Making the dragons fly

Martin Pelletier, visual effects supervisor at Rodeo FX, explains how House of the Dragon's fantastic flying beasts are able to take to the air

By Matthew Corrigan

Published: October 15, 2024 Updated: October 16, 2024

Martin Pelletier, visual effects supervisor at Rodeo FX, explains how House of the Dragon's fantastic flying beasts are able to take to the air

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Snowdonia (Eryri), a land of majestic peaks, high, silvery lakes and rich, rolling pasture could almost have been tailor made as the backdrop for HBO's House of the Dragon, prequel to the world-conquering Game of Thrones. Visiting the region, maybe finding one of its forgotten castles or hidden valleys, it's easy to imagine that fantastic creatures really do soar among the jagged mountains, great leathery wings spread wide as they flit from point to point.

Redefining possibility For the team at Rodeo FX, turning imagination into reality is all in a day's work. When three spectacular new dragons were needed for season two, they were perfectly placed to deliver. Moondancer, Vermax and Silverwing were integral characters in the continuing story. Just like their human counterparts, they, too, were shaped by their life experiences. Martin Pelletier, visual effects supervisor at Rodeo FX, oversaw their creation and gives an insight into the process behind it.

Martin Pelletier, visual effects supervisor, Rodeo FX The first step is understanding the storytelling point of each and every character, he explains. We had a meeting with the client where they presented us with concepts of their dragons basically a simplified version. They also gave us a size reference next to a human being, to give us a good understanding of the scale. From there, we dove into a personality description. Using Moondancer as an example, he continues. Moondancer is a mid-size dragon in the series. He's meant to be reckless, snappy and unpredictable. He's a bit of a punk he has the mohawk. It was a really good way of picturing how we were going to animate the character.

The team then considers the types of actions that are required, such as soaring, diving, moving in a jerky way to reflect the dragon's spiky personality. The mechanics of his movement are explored, Do we have to collapse the wings, or keep them open all these things have to be considered when we start building. A skeleton is built up with muscle groups added before surfacing is applied. This takes into account the dragon's past, how his life has been lived according to the story, all of it intended to ensure the character is plausible and convincing. All of this combined ends up in maybe a four month process to build one creature from the ground up to a final beast that is going to be renderable in a shot.

Highlighting the importance of this aspect of the work, Pelletier says that the past life of an object being created is sometimes underestimated in CGI and VFX. We need to do the exercise when we build our assets, so that they really belong within the storytelling lines and don't stand out in a bad way, he says.

Turning reality into fantasy Understanding the need for believability, the team uses as many real life reference points as possible. With dragons, we're kind of short on real life references, Pelletier laughs, so we try to figure out what does exist that would translate. The wings, for example, have membranes that flex as the skin moves. To accomplish this, the team studied footage of bats in flight. The facial movements of komodo dragons and other lizards were also examined. All these things are based on the closest things we can find in real life, he continues, that was the biggest challenge.

Rodeo FX created around 230 shots for season two. Some 160 people worked on the project which took a little over eight months. Pelletier describes the technology required to breathe life into their creations. Our two main tools for 3D creation are Maya and Houdini. Maya is used with ZBrush, to sculpt our final models. To create texture, we use Mari or Substance. Everything else is handled in Houdini: lighting effects, simulation, muscle definition is also being driven in Houdini. Final renders are done in Houdini using Arnold, and the final compositing of everything is combined and finalised in Nuke.

Although AI is very much an industry buzzword, the technology was not extensively used by Rodeo FX. AI is an interesting beast, says Pelletier, before commenting that studios are sometimes reluctant to use it, perhaps because of concerns over privacy. There are some grey zones, he says, some limitations. Studios want a heads-up on whatever AI tools or technology we are going to be using, to ensure we're going to be safe playing with their content. It's quite sensitive. We couldn't go too wild and broad with AI especially on this show.

Aside from the creative elements, some AI solutions were used to handle repetitive work, effectively freeing up the team to concentrate on higher value tasks. There's a bunch of little AI tools [that we] used across the show that are not cloud-based and very secure, such as automated rotor work in Nuke [and] automated tracking in some instances,' Pelletier explains. It's just speeding up the process of early assembly, and it gives us a bit of a head start without spending too much time and money then we can finish using real artists to do the final work.

Achieving believability has clearly been a driving force for Rodeo FX, and Pelletier is fulsome in his praise, both for the team and what they have managed to create and the actors who worked with them. I think we have achieved something quite hard, which is giving an obvious and very distinct personality to Moondancer that was recognisab

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