VFX supervisor Stephen James, one of the show’s recent Best Special Visual Effects Emmy Award nominees, produced 356 shots across 36 sequences on the hit HBO series, filled with digital environments and water simulations that brought to life a version of Seattle overtaken by vegetation.
Returning to Season 2 of HBO’s critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic drama The Last of Us, visual effects studio DNEG delivered 356 shots across 36 sequences for Season 2, bringing to life a version of Seattle overtaken by vegetation and reclaimed by nature. Their work helped the hit show garner 16 Emmy Award nominations, including for Production Design and Visual Effects.
Led by DNEG VFX Supervisor Stephen James, himself one of the artists just nominated for the show’s visual effects, the studio’s contributions include environments depicting a flood-ravaged coastline, giraffes wandering through Salt Lake City, and a flashback featuring Joel and Ellie at a space museum.
“When we first see Seattle, the skyline is mostly based on photography augmented with CG buildings and matte paintings,” explains DNEG VFX Supervisor Stephen James. “In the foreground, we did a heavier full-CG takeover. Rather than randomly place buildings, we started with LiDAR to build city blocks with realistic spacing. That helped the architecture feel organic and believable. Otherwise, if you simply build to what you see in-camera it feels empty, like something is missing. We a try as much as we can to build off of a realistic foundation.”
The destruction depicted in the series is portrayed as a consequence of natural forces rather than war. “We justified the coastal collapse through flooding and underground tunnel failures,” says James. “We wanted it to look like it had slid into the ocean, not collapsed from explosions. Reference footage of real floods in the Pacific Northwest helped us achieve that.”
He continues, “Think of those moments in nature where we have massive storms and ask yourself, ‘If there is no one to clean it up or rebuild the dams, what would happen over time?’ In terms of how we designed the city collapsing into the water, we made sure that the silhouettes and the way everything was sloping leant itself to looking as if it was sliding into the ocean rather being destroyed by bombing. It had to feel like you could see the ground beneath the buildings collapsing into the water.”
To visualize Seattle’s downfall, DNEG turned to Houdini for city layout and environment design. “The destruction wasn’t on camera, so we had time to finesse it,” adds DFX Supervisor Melaina Mace. “We built a library from a handful of pre-destroyed buildings that could be re-purposed and used tools to collapse sections as needed and then scatter debris on top of that. Added up over an entire city, it ends up being quite a lot.”
Noting a procedural approach was not used for the Seattle build, she adds, “Per sequence, it was almost always a custom build for each section of the city. We worked closely with the show team and HBO to design all of the key shots and angles. We had specific concepts that we had to match in most cases, and where there wasn’t one, we worked with our own concept team to design that part of the city. While there was some instancing, the approach was mostly hand-built to match concept art and production design.”
Key landmarks such as the Seattle Aquarium and the Great Wheel were completely reconstructed using a mix of real-world data and artistic modeling. “Those were two of the many buildings we captured in Seattle,” says James. “We captured photography, LiDAR scans, and drone photogrammetry of those structures. That included a bunch of video captured from the drone to try to replicate shots that we might do in post. We did flyovers of the water, looking down at the city, going down the coast, or looking through the Ferris wheel, which is one of our shots in Episode 207. The show combined real-life locations, on-set builds, and some game assets. For the Great Wheel and Aquarium, we had to build high-fidelity new assets. The cool thing about both of them is that they are built out over the water on dock structures, which is fairly unique, which made their collapse plausible and justified Ellie’s need to travel by boat.”
Flood simulations were layered over completed environments to reinforce realism. “One of the challenges here was the need for solid environments before adding water effects on top of them,” says James. The effects team had several different levels and directions for wave heights and speeds. “We used the effects spectrum as a base level, with some white water and particulate coming off it, for anything in the distance,” he goes on to explain. “When it came to the foreground, we used the effects spectrum pass to drive a high-resolution simulation that blended perfectly into the background. One complexity was dealing with a lot of boats on the water. Even more complex was having to match digital water to practical water tank shots.”
Heavy rainfall throughout the series required flexibility across every asset, not just in look, but in how water interacted with environments. “Assets needed both wet and dry looks, including all vegetation,” remarks Mace. “Once we got to Seattle, I’m not sure if there’s a single shot that didn’t have some kind of ground vegetation or ivy overgrowth. Every time they shot on location in Vancouver, the set was dressed to a certain degree around the actors. But there was often a gap where it was a physical location that couldn’t be touched, so we needed to extend and integrate digital overgrowth. We also had to match the wind onset; we developed a new wind system for our vegetation and ivy setup this season.”
An asset library of trees, ground plants and ivy was created for Season 1, which DNEG was able to repurpose, incorporating more Pacific Northwest varieties. “We added more pine trees and used Megascans extensively for ground plants, which was a huge bonus for both seasons because they had such a variety of plant life to pull from” says Mace. “It became a massive asset library. And you can never put enough detail into a scene.”
James emphasizes the importance of the ecological storytelling: “We ensured vegetation made sense narratively, showing how nature reclaimed Seattle. For instance, a collapsed highway might allow a meadow to form. The vegetation guided the viewer’s eye and supported the environment’s logic.”
Animal life also played a key role the work. “Footage was shot at the Greater Vancouver Zoo,” James says of the giraffes featured in the show. “Close-ups used real giraffes; wide shots were fully CG. The practical footage gave us a perfect reference for muscles, animation, and creature effects as well. Having a fully CG environment allowed us to show them walking through the grass and reflecting in the pond. There were lots of subtle ways where they feel connected to the environment. Ultimately, it’s all CG around the giraffes.”
Between seasons, DNEG transitioned its pipeline from Clarisse to Houdini Solaris with RenderMan. “We had to rebuild most assets,” says Mace. “Our ivy template was already in Houdini, which helped, though we added a few more features for the new season. We expanded our wind generators in the vegetation and tree pipeline. The bigger challenge was that Clarisse handled a massive amount of geometry easily, and because we had so many large-scale environments that had scattering of all types, from vegetations to city buildings and debris, we had to find a way to optimize the geometry-heavy environments.”
“At least we have the work from Season 1 as our North Star in terms of what was needed,” James adds.
One of the most complex sequences featured Ellie boating along a flooded coastline. “It was shot on a dry rig against bluescreen,” James explains. “We placed her in a CG ocean with storm simulations and lightening that reveals this epic city behind her. It’s incredibly dark, and there are boats that have run aground and are being jostled all over. Every element was thrown at her to evoke a sense of isolation and fear. It’s a shot packed with some of our longest and most complex water simulations. You may not notice everything, but you feel it.”
“We started with real-world weather references,” James adds. “The key was integrating Ellie’s motion with the simulated water to sell the realism. We layered in everything from subtle spray to large crashing waves.”
For DNEG, the approach to The Last of Us is grounded in visual realism enhanced through digital craftsmanship. “The show is meant to feel grounded and real,” says Mace. “So even when we’re dealing with surreal destruction or vast plant overgrowth, it’s all rooted in physical possibility.”
From infrastructure collapse to intimate animal interactions, the visual effects in The Last of Us Season 2 continue to evolve the show’s signature aesthetic while expanding its scope. DNEG’s contribution deepens the immersive world-building and visual storytelling that audiences have come to expect.
Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.
