The Orville (Case Study)
(CASE STUDY)
THE ORVILLE: NEW HORIZONS
The FuseFX Team had the pleasure of being the lead VFX house for season 3 of The Orville: New Horizons. Led by VFX Supervisor Tommy Tran, the studio produced cinematic visuals on 1,827 shots including bigger and more complex planets, space battles, and an impressive, completely overhauled USS Orville.
Before and After: The Orville VFX team created a creature called 'Randall.' Rollover the image below and see the plate to comp addition.
FUN FACTS:
Here are some fun facts about our work on the series:
- Worked on a total of 1,827 shots throughout season 3
- 50+ artists
- Created alien planetary environments/weather systems/cities to all-out space battles
- Unreal Engine utilized for episode 309.
- Principle vendor for all new assets- including the ECV-197 Orville
- Orville was upgraded from 20+ modeled panels to 3000+. This was to achieve a higher fidelity of realism and not hinder production to "scrape" the camera on the surface.
- Space station asset is 2.5 miles long
HIGHLIGHTS: STILLS
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“The entire season eclipsed all other seasons by far when it came to budgets, scope and complexity of shots. Every shot felt three times bigger than in past seasons,” says Tommy Tran, Visual Effects Supervisor for FuseFX, “Not only were the space battles grander, but also many new environments were introduced.”
301-303 Reel
“The Concept for the Krill planet depicted a vast, dark and dreary metropolis harkening to Blade Runner 2049 city sequences. It was a blueprint for the scale magnitude of the city. Then it was up to Patrick Horne, one of our CG Supervisors, to populate it with hundreds if not thousands of buildings, city centers, roadways, aqueducts and holographic billboards, using Clarisse to manage to build it all.”
—Tommy Tran, Visual Effects Supervisor, FuseFX
304-307 Reel
“I have to give credit to Samantha Hernandez, our VFX Producer, and J.V. Pike and David Rey, two of our VFX/DFX Supervisors, for bearing so much of the workload.” Tran notes, “There were not only the artistic challenges of creating new worlds, but also something that few outside our industry understand, which is the sheer amount of data to manage and get rendered within the time constraints.
Unreal Reel
"Episode 9 was so big, we had to split up into multiple teams working in tandem to get everything done on time. It was quite the undertaking to keep up with the scope of the scripts and Seth's creative vision. We relied heavily on Clarisse, Unreal Engine, Houdini, and Maya to develop these massive new assets.” - Tommy Tran, VFX Supervisor
308-310 Reel
