Cosmos was largely completed using the toolsets from The Foundry. The CG ship was modeled and rendered in Modo and the space backgrounds and planets were created using Nuke. All of the shots of the planet Earth, with the exception of the spaceship, were created entirely in Nuke's 3D system. Several planetary rigs were built as a templates and were then mapped with 8K and 16k images sourced from online sources as well as hand painted art pieces created in-studio. The Optical Flares plugin for Nuke was used for a large majority of the flare work. We also had long clips of real lens flares shot over black. They were roto'd apart, repo'd and retimed to get different looks for each shot. They helped provide a very natural and organic feel without having to build and animate complex flare comp rigs.
