Foundation S1

We worked on most of the shots involving the planet Synnax, seen from space, from a terrestrial point of view and underwater.

For the rings, we dissected the resources available from the Cassini–Huygens space research mission exploring Saturn’s System. We also collected references from Nasa. We really tried to build a coherent universe and created some VFX grounded to reality.

Perspective, light and shading were very important in order to create beautiful reflections so we decided to create each component in 3D instead of a more traditional DMP workflow. The rings were made of little rocks scattered along curves, the skies were a mix of HDRI’s and hundreds of individual clouds as VDB scattered in the distance.

For the Synnax village, we received extensive reference photography and photogrammetry from the practical set build – we extended in a logical way what was built. We created a library of individual assets: walkways, platforms, houses, stairs, canoes, fishing ropes, props etc.

The village layout was done using proxy geometry then exported as point cloud to light, where the proxy geometry was swapped to high resolution geometry. In parallel each asset was detailed, and random props and ropes were scattered throughout the whole layout whilst Houdini proceduralism facilitated the task.