Hi everyone, I got to help bring this beautiful monster to life in the latest season of Star Trek Discovery. I was responsible for all the rigging, facial motion capture, tissue simulation and general asset maintenance for this character. I hope you all like it!
The team at Ghost VFX also won the 2021-22 Prime Time Emmy for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Single Episode, for this episode on Start Trek Discovery. I'm very proud to have ben a part of this team.
The main challenge with this asset in rigging was to get it motion capture ready for both body and face. I had the pleasure of working with my colleague Bjarke Rauff, a fellow Creature TD to achieve this goal. Bjarke helped incorporate the Perception Neuron suit to our existing pipeline for body capture, while I focused on implementing Apple's ARKit technology for facial capture. A custom facial rig and animation publishing tool was built to achieve high quality data capture across a multitude of shots.
The animation was done by Bjarke Rauff, Feanor Engemann and Jakob Baltzersen. Anders Elmholdt was responsible for all the Houdini work. Keriem Dijksma was the talented artist that made the concept and final sculpt for the monster. Rendering & shading was done by Dan Andersen. The entire project was made under the supervision of Ivan Kondrup and producer, Kristen Prahl.
Shot Breakdown
Shot Breakdown
Face Rig Test
Muscle Deformation Test