For Spartacus Season Three the VFX requirements were a movable feast from 2.5D projected matte painting setups to camera solves and set extensions.
It was also the final call for our well established arena pipeline, and we were able to deliver render layers and crowd elements that looked better than ever before. The arena’s fiery destruction in episode five was a combination of complex rigid body dynamics, cloth simulations and hand animated fixes. Final compositing of all our elements was completed by DigiPost under the beautifully painterly art direction of Peter Baustaedter.
Late in the day, compositor Emrys Plaisted and I were given a major challenge: to replace the left eye of the character Oenomaus when it was cut out in the final episode. Although a physical prosthetic was used, it was decided to substitute a digital version after the shoot had wrapped. Delivering this effect in extreme close up was challenging, time consuming, exacting and ultimately very satisfying.
3DCGI 