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DTSTAMP:20260417T190157Z
LOCATION:West Building\, Ballroom AB
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250813T144500
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20250813T153000
UID:siggraph_SIGGRAPH 2025_sess275_pros_112@linklings.com
SUMMARY:Wētā FX Presents: The Last Of Us Season 2: The Horde
DESCRIPTION:Nick Epstein (Weta FX) and Dennis Yoo (Wētā FX)\n\nStarting wi
 th an exciting and challenging client brief – an infected horde thawing fr
 om frozen stasis to overrun the town of Jackson, and a tight timeline for 
 this ambitious work, meant our Wētā FX team really had something to sink o
 ur teeth into.\n\nVFX Supervisor Nick Epstein and Animation Supervisor Den
 nis Yoo will take you through how Wētā FX worked with the production VFX t
 eam to previs, build, animate, and integrate a thousand-strong horde to th
 e gritty realism of The Last of Us Season 2. \n \nUsually crowd work sugge
 sts compromises, but as this talk will show, for this artfully chaotic seq
 uence there were none. Every infected was designed and built to hold up fu
 ll screen, with full cloth and hair simulation, and a full set of face sha
 pes. Essentially, every crowd character was a hero character, and that pre
 sented a lot of challenges.\n \nTaking you onset,  Nick will explore how W
 ētā's Previs was  developed with and utilised by the production team to ca
 pture some incredibly complex action with confidence that it would transla
 te to a predictable, yet flexible final product. \n \nExtremely variable s
 hooting conditions required innovative solutions, including the developmen
 t of a robust depth extraction toolkit which enabled varying weather patte
 rns to be inserted into any plate, and the entirely CG horde to easily be 
 intermingled with live action performers.  \n \nFlexibility and variation 
 was one of the most important design factors to consider to bring the sequ
 ence to life. For this, we required a ‘mix and match’ system that would al
 low any piece of clothing to be dynamically refitted to any infected, rega
 rdless of proportions, and crucially this needed to be represented upfront
  in animation as well as renders later.\n \nDennis will outline the challe
 nging combination of motion capture, keyframe animation, and ragdoll dynam
 ics required to achieve a realistic, but also somewhat inhuman – infected 
 – cadence to horde performances.\n \nThis talk will detail the process for
  building a vast digital assets wardrobe based on client provided scans, a
 nd adapting these across the infected horde using a procedural texturing s
 ystem in lighting, usually utilised earlier in the pipeline by lookdev. \n
  \nIn addition to this, the episode needed extensive cloth and hair simula
 tion at a scale previously not undertaken at Wētā.  This was further compl
 icated by the dynamic refitting of garments, as well as the use of ragdoll
  dynamics, resulting in some (sometimes) comically terrifying situations f
 or our creature team to wrestle through.\n \nWe developed a Nuke based sys
 tem for ‘weather fixes’ driven by challenging conditions during the Jackso
 n siege shoot.  Finally, we’ll talk about how our environment/DMP team han
 dled full replacements - from the snowfields and mountains surrounding Jac
 kson in different weather conditions, to full CG forested snowscapes.\n \n
 Last but certainly not least, is the return of the iconic Bloater. The new
  unforgiving environment and intense weather conditions meant that we had 
 to carefully rethink the complex character build, and how to achieve all t
 he menacing details…\n\nInterest Area: Production & Animation\n\nRecording
 : Not Livestreamed, Not Recorded\n\nKeyword: Animation, Capture/Scanning, 
 Industry Insight, Lighting, Simulation\n\nRegistration Category: Full Conf
 erence, Wednesday\n\n
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