Case Study: Home Box Office, Inc achieves stormy-sea VFX realism with Foundry Nuke

Home Box Office, Inc cuts VFX prep from a week to 2 days with Foundry

The customer, Home Box Office, Inc, faced the challenge of creating a visually dark and complex stormy water sequence for the season finale of The Last of Us S2. Working with vendor Foundry's product Nuke, the VFX team at DNEG needed to maintain the show's dystopian style while ensuring the action remained visible to viewers despite the director's desire for a moonless, moody look.

Foundry's solution involved using Nuke's 3D system, Deep Compositing, and the CopyCat machine learning toolset. This allowed artists to creatively rebuild environments, enhance CG passes, and efficiently solve problems like recoloring vegetation. The results included significant time savings, with CopyCat completing a task in two days that would have taken a week per shot, and ultimately delivered a dramatic, immersive, and visually consistent finale.

Home Box Office, Inc