The Lost Bus is a 2025 survival-drama directed by Paul Greengrass for Blumhouse Productions in association with Comet Pictures and Apple Original Films. The film is based on the non-fiction book Paradise: One Town’s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by journalist Lizzie Johnson. Set against the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, it follows a school-bus driver and a teacher who fight to guide 22 children to safety through an encroaching inferno. Combining Greengrass’s documentary-style direction with large-scale visual effects and environmental reconstruction by RISE FX, the film depicts one of the deadliest wildfires in recent history with stark realism.

Supervising the inferno: Oliver Schulz (IMDB | Linkedin) is a senior Visual Effects Supervisor at RISE FX, the Berlin-based VFX studio. Over more than a decade at RISE he has guided VFX supervision on major international productions including Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Blue Beetle and Megalopolis, among many others.

His background spans concept art, digital matte painting and 3D environments; skills that helped him to take the creative lead on blockbuster-scale environment and FX heavy shows. In this interview he reveals how he and his team at RISE tackled the challenge of recreating a burning landscape for The Lost Bus, combining procedural geography, wind-driven vegetation, deep-rendered volumetrics, and machine-learning techniques for depth integration, to bring the inferno to life on screen.

DP: How did you get onto the Lost Bus? 

Oliver Schulz: I came on board after wrapping up on Megalopolis and jumped onto the very first meeting with Charlie Noble and Gavin Round, Production VFX Supervisor and Producer. The project was already awarded at that time so we directly started talking about the Sequences and the scope of the Rise portion of work.

Luckily or better sad tragically this was a real event so in regards of look, there were many references and documentation of this day. So our first meeting was looking through a lot of real world footage from all available sources. Charlie had been prepping reference reels from the very beginning, so we could hone in on a lot of specific ones for each portion of the work because he had references for all of them!

DP: Roughly how big was the RISE team on The Lost Bus, and how long did you spend from first build to final comp?

Oliver Schulz: We started with a very small core team in May 24 and delivered the last shots at the beginning of 25.  I think around 50-60 people worked on the show in total during the production with up- and downramping based on specific project needs like temp deliveries for example.

DP: The antagonist of the movie is the geography of a very particular area, and the fact that it is on fire – how did you make sure that it was recognizably that specific part of the world? 

Oliver Schulz: We started with real world data derived from elevation models. That gave us a pretty good grounding in reality. We got lidar scans for very specific locations like the Pulga Bridges for example which was invaluable as this is usually something one doesn’t get from any publicly available sources. We spent quite a bit of time to get us a very good foundation of all key locations, which meant that everything had a geometrical base until the very last mountain you see on the horizon.

Our Lidar Supervisor David Salamon was instrumental in setting up this base. He used some maps imagery to give a rough base color to all those individual geometries that served as a rough guide later on in layout and surfacing for distributions of materials or assets. One has to keep in mind that most data was post 2018 so for instance vegetation had to be recreated from mostly photographic references shot before the fire. We tried to stay as true as possible to real world geography, but later on of course things had to be changed for storytelling reasons. 

DP: When merging New Mexico plates into your California canyon builds, how did you maintain scale and geological continuity?

Oliver Schulz: As production did not have access or in case of some very sketchy roads didn’t shoot at the original location for safety reasons, they did some scouting through the US and chose some New Mexico locations as stand ins for some of our sequences. The most prominent was the Pulga road for sure. In the film, the first responding firefighters trying to get to the origin of the camp fire first get sight when they are on top of the Pulga Highway bridge crossing the Feather River Canyon.

Without any better option they decide their best shot is to try and get to the fire following a very narrow road on the slope of the canyon. All shots on Pulga Bridge were shot on a Studio Backlot featuring full CG Environments including the FG bridge. This narrow path however was all shot on the New Mexico location with two big fire engines driving a slightly wider road. 

In production that meant that we replaced most of the visible Environment due to a couple of reasons. First of course it needed to have the right roadwidth and the correct canyon in the background. Second we needed to have very windy vegetation everywhere. Third in case all of that worked in camera which was pretty rare we still needed to put FX Elements into every shot consisting of dust, debris, smoke and later also embers. With those guidelines in place probably 90% of the shots became full CG exteriors only keeping small bits of photography for fire engines and some road pieces.

Once all those went into layout we made sure to keep a senseful progression to those shots meaning having the firefighters travel along the road during those shots in cutorder. The topography of the shooting location though was pretty different from the storypoint progression on the pulga road, so was the framing in camera when pointing at the fire from the fire engine interiors.

That of course meant as good and real our base was, it needed to be heavily augmented to make sense with storytelling and framing choices. Most shots feature the correct BG canyon but the midground is totally made up to allow for good view to the fire origin. All of this had to be understandable even with very frenetically moving handheld cameras.

DP: Let’s talk vegetation: How much botanical creative freedom did you have? 

Oliver Schulz: Vegetation was a big part of the environment and one of the reasons for the rapid spread of the fire. All FVX vendors had to tackle it in one way or the other which meant all were contributing to the research for which plant goes where. The foundation was once again the research and material collection from Charlie and his team.

We focused on the most common species found in this region of CA and made sure the level of dryness and the distribution made sense. So in this sense there was not too much freedom here as everyone tried to make this as real as possible from this point of view. For the build we actually just used the most common ground which is Speedtree with some augmentations done in Houdini. Part of the assets were also shares from other vendors which just needed ingestion and rigging in FX.

DP: You mentioned building a hierarchical “ecosystem” in Houdini. How modular was this system, and how much hand-authoring did artists still need to do per shot?

Oliver Schulz: This was something we actually invested a bit of time in at the very beginning and was overseen by CG Supervisor David Schulz and Layout Lead Mareike Loges / Senior Layout Artist Björn Markgraf. The core idea is nothing new and hierarchical just means that you start from the biggest Elements in your kit and than go smaller and smaller based on the previous distribution of Elements. First step is to either scatter or handplace big trees for example, following this you end up with a certain distribution. 

Based on this the system places smaller entities like younger trees or seedlings and smaller shrubs and bushes around or between the big trees. This distribution is based on simple rules like distance or terrain steepness. In case of the Pulga road we divided it up in two categories: mountains and roads. Both had similar procedures. We would always start with the rough blocking geometries matching either scan data, elevation data or sometimes just made up. From there we would generate the base coverage of rock cliffs which would hold out trees mostly in those areas. Following this we created the trees and bigger vegetation which would determine the ground coverage of rocks vs more pepply ground.

Roads were pretty similar but less complex as they mostly feature small stones. Again here we used some manually created maps to drive the distribution of small vs bigger pebbles that mostly accumulate on the side for example.

The toolset itself worked pretty well and as it was applicable as a template we could have a fully laid out shot in a day. Shot specific adjustments were applied on almost every shot though, mostly for continuity, visibility or art direction purpose. 

DP: Vegetation, environment, and FX were all dependent on one another. How did you keep versioning sane between departments?

Oliver Schulz:  That was a big topic indeed and it only is possible with two things: a rigorous approval system and a good pipeline that helps you track those approved layouts. We rely on our usd pipeline to do exactly that for us, it makes it somewhat easy (Im sure layout and production will hit me for this) to track department versioning. For each layout update we`d always get automatic QC renders that run through our inhouse “slapstick” system which is our inhouse auto comp engine.

When Layout would do a specific change it would publish this either on a shot or on an Sequence/Environment level. This will trigger a QC render from the shotcam of the affected shots. Once the rendering is done it will have a postjob that combines it with the prepped plate in nuke and runs another renderjob that will give you the layout reviewable which is than checked and can be approved and pushed into the pipeline from RV. This Layout than becomes available to the FX department which would run all needed simulations and hand off another QC reviewable for approval. Without those systems in place it would have been a nightmare to stay on top of all these versions!

DP: You said the layout department drove wind direction and strength instead of FX. How did that change your creative workflow?

Oliver Schulz: Yes that was indeed true and one of our early conversations we had internally to determine the approach all Environment builds would share. It was a practical decision based on two factors: We would simulate all vegetation on the asset level in different windspeeds for efficiency reasons and we wanted to keep iteration loops to a minimum.

This meant that I wanted to look at layout versions with moving vegetation as the strong directional wind would make it necessary to consider this already while layouting trees. As the direction is clearly visible you cant rely on spinning a tree 360 deg free in Y to create variations as the direction is “baked” in, so you need to see it moving in order to determine if an environment looks good!

The second reason is that FX needed to take care of vegetation simulation only once and when approved never needed to come back. This system worked really well and was accessible to the layout artists down to the single blade of grass, meaning one could really art direct where and how much specific things should move.

DP: You divided smoke into “hero” and “residual” categories. How did you manage density and readability without losing visual clarity?

Oliver Schulz: These two categories were simply based on the fact that we needed to deal with smoke in almost every shot. The ever present residual smoke needed to inherit a direction, needed to be art directable and also needed to render as fast as possible. Its pretty much the equivalent of atmospheric perspective in a wildfire scenario. Our Fx Supervisor Akin Göcmenli came up with a system of instanced presimulated caches that sometimes could consist of thousands of individual ones.

We started by doing simulations of smoke with a constant wind direction and speed that had a hidden source of emission and diffused pretty soon. That gave us a very soft falloff to the edges of the simulation grid which made these simulations perfect to overlap and look as one big single instance of smoke. On top due to those aspects it was quite easy to remove single containers and punch holes into the wall of smoke for visibility. We also invested a bit of time to develop shaders and render efficiencies to cut down on notoriously long volumetric rendertimes for this element.

Hero smoke was the category which either had a visible emission source in frame or simply had a hero storytelling element. These were usually shot or sequence simulations as they were mostly much denser and most of the time also much closer to camera. We also spend a good amount of time matching shading and simulation to real world references.  The secret to readability also lies in relentless QCing of outputs to make sure once you kickoff the expensive lighting renders, you are as certain as possible all elements are going to work. 

DP: The ember work looks incredibly detailed. How did you simulate believable motion in strong winds without visible repetition or looping patterns?

Oliver Schulz: Embers were a big part of the equations so by now you might guess…. Yes we spend a bit of time in asset prep to build some solid foundations. The first thing is of course the driving factor for all fx aspect: the wind.

FX developed hero wind forces that we used to simulate all elements with. A good amount of chaos and variance is key to not run into issues with readable patterns in any simulation. Another factor is collision. Embers will behave a certain way when they collide and thats what we tried to replicate. Also the ground plays a big role especially with the heavier emberclumps that slide over it.

Reality is unbeaten when it comes to little quirks and anomalies especially for something as complex as this. As no one is able to have a ground as detailed as the real world we also sometimes had a collision geometry that had slightly more displacement in order to have more detailed collisions happening. 

DP: Lighting and volumetrics are natural enemies. How did you maintain physically plausible lighting through that much smoke and fire?

Oliver Schulz: That was one of the biggest questions going into this project, considering that what was shot on set sometimes had very little to do with what ended up on screen, especially in terms of atmospherics. The best base for something to look real is to match the real thing. We did so in our asset phase and made sure our shaders and lightrigs were physically plausible, especially the ones only used to develop assets. 

We would match greyballs and reference macbeth charts in order to make sure scene lighting was correct in terms of lightbalancing. Then from there we developed shaders for all aspects.One of the most common issues I see is that volume and surface renders aren’t lookdeved in conjunction. What you end up having to do is to grade surface and volume render differently. This leads to very unrealistic renders very fast because there is no ground truth you can come back to.

We tried to make sure all our shaders worked with each other to have exactly this common base. Also when dealing with dozens of light sources and those issues on top that’s definitely a position you don’t want to be in when time is running…. All volumetrics do have very different properties to them where one of the biggest is how they scatter light. Back to front scattering can take a volume from being ultrabright to consuming all lighting energy and being pitchblack. So once you matched the real thing, use those tools wisely to deviate from there and support the story. 

We tried to always start with a balancing pass usually done still in lighting. This goes to comp as the foundation to do all the finetuning with. Still there was a lot of tuning left for comp and also we needed to break reality more than once to make sure that what you wanted to read in a frame remained readable when tons of smoke and fire went in front. Sometimes we needed to go as far as use the deep data to pull things in and out of the smoke to make them visible. Still the most valuable tool you have is the artist’s eye to determine the sweet spot of good vs real.

DP: You mentioned deep rendering bottlenecks, like OIIO running out of patience with too many AoVs. What exactly went wrong first?

Oliver Schulz: Haha yes that was one of the issues that came when switching to full deep with our renders. That means you have each component of each lightgroup rendered with deep data to put it back together in comp. That resulted in a lot of channels that apparently were too much for OIIO to handle. Thank god that was fixed otherwise I wouldn’t write this story now ;)

DP: Rendering holdouts took up to an hour per frame. Did you develop any automation or optimisation to make deep rendering less painful?

Oliver Schulz: Indeed rendering times for deep holdouts were quite painful and nothing to speed up really. With so many volumetric elements you need to deep hold out everything with everything to make sure its accurate. If you multiply this with the number of separate elements rendered and with the amount of light Aovs times the amount of components you end up with a staggering number of renders.

Plus in the end you need to denoise all frames so the best solution was try to plan out delivery dates as good as possible to have time for all those thousands prerenders to run on the farm. Still our compositing Supervisor Oliver Hohn and Lead Nicolas Burgers had some longer evenings ensuring all renders were there the next morning to be picked up by the compositing Artists.

DP: You used machine-learning depth generators to create deep data from plates. What tools powered that, and how reliable were the results?

Oliver Schulz: We started testing tools quite early in anticipation of very challenging compositing work. DepthAnything v2 was what we ended up using as a default prerender pass. The results were a mixed bag considering the wide range of plates we worked with, although it proved to be valuable to have. Comp remapped the relative value output of the depth passes to absolute values from deep data with help of lidarscans or renders and was able to create some good integration especially with more wispy type of smoke.

For denser smoke and more accurate holdouts especially for actors we still needed to rely on a lot of manual roto for good integration. The AI passes proved to be pretty successful though for fast temp work as you get something going in no time. Issues were mostly the missing good temporal stability and also the lack of precision. 

 DP: Before deploying new tech like ML depth generators or procedural ecosystems, how do you test them safely inside production?

Oliver Schulz: We implemented those during production directly on our project infrastructure, so developed, tested and used simultaneously. 

DP: Were there any spectacular ML depth map failures, like smoke reading as solid or background cliffs collapsing?

Oliver Schulz: Depth popping or lost shapes were the most common ones. But as none of these passes were used without correction in comp I’m sure I haven’t seen all of them!

DP: With so many volumetric layers, how did compositors manage complexity without drowning in passes?

Oliver Schulz: We have standard workflows for loading CG renders into nuke which do provide a basic level of organization. However the more elements you have the bigger the compscripts and we had some good ones for sure!

DP: Fire colouration is tricky. Did you use any spectral rendering or rely purely on LUTs to match on-set lighting and heat distortion?

Oliver Schulz: That is very true.. Luckily production tried to shoot everything with a practical fire which provided a good level of references in camera. If you than try to render as physically plausible as possible and have something in frame that you can match exposure to you are already halfway there. We didn’t use any spectral rendering here and rendered everything through Houdinis Karma in RGB.

DP: You switched to full motion-blur sampling for embers instead of faked streaks. How much did that impact render time, and was it worth it?

Oliver Schulz: Oh that was worth every minute of rendertime.. Real Motionblur for an element which is mainly visible in motionblur is a good investment. Plus the rendertimes weren’t actually that bad and took only a couple of minutes as you are not dealing with an expensive shading as well. The biggest benefit is getting nice curved and very interesting blurs especially with collisions.  The trick actually is to only invest time where its needed and render other elements with less costly settings. Deep compositing allows for it as you are not bound to any holdouts and you can combine differently rendered motion blur without any problems.

DP: How crucial was RiseFlow for distributing simulations and maintaining consistency across all sequences?

Oliver Schulz: We started implementing RiseFlow at the very beginning once we had our initial workflow for distributing elements figured out. The development was done by our Head of Pipeline Paul Schweizer and the implementation on the show was spearheaded by Jonas Sorgenfrei.

It actually is a very versatile framework that we use for a variety of tasks here at Rise. Its a modular node based System that can take arbitrary inputs and execute them in a chained workflow. FX built templates for various scenarios that got exposed variables like wind direction, speed, inputs for collision geometry etc. These could than be varied per shot and sent to the farm for execution. Once all those Sims were done, QC renders were submitted to the Farm and when completed, auto comped in Slapstick.

That meant that one artist could do changes on a big number of shots by adjusting the template and than resimming and rendering them over night. All render elements were deepcomped with our deep plate workflow and reviewed the next morning. This allowed for rapid adjustments and turnarounds which was a very crucial aspect of this fast paced production. 

DP: How did RiseFlow and Slapstick communicate between departments for reviews and dailies?

Oliver Schulz: RiseFlow and Slapstick are two different things really. The point where they communicate is that Riseflow might trigger a farmjob where Slapstick is hooked in as a post process that gets triggered after completion of the render. Slapstick again is a modular node based system implemented in Nuke that allows for a generalized template to be created. These inputs could take for instance all general elements that comp might use to layer a shot like mainplates, rotos, colorcorrections, lensdistortions etc and comp them together. We use Slapstick in all departments to create automatic reviewables for assetbuild like turntables with reference images, lighting slaps,fx slaps and so on.

DP: You’ve called The Lost Bus the toughest matchmove job you’ve ever seen. How did you solve the handheld, wet, low-light camera challenge?

Oliver Schulz: That was a tough one indeed. To solve this it really just comes down to the excellence of all individual artists that created those matchmoves. So there is no magic recipe to get through so many challenging matchmoves…

DP: Greengrass loves long, continuous takes. How did you manage to iterate and render efficiently on such heavy, unbroken shots?

Oliver Schulz: I guess it is really to choose your battles wisely… Invest into a good foundation early on and make sure to be as precise as possible in prep phase. Once the show is running and you are in full delivery mode there is no time to go back and redevelop anything.

Render optimization as much as possible and then relying on everything that was set up in the beginning is key to not have to think about accuracy anymore when you are trying to finish the shots. We did this and it really paid off, though having a couple of long shots with lots of elements to render we never ran into the issue of having to fear a render didn’t get finished in time.

There were some challenging shots for all departments involved but again the prep phase paid off and we managed to deliver everything in time. It’s really a Situation in which the Production team led by Michelle Cullen and Production Manager Androniki Nikolaou outdid themselves by planning and scheduling every milestone in production to make sure we had what we needed to finish shots in time. Of course that also means adjusting and revising this schedule each and every day based on client comments and changes.. It’s a tough job to make sure the whole production runs like a well oiled machine!

DP: Deep compositing only works if all layers align perfectly in space. Did you use diagnostic tools or pure visual QC to verify deep accuracy?

Oliver Schulz: The good thing about deep is that it’s pretty accurate as long as the sampling increments in depth are small enough for certain elements. It’s a game of keeping error thresholds low enough so you don’t pick them up actually. The balancing is precision versus filesize. Surface renders aren’t an issue really as you are dealing with front and backsides of hard surface objects really.

The fun starts with volumetric elements and this is where you need to tweak the settings a bit to make sure you don’t end up having 5GB per frame in volumetric renders. Still frames could grow to well over 1GB on bigger shots with all elements included, so we needed to do some rough calculations beforehand to make sure we weren’t running out of allocated serverspace.

DP: How did you maintain consistency for fire behaviour across sequences? Was there a single reference look, or did it evolve shot by shot?

Oliver Schulz: One of the big topics obviously here as the quality of the fire not only needed to remain consistent but also serve the story in how it behaves. When you look at fires in reality they all have very different qualities to them depending on a ton of external factors like what is burning, where it burns, what is the actual heat it produces and what is the influence of the wind and so on. So yes it’s crucial to pick a reference and not try to incorporate them all. The initial tactic we used was to create asset based fires with all components.

The two types that production defined as assets were “spotfires” and “forestfires”. Pretty generalized in description though mostly divided up by scale. So we took those two types into asset development and created a little scene with them. Forestfire in the background and spotfires in the foreground. This scene actually was the same one we used to lookdev all assets in. So we had a common ground for all assets really and the fx ones were not different.

We picked a general reference we felt was working well for each category and supplemented that with references that production had shot on set. The shot element though were mostly run by gas so wouldnt really emit any smoke but were a general ref in terms of breakup and edge qualities. Also those would come in native resolution where most of the actual refs are cellphone captures of much poorer quality.

So with all those references in place we started matching the fires again in different windspeeds. We tried to also implement all little details especially on the bigger forest fire like flambursts on dry wood, falling burning pieces of wood etc. Once fire was in place we hooked it up with all secondary elements like smoke and embers. We had already pretty robust setups developed for each of them individually so we could already build on a solid foundation using those as a base.

Once this little scene was successfully approved by production to go into shots we splitted out the individual components as assets again. These had all elements attached like smoke emission, ember emission, lots of different masks for heat distortion and were ready to be dropped into shots.

Using this technique we had a very solid foundation of very similar looking and behaving fires. Of course for hero shots we would need to resim those, but with setups in place and our template system it was mostly straightforward. Of course there are shots that need to tell a certain story like a fire coming right at you towards camera. Solving a problem like reading a perspective of a selfilluminating matter coming right towards camera is a different beast though you can’t prep for! This just takes a lot of creativity and trial and error to get right…

DP: What’s the single biggest creative takeaway from The Lost Bus you’d carry into your next show?

Oliver Schulz:  Don’t try to put out all the fires at once….

DP: Which shot makes you proudest or gives you flashbacks?

Oliver Schulz: Oh there are so many good ones really, honestly when I was watching all shots in a row I was so happy about the overall level of quality the team achieved in every aspect. So hard to pick singles but the Embercam full CG shots looked amazing on the big screen and were pretty spectacular… but getting them to the state we delivered them in was quite a journey…

DP: Finally, if you had to redo The Lost Bus from scratch, what would you rebuild first? Vegetation tools, compositing templates, or your caffeine reserves?

Oliver Schulz: Myself :)

The post Rendering the Inferno at RiseFX: The Lost Bus first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

For Momo (2025), director Christian Ditter, Ratpack Film Production and RiseFX took on the challenge of reimagining Michael Ende’s timeless tale for a new generation — without losing its quiet melancholy or handmade charm. Based on the 1973 novel and following in the shadow of the 1986 adaptation, Momo centres on an orphan girl who must battle the soulless Men in Grey, who stealthily take over her city and steal time.

Michael Wortmann, who worked on films such as Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and Black Panther (2018) and Red One (2024) brings Hollywood scale experience to Momo. As VFX Supervisor at RiseFX, he led the team through a 16-month production cycle, delivering more than 280 shots with a crew of roughly 50 artists – merging blockbuster techniques with a grounded, naturalistic aesthetic in this German production.

Creative Directions

DP: How jarring was it to go from the adrenaline-soaked action comedy Red One to the timeless, melancholic world of Momo?

Michael Wortmann: Well, these two movies might not seem to be much alike on the first look but if you think about it they do have a lot in common. Both movies address a wide audience, they fall into the genre fantasy and they both deal with the timeless topic of who we spend time with. The surreal set extensions are a fantasy but keeping a lot of things grounded in the real world is key to make the story relatable to the viewer.

DP: Momo comes with serious nostalgia baggage, both from the book and the 1986 movie. How much of that legacy influenced your take? And how did you decide what to preserve, what to reinvent, and what to toss out with the Men in Grey’s cigars?

Michael Wortmann: The goal was clear from the beginning: we are not doing a remake, we really want to upgrade Momo and make a 2025 version of it. So this was not about nostalgica but really updating all the elements of the story to make them relatable to a new generation that didn’t grow up with the old movie. So dolls became Bibibots, cigars became inhalers, there’s grey women now and so on. Still, we tried not to lean into science fiction too much because essentially Momo is a tale. Director Christian Ditter had all these wonderful ideas when he wrote the script and this really translated into the design of the film.

DP: The realm of the Men in Grey and the Source of Time are gorgeous, especially that giant pendulum over the water. How did those concepts evolve visually? How many iterations did they go through before locking in the final design?

Michael Wortmann: The golden dome is one of the pivotal moments in the book and the movie as well. It took a while to figure it out and there were a lot of options discussed. The description in the original book was a cave like place so we started looking into actual caves in Croatia.

During preproduction it became obvious that we wouldn’t be able to make a cave shoot happening so we got creative about it. We discussed all kinds of ideas, minimalistic approaches like a black void just shoing a water surface with Momo and the flower of the hour. We also discussed shooting in an LED Stage but we felt this is not the right approach for our movie. Momo is essentially shot entirely on location so we were worried that LED stage shots would look unnatural.

So on one weekend, while we were still shooting our director went to a beach in Split and found that little half moon shaped bay –  and we all knew this is the place! So we started developing concepts which developed a bit over time. We started with antique ruins but ended up with a more naturalistic design reelected in a dome made from driftwood as our director felt that this place needed to be more organic. We worked closely with concept artist Francesco Corvino who depicted style frames for this environment.

DP: How much of the final look was premeditated versus discovered? Were there moments where someone said, “Wait, this actually looks better upside down,” and you just rolled with it?

Michael Wortmann: We tried to plan as much as we could but on the visual effects side we had to develop some things to make things look really appealing. For example in the Neverlane we were facing problems because the whole set and the set extension were sandstone color. So we started introduce lensflares which were artificially rgb colored so they resemble rainbow colors. They weren’t the true look of the lenses we used but they helped a lot in making the shots not look monochromatic.

DP: Momo has this delicate balance of realism and magic and  it never tips too far into fantasy. Was there a guiding visual rulebook or “Momo physics” that defined what could exist in that world?

Michael Wortmann: We agreed with the director that anything in our Momo world is grounded in reality. Time being frozen is a thing, it is something we can show without being non-physical. Even the dissolves of the greys are based on their colors, non-gravity and the pink color of the flour of the hour – they come across like fairy dust but in essence they are organic and real in terms of the story.

DP: In terms of look development, what role did RiseFX play in setting the tone?

Michael Wortmann: There was a little concept art that was done before we shot the movie and then we had Francesco working on concepts together with the director after the shoot. But there were still a lot of things left for us to figure out so we did a lot of design work on this one. The look through Momo’s glasses, the design of the future city, the Neverlane set extensions, the time vault and the screen during the judgement scene, just to name a few.

Technical & Pipeline

DP: Let’s talk about scale. When did Rise actually start on  Momo? How long did production run, how many artists were involved, and roughly how many shots were completed?

Michael Wortmann: We started on Momo in January 2025 and we finished in May 2026, so it was a long one. I think we had a crew of 50 artists working on our show over time and we completed 280 shots, which is the majority of work. 

DP: The reel shows full-CG environments, set extensions both “normal” and “fantastic,” time-freeze sequences, particle sims — basically a buffet of VFX challenges. How did the team manage such variety without losing track of what’s real, what’s magic, and what’s due Tuesday?

Michael Wortmann: I am working with an experienced team that I know for years so I can completely rely on them helping me navigate through the storm. As I was on set supervising the shoot and in direct touch with the director and producer so I had a lot of background knowledge of what we needed to do.

DP: The USD-based multishot pipeline was pushed forward, I assume – how exactly did that work in practice these days? Were there multiple vendors, and how did you keep asset exchanges from turning into a Kafka novel?

Michael Wortmann: No, this was not as crazy as it sounds. Our pipeline is well established and it all worked out as planned. We pushed pretty much all shots through our pipeline: Maya, Houdini, Karma rendering and Nuke.

DP: Which shots were the biggest technical headaches, and how did Rise solve them?

Michael Wortmann: I think the golden dome shots were really challenging, both creatively and technically. We needed to match the beach including water sims, caustic renderings and all that, the asset was extremely heavy with all the wooden structures. Finally we needed this weird lighting setup where the center of the scene is in bright light but towards the end of the set we wanted night. We tried to sell the sunlight in the plates as the light coming down onto the pendulum and I think that worked beautifully.

Creature Feature: Cassiopeia the Turtle

DP: Let’s talk about Cassiopeia, everyone’s favourite turtle and possibly the calmest on-screen actor in cinema. How much research went into her design and movement?

Michael Wortmann: When we started I was told Cassiopeia is an animatronic build and that we only need to take care of her letters. I was curious but when I saw the first tests I knew we would need to help so we ended up with a good combination of animatronic and cgi shots here. We had all kind of hybrid shots where we just replaced the feet or touched up the rig underneath her shell. Chris Creatures did a great job and she really looks cute. Some closeups are especially incredibly well working, the animatronic had two versions, one that could move around and one that was slightly bigger and had a full facial rig. The only thing she basically can’t do is walk like a real turtle so that’s when we had to fully replace her.

DP: Be honest: did anyone at Rise actually have a turtle at home they brought in for research? And if yes, how long did the motion capture session take? And how is RiseFX’s policy towards pets in the office?

Michael Wortmann: Haha, we do have that occasional dog coming in but like always no animals were harmed during making this movie!

DP: The film’s Cassiopeia clearly isn’t a real turtle, not just because of the writing on her shell (D’uh). She moves with agency, emotion, even purpose. How much of that is biologically plausible, and how much is, well, pure storytelling?

Michael Wortmann: I think we went modest when it comes to unnatural behaviour, Michael Ende wrote Momo in Italy and had turtles in the garden of the place where he stayed. That’s why she is mostly natural and also why she doesn’t speak. I really like the mix of a natural turtle but then being spiced up with fantasy colors, she is way to blue for a real turtle.

DP: There’s a fine line between an anatomically accurate turtle and an expressive one. How did the animators find that sweet spot — especially when Cassiopeia smiles (something turtles, tragically, do not do)?

Michael Wortmann: Anatomically turtles cannot smile but her mouth shape really helps. Most facial expressions are not a result of one thing moving but if you open your mouth while you close your eyes a bit it makes the whole face suddenly resonate and allows to read an emotion. Animating the flower petals was much more difficult because that animation really is just about translating an object in space while still transporting a message.

DP: If you had to define Cassiopeia in one word what would it be?
Michael Wortmann: (Classic) Sidekick!

Wrap-Up

DP: If you were to start Momo again from scratch (same script, same crew, same turtle) what would you do differently, either creatively or technically?

Michael Wortmann: Well, there’s always that one shot you are not super happy with but overall we really managed to deliver a very consistent and high quality of vfx work. This was a german production and even though we had a decent budget we had to manage things efficiently in order to make this movie really look as big as it should. Everyone in Germany want to finally do these big, cinematic movies – I think we did one.

DP: What lessons or tools from Momo will Rise carry forward into future productions, apart from the obvious “saving time to spend time” mantra, which seems to apply to pipelines, not to artists?

Michael Wortmann: After this we have done another step into a direction where we can provide the full scope of VFX, not only in terms of content but also in terms of supervision and production support. Momo was always about taking all the experience and knowledge and make it possible to shoot a big looking movie on set without impacting the production as little as possible. There’s hardly greenscreens, no LED stage, everything is real and onset, thats’s why it looks so good. There’s a reason why the directior Christian Ditter and me both own a copy of “Making of The Creator”. 

DP: Finally, what’s next for you and for Rise FX?

Michael Wortmann: Welcome to the Hunger Games! I’m working on the new installment, titled “Sunrise on the reaping” – stay tuned, It’s going to be good!

The post Momo: Of Time, Turtles, and Technical Wizardry first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

When your morning stand-up starts with “Today we blow up The Beast” and ends with “Please aim the stone garden statue at the helicopter,” you know it’s a good week at RiseFX. In Heads of State, the Berlin-based studio delivered high-stakes action, digital doubles, and a presidential limo detonation that probably shouldn’t be emailed to the TSA.

Let’s get Presidential

DP: What was your scope on the project ?

Alex: The show for Rise was just under 500 shots in 3 major sequences split over multiple sites with a very broad range of work required. The film is, in my eyes, a classic action film and it was great fun to dive into the tropes of the genre with bullet hits, explosions, car crashes and muzzle flashes. Beyond this, we had to handle digi-doubles, face replacements, set extensions, full environment builds, blood and, of course, statues. 

The timeline for Heads of State was an interesting one, as it started before the writers’ and actors’ strikes, went on hold during the strikes, and then returned in full force. Obviously having work go on hold for a long period is challenging, because crew moves on to other shows in the hiatus and new artists have to pick up where others started. As a result the crew size grew and shrank a few times, but in total the crew was about 150 people strong over Stuttgart, Munich, Berlin and London over the course of the show.

Sebastian: Since both the Beast chase and the helicopter sequence are fast-paced action sequences, the total number of shots was quite high, so we had to edit many consecutive shots, which often posed a challenge for continuity.

It was crucial to have a proven system in place to handle the tasks involved in these shots in a multi-shot scenario with short turnaround times, so that any last-minute changes to one of the shots would not cause problems, as many things were interdependent.

DP: What did the overall pipeline look like for your work?

Alex: White Monster Energy was the vital source of caffeine that was the backbone of the production for me. One at 9am and one at 2pm ensured I had sufficient manic energy for all the dailies sessions.

Pipeline wise the most notable new feature we leaned on for Heads Of State was Riseflow. Artists and supervisors can create templated tasks in Houdini which can be triggered at designated points in the pipeline. 

For example, in the chase sequence for The Beast, we had to cover the car in bullet hits that would grow in number over the course of the chase. Obviously we need to maintain clean continuity over all the shots, so we needed a workflow to make this quick and easy. Our solution was that a dedicated artist would dictate and manage the bullet hit locations and timing in Nuke.

The locations of these hits were mapped onto the 3D car in UV space, and then a Houdini process would run for each shot that would dent the body work or fracture the windows in the desired location. This was a huge advantage in managing notes. If a change was made to a hit location in the 3rd shot in the sequence, the update would be rapidly available in lighting for all subsequent shots as well.

Sebastian: As mentioned before, our USD multi-shot workflow, which in this case was mainly used for layout, animation, FX, and lighting, was crucial in enabling us to quickly and efficiently manage iterations across all consecutive shots. The ability to launch things directly from our RiseBase database as a chain of commands to automatically execute sequential processes one after the other, rather than manually executing each pipeline step individually, saved a lot of time and helped to significantly speed up iterations.

DP: What kind of material did you receive from the set – plates, HDRIs, LiDAR scans, on-set references?

Alex: The set data for Heads of State was generally great. We had LiDAR for all locations we were working with as well as extensive set photography and light probes. I would have personally liked scans and photography for every prop we had to model, but not every production has the time and resources on set that a Marvel show can bring to force.

Sebastian: I was quite satisfied with the material provided, and some of the LIDAR scans of the beast chase were particularly impressive, as they had to cover very large areas where the car was traveling.  At first, it was a bit confusing to figure out where you were and how that related to the car’s position, especially since a lot of scenes only took place inside the car, but after a while, you got a pretty good idea of which corner you were turning.

The Beast & The Big Boom

DP: Was the presidential limo full-CG, partially practical, or a hybrid build?

Alex: We did indeed have a fully built asset for the Beast! For most of the shots we used a hybrid method of a CG chassis but retaining the wheels from the plate. Tracking the rigid body of the car was a far more streamlined process than tracking all the wheels independently, and keeping the plate wheels meant we didn’t have to worry about coming up with a workflow for tyre deformation or the joys of rotational motion blur.

The real body of work for most of these shots came in lighting. The car is mostly a reflective or refractive surface, so placement of proxy geo to project the plate or elements onto was a shot by shot process to ensure good reflections of the environment. 

The other aspect of the Beast chase was the interior shots. As is pretty standard, the car used for the exterior shots is not the same as the one used for the interior. A keen eye would be able to spot differences in the shapes of some windows. Fortunately, the Beast asset was built in such a way that it was pretty easy to compensate for the difference and maintain continuity.

It is worth noting that a reasonable amount of time and effort went into perfecting the look of the window cracks. Ilya was passionate about being able to see the thickness of the windows in the cracks, so we generated spiderwebs of layered reflective cracks like ribbons to help sell the depth of the bullet hits. 

Sebastian: What Alex said – and yes, the appearance and effect of the bullet holes were treated almost like a separate, specific design element. The goal was not necessarily to achieve realistic behavior or appearance, but rather to emphasize the thickness of the glass with the right degree of gloss and bling to show off the reflected light and broken glass as well as possible. It took a few tries before the Director was satisfied.

DP: Explosions are always a balancing act: how did you handle FX simulation, lighting, and compositing to keep it cinematic but convincing?

Alex: My background is as an FX artist and I love a good explosion. It is always fun discovering the visual language of explosions on a show, and we were fortunate in that there were some great practical explosions in the Beast chase. This gives us a great starting point, but we have lots of different explosions to handle, each with a different look.

In the Beast chase, we have the classic smokey fireball style of explosions, which could indeed have Michael Bay raising an eyebrow.  Earlier in the film we have a giant fireball filling up an interior staircase. For this we went with quite a clean burning fire that didn’t leave a lot of smoke, otherwise we would have had to add thick smoke for the rest of that sequence. Following this, Idris is holding a thermite grenade that he throws into a goon’s helmet. The challenge of this shot was crafting a look to make it read as themite whilst making sure it didn’t look like it should be burning Idris’ face off. 

For all of our FX work we lean on Houdini. I have never worked with a software that allows for such explicit control of an output. It allows us to address client notes at speed without the fear of painting ourselves into a corner in terms of approach. Because we also do our lighting and rendering in Houdini, we don’t have to worry about translating sim data between softwares.

Sebastian: The appearance of explosions, fire, and flames was discussed extensively internally and with the client and often iterated. On the one hand, there was practical SFX fire from the set that had to be used as a reference or unchanged, as it was only supplemented in places. On the other hand, it naturally had to be done with the right degree of movie magic and kaboom.

In addition to the look, the physical behavior of the flames was discussed, for example, when a flying, burning fire truck rotates around its own axis. We often started with the correct physical behavior, but almost always had to edit it, for example, to avoid covering too much of the action, to steer the flames in the desired direction, or to time the fire so that the Beast dramatically emerged from the flames at the right moment.

Favourits and More

DP: Which shot is your personal favorite – the one you’d put in your own showreel?

Alex: One of my favourite shots is an incredibly simple one. The Beast is reversing down a hill whilst under fire. The shot is from Idris’ POV and is framed on the wing mirror of the car. A bullet shot hits the wing mirror and blows it off.

The plate for this shot was the interior set of the car without glass in the window against a greenscreen. The exploding wing mirror was a practical gag. We replaced the greenscreen with elements of a street the Beast is driving down, cleaned up some wires and hanging bits of mirror and placed in our cracked CG window. 

The end result is clean and demonstrates the beauty of our window cracks in a shot that isn’t super motion blurred. The shot is a great example of practical special FX blended with VFX, and was a very easy shot for us to final. It is always a pleasure when something goes according to plan!

Sebastian: My favorite shots are actually three consecutive shots in the Beast Chase Sequence, where Sasha fires the rocket launcher from the sunroof, Sam dodges the Beast while we see the reaction of all the passengers in the car in slow motion, and then the car bursts out of the flames in real time.

It was quite complex to adjust the position and timing of the explosion and flames to the given camera movement, the car, and the surroundings so that three credible consecutive cuts were created and it ultimately looked like a continuous sequence of events.

Although we started with fairly simple layouts to nail down the timing early on and get it approved, these shots were among the last to be finalized, which doesn’t make them my favorites from a production standpoint, but the way they work together in the end made it worth the effort.

DP: If you could give yourself one piece of advice before starting the project, what would it be?

Alex: Never underestimate a face replacement. We had a few scattered around and they were mostly quite painless, but one shot where Priyanka tackles Paddy off of a balcony in Nato took quite a few versions to nail. 

The shot features a stunt double for Paddy, who I assume didn’t want to get thrown from a balcony. The camera shows his face very clearly for the duration of the shot, so we had to ensure we had elements of performance in the work. We were given a donor plate to extract Paddy’s face to use in the action shot, and it got us about 70% of the way there very quickly. However, getting it to 100% proved a challenge.

The shape of the stunt performer’s head was just too different from Paddy’s to be able to convince a viewer with a simple face replacement. It would have been great to switch to a full CG digi-double of Paddy for this, but our digi hadn’t been rigged for facial anim, and the budget of the shot would cover that process. In the end we used a 3D render of the digi head to fully replace the plate, and projected the facial performance of Paddy onto the 3D geo in Nuke. 

Sebastian: Fast-paced action scenes in long sequences require early planning and must be approved by the client as soon as possible in terms of layout and timing for all tasks so that everything is ready on time.

Although we knew this from the beginning, many approvals depend on the edit, and we could probably have made final decisions earlier and with less stress if we had carried out a more comprehensive and quickly editable post-visualization here.

DP: What are you working on now – are there new technologies or workflows making their way into your pipeline?

Alex: I have been testing a volume based approach for rendering trees that is very promising. Generally speaking, trees are always a pain to render because the sub-pixel geometry results in noisy renders, and the normal solution is just more samples. The approach I am testing is giving me good results with lower samples, and has a very organic look to it. 

The post RiseFX on Heads of State: Explosions, Statues, and Digital Diplomacy first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

When Red One dropped last this year, audiences got get a holiday cocktail of Jumanji-style action (The director was the same – Jake Kasdan), Christmas mythology, and CG hellhounds. Behind the visual spectacle: RISE FX, tasked with bringing a gooey portal system, guard monsters, and an actual magic chicken to life. We caught up with VFX Supervisor Michael Wortmann at FMX2025, to talk creature design, feather grooming in Houdini, and what happens when Krampus goes full-screen. From Atlanta to EmberGen simulations—here’s how RISE tackled 280 shots for Amazon MGM’s festive actioner.

DP: What was RISE FX‘s scope on Red One, and when did you get involved in the project?

Michael Wortmann: RISE came aboard the production during the shoot in Atlanta, Georgia in March 2023. We were tasked with some sequences for the new, secret Amazon christmas movie alongside Sony Imageworks and Rodeo FX. We had already worked with VFX Producer Cari Thomas on Shazam but we never worked with Jerome Cheng, the overall VFX Supervisor of the show. We ended up delivering 280 vfx shots for Red One over the course of twelve months requiring a mix of CG creatures, digital set extensions and a lot of hardcore 2D augmentations.

DP: Red One walks a fine line between Christmas fairy tale and action film. How did that tone influence the visual style and your VFX approach?

Michael Wortmann: We knew that production vfx supervisor Jerome Cheng and director Jake Kasdan had already worked together on Jumanji: Welcome to the jungle so it was clear that they would expect topnotch photoreal vfx work and a colorful phantastical design at the same time. But overall this movie would be a comedy so everything needed to help that and action would not be considered the most important thing.

 
DP: So, how duo you get that “fairyle” style in a story like this? 

Michael Wortmann: For example: the Krampus castle was conceived as a matte painting for the shot when Cal and Jack enter the realm of Krampus. When the second wide shot was added later, we did another matte painting because we never built the whole asset. Iterating the matte painting was straightforward and didn’t require so many rounds, in contrast to the design of the portals. Portals are not a new idea, so we needed to come up with something that would be funny and cool looking at the same time. 

The key requirement was to create something that happens fast because if something is overly complex or too long-lasting it is a) NOT funny and b) hard to read and understand by the audience. We started with the membrane simulation and made it feel gooey, later we refined it by adding ice crystal structures and depth blur. The last step was to foreshadow a bit of what is behind the portal. Our compositor Cintia Coll went through all the steps and then distributed the setup to other artists.

DP: How do you plan and prepare when a sequence might end up being full-CG—even if that’s not the original plan?
Michael Wortmann: Creating a full set or shot in CG is very expensive and time-consuming. As soon as directors or producers know that something is fully digital, they suddenly feel different about it. So we always try to shoot anything and keep it in there, so we might just end up with a 99% digital shot – just out of pure psychology. 

The big difference is when something is planned as digital from scratch it’s a long but more controlled process because it will be designed and relevant data will be acquired. However, if a shot turns from footage to full digital, it’s more likely to not have all the reference we would need. If we are lucky, we can reference a lot from the shot that cannot be used but still might help us get it right. All this factors into the bidding, planning and execution of a given shot. However, I have to admit that this can happen, but it is very rare that a shot is going overboard, and we need to rescue it.

DP: What were the most iteration-heavy sequences in Red One, and how did you manage creative feedback?
Michael Wortmann: The most iterations on Red One happened in character animation, especially the hellhounds and the chicken were a big challenge. When you do character animation the pressure is up because the director will ask for a certain performance and that means your shot is suddenly focussed on in a very different way as if you are doing a wire removal. So both, internal and external review iterations are really high in comparison to other vfx shots because it really needs to be perfect because one shot of bad character animation and the illusion is ruined.

DP: Can you walk us through the guard monsters? What went into designing and animating them?
Michael Wortmann: We received a ZBrush sculpt from the production with a design that was relatively close to the final design. So the first thing was to retopologize the model to make it suitable for rigging. 

Our modeller Marius Pörsel took care of that and also refined muscles, facial details and the porcupine spikes that are growing from the neck like a lion’s mane. After that texture artist Timo Scheu started to build shaders and paint textures based on the hires displacement maps generated from the ZBrush model. 

The tricky bit was to combine subsurface shading for the skin with rhinoceros-like armoured skin parts. As we knew that the hellhounds would only be visible in night scenes we developed shaders for the eyes that would give us nice reflections and even catlike yellow reflections also called Tapetum Lucidum. 

Rigging was rather traditional, we tested Houdini’s skin simulation tools but eventually found that we would not see much at night and the camera distance to the hellhounds. So our rigger Thorsten Schulz took care of this and adjusted the rig based on feedback from our animation supervisor Thorsten Kesse.

DP: We’ve heard tales of “The Chicken”. You must explain.
Michael Wortmann: The chicken in Red One is one of the funniest characters. In the story, the chicken is a bewitched agent of the E.L.F. agency and can be turned from a rubber chicken key ring to an actual live chicken by Callum’s actualizer.

Because of the interaction with the CG hellhounds, it was clear we needed a digital chicken. The director Jake Kasdan even owns chickens himself and sent us video footage of his favourite chicken, which is called Ellen.

We used Ellen as reference but, as Ellen is of brown colour, we had to make her white eventually because the brown colour was cancelled out by the blue night colours. Our FX artist Luca Schippmann used Houdini’s new set of feather tools to groom Ellen. This required a lot of development time as the tools were new. Ultimately, we could simulate all feathers and render Ellen with feathers made from curves, which allowed for the closeup shots we needed.

DP: What was the most unexpected challenge during the show—something you couldn’t have planned for?
Michael Wortmann: I think the biggest challenge was Krampus. When we were confronted with the Krampus sequence and briefed on the work, everybody was a bit concerned if we could pull this off. The approach was to rotoscope the Krampus character including fur and hair from the plates, scale him up and digitally recreate the areas that were missing in the plates now. 

We decided that we could do this, and after we completed the first couple of shots we became more confident. The shots turned out beautiful because we had nearly no chroma keying going on and everything looked great from the beginning as in the provided plates. There were a lot of test screenings, but for the biggest part this didn’t affect our part of the work.

DP: What kind of tools or workflows did you use to prepare for test screenings?
Michael Wortmann: For the first test screening, we worked completely on Quicktime proxies. We made sure to set everything up in a way that we could refine match moves and roto we created for this. However, this doesn’t always work – so we had to redo some work later on the high-res plates.

DP: Any clever uses of real-time tools or GPU-based solutions—like EmberGen?
Michael Wortmann: We used GPUs for simulating the storm clouds in Embergen. It seemed like a good test case as we never used it before in production, and because our clouds needed a lot of detail but not a very complicated behaviour or interaction we gave it a shot.

When we had our voxel cache VDB files we found it was nearly impossible to render in Karma, our standard renderer in Houdini, so we tested rendering on GPUs as well using Karma GPU. This gave us the power we needed, but there were still some limitations at that time when it comes to AOVs, deep output and image resolution constraints of which I believe most are fixed by now.

DP: What’s your approach to making sure “annoying shots” don’t end up in the final cut?
Michael Wortmann: This is not really an option. If we face a shot or briefing that seems not doable, we start a discussion about it and offer options to satisfy our client’s needs. “No” is not really an option…

DP: How do you adapt when today’s final delivery deadline is also… for Netflix?
Michael Wortmann: This has hardly changed, we still deliver ACES Linear EXRs that contain enough range for HDR grades. It’s more likely to work in 4k now than some years ago, but this is not really a problem.

DP: What good resources or tools were essential in your workflow—and which would you recommend to others?
Michael Wortmann: We have a lot of custom tools for our pipeline which starts with our own database Risebase and continues through all departments with customizations for Nuke, Houdini and OpenRV. These help us get through these big shows and are tailored for our needs more than any software we could buy.

DP: Can you tell us what’s next for you or RISE FX—if it’s not under NDA?
Michael Wortmann: I recently wrapped work on Michael Ende’s Momo, a really cool project that I supervised completely including the shoot, coming to theatres later this year.

The post Rise FX saves christmas? first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.

We spoke to Andreas Giesen (andreas-giesen.com), who has been with RiseFX (www.risefx.com) since 2011 and has worked on X-Men, The Matrix, The Last of Us and the various entries in the Marvel universe, among others. He was involved in Fallout as VFX supervisor – and we asked him again after his talk at FMX.

DP: What shots did you get? And how did you get involved with Fallout in the first place?
Andreas Giesen: We worked on just under 400 shots in total and were lucky that they were also very varied. Classic set extensions for the destroyed cities and the Wasteland, the iconic Vertbirds and Powerarmors, right through to the effects-intensive sequences at the beginning and end of the show.
We had already worked with Lisa Joy on the film Reminiscence and for Jonathan Nolan and Jay Worth on Westworld, where there were also gigantic set extensions. Of course, it was a great honour for us to be on board Fallout from the very beginning.

DP: I assume you played Fallout again as Research and Development?
Andreas Giesen: Yes, we had quite a few people on the team who spent countless hours in the various Fallout games. I personally played Fallout 4 extensively as a sniper. But we also had veterans from the early days whose input was incredibly helpful in making sure we stayed in the canon of the series.
I think that’s what characterised this project overall, that everyone involved really had great respect for the original and that a lot of heart and soul went into this implementation from all sides. Practically by Fallout fans for Fallout fans! I think it’s remarkable that the creators have also managed to get newcomers to the series on board..

DP: One would think that it would be easier to develop a film from a game because everything is already in 3D – were you able to use assets from Bethesda and the various studios?
Andreas Giesen: Of course, the Fallout universe offers an incredible amount that we orientated ourselves on, which is why we ordered a few artbooks before the start of the project. We only received complete 3D models of the Vertibird and the Dirigible, but these were more for inspiration than anything else, as they were quite simple in terms of the level of detail (the game is already a few years old).
An elaborate version of the Powerarmor and the Vertibird was also built on set, of which we then received lidar scans. While the Powerarmor could be used as is, apart from a few extensions, we had a little more freedom with the Vertibird, as only the front part was built on set and we had to add the rear part accordingly. Although some of the Powerarmors were of course completely replaced with CG in the end, I think it was important for the look and feel of the series to have this realistic, real armour on set.

DP: How many people were involved in your shots and what pipeline are you working in?
Andreas Giesen: In the almost 1 ½ years that Fallout ran at RISE, we had about 120 different artists working on the project. At the peak, which was towards the end of the project, there were around 60-70 at any one time. Of course, it wasn’t just artists, but also people from other departments such as production, coordination, editorial and pipeline.
The central tool in our USD-based 3D pipeline is Houdini, where everything from shading/lookdev, layout, lighting, FX and rendering (Karma) takes place. The same applies to the procedural creation of individual objects, landscapes or entire cities, which is now also playing an increasingly important role. We mainly use Maya in conjunction with Zbrush for classic modelling and Mari or, in some cases, Substance for texturing. Compositing is done exclusively in Nuke.

DP: And what was the first shot you worked on from these?
Andreas Giesen: We started with the sequence where the “Dirigible”, the zeppelin-like airship, arrives at the Brotherhood of Steel airbase for the first time. These shots were perfect for the start, as we were able to directly utilise our asset, which had been built over weeks, and they were relatively simple and clearly defined overall. At the beginning, we also received a package from the client with lidar scans of the locations and concept art for some of the assets and locations.
The fact that the entire series was shot on film with anamorphic lenses presented us with some particular challenges when it came to integrating the CG objects, but in the end, after successful integration, it contributed enormously to the credibility of the shots and the original look of the entire series.

DP: How much fun is it to detonate a nuclear bomb?
Andreas Giesen: An effect like that is, of course, every effects artist’s dream. So seeing the finished sequence in the series certainly makes the hearts of many VFX artists beat faster, including mine!
For us, however, this sequence was also one of the most challenging, as we had to create a retro-futuristic version of the whole of LA, combined with very complex and long large-scale effect simulations. We also had little to no room for classic matte painting, as large parts of the city had to be dynamically destroyed and the huge pyroclastic cloud had to interact with everything.
As a starting point, there was a concept art image from the production that we could build on. However, this had probably been created before the shoot, so the layout in the shots had to be changed considerably in some cases. Nevertheless, it gave us a direction in terms of look.

As a basis, we then extracted the real topography of LA from online mapping tools. However, these buildings, or rather “blocks”, were nowhere near detailed enough, so we used procedural techniques in Houdini to distribute countless details: Windows, balconies, fire escapes and roof superstructures. These elements were scattered based on certain rules, which we first tested on a single block of buildings and then refined. Colour variations and colourings based on the original colour of the building were important to create enough variation and avoid repetition even within these perhaps 30 elements at a distance.
In addition, our asset team, led by our CG supervisor Jenny Leupold, modelled several hero landmarks and buildings in the classic way, which then contributed significantly to the retro-futuristic LA, such as the Town Hall or the LAX airport. Since LA also has many parks, we have tens of thousands of Speedtree trees as instances scattered throughout the city.

Even though the overall topology is close to the real LA, the scaling of downtown was a bigger issue as it was very important to the client that it remained visible despite the distance we had to keep. If we had simply scaled the existing buildings larger, the entire relationship would have been destroyed, as these buildings would have had much larger windows than those in front, for example.

So in the end we recreated the silhouette of downtown with new, taller retro-futuristic buildings. This meant that everyone could immediately identify LA and yet the correctly scaled details made it possible to recognise the great distance. As already mentioned, we also had to adjust the layout of the city or the orientation slightly depending on the shot so that the important elements were always in the picture.

DP: And how easy is it to blow up a city so that it looks good in the series?
Andreas Giesen: I think our main explosion ended up being version number 273, I would say that answers the question of how easy it was. But of course it’s not unusual for effects of this size to go through that many, or even more, iterations.
There were several technical challenges in this sequence. Firstly, the first explosion and the shockwave extend over several shots, so we had to create particularly long simulations to maintain continuity from shot to shot.
Explosion shots in films are often only two to three seconds long, in this case all the shots added together were more like 30 seconds. Our FX supervisor Kristian Kück and his team have probably created some of the greatest simulations ever created at RISE. I think Fallout used more memory on our servers than the three projects I worked on previously combined.

Thanks to our USD pipeline, it was possible to make all the timing and layout adjustments for the individual shots of the sequence from a Principle scene by always moving a large cache. The timing and placement is then “pushed” from this Houdini scene so that the lighting artist always works automatically with the current version, depending on which shot he is looking at in his Principle lighting scene.

Another challenge was the sheer number of layers that had to be simulated for each of the four explosions in the final shot. While the explosion itself already consisted of several layers, there were also collapsing buildings, swirling dust, various shockwaves, shattering windows and vegetation in the city and also in the foreground. This vegetation was particularly interesting as we had to find an efficient solution for this incredible amount of trees.

A complex simulation for every single tree was definitely not an option. Our FX-TD Jonas Sorgenfrei has developed an interesting approach that uses the Speed-Tree Skeleton to skin the trees. In the actual simulation, only curves are simulated in Houdini, which is very efficient. Using KineFX, the curves can even be easily adapted completely without any simulation. In the final step, the movement is then transferred from the curves to the trees again; a point deform or similar computationally intensive method is not necessary, as the trees are already skinned and we were therefore able to use the joint deform node, in principle as with characters.

The third and perhaps biggest challenge was the look of the main explosion. Of course, you can find some references to nuclear explosions online, including the typical mushroom look. However, Jonathan Nolan, the director, had a slightly different idea in this case. In the first shots, when the little girl looks towards the explosion, it should still be unclear whether the explosion is really a nuclear explosion or perhaps just a large cloud of smoke from a fire.
In the references of real explosions, however, you can see the typical mushroom cloud almost immediately after the initial flash of the explosion has died down. So we had to find a way to make it visually believable that the mushroom cloud practically comes out of the smoke cloud.

This caused our FX team a lot of headaches, especially as these two layers could not simply appear “stuck together”. In the end, the decisive factor was the balancing of the different velocities in the simulations, which influenced each other so that the mushroom rising later slightly displaces the other smoke without the scale suffering from too fast an advection.

DP: And what was the last shot you completed?
Andreas Giesen: We actually edited the series pretty chronologically and also handed it in, as the editing room also worked that way and so we had the first episodes ready for final editing earlier.

So we finished the big attack in episode 8 last, although there were also some complex shots from the earlier episodes that took longer.
We also received the sequence with the cold fusion from the last episode relatively shortly before the deadline. Completing this in the remaining time was a particular challenge, as the time frame for complex FX simulations was no longer sufficient. But as always, Jonathan Heine and his compositing team still managed to conjure up absolutely convincing shots, with an exciting combination of some FX layers but also a lot of Nuke particle magic.

DP: I assume some of the shots – especially for the VP stage – were flexibly constructed and realised in your USD multi-shot workflow?
Andreas Giesen: Yes exactly, actually all of our shots go through the multi-shot workflow. We assign all the shots in a sequence or even several sequences, as long as they are playing at the same location, to a principle shot.
For example, we had the “Airfield Principle Shot”. All shots that take place on the Brotherhood of Steel airbase were assigned to this, including those in which the Vertibird flies at the beginning. So we don’t create a lighting scene for every single shot, but manage the lighting for e.g. 40 shots in this one Principle scene.

Of course, adjustments can be made for each shot using a so-called shot switch, which rotates the direction of light of the sun in a shot, for example. Rendering or sending for rendering on our render farm also takes place from this scene. Using a separate submitter node, you can then select in Houdini which shots are to be rendered overnight and send any number of shots with just one click.
We already had a multi-shot workflow before USD, but USD has simplified things and made it even more efficient, at least now that the rather complex changeover has been completed. Whereas it used to be much more complex to combine all elements of a shot, there is now only one node that loads practically all USD layers for a shot and it is not necessary to load cameras, layout, animations and FX caches individually.

As we work with a push pipeline, the subsequent department always has the latest version of a layer, so manual updates are no longer necessary. In combination with our database, the Risebase, we also have seamless dependency tracking, which greatly simplifies the overview and work of the artists. Of course, these Principle scenes are not only available for lighting, but also for all other CG departments such as assembly, layout or FX.

DP: With such a large production, everything is often very precisely planned in advance – were you able to get creative with Fallout, and if so, with what?
Andreas Giesen: On the client side, we worked directly with the VFX supervisor Jay Worth and his team and the collaboration was very pleasant and creative. Of course, there were certain specifications and visions from him and also Jonathan Nolan, the producer and director of the series, as I mentioned before, we initially received concept images for LA City, for example.
All in all, however, we had a lot of creative freedom when it came to the design of the destroyed environments, such as the bombed-out city of Shady Sands or the surroundings of the Griffith Observatory in the last episode. Of course, it was important for it to fit in perfectly with the tone and look of the series, but there were rarely exact specifications as to where which building should be located or anything like that.

The thrusters/nozzles on the power armour were also interesting. The basic model didn’t have these at all and we then made various animated designs with some ideas of how these thrusters could look and also how the mechanism works in detail when unfolding. The most important thing was that it shouldn’t look like Iron Man!
Joshua Koilpillai our asset lead and the other artists did a really great job, so Jay and Jonah quickly decided on a design, which we then refined a little. I think this also allowed us to build trust quickly, so that we were able to get creative again and again, which also made this project so exciting for me and the whole team. Our producer Annelie Dangel and her production and coordination team kept the backs of all the artists perfectly free so that everyone could concentrate fully on the creative work.

DP: Let’s talk about the Power Armors: As one of the most recognisable images in the Fallout series, it must have been a pleasure for the modelling/team?
Andreas Giesen: Definitely! This project was highly coveted at RISE, as we have a really big Fallout fanbase. Fortunately, the project ran for a long time and the tasks were so varied that many artists at RISE were able to work on it.

We received the basic model of the power armour from another vendor and then refined it with a number of details, as it was clearly visible in some of our shots, for example when Max crushes the bandit’s head with the hand of the power armour. A few scratches had to be added, especially in the texturing. We also modelled and textured the entire interior of the armour based on the lidar scan, as we had some shots in which it opens up completely.

Interestingly, they actually had a stuntman on set with a jetpack on his arms, who then flew through the air. A bit unconventional, but we were able to use the movement very well as a reference for the animation and also some of the dust and leaves that were whirled up are still real in the final shots. The integration of the CG armour made this approach a little more complex, but I would say the advantages outweighed the disadvantages.

For the shots in which one or more CG power armours are running, we did a motion capture session with our Xsense suits, which took a few attempts. Apparently it’s not so easy to walk as if you were wearing bulky and heavy armour..

DP: One of your shots was again a sunken city with dust, craters, in one case the sea and all kinds of broken buildings – were you able to use your experiences from Reminiscence here?
Andreas Giesen: Yes, we were certainly able to build on that experience, but with Fallout we tried to rely even more heavily on procedural workflows in Houdini, as the number of different environments was significantly larger.

We also made greater use of heightfields in order to have a realistic basis. In Reminiscence there was a lot of flooding, in contrast to Fallout where the wasteland, i.e. the ground, is an important element. The heightfield tools in Houdini are very flexible, so we were able to create landscapes hundreds of kilometres in size with entire mountains, as well as extreme detail on a small scale for close-up shots.

For the New Vegas establishing shot at the end of the series, we had to split the heightfield into about 10 different chunks to get enough detail for the front area. As it was clear for this shot that there would only be this one camera position, we resolved the heightfield chunks in the foreground significantly higher than those in the background. The mountains were then separate heightfields that we could move flexibly.

We proceeded in a similar way with the establishing shot of the Griffith Observatory during the day. As we were at a real location in LA in this shot, we first extracted the height data from map services and then projected this information into a heightfield. We then scattered procedurally destroyed buildings in Houdini, interspersed with LA Hero buildings that we had also built for the non-destroyed version of LA. Since they were destroyed in the first episode in elaborate simulations, we were able to use practically the final state of these simulations for the post-bombing shots.

In addition to the buildings, countless other details such as piles of rubble, destroyed cars and remnants of vegetation were distributed. This, combined with another heightfield layer simulating the sand piled up around these details, resulted in a realistic landscape. Even though this shot was based on a drone plate, you can see in the before and after comparison that not much of the plate remains, except for the sky. Nevertheless, it was incredibly helpful, especially for compositing, to have the plate as a reference, particularly in terms of the depth of the haze.

DP: The Vertis “feel” very close to the game – but the series stands between the games and the physical maquettes/toys/models that inevitably appear – have you already prepared anything here?
Andreas Giesen: We’ve actually given our detailed 3D model of the Vertibird, including all the textures, to a British company that specialises in such replicas. If you look at The Wand Company’s website, you can even see the first pictures.

A 35cm Vertibird made of metal with movable wings and rotating rotors. I have an idea of what the people in our asset team will want for Christmas..

DP: Will it be possible to throw characters into the rotor?
Andreas Giesen: That “accessory” probably won’t be there unfortunately, but I think that shot in the last episode where someone just gets shredded by the rotor is one of those details that makes Fallout so special.
Our FX artists were really able to let their hair down with this series, even apart from the large-scale effects like the atomic bomb explosion. Whether it was the dust clouds from the Vertibird, crashing power armour, the head smash or the spectacular attack in the last episode, there was never a dull moment..

DP: Looking at the whole project, what would you do differently if you were starting from scratch?
Andreas Giesen: You learn with every project, of course, and especially when it comes to creating landscapes of this scale, we were still able to optimise our workflows quite well during Fallout.
If I think of a specific shot, it’s probably the headsmash shot in the third episode. We changed our approach several times here, starting with a fairly simple solution that turned out to be inadequate. I think both the client and we were hoping that we would get by with it. But if we had started directly with the more complex approach that we ended up with, we would certainly have saved a lot of time. But as the saying goes: you’re always smarter afterwards. And for the next project.

DP: And what was your favourite shot?
Andreas Giesen: Not an easy question! Perhaps we can agree that I can choose a favourite shot for each category? My favourite environment shot is the Shady Sands crater establishing shot in episode 5. I really love the reveal moment and the detail that went into that shot. Our layout team did a great job here, and the compositing team really nailed the integration of the CG layers with all the lens effects.
In terms of our vehicles, it’s the shot in the second episode where we see the Vertibird take off from the Brotherhood base for the first time and make a turn. Here you can see the Vertibird for the first time with all its details, almost like a turntable.

My favourite FX shot is in the last episode, the Vertibirds fly the attack on the observatory, we are with the camera inside with Max and through the window we see how the Vertibird in front of us is hit by a missile and explodes. Every department, from animation to FX, lighting and compositing, really went all out for this shot. The fact that the explosion and the Vertibird don’t stay in focus the whole time makes this shot feel particularly realistic, I think. Of course, we could only influence this to a limited extent, but well-shot source plates are naturally motivating.
We also had a hard time choosing the showreel shots, the whole team did an incredible job, which I’m very proud of!

DP: And what are you working on now?
Andreas Giesen: As far as new projects are concerned, I can’t reveal much at the moment, but the next few months will definitely be exciting and of course we always use the time to improve our pipeline and try out new techniques, such as the use of Gaussian splats at the moment. The switch to Houdini 20.5 will also take place soon and we will continue to work on XPU/GPU rendering.

The post Fallout! first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.