VFX house recreates D&D with same sort of effects as The Mandalorian

Actual play performances of Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games have grown in popularity over the last decade, expanding from podcasts and simple tableaus of players on Twitch and YouTube to elaborate costumes and sets. But the team at Corridor Digital is taking their game of D&D even further, utilizing the same kinds of virtual soundstages used in modern video games, films like Avatar 2, and TV shows like The Mandalorian. On Sunday, it published a behind-the-scenes look at the process.

At the core of Son of a Dungeon season 2 is, as you may already have guessed, a massive green screen that technicians use to project various environments on top of. The environments, however, are actual bits of tabletop terrain hand sculpted by the team at Dwarven Forge. Corridor then uses photogrammetry to create the terrain as a series of digital assets inside Unreal Engine 5. The goal is to recreate the events that took place during the session as if the players had been shrunk down and placed on top of the table. It’s less a live-action movie; more like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. The effect is charming.

While you can see some of the making of on YouTube, the full season is available through Corridor’s subscription service, which offers a 14-day trial before converting to a $3.99 monthly subscription.