The production needed hundreds of unique environment shots spanning castles, siege battlefields, sweeping landscapes, and dense urban interiors — all set in a historically grounded but cinematically heightened medieval world. Budget constraints ruled out a traditional approach of building sets or shooting on location for each environment. Everything had to be created in CG.
The additional pressure: the environments couldn't feel like a VFX backdrop. They had to feel lived-in, weathered, real. The director's reference was not fantasy films but historical painting — Brueghel, Dürer, the density and chaos of real medieval life.
Shot Breakdowns
PICK A SHOT · DRAG THE WIPE · ROTATE IT · TOGGLE RGB / B&W · ADJUST GAMMA AND GAIN — LIKE A REVIEW STATION
Partial practical set and interactive smoke on a modern backlot — everything above the foreground had to be replaced, with the destruction sim matched to live-action debris already in the plate.
3D Scan
DRAG TO ORBIT · SCROLL TO ZOOM · DRAG THE LIGHT SLIDER TO SWEEP REFLECTIONS
We began in development, breaking down the script environment by environment and establishing a visual language before a single asset was built. Szabi led the visual development process — mood boards, concept paintings, and key art that locked in the world's palette, material language, and lighting logic months before production.
From there the team moved into an AI-assisted asset pipeline that allowed us to explore material variations and vegetation systems at a speed that would have been impossible using traditional methods — while keeping artistic direction firmly human. Every asset went through Szabi's eye before it was approved.
The siege sequences required a crowd and dynamics approach that integrated seamlessly with the environment. We built modular environment components — wall sections, towers, gate structures — that could be assembled and destroyed procedurally across dozens of different shots without visual repetition.
Spectral supervised on set from the start of principal photography, ensuring every plate was shot with its digital environment already locked. Fewer surprises in post meant fewer fixes, and fewer fixes meant a cheaper back end for the production.
Across the run the work ranged from intimate candlelit interiors to full CG aerial wides across armies of thousands — the same modular library carrying both. The result is a world that earns its scale.
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