The Alienist – VFX
The Alienist, a new 10 part TV series produced by TNT and Paramount TV, is an unflinching psychological thriller set in 1896 amidst the vast wealth, extreme poverty and technological innovation of New York during the Gilded Age. The Alienist follows the hunt for a serial killer responsible for the gruesome murders of boy prostitutes. Stars Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans and Dakota Fanning.
Shot in Budapest, Hungary, The Alienist required many digital set extensions to recreate the elaborate, intricate and bustling turn-of-the-century New York streets.
Undabo’s Doug Kennedy worked alongside the talented VFX team at Peerless with the initial asset build for the show. Doug’s main role was a layout TD, writing tools and scripts to manage the vast amounts of models and data created for the very detailed city extensions & laying out and rendering shots for the upfront trailer available below.
The tools created were essentially one click solutions to streamline tasks:
Linux-Windows_SWITCHEROO
To easily switch between Windows and Linux File paths or locations in a scene for exporting assets from one to the other.
Rip_Material_Presets
Used for updating merged models with latest textures, rips all materials from the available Libraries and saves the presets to a folder location
Attach_Material_Presets
Used for updating merged models with latest textures. Attaches all previously saved presets from location to selected materials
CONVERT_ALL_TO_CLASSICAL_
Fixes softimages peculiar scaling system on nested objects, essential for successfully horizontally flipping models.
EXPORT_ABC
Automated Exporting of grouped Alembic models, converts reference models to local models, (alembic auto converts instances on the fly)
IMPORT_ABC
Basic importer with incrementing count number. These were used for importing & exporting massive layouts for crowd sims
GLASS_AOV
Automated buffer system for setting up glass pass on buildings.
IMPORT_EMDL_FROM_FOLDER
Point it a folder and import all the models in that folder.
Instance_to_Duplicate
Converts an instance back to to a model
Instance_to_duplicate_with_
The script above does not come up for air and might run out of memory, this version autosaves after x amount of conversions.
Match_new_Instances
Make new instances of new model but place in the position of old instances. for updating scenes with new versions of models when updating ref models just doesn’t work!
pointCloudToInstance
Made for filling market stands with piles of fruit. ICE makes the fruit piles, the script converts all the fruit back in to normal model instances.prerender_change_to_res1_
Convert all items in group REFMODELS to resolution 1 reference model. or edit to make any resolution needed. used to load heavy scenes and fix broken loading of reference models on scene load.
Prerender_reload_refmodel
as above but can just reload the models not change the resolution
prerender_reload_refmodel _withpause
Hit okay after every update if needed, stops computers exploding!
Reattach_Instances_to Masters
when instances stop working and become disconnected, this will fix them. If they really are dead use Match_new_Instances to repopulate with fresh ones.
SIMPLIFY_BUILDING_BUILD
Specifically made to automatically strip down and tidy up complicated town house buildings and convert into fbx exports ready for re-importing and merging (this removes the sharing material dialogue box issue).
