Working from home: Chaos Cloud delivers Vivarium VFX

How did you get your foot in the door for VFX work?

Jonas Ussing: 15 years ago, I got my first freelance gig for Ghost VFX in Copenhagen, creating a flying logo for a CD commercial. I went on to work for a number of Danish VFX and production houses, and have often come back to Ghost to work on Hollywood titles including The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Cowboys & Aliens and Olympus Has Fallen. This experience was extremely educational; Ghost has fantastically talented people, and I learned everything I know about Hollywood-level FX there.

What were you asked to contribute to the film?

JU: The majority of VFX on the film were comp effects that were distributed across a number of other vendors. I was tasked with creating the 3D version of the suburban nightmare.

How did you find working with the film's makers?

JU: It was very cool. They were already using vendors in several countries, so I was just another remote vendor. I met with VFX producer Mikael Windelin, veteran VFX supervisor Peter Hjort and director Lorcan Finnegan to discuss the sequences.

How many people worked on your Vivarium effects shots?

JU: In post, just myself. I used an abundance of resources from show supervisor Peter Hjort, such as set photos, measurements, etc. All photos had a color chart in them for calibration, and the set had HDRI probes (also with color charts) for every scene so that I could light the CGI set accordingly, per scene.

What were the advantages of using Chaos Cloud to render them?

JU: With Chaos Cloud, I could deliver more than a whole minute of full CGI shots, never waiting more than an hour for a full render of a shot. I could never have done that on my own setup.

Did Chaos Cloud help you develop shots with Vivarium’s creative team?

JU: Chaos Cloud helped with iterations in the sense that I could deliver finished and completely re-rendered shots overnight. I also think companies will have to greenlight more render farms as eligible for NDA work, as they turn to smaller shops that have to use render farms.

Do you think smaller effects studios are going to become more prevalent?

JU: Definitely, because render farms and real-time rendering make it possible for really small shops to create high-end feature material without the cost of running a large facility.

It's always been technically possible to do our line of work remotely, but company policies and NDAs have made it difficult. Now, companies have been forced to work around it, and hopefully, the management has found out it works just fine.