I watched Jupiter Ascending and it LOOKED amazing. As part of the Digital Matte Painting forum, it would be
awesome if we could discuss some of the environment work here in regards to design, aesthetics, technical
headaches and realization, etc.
Any DMPs out there who wish to share their experience creating this stupendous monster of a VFX
world, please feel free to post stuff right here.
How Jupiter Ascending was made
http://www.cgsociety.org/index.php/CGSFeatures/CGSFeatureSpecial/jupiter_ascending
Art of VFX
http://www.artofvfx.com/?p=11056
The Jupiter Look Book
[http://lookbook.jupiterascending.com/intl/uk/](http://lookbook.jupiterascending.com/intl/uk/)
Conceptual art by Maciej Kuciara with link to Empire magazine scan
http://www.kuciara.com/#/jupiter-ascending/
Jupiter Ascending - “Inside the Universe” Featurette
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grjFva1r9EM
FX Guide: Strange Worlds
https://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/strange-worlds-methods-jupiter-ascending-effects/
Jupiter Ascending Concept Art by The Aaron Sims Company
http://conceptartworld.com/?p=38440
How VFX Artists Designed the Computers in Jupiter Ascending
http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/heres-how-vfx-artists-designed-the-computers-in-jupiter-ascending
Behind the Scenes of Jupiter Ascending VFX
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnZt-V05p-k#t=16
Jupiter at Framestore
http://www.framestore.com/work/jupiter-ascending
[img]http://www.awn.com/sites/default/files/styles/original/public/image/featured/1016615-warner-bros.delays-jupiter-ascending-2015.jpg?itok=pAd4Qnhh[/img]Glad you liked the look of the movie Milan, it was certainly a big effort from a lot of people!
Some great resources there too Seema, nice job compiling all of those!
So I guess I can talk a little bit about my involvement on this show. I’d feel like a massive fraud taking any real credit for this one as I only joined very late in the show. The Art Director / DMP supervisor on Jupiter here at Dneg had to leave the show about 4 weeks before finishing, so I joined for about the last 8 or 9 weeks, and stepped in to his role for the final month. Fortunately by that stage, all of the workflows had been built, the look of the world was well advanced, and the crew were in place, most of whom had been on the show a lot longer so we’re already very familiar with what was required.
So my job really was just to keep things ticking over smoothly for the final push - assigning any new tasks, keeping an eye on what was going through or coming back for changes, and because everything was in very good shape already from before I joined, I was able to continue contributing my own matte paintings and concepts right to the end, as I had been doing in my initial few weeks on the show.
The pipeline on this one was very CG heavy. That made sense given the two locations that contained numerous shots, and the big fx requirement. So actually from a DMP standpoint, the work was largely in enhancing the CG where it didn’t hold up in certain shots. There were a good few standalone shots though that did require a more involved approach from DMP as they were never going to get the same level of CG build. As such, I don’t think there was a single matte painter who didn’t end up doing concept work at some point or other. I’d say that’s quite rare, usually there are one or two concept tasks that pop up through a slow that land on the matte painters schedule, maybe more depending on the show size or structure. But I can’t remember another show where the whole of the DMP team ended up doing concepts at some point or another.
Projection work is almost always carried out by the DMP artist these days too, but not on this show. The CG pipeline ended up being heavily Houdini based - for the fx obviously, but also because Houdini’s native renderer Mantra proved to be the most efficient when it came to rendering the insanely detailed geo that had been built. That posed an issue because the matte painters weren’t familiar with Mantra or Houdini, so the lighting TD on any given shot was usually the one responsible for the projections. For the shots that were more unique and could be set up to be more Maya / Nuke friendly, things were easier and the matte artist would do the projections.
Anyway, there’s not too much more specific I can think to say, certainly not without potentially violating an NDA, but I’ll see if a few colleagues are interested in chipping in here, especially the one who had much more long-standing involvement in the show (I’m talking a couple of years rather than a couple of months).
Hope some of that info is interesting anyway, sorry I can’t say too much because of NDA’s, but that was my experience anyway 
Hi,
I was Environment Lead at Method Studios for Jupiter Ascending, we completed a number of shots, (mostly “Orous” and “Kalique” ) including the one you see in the opening post of this thread with the ‘fish ship’
We were involved in both the pre-production concept phase as well as the post shots being discussed here.
Is there anything in particular you guys would like to know?
Thanks
Olivier
Hey Olivier,
Awesome to see you here, I’d love to know a bit about where you guys drew inspiration from when the whole project was still in pre production. As I said in my post above, I was very late to the show so I missed all that fun in designing the world early on. If I remember right, you guys were involved from a very very early stage so I’m presuming things were still pretty open at that point?
I saw some of the concepts that you and Philippe did (I know Philippe from way back) and I have to say they are really beautiful. The sort of shots that you’d dream about as a matte painter, especially those waterfall environments!
Also, are you about to tell us anything about what your pipeline was when working on the final shots?
N
Nice thread here!
Big fan of your work guys and looking forward to see your outstanding art on the big screen.
One show I would have loved to be part of. Nice of you to do that write up Nick, some lovely images from the show.
Wow, Sci-fi heaven! 
…But a technological hell for the artists involved, no doubt! Maybe I’m wrong but it looks like Vue has been used in the creation of this movie, I’d love to know if anyone here used that program and how that helped contribute to the shots
I haven’t seen the film, but I have to say visually this looks to be breaking the barrier. And what I especially admire about the overall look of this film is the colour working in sync beautifully with the intricately detailed Sci-Fi environments, which to me is really refreshing to see as I think too much Sci-Fi uses the same depressing desaturated colour palettes. Its storytelling after all, make it bright, make it colourful and as aesthetically pleasing as possible! From what I see with this movie, it sure has been done, and on a whole new level. Good job to all those involved, really inspiring work.
Hi Nick,
We started to work on the project back in 2011. Back then, the brief was very open. We were given a few lines describing the world that needed concepts along with some mood boards. From there, we would submit our concepts on a weekly basis, get feedback… and repeat
Our two main source of inspirations were the natural world (from micro to macro scale) and 3D fractals.
For the finals shots the DMPs were the usual mix of photos and 3D renders (vue3D) blended together with Photoshop and then pass over for comp magic. In the following image all the elements where made and rendered with VUE3D and then reprojected on basic geo. The planet generator in Vue came very handy !
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9SZET8n3W7w/VNutDTALbhI/AAAAAAAAATI/p_GljZ0nRdA/s1600/2015_%2B2_11_19_27.png
Thank you to both of you, Nick and Olivier. You and your teams deserve some OSCAR, BAFTA and VES recognition for your outstanding work.
Jupiter Ascending Concept Art by Olivier Pron http://conceptartworld.com/?p=38214
There are basically three and a half things I’m interested in. The 0.5 question being how much Lana and Andy were involved with visually designing the worlds and guiding through the development. If this falls under NDA, please, do not elaborate on the matter.
My main question regarding the conceptual work is just to get an idea how you guys took shots from concept to final on this show?
Jupiter Ascending Concept Art by Philippe Gaulier http://conceptartworld.com/?p=38250
At what point did you split up individual environments into 3D and 2D, and on sequences with crazy camera moves or just a large number of separate shots with various angles, were you able to get away with providing renders straight to comp, or did you always have to paint over and re-project. The scope of work just seems overwhelming.
Jupiter Ascending Concept Art by George Hull http://conceptartworld.com/?p=38499
With such complex work, how did you guys manage the collaboration between different VFX houses on shots? The hand-offs, communication and all the back and forth must have required some advanced coordination. How did you go about it from a technical point of view?
Jupiter Ascending Concept Art by Emmanuel Shiu http://www.eshiu.com/
Bonus question: Comparing the Chicago chase sequence to something like the refinery at the end of the film, what significant differences were there in your approach to those shots? The base of my question being that one environment seems to be more set-extension based, while the other appears to have required more 3D builds. Just a stab in the dark though…
Thank you again for taking the time out of your busy schedules to answer some community questions here.
Whoa, what an awesome thread 
Sci-Fi-Heaven … I totally agree whith that. It’s a shame, that I couldn’t see the movie yet. Hopefully, I have the chance in the next days
I have only one question about the DMPs. As they are so complex, are the shots create by more than one house? Or are they made as “one shot => one company”?
I think it’s an enormous task to keep the correct look and feel while collaborating with each other.
wow, not much to say cause I have not seen the film yet (i will do for sure!). But always is great to see all this stuff. Mainly, from a DMP point of view.
amazing work! Congrats for the teams involved!
And thanks for the explanations!
Oh wow, great thread. Thanks so much to Nick and Oliver for taking the time to share your experiences. Haven’t had a chance to see the movie yet but looks pretty amazing from the work here.
Amazing looking film here, congrats on the work all! I was wondering if you guys used Clarisse ifx on any of the shots?