will come up with a cool visual effect for how to kill this person.’ Or, ‘Chhiu, our fight coordinator, will make an awesome fight.’ It is a frequent topic of conversation. We’re constantly trying to be inventive and create new ways to kill people!” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor A total of 1,600 visual effects shots were created for the eight episodes by ILM, Pixomondo, MPC Toronto, Spin VFX, DNEG, Untold Studios, Luma Pictures and Rocket Science VFX. Previs was a critical part of the process. “We have John Griffith [Previs Director], who owns a small company called CNCPT out of Texas, and he does wonderful Unreal Engine level previs,” Fleet remarks. “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.” Founding Director of Federal Bureau of Superhuman Affairs, Victoria Neuman, literally gets ripped in half by two tendrils coming out of Compound V-enhanced Billy Butcher, the leader of superhero resistance group The Boys. “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.” Multiple plates were shot to enable Simon Pegg to phase through the actor laying in a hospital bed. Testing can get rather elaborate. “For that end scene with Butcher’s tendrils, the room was two stories, and we were able to put the camera up high along with a bunch of blood cannons,” Fleet recalls. “When the body rips in half and explodes, there is a practical component. We rained down a bunch of real blood and guts right in front of Huey. It’s a known joke that we like to douse Jack Quaid with blood as much as possible! In this case, the special effects team led by Hudson Kenny needed to test it the day before, and I said, “I’ll be the guinea pig for the test.’ They covered the whole place with plastic like it was a Dexter kill room because you don’t want to destroy the set. I’m standing there in a white hazmat suit with goggles on, covered from head to toe in plastic and waiting as they’re tweaking all of these things. It sounds like World War II going on. They’re on walkie talkies to each other, and then all of a sudden, it’s ‘Five, four, three, two, one…’  And I get exploded with blood. I wanted to see what it was like, and it’s intense.” “On set, we have a cartoon of what is going to be done, and you’ll be amazed, specifically for action and heavy visual effects stuff, how close those shots are to the previs when we finish.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor The Deep has a love affair with an octopus called Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton. “It’s implied bestiality!” Fleet laughs. “I would call it more of a romance. What was fun from my perspective is that I knew what the look was going to be [from Season 3], so then it’s about putting in the details and the animation. One of the instincts that you always have when you’re making a sea creature that talks to a human [is] you tend to want to give it human gestures and eyebrows. Erik Kripke [Creator, Executive Producer, Showrunner, Director, Writer] said, ‘No. We have to find things that an octopus could do that conveys the same emotion.’ That’s when ideas came in, such as putting a little The Deep toy inside the water tank. When Ambrosius is trying to have an intimate moment or connect with him, she can wrap a tentacle around that. My favorite experience doing Ambrosius was when The Deep is reading poetry to her on a bed. CG creatures touching humans is one of the more complicated things to do and make look real. Ambrosius’ tentacles reach for his arm, and it becomes an intimate moment. More than touching the skin, displacing the bedsheet as Ambrosius moved ended up becoming a lot of CG, and we had to go back and forth a few times to get that looking right; that turned out to be tricky.” A building is replaced by a massive crowd attending a rally being held by Homelander. In a twisted form of sexual foreplay, Sister Sage has The Deep perform a transorbital lobotomy on her. “Thank you, Amazon for selling lobotomy tools as novelty items!” Fleet chuckles. “We filmed it with a lobotomy tool on set. There is a lot of safety involved in doing something like that. Obviously, you don’t want to put any performer in any situation where they come close to putting anything real near their eye. We created this half lobotomy tool and did this complicated split screen with the lobotomy tool on a teeter totter. The Deep was [acting in a certain way] in one shot and Sister Sage reacted in the other shot. To marry the two ended up being a lot of CG work. Then there are these close-ups which are full CG. I always keep a dummy head that is painted gray that I use all of the time for reference. In macrophotography I filmed this lobotomy tool going right into the eye area. I did that because the tool is chrome, so it’s reflective and has ridges. It has an interesting reflective property. I was able to see how and what part of the human eye reflects onto the tool. A lot of that shot became about realistic reflections and lighting on the tool. Then heavy CG for displacing the eye and pushing the lobotomy tool into it. That was one of the more complicated sequences that we had to achieve.” In order to create an intimate moment between Ambrosius and The Deep, a toy version of the superhero was placed inside of the water tank that she could wrap a tentacle around. “The word that we like to use on this show is ‘grounded,’ and I like to say ‘grounded’ with an asterisk in this day and age because we’re grounded until we get to killing people in the craziest ways. In this case, having someone floating in the air and being ripped in half by two tendrils was all CG.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor Sheep and chickens embark on a violent rampage courtesy of Compound V with the latter piercing the chest of a bodyguard belonging to Victoria Neuman. “Weirdly, that was one of our more traditional shots,’ Fleet states. “What is fun about that one is I asked for real chickens as reference. The chicken flying through his chest is real. It’s our chicken wrangler in green suit gently tossing a chicken. We blended two real plates together with some CG in the middle.” A connection was made with a sci-fi classic. “The sheep kill this bull, and we shot it is in this narrow corridor of fencing. When they run, I always equated it as the Trench Run in Star Wars and looked at the sheep as TIE fighters or X-wings coming at them.” The scene was one of the scarier moments for the visual effects team. Fleet explains, “When I read the script, I thought this could be the moment where we jump the shark. For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.” The sheep injected with Compound V develop the ability to fly and were shot in an imperfect manner to help ground the scenes. Once injected with Compound V, Hugh Campbell Sr. (Simon Pegg) develops the ability to phase through objects, including human beings. “We called it the Bro-nut because his name in the script is Wall Street Bro,” Fleet notes. “That was a complicated motion control shot, repeating the move over and over again. We had to shoot multiple plates of Simon Pegg and the guy in the bed. Special effects and prosthetics created a dummy guy with a hole in his chest with practical blood dripping down. It was meshing it together and getting the timing right in post. On top of that, there was the CG blood immediately around Simon Pegg.” The phasing effect had to avoid appearing as a dissolve. “I had this idea of doing high-frequency vibration on the X axis loosely based on how The Flash vibrates through walls. You want everything to have a loose motivation that then helps trigger the visuals. We tried not to overcomplicate that because, ultimately, you want something like that to be quick. If you spend too much time on phasing, it can look cheesy. In our case, it was a lot of false walls. Simon Pegg is running into a greenscreen hole which we plug in with a wall or coming out of one. I went off the actor’s action, and we added a light opacity mix with some X-axis shake.” Providing a different twist to the fights was the replacement of spurting blood with photoreal rubber duckies during a drug-induced hallucination. Homelander (Anthony Starr) breaks a mirror which emphasizes his multiple personality disorder. “The original plan was that special effects was going to pre-break a mirror, and we were going to shoot Anthony Starr moving his head doing all of the performances in the different parts of the mirror,” Fleet reveals. “This was all based on a photo that my ex-brother-in-law sent me. He was walking down a street in Glendale, California, came across a broken mirror that someone had thrown out, and took a photo of himself where he had five heads in the mirror. We get there on the day, and I’m realizing that this is really complicated. Anthony has to do these five different performances, and we have to deal with infinite mirrors. At the last minute, I said, ‘We have to do this on a clean mirror.’ We did it on a clear mirror and gave Anthony different eyelines. The mirror break was all done in post, and we were able to cheat his head slightly and art-direct where the break crosses his chin. Editorial was able to do split screens for the timing of the dialogue.” “For the shots where the sheep are still and scream to the camera, Untold Studios did a bunch of R&D and came up with baboon teeth. I tried to keep anything real as much as possible, but, obviously, when sheep are flying, they have to be CG. I call it the Battlestar Galactica theory, where I like to shake the camera, overshoot shots and make it sloppy when they’re in the air so you can add motion blur. Comedy also helps sell visual effects.” —Stephan Fleet, VFX Supervisor Initially, the plan was to use a practical mirror, but creating a digital version proved to be the more effective solution. A different spin on the bloodbath occurs during a fight when a drugged Frenchie (Tomer Capone) hallucinates as Kimiko Miyashiro (Karen Fukuhara) goes on a killing spree. “We went back and forth with a lot of different concepts for what this hallucination would be,” Fleet remarks. “When we filmed it, we landed on Frenchie having a synesthesia moment where he’s seeing a lot of abstract colors flying in the air. We started getting into that in post and it wasn’t working. We went back to the rubber duckies, which goes back to the story of him in the bathtub. What’s in the bathtub? Rubber duckies, bubbles and water. There was a lot of physics and logic required to figure out how these rubber duckies could float out of someone’s neck. We decided on bubbles when Kimiko hits people’s heads. At one point, we had water when she got shot, but it wasn’t working, so we killed it. We probably did about 100 different versions. We got really detailed with our rubber duckie modeling because we didn’t want it to look cartoony. That took a long time.” Ambrosius, voiced by Tilda Swinton, gets a lot more screentime in Season 4. When Splinter (Rob Benedict) splits in two was achieved heavily in CG. “Erik threw out the words ‘cellular mitosis’ early on as something he wanted to use,” Fleet states. “We shot Rob Benedict on a greenscreen doing all of the different performances for the clones that pop out. It was a crazy amount of CG work with Houdini and particle and skin effects. We previs’d the sequence so we had specific actions. One clone comes out to the right and the other pulls backwards.” What tends to go unnoticed by many is Splinter’s clones setting up for a press conference being held by Firecracker (Valorie Curry). “It’s funny how no one brings up the 22-hour motion control shot that we had to do with Splinter on the stage, which was the most complicated shot!” Fleet observes. “We have this sweeping long shot that brings you into the room and follows Splinter as he carries a container to the stage and hands it off to a clone, and then you reveal five more of them interweaving each other and interacting with all of these objects. It’s like a minute-long dance. First off, you have to choreograph it. We previs’d it, but then you need to get people to do it. We hired dancers and put different colored armbands on them. The camera is like another performer, and a metronome is going, which enables you to find a pace. That took about eight hours of rehearsal. Then Rob has to watch each one of their performances and mimic it to the beat. When he is handing off a box of cables, it’s to a double who is going to have to be erased and be him on the other side. They have to be almost perfect in their timing and lineup in order to take it over in visual effects and make it work.”
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  • HOW DISGUISE BUILT OUT THE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR A MINECRAFT MOVIE

    By TREVOR HOGG

    Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures.

    Rather than a world constructed around photorealistic pixels, a video game created by Markus Persson has taken the boxier 3D voxel route, which has become its signature aesthetic, and sparked an international phenomenon that finally gets adapted into a feature with the release of A Minecraft Movie. Brought onboard to help filmmaker Jared Hess in creating the environments that the cast of Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks find themselves inhabiting was Disguise under the direction of Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon.

    “s the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Departmenton Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.”
    —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise

    Interior and exterior environments had to be created, such as the shop owned by Steve.

    “Prior to working on A Minecraft Movie, I held more technical roles, like serving as the Virtual Production LED Volume Operator on a project for Apple TV+ and Paramount Pictures,” notes Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But as the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Departmenton Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.” The project provided new opportunities. “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance,” notes Laura Bell, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.”

    Set designs originally created by the art department in Rhinoceros 3D were transformed into fully navigable 3D environments within Unreal Engine. “These scenes were far more than visualizations,” Finlayson remarks. “They were interactive tools used throughout the production pipeline. We would ingest 3D models and concept art, clean and optimize geometry using tools like Blender, Cinema 4D or Maya, then build out the world in Unreal Engine. This included applying materials, lighting and extending environments. These Unreal scenes we created were vital tools across the production and were used for a variety of purposes such as enabling the director to explore shot compositions, block scenes and experiment with camera movement in a virtual space, as well as passing along Unreal Engine scenes to the visual effects vendors so they could align their digital environments and set extensions with the approved production layouts.”

    A virtual exploration of Steve’s shop in Midport Village.

    Certain elements have to be kept in mind when constructing virtual environments. “When building virtual environments, you need to consider what can actually be built, how actors and cameras will move through the space, and what’s safe and practical on set,” Bell observes. “Outside the areas where strict accuracy is required, you want the environments to blend naturally with the original designs from the art department and support the story, creating a space that feels right for the scene, guides the audience’s eye and sets the right tone. Things like composition, lighting and small environmental details can be really fun to work on, but also serve as beautiful additions to help enrich a story.”

    “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance. But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.”
    —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise

    Among the buildings that had to be created for Midport Village was Steve’sLava Chicken Shack.

    Concept art was provided that served as visual touchstones. “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists,” Finlayson states. “Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging. Sometimes we would also help the storyboard artists by sending through images of the Unreal Engine worlds to help them geographically position themselves in the worlds and aid in their storyboarding.” At times, the video game assets came in handy. “Exteriors often involved large-scale landscapes and stylized architectural elements, which had to feel true to the Minecraft world,” Finlayson explains. “In some cases, we brought in geometry from the game itself to help quickly block out areas. For example, we did this for the Elytra Flight Chase sequence, which takes place through a large canyon.”

    Flexibility was critical. “A key technical challenge we faced was ensuring that the Unreal levels were built in a way that allowed for fast and flexible iteration,” Finlayson remarks. “Since our environments were constantly being reviewed by the director, production designer, DP and VFX supervisor, we needed to be able to respond quickly to feedback, sometimes live during a review session. To support this, we had to keep our scenes modular and well-organized; that meant breaking environments down into manageable components and maintaining clean naming conventions. By setting up the levels this way, we could make layout changes, swap assets or adjust lighting on the fly without breaking the scene or slowing down the process.” Production schedules influence the workflows, pipelines and techniques. “No two projects will ever feel exactly the same,” Bell notes. “For example, Pat Younisadapted his typical VR setup to allow scene reviews using a PS5 controller, which made it much more comfortable and accessible for the director. On a more technical side, because everything was cubes and voxels, my Blender workflow ended up being way heavier on the re-mesh modifier than usual, definitely not something I’ll run into again anytime soon!”

    A virtual study and final still of the cast members standing outside of the Lava Chicken Shack.

    “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists. Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging.”
    —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise

    The design and composition of virtual environments tended to remain consistent throughout principal photography. “The only major design change I can recall was the removal of a second story from a building in Midport Village to allow the camera crane to get a clear shot of the chicken perched above Steve’s lava chicken shack,” Finlayson remarks. “I would agree that Midport Village likely went through the most iterations,” Bell responds. “The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled. I remember rebuilding the stairs leading up to the rampart five or six times, using different configurations based on the physically constructed stairs. This was because there were storyboarded sequences of the film’s characters, Henry, Steve and Garrett, being chased by piglins, and the action needed to match what could be achieved practically on set.”

    Virtually conceptualizing the layout of Midport Village.

    Complex virtual environments were constructed for the final battle and the various forest scenes throughout the movie. “What made these particularly challenging was the way physical set pieces were repurposed and repositioned to serve multiple scenes and locations within the story,” Finlayson reveals. “The same built elements had to appear in different parts of the world, so we had to carefully adjust the virtual environments to accommodate those different positions.” Bell is in agreement with her colleague. “The forest scenes were some of the more complex environments to manage. It could get tricky, particularly when the filming schedule shifted. There was one day on set where the order of shots changed unexpectedly, and because the physical sets looked so similar, I initially loaded a different perspective than planned. Fortunately, thanks to our workflow, Lindsay Georgeand I were able to quickly open the recorded sequence in Unreal Engine and swap out the correct virtual environment for the live composite without any disruption to the shoot.”

    An example of the virtual and final version of the Woodland Mansion.

    “Midport Village likely went through the most iterations. The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled.”
    —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise

    Extensive detail was given to the center of the sets where the main action unfolds. “For these areas, we received prop layouts from the prop department to ensure accurate placement and alignment with the physical builds,” Finlayson explains. “These central environments were used heavily for storyboarding, blocking and department reviews, so precision was essential. As we moved further out from the practical set, the environments became more about blocking and spatial context rather than fine detail. We worked closely with Production Designer Grant Major to get approval on these extended environments, making sure they aligned with the overall visual direction. We also used creatures and crowd stand-ins provided by the visual effects team. These gave a great sense of scale and placement during early planning stages and allowed other departments to better understand how these elements would be integrated into the scenes.”

    Cast members Sebastian Hansen, Danielle Brooks and Emma Myers stand in front of the Earth Portal Plateau environment.

    Doing a virtual scale study of the Mountainside.

    Practical requirements like camera moves, stunt choreography and crane setups had an impact on the creation of virtual environments. “Sometimes we would adjust layouts slightly to open up areas for tracking shots or rework spaces to accommodate key action beats, all while keeping the environment feeling cohesive and true to the Minecraft world,” Bell states. “Simulcam bridged the physical and virtual worlds on set, overlaying Unreal Engine environments onto live-action scenes in real-time, giving the director, DP and other department heads a fully-realized preview of shots and enabling precise, informed decisions during production. It also recorded critical production data like camera movement paths, which was handed over to the post-production team to give them the exact tracks they needed, streamlining the visual effects pipeline.”

    Piglots cause mayhem during the Wingsuit Chase.

    Virtual versions of the exterior and interior of the Safe House located in the Enchanted Woods.

    “One of the biggest challenges for me was managing constant iteration while keeping our environments clean, organized and easy to update,” Finlayson notes. “Because the virtual sets were reviewed regularly by the director and other heads of departments, feedback was often implemented live in the room. This meant the environments had to be flexible. But overall, this was an amazing project to work on, and I am so grateful for the incredible VAD team I was a part of – Heide Nichols, Pat Younis, Jake Tuckand Laura. Everyone on this team worked so collaboratively, seamlessly and in such a supportive way that I never felt like I was out of my depth.” There was another challenge that is more to do with familiarity. “Having a VAD on a film is still a relatively new process in production,” Bell states. “There were moments where other departments were still learning what we did and how to best work with us. That said, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I remember being on set at the Simulcam station and seeing how excited people were to look at the virtual environments as they walked by, often stopping for a chat and a virtual tour. Instead of seeing just a huge blue curtain, they were stoked to see something Minecraft and could get a better sense of what they were actually shooting.”
    #how #disguise #built #out #virtual
    HOW DISGUISE BUILT OUT THE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR A MINECRAFT MOVIE
    By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Rather than a world constructed around photorealistic pixels, a video game created by Markus Persson has taken the boxier 3D voxel route, which has become its signature aesthetic, and sparked an international phenomenon that finally gets adapted into a feature with the release of A Minecraft Movie. Brought onboard to help filmmaker Jared Hess in creating the environments that the cast of Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks find themselves inhabiting was Disguise under the direction of Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon. “s the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Departmenton Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.” —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise Interior and exterior environments had to be created, such as the shop owned by Steve. “Prior to working on A Minecraft Movie, I held more technical roles, like serving as the Virtual Production LED Volume Operator on a project for Apple TV+ and Paramount Pictures,” notes Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But as the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Departmenton Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.” The project provided new opportunities. “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance,” notes Laura Bell, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.” Set designs originally created by the art department in Rhinoceros 3D were transformed into fully navigable 3D environments within Unreal Engine. “These scenes were far more than visualizations,” Finlayson remarks. “They were interactive tools used throughout the production pipeline. We would ingest 3D models and concept art, clean and optimize geometry using tools like Blender, Cinema 4D or Maya, then build out the world in Unreal Engine. This included applying materials, lighting and extending environments. These Unreal scenes we created were vital tools across the production and were used for a variety of purposes such as enabling the director to explore shot compositions, block scenes and experiment with camera movement in a virtual space, as well as passing along Unreal Engine scenes to the visual effects vendors so they could align their digital environments and set extensions with the approved production layouts.” A virtual exploration of Steve’s shop in Midport Village. Certain elements have to be kept in mind when constructing virtual environments. “When building virtual environments, you need to consider what can actually be built, how actors and cameras will move through the space, and what’s safe and practical on set,” Bell observes. “Outside the areas where strict accuracy is required, you want the environments to blend naturally with the original designs from the art department and support the story, creating a space that feels right for the scene, guides the audience’s eye and sets the right tone. Things like composition, lighting and small environmental details can be really fun to work on, but also serve as beautiful additions to help enrich a story.” “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance. But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.” —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise Among the buildings that had to be created for Midport Village was Steve’sLava Chicken Shack. Concept art was provided that served as visual touchstones. “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists,” Finlayson states. “Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging. Sometimes we would also help the storyboard artists by sending through images of the Unreal Engine worlds to help them geographically position themselves in the worlds and aid in their storyboarding.” At times, the video game assets came in handy. “Exteriors often involved large-scale landscapes and stylized architectural elements, which had to feel true to the Minecraft world,” Finlayson explains. “In some cases, we brought in geometry from the game itself to help quickly block out areas. For example, we did this for the Elytra Flight Chase sequence, which takes place through a large canyon.” Flexibility was critical. “A key technical challenge we faced was ensuring that the Unreal levels were built in a way that allowed for fast and flexible iteration,” Finlayson remarks. “Since our environments were constantly being reviewed by the director, production designer, DP and VFX supervisor, we needed to be able to respond quickly to feedback, sometimes live during a review session. To support this, we had to keep our scenes modular and well-organized; that meant breaking environments down into manageable components and maintaining clean naming conventions. By setting up the levels this way, we could make layout changes, swap assets or adjust lighting on the fly without breaking the scene or slowing down the process.” Production schedules influence the workflows, pipelines and techniques. “No two projects will ever feel exactly the same,” Bell notes. “For example, Pat Younisadapted his typical VR setup to allow scene reviews using a PS5 controller, which made it much more comfortable and accessible for the director. On a more technical side, because everything was cubes and voxels, my Blender workflow ended up being way heavier on the re-mesh modifier than usual, definitely not something I’ll run into again anytime soon!” A virtual study and final still of the cast members standing outside of the Lava Chicken Shack. “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists. Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging.” —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise The design and composition of virtual environments tended to remain consistent throughout principal photography. “The only major design change I can recall was the removal of a second story from a building in Midport Village to allow the camera crane to get a clear shot of the chicken perched above Steve’s lava chicken shack,” Finlayson remarks. “I would agree that Midport Village likely went through the most iterations,” Bell responds. “The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled. I remember rebuilding the stairs leading up to the rampart five or six times, using different configurations based on the physically constructed stairs. This was because there were storyboarded sequences of the film’s characters, Henry, Steve and Garrett, being chased by piglins, and the action needed to match what could be achieved practically on set.” Virtually conceptualizing the layout of Midport Village. Complex virtual environments were constructed for the final battle and the various forest scenes throughout the movie. “What made these particularly challenging was the way physical set pieces were repurposed and repositioned to serve multiple scenes and locations within the story,” Finlayson reveals. “The same built elements had to appear in different parts of the world, so we had to carefully adjust the virtual environments to accommodate those different positions.” Bell is in agreement with her colleague. “The forest scenes were some of the more complex environments to manage. It could get tricky, particularly when the filming schedule shifted. There was one day on set where the order of shots changed unexpectedly, and because the physical sets looked so similar, I initially loaded a different perspective than planned. Fortunately, thanks to our workflow, Lindsay Georgeand I were able to quickly open the recorded sequence in Unreal Engine and swap out the correct virtual environment for the live composite without any disruption to the shoot.” An example of the virtual and final version of the Woodland Mansion. “Midport Village likely went through the most iterations. The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled.” —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise Extensive detail was given to the center of the sets where the main action unfolds. “For these areas, we received prop layouts from the prop department to ensure accurate placement and alignment with the physical builds,” Finlayson explains. “These central environments were used heavily for storyboarding, blocking and department reviews, so precision was essential. As we moved further out from the practical set, the environments became more about blocking and spatial context rather than fine detail. We worked closely with Production Designer Grant Major to get approval on these extended environments, making sure they aligned with the overall visual direction. We also used creatures and crowd stand-ins provided by the visual effects team. These gave a great sense of scale and placement during early planning stages and allowed other departments to better understand how these elements would be integrated into the scenes.” Cast members Sebastian Hansen, Danielle Brooks and Emma Myers stand in front of the Earth Portal Plateau environment. Doing a virtual scale study of the Mountainside. Practical requirements like camera moves, stunt choreography and crane setups had an impact on the creation of virtual environments. “Sometimes we would adjust layouts slightly to open up areas for tracking shots or rework spaces to accommodate key action beats, all while keeping the environment feeling cohesive and true to the Minecraft world,” Bell states. “Simulcam bridged the physical and virtual worlds on set, overlaying Unreal Engine environments onto live-action scenes in real-time, giving the director, DP and other department heads a fully-realized preview of shots and enabling precise, informed decisions during production. It also recorded critical production data like camera movement paths, which was handed over to the post-production team to give them the exact tracks they needed, streamlining the visual effects pipeline.” Piglots cause mayhem during the Wingsuit Chase. Virtual versions of the exterior and interior of the Safe House located in the Enchanted Woods. “One of the biggest challenges for me was managing constant iteration while keeping our environments clean, organized and easy to update,” Finlayson notes. “Because the virtual sets were reviewed regularly by the director and other heads of departments, feedback was often implemented live in the room. This meant the environments had to be flexible. But overall, this was an amazing project to work on, and I am so grateful for the incredible VAD team I was a part of – Heide Nichols, Pat Younis, Jake Tuckand Laura. Everyone on this team worked so collaboratively, seamlessly and in such a supportive way that I never felt like I was out of my depth.” There was another challenge that is more to do with familiarity. “Having a VAD on a film is still a relatively new process in production,” Bell states. “There were moments where other departments were still learning what we did and how to best work with us. That said, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I remember being on set at the Simulcam station and seeing how excited people were to look at the virtual environments as they walked by, often stopping for a chat and a virtual tour. Instead of seeing just a huge blue curtain, they were stoked to see something Minecraft and could get a better sense of what they were actually shooting.” #how #disguise #built #out #virtual
    WWW.VFXVOICE.COM
    HOW DISGUISE BUILT OUT THE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR A MINECRAFT MOVIE
    By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. Rather than a world constructed around photorealistic pixels, a video game created by Markus Persson has taken the boxier 3D voxel route, which has become its signature aesthetic, and sparked an international phenomenon that finally gets adapted into a feature with the release of A Minecraft Movie. Brought onboard to help filmmaker Jared Hess in creating the environments that the cast of Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Sebastian Hansen, Emma Myers and Danielle Brooks find themselves inhabiting was Disguise under the direction of Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon. “[A]s the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Department (VAD) on Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.” —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise Interior and exterior environments had to be created, such as the shop owned by Steve (Jack Black). “Prior to working on A Minecraft Movie, I held more technical roles, like serving as the Virtual Production LED Volume Operator on a project for Apple TV+ and Paramount Pictures,” notes Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But as the Senior Unreal Artist within the Virtual Art Department (VAD) on Minecraft, I experienced the full creative workflow. What stood out most was how deeply the VAD was embedded across every stage of production. We weren’t working in isolation. From the production designer and director to the VFX supervisor and DP, the VAD became a hub for collaboration.” The project provided new opportunities. “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance,” notes Laura Bell, Creative Technologist for Disguise. “But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.” Set designs originally created by the art department in Rhinoceros 3D were transformed into fully navigable 3D environments within Unreal Engine. “These scenes were far more than visualizations,” Finlayson remarks. “They were interactive tools used throughout the production pipeline. We would ingest 3D models and concept art, clean and optimize geometry using tools like Blender, Cinema 4D or Maya, then build out the world in Unreal Engine. This included applying materials, lighting and extending environments. These Unreal scenes we created were vital tools across the production and were used for a variety of purposes such as enabling the director to explore shot compositions, block scenes and experiment with camera movement in a virtual space, as well as passing along Unreal Engine scenes to the visual effects vendors so they could align their digital environments and set extensions with the approved production layouts.” A virtual exploration of Steve’s shop in Midport Village. Certain elements have to be kept in mind when constructing virtual environments. “When building virtual environments, you need to consider what can actually be built, how actors and cameras will move through the space, and what’s safe and practical on set,” Bell observes. “Outside the areas where strict accuracy is required, you want the environments to blend naturally with the original designs from the art department and support the story, creating a space that feels right for the scene, guides the audience’s eye and sets the right tone. Things like composition, lighting and small environmental details can be really fun to work on, but also serve as beautiful additions to help enrich a story.” “I’ve always loved the physicality of working with an LED volume, both for the immersion it provides and the way that seeing the environment helps shape an actor’s performance. But for A Minecraft Movie, we used Simulcam instead, and it was an incredible experience to live-composite an entire Minecraft world in real-time, especially with nothing on set but blue curtains.” —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise Among the buildings that had to be created for Midport Village was Steve’s (Jack Black) Lava Chicken Shack. Concept art was provided that served as visual touchstones. “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists,” Finlayson states. “Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging. Sometimes we would also help the storyboard artists by sending through images of the Unreal Engine worlds to help them geographically position themselves in the worlds and aid in their storyboarding.” At times, the video game assets came in handy. “Exteriors often involved large-scale landscapes and stylized architectural elements, which had to feel true to the Minecraft world,” Finlayson explains. “In some cases, we brought in geometry from the game itself to help quickly block out areas. For example, we did this for the Elytra Flight Chase sequence, which takes place through a large canyon.” Flexibility was critical. “A key technical challenge we faced was ensuring that the Unreal levels were built in a way that allowed for fast and flexible iteration,” Finlayson remarks. “Since our environments were constantly being reviewed by the director, production designer, DP and VFX supervisor, we needed to be able to respond quickly to feedback, sometimes live during a review session. To support this, we had to keep our scenes modular and well-organized; that meant breaking environments down into manageable components and maintaining clean naming conventions. By setting up the levels this way, we could make layout changes, swap assets or adjust lighting on the fly without breaking the scene or slowing down the process.” Production schedules influence the workflows, pipelines and techniques. “No two projects will ever feel exactly the same,” Bell notes. “For example, Pat Younis [VAD Art Director] adapted his typical VR setup to allow scene reviews using a PS5 controller, which made it much more comfortable and accessible for the director. On a more technical side, because everything was cubes and voxels, my Blender workflow ended up being way heavier on the re-mesh modifier than usual, definitely not something I’ll run into again anytime soon!” A virtual study and final still of the cast members standing outside of the Lava Chicken Shack. “We received concept art provided by the amazing team of concept artists. Not only did they send us 2D artwork, but they often shared the 3D models they used to create those visuals. These models were incredibly helpful as starting points when building out the virtual environments in Unreal Engine; they gave us a clear sense of composition and design intent. Storyboards were also a key part of the process and were constantly being updated as the project evolved. Having access to the latest versions allowed us to tailor the virtual environments to match camera angles, story beats and staging.” —Talia Finlayson, Creative Technologist, Disguise The design and composition of virtual environments tended to remain consistent throughout principal photography. “The only major design change I can recall was the removal of a second story from a building in Midport Village to allow the camera crane to get a clear shot of the chicken perched above Steve’s lava chicken shack,” Finlayson remarks. “I would agree that Midport Village likely went through the most iterations,” Bell responds. “The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled. I remember rebuilding the stairs leading up to the rampart five or six times, using different configurations based on the physically constructed stairs. This was because there were storyboarded sequences of the film’s characters, Henry, Steve and Garrett, being chased by piglins, and the action needed to match what could be achieved practically on set.” Virtually conceptualizing the layout of Midport Village. Complex virtual environments were constructed for the final battle and the various forest scenes throughout the movie. “What made these particularly challenging was the way physical set pieces were repurposed and repositioned to serve multiple scenes and locations within the story,” Finlayson reveals. “The same built elements had to appear in different parts of the world, so we had to carefully adjust the virtual environments to accommodate those different positions.” Bell is in agreement with her colleague. “The forest scenes were some of the more complex environments to manage. It could get tricky, particularly when the filming schedule shifted. There was one day on set where the order of shots changed unexpectedly, and because the physical sets looked so similar, I initially loaded a different perspective than planned. Fortunately, thanks to our workflow, Lindsay George [VP Tech] and I were able to quickly open the recorded sequence in Unreal Engine and swap out the correct virtual environment for the live composite without any disruption to the shoot.” An example of the virtual and final version of the Woodland Mansion. “Midport Village likely went through the most iterations. The archway, in particular, became a visual anchor across different levels. We often placed it off in the distance to help orient both ourselves and the audience and show how far the characters had traveled.” —Laura Bell, Creative Technologist, Disguise Extensive detail was given to the center of the sets where the main action unfolds. “For these areas, we received prop layouts from the prop department to ensure accurate placement and alignment with the physical builds,” Finlayson explains. “These central environments were used heavily for storyboarding, blocking and department reviews, so precision was essential. As we moved further out from the practical set, the environments became more about blocking and spatial context rather than fine detail. We worked closely with Production Designer Grant Major to get approval on these extended environments, making sure they aligned with the overall visual direction. We also used creatures and crowd stand-ins provided by the visual effects team. These gave a great sense of scale and placement during early planning stages and allowed other departments to better understand how these elements would be integrated into the scenes.” Cast members Sebastian Hansen, Danielle Brooks and Emma Myers stand in front of the Earth Portal Plateau environment. Doing a virtual scale study of the Mountainside. Practical requirements like camera moves, stunt choreography and crane setups had an impact on the creation of virtual environments. “Sometimes we would adjust layouts slightly to open up areas for tracking shots or rework spaces to accommodate key action beats, all while keeping the environment feeling cohesive and true to the Minecraft world,” Bell states. “Simulcam bridged the physical and virtual worlds on set, overlaying Unreal Engine environments onto live-action scenes in real-time, giving the director, DP and other department heads a fully-realized preview of shots and enabling precise, informed decisions during production. It also recorded critical production data like camera movement paths, which was handed over to the post-production team to give them the exact tracks they needed, streamlining the visual effects pipeline.” Piglots cause mayhem during the Wingsuit Chase. Virtual versions of the exterior and interior of the Safe House located in the Enchanted Woods. “One of the biggest challenges for me was managing constant iteration while keeping our environments clean, organized and easy to update,” Finlayson notes. “Because the virtual sets were reviewed regularly by the director and other heads of departments, feedback was often implemented live in the room. This meant the environments had to be flexible. But overall, this was an amazing project to work on, and I am so grateful for the incredible VAD team I was a part of – Heide Nichols [VAD Supervisor], Pat Younis, Jake Tuck [Unreal Artist] and Laura. Everyone on this team worked so collaboratively, seamlessly and in such a supportive way that I never felt like I was out of my depth.” There was another challenge that is more to do with familiarity. “Having a VAD on a film is still a relatively new process in production,” Bell states. “There were moments where other departments were still learning what we did and how to best work with us. That said, the response was overwhelmingly positive. I remember being on set at the Simulcam station and seeing how excited people were to look at the virtual environments as they walked by, often stopping for a chat and a virtual tour. Instead of seeing just a huge blue curtain, they were stoked to see something Minecraft and could get a better sense of what they were actually shooting.”
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