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The Book of Boba Fett
Ghost VFX completed a variety of visual effects for one of the latest installments of the Star Wars franchise, The Book of Boba Fett.
plot
The story follows the infamous bounty hunter after the events of the Star Wars movies and Season 2 of The Mandalorian. The spinoff finds Boba Fett occupying Tatooine as he takes his throne in what was once Jabba the Hutt’s territory.
scope
Working with VFX Supervisors Richard Bluff and Cameron Neilson as well as Animation Supervisor Paul Kavanagh, Ghost VFX began work in early 2021.
We completed a wide variety of shots, but most of the work was set extension work,” says Ghost VFX Supervisor Andreas Thomsen. “We also did several face replacement type shots for alien creatures who needed better articulation, replaced limbs with robotic ones and added fully animated droids that we also got to build here in Copenhagen. To top it all off we had a group of more FX driven shots where we developed the look of different close combat weapons.”
“Ghost VFX mainly worked from concepts executed by ILM, but we also got to create a few of our own such as the weapons the biker gang uses when helping Boba Fett capture the Wookie gladiator Black Krrsantan. These were then based on provided references and developed through discussions with Richard and Cameron,” describes Ghost VFX Producer Monique Buitenen.
IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS
An example of more complicated effects was a scene where Boba Fett’s dressing droids dress him in his armor after he awakes from sleeping in his bacta tank, the cylindrical vessel filled with bacta fluid in which Boba Fett is submerged to heal his wounds. “These droids were choreographed by actors on set whom we later removed and replaced with the CG droids we built in-house, based on the designs provided,” notes Thomsen. Ghost VFX mainly relied on off the shelf software. These primarily included Maya, Houdini, Nuke, Mari, Substance Painter and Zbrush. All shots were rendered in VRay.
Animating these to look puppeteered, and carefully tracking the moving pieces of the outfit, sells the idea that they could have existed on set, as was the case with other droids in this show.”
