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CGI in Raspberry Pi - Good enough for Game of Thrones?

Being a Game of Thrones fan I’m often impressed with the Computer Generated Imagery used. Like many people I’m in Team Stark, but it’s difficult to not be in awe of Daenerys Targaryen’s dragons, so with series 6 starting it made me wonder exactly how these magnificent creatures were created.

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Unfortunately these dragons aren’t based on real animals, but if they were they would be EPIC! 

The VFX for the show is actually created by Pixomondo, using cineSync, and what a great job they do! But how do they do it?

Well first the team studied existing animals, such as bats, geese and Komodo dragons, so they could create realistic-looking wing movements for the fictional beasts.

Next they used puppets and tennis balls on sticks to set the positioning when filming shots with real people. This enabled the team to get the right position and then build from there.

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The use of cineSync enabled the teams at Pixomondo to work across various locations (like their HQ in Germany, preparing for filming in LA, or across the multiple GoT site locations), to view, annotate and edit files at the same time.

This great article from Cospective includes an interview with the team at Pixomondo.

Can we replicate these dragons using a Raspberry Pi 3  (896-8660) ? Well actually the Raspberry Pi 3  (896-8660) does have the ability to allow you to create CGI scripts but this is very different to Computer Generated Imagery thus making it impossible to produce a mean, lean, flying-machine such as Drogon, or does it? With the developments in tech over the last few years, and the new Pi-Top (917-6213) transforming the Raspberry Pi into more of a standard laptop, I don’t think it will be long until this great development board (or others alike) is capable of such things.

Series 5 ended with Daenerys currently surrounded by unfamiliar Dothraki, so will Drogon, Rhaegal or even Viserion come to her rescue? I certainly hope so, but I guess we will find out at 9pm tonight!

I'm a Formula 1 enthusiast with a passion for electronics and technology. Also a marketing professional working in #TeamDS
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