Mar 21, 2024

3 Body Problem" VFX Supervisor Steffen Fangmeier on Balancing Interplanetary Realities in Netflix's Ambitious New Sci-Fi Series

The premise of "3 Body Problems" (the first in a trilogy of novels by Cixin Liu, which will be available as a streaming series on Netflix on March 21) is simple. The alternating proximity of the suns causes gravitational effects and climate change that throw civilization into chaos and cause the inhabitants to seek escape from their doomed world. Trisolarians make contact with Earth scientists in revolutionary China and prepare for planetary migration using multidimensional physics in the decades to come.

To adapt this science fiction saga, showrunners David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Wu shaped the elements into an eight-part thriller centered on a group of international physicists in London who expose an impending invasion. The story includes intelligence officers (Benedict Wong, Liam Cunningham), rogue agents (Rosalind Chao, Jonathan Pryce), and young scientists (Eiza González, Jovan Adepo, John Bradley, Alex Sharp, and others).

The film reunites much of Benioff and Weiss' "Game of Thrones" team. Visual effects producer Steve Kullback and visual effects supervisor Steffen Fangmeier worked with special effects and prosthetic effects artists from Shepperton Studios in England and eight international visual effects studios to create the intense imagery.

Central to the series is the visualization of the "three-body problem," which depicts the interaction of alien suns in a hyperreal virtual game. Says Steffen Fangmeier, "Not only was there the challenge of creating realism in the game, but there was also a huge challenge in terms of filming these scenes." Our first view of the environment was not complex; it was a barren landscape with temples. But the lighting changed as the three suns rose and set, so the question was how to capture this."

In game level one, scientist Jin Chen (Jess Hong) meets a robed count and his young squire (Eve Ridley) as the lights swim around them. Production designer Deborah Riley and cinematographer Jonathan Friedman staged this scene in Shepperton's LED shooting environment.

"We used programmable LED panels with moving light sources," Fangmeier explains. 'It allowed for more complex filming scenarios in terms of changing the lighting. Normally, it is difficult to shoot exteriors on stage. But in this environment, because it is a simulation, we were able to avoid that. The scenery was simplified in the sense that there was not much complexity, but it had to look absolutely realistic to impress the players with the game. The lighting engineer programmed the animation very quickly, with the lighting changing from daylight to dusk and then to night"

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As the sun scorches the landscape, the follower appears to shrink, surrendering to the scorching heat. Prosthetic designer Tristan Versluis created a flattened carcass that can be rolled up like parchment for "dehydrated" regeneration. Scanline VFX created the effect of dehydration and subsequent rehydration through intricate 3D animation.

"The process of the girl becoming this [shell-like] figure, oozing moisture and revealing bones and distortions was supposed to be spontaneous," says Fangmeier. It was something the followers did voluntarily, an illustration to show the djinn how the Trisolarians preserved themselves when their planet became uninhabitable." All VR sequences were meant to educate the humans playing as characters in the game.

Jin and her friend Jack (John Bradley) enter Level 2 in a medieval cathedral that succumbs to a terrible incineration. Work began on the cathedral's interior at Wells Cathedral in Somerset, England. Cinematographer P.J. Dillon installed light sources outside the doors and windows of the cathedral to simulate the fiery alien sunlight. Scanline VFX then animated pyrotechnic effects such as stained glass windows melting and followers on horseback being engulfed in nightmarish flames.

"We shot the real horses from a mobile camera van. But the horses and followers were all animated with computer graphics."

"The horses and followers were all animated with computer graphics. We did not use practical fire because of the precious location. However, warm, interactive lighting was used to make the characters in the altar set pieces feel as if they were lit by CG fire, which the scanlines added later"

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In the aftermath, a mysterious figure (Kai Shimooka) appears in the volcanic landscape." As she walked on the lava, she used lighting strips on the floor for interactive light. That is the general rule. When we are not in the actual location, we create what the actors interact with. The rest is computer generated."

On Level 3, Jin and Jack visit a recreation of Omar Khayyam's (Jason Forbes) Persian temple surrounded by 30 million Mongol soldiers. Only 40 costumed performers represented the soldiers on the set. Scanline VFX created the entire environment.

"The army went all the way to the horizon, with mountains looming in the background," says Fangmeier. This is something they did well in "Game of Thrones. This is something we did a lot in 'Game of Thrones' as well." For the actor lighting changes, P.J. Dillon used animation on the LED panels based on the previs we created in the Unreal Engine."

Production built half of the temple's upper platform and part of the roof, suspending the cast by wire for stunts and special effects to represent the failure of gravity.

"Some of the flying soldiers were also filmed as elements," Fangmeier adds. 'I required them to wear helmets that covered most of their faces. I also asked them to wear gloves, as digital hands tend to stand out as fake. For the soldiers standing near the camera, I tried to choose real performers, but they often had digital [characters] right next to the real performers, so we had to match them perfectly."

In scenes where characters were entering and exiting the game, they wore polished chrome headsets. Ireland's Screen Scene VFX tackled the difficult problem of how to stage the headset scene without showing the filmmakers reflected in the props.

"The props showed everything. They had to replace everything visible in the room, including the cameraman, camera equipment, and lighting flags." Additional VFX supervisor Rainer Gambos took photogrammetry of each set and passed it to the screen scenes.

Then, the chrome interior of the helmets liquefies, transporting the viewer into a virtual reality world. BUF was also responsible for the second episode and the final game sequence of the fifth episode, which was the most scientifically complex." We made hundreds of versions before we got to that design," Fangmeier says. No one wanted it to look like a digital clock, but the numbers had to be legible and show anguish. We imagined a proton-sized 'sophon' flying around at nearly the speed of light, ticking numbers into our retinas."

Sophon was conceived as a proton-sized supercomputer that would first affect particle accelerators on the ground and then appear in the sky as a warning to global citizens around the world BUF treated Sophon's image, "a supercomputer that would be able to detect the speed of light, and then show the numbers on the retina.

"BUF did all of our unusual stuff because that's their specialty," says Fangmeier. Especially with the expansion of the proton from ten dimensions to two dimensions. It was especially hard to get the proton to expand from 10 dimensions to 2 dimensions. When we showed the new version to the showrunners, their reaction was, 'Oh, that's not quite what we want. That was the creative challenge."

The series included such diverse tasks as realistic animal animation at Image Engine Vancouver, an international period setting, scientific hardware, and a spectacular destruction sequence in episode 5, which visual effects supervisor Boris Schmidt and his team directed at Scanline. sequences, among other diverse tasks, while Steve Kullback strategically planned resources.

"It was our first season, so we had plenty of time, especially in post-production," Fangmeier recalls.