In 2024, Jelmer Boskma gave us an in-depth look at the VFX work crafted by DNEG for the series Time Bandits. Today, he returns to share insights into his latest project: the sci-fi series Murderbot.
How did you and DNEG get involved on this show?
I had just wrapped my previous show when the studio reached out to DNEG about ‘Murderbot’, and the timing aligned perfectly. Not long after, I met with VFX Production Supervisor Sean Faden to discuss the scope of the project. It would be our first time working together, but it felt there was an immediate sense of alignment on both the creative vision and technical approach. DNEG’s previs team and myself got involved early on, which allowed us to support Sean during pre-production by providing previs and additional concept art.
How was the collaboration with the showrunner and VFX Supervisor Sean Faden?
Collaborating with Sean and VFX Producer Danny McNair was an absolute pleasure. Sean had a very clear creative vision and was incredibly collaborative throughout, which made our work much more focused. That tone was echoed all the way up to the showrunners, Chris and Paul Weitz, who were deeply involved throughout post and gave clear, thoughtful feedback at every stage. I don’t recall many times where the feedback from Chris and Paul differed far from our internal notes or Sean’s ideas for our shots. The process was about as smooth and creatively rewarding as anyone could wish for.
How did you organize the work with your VFX Producer?
The work was divided over our Montreal, Vancouver and Mumbai teams with Montreal being the hub for the show. My VFX Producer, Vicky Gillett, was instrumental in driving all of this. With sequences being turned over in roughly episodic order, she managed scheduling, resource allocation, and communications across multiple time zones. Her ability to maintain momentum while balancing the needs of editorial, production, and our internal teams played a huge part in the delivery of nearly 500 shots.
How did DNEG’s involvement in pre-production help shape the show’s action sequences? What role did previs and techvis play in that?
I cannot overstate the benefit of our early involvement enough. Being able to actively contribute design solutions to both the hostile creatures during pre-production, whilst blocking out their choreography in previs, was invaluable. We weren’t locked into anything yet, which meant we could work in tandem to ensure we could present Chris and Paul with a set of creatures that not only looked the part, but were also able to perform the way we needed them to.
Having this headstart also allowed us to share our early 3D worm model with the special effects makeup department. They crafted a physical section of the worm’s head to scale, which we could use for lighting reference on set. The model also proved helpful for the costume department with regard to Dr. Bharadwaj’s encounter with the worm. Since we knew exactly how she would be grabbed, they could create a ripped and punctured version of her outfit that would connect well with our animation later on. For a few particularly complex shots, we also delivered techvis to help camera and SFX teams prep the rigs needed to shoot the plates.
Can you describe the process behind designing Murderbot’s deployable helmet and arm cannons? How did you approach blending these elements into the character’s overall look?
The practical suits designed by the costume department were beautifully fabricated and served as a great foundation for our work. For the deployable helmet, we took a mechanical design approach, but in reverse, breaking the helmet down into moving parts that could fold and retract in a physically plausible way. This was very much a process of trial and error. Working directly in 3D, figuring out section by section how to make it all work. We also added internal details, hinges, brackets, and sliding plates that would only be seen mid-transformation but added a layer of believability. The same principles applied to the arm cannons: they were designed to feel functional, and consistent with the language of the suit. For the arm cannons, it was less about solving a puzzle, but more about designing something that felt in keeping with the rest of the suit. The animation and integration relied heavily on accurate body tracking and lighting passes to ensure our CG elements blended in seamlessly.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in animating Murderbot’s suit, particularly when it comes to the helmet and arm cannons in action sequences?
One of the key challenges was making the animations feel like part of the character’s behavior, rather than something external being added. With the helmet, we spent a fair amount of time tuning the exact speed and timing of the deployment to feel both slick and deliberate, never too showy, never too mechanical. We also introduced subtle touches, like the actor’s ears shifting slightly as the helmet retracts, or his hair settling as the pressure releases. Those small details did a lot to sell the realism. For the arm cannons, the challenge was to make their blasts feel truly integrated with the character. I didn’t want to rely on relighting the plate with 2D roto shapes. Since we were planning to bodytrack Murderbot’s arms anyway, I opted to 3D track the entire torso and actually render interactive lighting passes driven by our blaster FX, which we then comped back on top of the plate. This gave a much more naturalistic look to the light emitted from the blasters and helped them feel more integrated.
The creature designs in Murderbot are quite intricate. Could you walk us through the creation process of the alien creatures, including the creature FX and the detailed animations that brought them to life?
Initial designs were provided in the form of concept illustrations done by the art department. I began by roughing out the female worm creature in ZBrush, to get a handle on its form as well as to get more specific with the design. An added benefit of working in 3D early on was that this allowed us to test out the creature’s range of motion and general proportions. It helped us identify potential issues with the design when comparing it with the staging and choreography we were starting to develop in the previs. From there, the design evolved through concept paintovers and sculpt iterations until we landed on something that could handle both close-up performance and full-body action. Our creature team took that early model and refined everything beautifully, adding the additional detail we were going to need for our close-up shots and laying out the final polygonal topology. Painting of the textures and lookdev were happening in tandem with the development of the creature rig, which was constantly being refined based on feedback from our animation team, led by animation supervisor Andrew Doucette.
Andrew and his team developed the animation style of the female worm through motion tests that balanced insect-like unpredictability with a sense of weight and scale. The creature had dozens of limbs, two heads, and a highly segmented body, so maintaining plausibility in movement while also feeling alien was key. FX-wise, we layered multiple sims, tissue deformation, fluid FX (when required) and environmental interactions, to give the creature a physical presence on screen. For the male hostile, much of the same process was followed. Different references were relied upon though. Rather than looking at insects, we studied octopi, rhinos, elephants and walruses. We looked at creatures with thick, leathery skin and a substantial amount of weight in their movement. Although screentime for the male hostile was going to be somewhat limited compared to the female, the complexity of its design and performance required us to still invest a substantial amount of time developing this creature.
The worm attacks are some of the most intense scenes in the show. What was the process of creating these digital doubles and ensuring that they fit seamlessly with the live-action elements?
Our digidoubles were built to a very high level of fidelity, often based on full-body scans of the actors. These were critical for shots that required extreme interaction or where live-action performance wasn’t feasible. For the worm attack at the survey crater, we used a hybrid approach, preserving as much photographed performance as possible, and using a combination of body-tracked and keyframed digidoubles to bridge the gap between practical and CG. Lighting and camera reference plates were captured on set, including our usual chrome spheres and color charts, which allowed us to match CG elements to the scene precisely. In post, we evaluated every shot to determine whether the live-action could be enhanced or needed to be fully replaced, and always made that call based on what would best serve realism and impact.
How did DNEG handle the FX-heavy sequences, like dust, blood, and weapon effects, within the fast-paced fight scenes? Were there any specific techniques you used to keep them looking realistic?
We approached these shots with a philosophy of layering, as each element had to interact correctly with everything else, from creature impacts to environmental disturbance. Our dust simulations varied from fine particulate clouds to heavier debris kicks, depending on what the creature was interacting with. Rigid body simulations were run anytime we had the worm run on soil that featured small pebbles.
Blood FX were treated uniquely for each character. For example, Murderbot had a silvery-blue mix of fluids with varying amounts of viscosity, while the worm’s blood was a saturated green, but otherwise behaved fairly naturally. The key was to create readable silhouettes and shapes that popped visually, even during fast cuts. Both for the blaster muzzle flashes and bolts, as well as for any blood splatter or mist. For any plasma bolts fired from Murderbot’s arm cannons, we first blocked in the bolts using basic geometry. This allowed us to get signoff from the showrunners and the editors on timing and placement, before spending time running the actual simulations.
The Hopper ship plays a crucial role in Murderbot. How did DNEG approach the design and animation of the Hopper, and how did it interact with the live-action footage?
The hopper design came to us in the form of a handful of illustrations done by the art department. A partial set of the aft side hopper was constructed on 3 separate locations, which was key reference as far as finishing and detailing was concerned. We took inspiration from the set piece and wove that design language of panels, cutlines and mechanical detail into the build of the rest of the CG hopper. We made suggestions for the movement of any articulating pieces, such as the landing gear, turbines, louvers and hatch, grounding the hopper as a fully functioning transport vessel. For some shots, we would find ourselves extending the partially constructed physical hopper on set with our CG hopper. For other shots, for instance, where the hopper is flying or landing, we used the setpiece as reference and a target for its final position, but fully replaced the physical element. The interior of the hopper was built as a separate set, which we LIDAR scanned and included as well with our hopper extension shots. We ran multiple FX simulations for the hopper turbines when in flight, as well as dust kickup, steam, and heat ripple passes for moments when we see the hopper landing or taking off.
Can you talk about the challenge of integrating the CG environments, such as Preservation AUX and Deltfall, into the live-action plates, especially considering the weather conditions in Ontario?
The Ontario shoot gave us beautiful real-world lighting and grounded locations, but with that came unpredictability in the weather. Some sequences were shot under a range of weather conditions, from full sun to overcast skies and even rain. To normalize the lighting, we introduced CG cloud shadows into sunlit shots and added sunlight into overcast ones. This was done by rendering light and shadow passes on the LIDAR data of our location. I wanted to avoid altering the lighting on the actors directly, so whenever they were shot on an overcast day, we would add sunlight away from them, making them feel situated within the cast shadow of a cloud. Similarly, if the plate had our actors in direct sunlight, we would add cloud shadows in other places within the frame.
As far as our environments are concerned, Preservation AUX was the most extensive from a build standpoint. It appears throughout the season, seen from different angles, across different days, and under varying lighting and weather conditions. Building it fully in CG gave us the flexibility to maintain visual continuity across all those scenes, and made the most sense in terms of scale and reuse.
For Deltfall, we enhanced the practical location with hundreds of alien trees and plants. Most of the vegetation was created as detailed 3D assets, though some trees were carefully rotoscoped and color graded from the plate photography. The Deltfall sequences, in particular, posed a major challenge for our roto and comp teams, who had to isolate large portions of the live-action foliage to make room for our CG flora and other environmental elements. Ultimately, this was well worth the effort as the blend of real and CG vegetation made that world feel far more grounded than if we had gone with a fully synthetic environment. Beyond the plant life, we added sulfur deposits, steam, hopper landing platforms, and a refinery to the lake. We also extended the practical Deltfall habitat, adding an upper level, two additional hubs, and connecting hallways in CG.
Could you explain the role of the CG environments in enhancing the atmosphere of Murderbot? How did you ensure they felt grounded in the world while still adding to the science fiction elements?
Shooting on location gave us a great starting point, and from there, the CG environments were used to subtly shift things into the realm of sci-fi. Sometimes that meant adding planetary rings in the sky, or chromatic distortion in the clouds, small touches that quietly suggested an alien world. For Deltfall, the environment needed heavier augmentation. Once we added in alien vegetation, atmospheric FX, and structural extensions, the balance shifted just enough to feel immersive and otherworldly without losing its naturalism. While the techniques varied across environments, the goal was always the same. Transporting audiences to a new, different world and not having them question its believability.
With so many different sequences and assets involved, what was the pipeline like for ensuring consistency across the 448 shots and 27 sequences?
Houdini forms the nucleus of our RenderMan pipeline with layout, environments, FX, lookdev and lighting all running through it, whilst leveraging openUSD to ensure clean handoffs between departments. As far as ensuring consistency is concerned, casting is everything. Having each department overseen by people that have a proven track record when it comes to organisation and planning, as well as a keen eye for detail, is paramount. I was very fortunate to have these key roles filled by an absolutely stellar team.
Looking back on the project, what aspects of the visual effects are you most proud of?
What stands out to me most is the breadth of work we contributed, from subtle environment extensions and set augmentation to complex creature animation and hard-surface builds like the Hopper. I’m especially proud of how seamlessly our more invisible work sits beside the larger, flashier moments. Seeing a digital extension of a set blend perfectly into a scene can be just as rewarding as watching a full creature sequence come to life.
Which sequence or shot was the most challenging?
The last shot we finaled was the moment a Graycris secunit gets crushed by the hopper at the Deltfall location. It was one of the few moments where editorial direction shifted a bit. We ended up not having the right coverage for that and had to resort to a Graycris digidouble full frame, walking slowly towards the camera. We resorted to keyframe animation as we didn’t have access to the actors anymore to capture their motion for this specific moment. It took a good amount of extremely subtle tweaks to make that moment feel as natural as we needed it to be, as any hint of Graycris being a digidouble would ruin the impact of the shot.
As far as a challenging sequence, I would say that the survey crater attack in episode 1 had the most moving parts. Besides the general complexities of bringing the worm creature to life, balancing out the weather and lighting conditions across that scene made an already tricky sequence substantially more challenging.
Is there something specific that gives you some really short nights?
Not so much the show itself, but working through the tail end of the industry-wide writers’ and actors’ strikes added a layer of uncertainty to everything. That industry-wide disruption definitely had an emotional weight, and finding focus in the midst of that was challenging at times.
What is your favorite shot or sequence?
There are a handful of shots sprinkled across the season that I’m especially proud of, all for different reasons. Some are creature and FX-heavy and stand out technically, while others are more understated; set extensions or environmental tweaks that blend in so well you’d never know they were touched. It’s that variety that made the project so satisfying.
What is your best memory on this show?
Honestly, just having the chance to work on Murderbot from beginning to end. It was a difficult time for many of us in the industry, and being surrounded by such a dedicated, thoughtful group of people made the experience special. It gave all of us something to pour our energy into when the industry was going through a really uncertain period. That’s not something I’ll forget.
How long have you worked on this show?
I had my first look at the script in December 2023. We started our preproduction work early the next year and delivered our final shots in March 2025, so it was about a 15-month journey from start to finish.
What’s the VFX shots count?
DNEG delivered 488 shots across 27 sequences and 8 episodes
What is your next project?
I look forward to the day when I can give a more concrete answer to this, Vincent, but for now, I’ll have to stick with the usual vague one: it’s a little too early to share just yet, sorry!
A big thanks for your time.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
DNEG: Dedicated page about Murderbot on DNEG website.
© Vincent Frei – The Art of VFX – 2025
