At the end of the last episode of the excellent Apple+ TV series, For All Mankind, there was a surprise post-credit shot of a giant rocket rising from the ocean. The rocket was the Sea Dragon, an absolutely huge two-stage booster that could have put the entire International Space Station into orbit in one launch. It would have been awesome!
For the show, the scene was created by Union VFX and they've written about how they created the scene and posted a short VFX breakdown of some of the elements. If you're into VFX stuff, it's fascinating, and even if you're not, it's worth watching for the goosebumps.
Working with production visual effects supervisor Jay Redd, Union VFX handled the rocket scene, ultimately delivering a 4K, 2544 frame single shot of the launch from under the ocean. It was based on a Sea Dragon rocket (never built for real but part of the show’s alternate version of the ‘space race’ in which the Russians beat the Americans to the first moon landing).
To find out more about how the launch was crafted, befores & afters asked several members of the Union VFX crew about the steps involved. These included taking original previs and generating water, fire and smoke sims as well as the rocket itself, in the process generating 4 billion voxels. The team also talks about utilizing cloud rendering for the work. Check out their run-downs, below, plus Union’s VFX breakdown of the sequence.
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