By Karen Moltenbrey

Visual effects have often been both a remote and a collaborative effort. VFX vendors work closely with their clients, usually communicating with them remotely. Internally, though, the effects artists typically work in close proximity, interacting with one another and other departments as they complete various aspects of the job.

For instance, one person may be handling smoke simulations, while another works on a CG model for the same scene, resulting in a collaborative workflow. But, COVID restrictions have physically separated visual effects artists, leaving studios to establish remote workflows that have as little impact as possible on the work as well as on the artists themselves.

Adam Stern

Artifex Studios: Resident Alien
… and then COVID hit and changed everything. That has been a recurring theme for most people and businesses everywhere, and the visual effects industry is no different. In fact, Artifex Studios — based in Vancouver, BC, and provider of VFX services for North American and international clients — was in the midst of creating effects for the SyFy Channel comedy Resident Alien when forced into a remote workflow scenario.

According to Rob Geddes, Artifex VFX supervisor, the show was filming [in BC], and Artifex was working on VFX for the first two episodes. “Everything was proceeding as normal, and then very quickly, we got word that shooting was likely going to halt and BC shut down.” Artists immediately began reaching out asking what effect this would have on them and the studio.

So Geddes, along with Artifex founder Adam Stern, acted fast, implementing an immediate move to a remote workflow. “We were up and running within the day,” says Stern.

The pair, along with some senior staffers, headed into the office to set things up so the artists there could continue working on the series from home by remoting into their own workstations at the studio using a VNC freeware client. This would enable the VFX crew to access the tools they needed, including Autodesk’s Maya, Chaos’ V-ray, Andersson Technologies’ SythEyes, Foundry’s Nuke and open-source Meshroom photogrammetry software. The senior staff also set up an FTP server for clients that they managed remotely.

Geddes and Stern, like most, expected the situation to last just a few weeks. “So we spun up and tested it that day and knew it would work, and we sent out an email saying, ‘We’re going to try this for now and see how it goes,’” Geddes recalls.

Adds Stern, “We wanted the fastest method possible, which at the time meant using Remote Desktop clients to access our already-running infrastructure. So, very little had to be implemented at the start.”

The biggest difference was the lack of a physical staff presence in the studio. The processes and so forth didn’t really change, says Stern. The crew just had to approach things in a different way at times. But eventually, the group fell into a rhythm.

Although the VFX artists were able to continue working on those first few episodes, production — and, subsequently, post production — on the series shut down as the lockdown orders continued from March 2020 onward. When production started up again, so, too, did Artifex’s staff, continuing with the remote workflow they had established months prior.

With a few exceptions, the staff had “reasonable” home workstations and bandwidth that could handle streaming. “The only concern we had was running dailies. We weren’t sure how that was going to go because we couldn’t get everyone in the room,” notes Geddes. However, the continued use of ftrack project management software, which enables remote reviews, solved that.

“Everyone can just log in to a URL, and we can all see the shots. Everyone can do draw-overs if they want. That was our savior. We would jump on a Google Meet and fire up ftrack and review our shots. With everyone submitting through ftrack, we still had eyes on everything,” adds Geddes. “It was a little odd, though. We didn’t have the social aspect of getting together for lunch or a beer at the end of the week. But workwise, I don’t think we really felt the sting.”

That can be attributed to the group having worked together for several years, “so the shorthand is already there,” says Geddes, adding that the remote workflow likely would have been challenging if the studio had to on-board a number of new employees — an issue that will have to be addressed at some point if the off-site scenario continues into the future. Another hurdle to the remote workflow is the varying comfort level of individuals communicating in a group setting online during dailies and so forth, as some of the VFX artists are more introverted and prefer to discuss things one-on-one.

Like many folks, the artists use Zoom to communicate as well as Slack for internal day-to-day ongoing chats and to schedule meetings and solo office time. The day-to-day business communications, though, are run through the Google Suite — Gmail, Calendar and Google Meet for the dailies voice channel.

According to Stern, rather than experiencing a drop in efficiency or output while remote, the opposite has been true. And there have been no major hardware or software issues to contend with. “We were able to perform all client feedback sessions remotely, which we were already used to,” he adds. On the downside, most of the staff missed the personal connections and the ability to have quick dialogs about work. And while Remote Desktop clients solved the ability to work remotely, “it’s still not as good as sitting in front of a workstation,” Sterns adds — a situation that is still improving.

At the time Artifex initially began transitioning to a remote workflow, the crew was finishing up a horror anthology series for Quibi (which is now shut down). And since the hiatus, the group has completed 685 VFX shots spanning 10 episodes of Resident Alien, about an alien that crash-lands on Earth and hides in plain sight by assuming the identity of a doctor in a remote Colorado town. The VFX work comprises various environments, spaceships and creatures, including a CGI octopus. Communication with the post producer was through Google Hangout. While Resident Alien was in post, Artifex also completed effects for a Nickelodeon miniseries, Are You Afraid of the Dark? The team used Zoom to communicate and, on the client end, Evercast for sessions with the editor.

Rob Geddes working from home

As Geddes notes, even the client interface process remained unchanged. “We never know where the next show is coming from, so that was just more of the same process.” Now, though, management has the added responsibility of checking in daily with the remote artists.

“The work is getting submitted, but you never really know what’s going on with the artists behind the scenes, how they are handling things,” says Geddes. The feedback from the staff, however, has been positive — they are thrilled about not having to commute and like having some degree of flexibility in their workday.

“For us, working remotely has been a net positive,” says Geddes, noting that there’s still more work to be done in solving some of the issues surrounding remote workflow. “People still need to come together and brainstorm. It’s all that in-between time when small ad hoc groups have to get together and hash out an idea or solve something. We still need to make that happen better in a remote scenario.”

Stern feels the same, calling the experience “very positive.” The key to success, he maintains, is always aiming for clear, frequent communication and maintaining a connection with the team on a daily basis.

Big changes, in fact, are afoot at Artifex, as the studio is planning on moving entirely to a cloud-based remote workflow. “I have been wanting to implement it for years,” says Stern. To this end, Artifex is meeting with the team from Amazon Web Services (AWS) with the intent to shift its infrastructure and pipeline into the cloud. “Our plan is to proceed full steam ahead with Nimble Studio,” says Geddes.

Amazon Nimble Studio, announced last week, is a new service that enables facilities to set up a content production studio in hours instead of weeks, while providing them near-limitless scale and access to rendering on demand. As a result, the service will enable a studio such as Artifex to rapidly on-board artists from anywhere in the world and produce content faster and more cost-effectively by accessing accelerated virtual workstations, high-speed storage and scalable rendering across AWS’s global infrastructure.

In the weeks leading up to the Nimble Studio announcement, Artifex had been running tests and determining how best to replicate its current pipeline and processes on AWS. “Nimble will allow us to configure and spin up the resources we need to get everyone going right away as we all work from home. The goal is to very quickly have everyone up and running completely on the cloud,” Geddes adds.

Michael Kaschalk and assistant working from home

Disney Animation Studios: Raya and the Last Dragon
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS) has produced many animated films. In fact, the studio’s most recent, Raya and the Last Dragon, marks number 59. And yet, the movie has the distinction of being the first to have been made by the crew of more than 450 working at home because of COVID restrictions. In fact, practically all of the shot production took place from living rooms, kitchens, back yards and bedrooms. Quite a feat when you consider Raya has a runtime of just under two hours, and the work is spectacular.

Raya (released in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access this past March) is the story of a young woman’s struggle to overcome trust issues while seeking to find the last dragon, who she hopes can help save humanity once again — just as legend says happened 500 years earlier — when an evil curse returns to the fantasy world of Kumandra.

Those working on Raya integrated and perfected a number of individual technical achievements from Disney-animated films over the past few years. Moreover, the movie contains several unique lands with their own designs, shape language, cultures and people. Water — a particular CG challenge — is an important element throughout, resulting in a wide range of atmospheric effects. In fact, the movie contains a plethora of effects, including the evil Druun character and those related to dragon magic.

“The vast majority of the film was made remotely. For effects, only about 5% was done before we left the building and started to work remotely,” says Michael Kaschalk, head of effects animation on Raya, estimating the work by other departments to have been in a similar range.

As Kaschalk explains, the studio has had work-from-home (WFH) systems that had been given to certain artists in the past, especially during crunch time on a project, so they could finish up the day, go home, be with their families and then pick back up later in the evening and continue to work before returning to the studio the next day. “But that’s not all-day interactive, doing reviews and daily communication,” he explains. “This [situation] was completely new.”

A core group of supervisors and leads was up and running from their homes within about a week of the lockdown, with everyone else on board shortly afterward. Most of the initial hurdles pertained to slow bandwidth, as the work-from-home supplemental kits were not meant for so many to be using them full-time. The kits comprise a keyboard and mouse, a very small device that connects to a monitor, plus an Ethernet cable that plugs into the modem, which connects to the individual’s office computer.

“Kit availability was limited since only a small number of people had been using them. You’re basically logging into your machine at the studio in your office, and it’s mirroring that on your display at home,” Kaschalk explains. “You’re remotely controlling your machine at work. We all ended up needing to have that, especially if you were using software to create animation.”

As for the remainder of artists, the engineers used a work-from-home program they had launched during Zootopia a few years back to allow for flexible work hours. At the time, the PC-over-IP solution supported approximately 200 artists, but when the pandemic struck, this was scaled up to support the rest of the staff.

According to Patrick Danford, director of technology at WDAS, many hours were spent around the clock in those first weeks figuring out how to address all the different needs. “Most of the amazing engineers who work in infrastructure and platform services teams at WDAS dropped what they were doing to help figure it all out. Within a month, we had most people back online and working as best they could,” he says. “We’ve been gradually improving things where we can ever since. It all feels kind of astounding in retrospect.”

Once the artists were able to remote into their office machines, they had access to all the software they typically use, such as Pixologic’s ZBrush, Autodesk’s Maya, SideFX’s Houdini and more, as well as proprietary tools including Paint 3D and Hyperion, Disney’s renderer.

According to Kaschalk, communication during this time was imperative. Whereas in the office this would often mean opportune moments of stopping by someone’s desk or running into a person in a hallway, now face-to-face communication had to be intentional and planned. A quick email or chat message would suffice for a simple, fast answer, but a different dynamic — one that’s “live” — is needed to hash out a concept with a co-worker.

In fact, video chat became the primary method of communication, which allowed the group to read body language, at least to some degree. “But again, you have to be intentional about setting up those conversations and finding the time to do them,” says Kaschalk. “Then, secondarily, this would fall to chat and email.” Often, it was easier to show someone something than to explain it, and in these instances, desktops were shared, more so between peers but sometimes with supervisors.

Telephone calls, however, were few and far between. “I think that was starting to wane before the pandemic anyway,” Kaschalk says. “I know a lot of artists who didn’t even have phones at their desks anymore and instead were using different forms of communication with an extra dimension, likely because we are in such a visual industry, and it’s more efficient to show something than to explain it verbally.”

He continues: “For every department to keep pushing themselves on every show, they have to connect. You can fall into a pattern of working in your silo and passing data over to another department, then they pick it up and go. But you’re not really partnering in that to create the absolutely best art. We have a really healthy aspirational mindset of always challenging that and always keeping those walls down, even when we’re not in the building.” This was achieved often through various interdepartmental communications channels, so questions would be answered in a timely manner. Also, there were weekly check-ins with all departments to review any concerns.

Kaschalk admits that he was worried about the crew’s emotional well-being and the added stress that completing the complex film would have — atop the anxieties related to the virus and the personal strains it brought. So he would check in with staff to see how they were doing, how they were feeling. And then there were the efficiency and productivity questions concerning the movie itself — especially as the lockdown stretched into weeks, then months.

“I think we were all shocked and amazed at how much efficiency we were able to retain and hold on to through this process,” says Kaschalk. “While people were OK and productive, they did feel a certain disconnect and isolation.”

Nevertheless, WFH produced some positive results, too, such as schedule flexibility, the absence of a commute, the ability to see family more often and being able to work outside or in different environments. It also expanded meetings to include more people who had been excluded before due to physical space limitations and allowed many to multitask during meetings. And, perhaps best of all, it enabled co-workers to get to know one another on a more personal level through the introduction of family members and pets during Zoom calls.

So, is a remote workflow the wave of the future? “I don’t know where that will land, but I don’t believe that the old ‘normal’ exists anymore for anyone in the industry. But I am very excited to discover what that new normal is,” says Kaschalk. Nevertheless, he believes that if you were to ask 100 people how the experience was for them, you are likely to get 100 different answers.

“I wondered when we finished if I would have moments where I felt like I could have done better. And then when I saw the screening, the reality of what I saw and the splendor of the effort that everybody put in there, it superseded and was out of line with any of the insecurities that I had had, and that was a really wonderful feeling,” Kaschalk says.

WDAS is working on its next big release, Encanto, scheduled for theatrical release later this year. Most of the production is being done at home, as well, and that team stayed in close contact with the Raya team concerning their remote workflow experience, giving them a significant head start when they got into full production mode on the new feature.

Karen Moltenbrey is a veteran writer covering visual effects and post production.