Weta Digital has released a new VFX breakdown video on creating Laketown from ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.’

Laketown: The Devil is in the Details: 

To create the city, our models department built 50 unique buildings, eight unique bridges and six towers, all of which were dressed and scaled differently in order to provide the vast amounts of variance required to populate the 200,000 square metres of ground with up to 1,500 buildings visible in some of the shots. Over two million planks of wood, more than five million roof tiles and 1,749 walkways were created to bring Lake-town to life.

VFX of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug:

Middle-earth is a fantastical world of imagined landscapes and many incredible digital creatures. We completed almost 2000 VFX shots for the film, encompassing hero digital performance work, large scale water and fire simulations, complex digital environments, digital doubles of a large cast, and extensive creature work. Take a glimpse at the invention, artistry and innovation that the artists at Weta Digital used to make it all come together in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

Behind-the-scene video of Orlando Bloom shows off his knife skills:  

[Via TheOneRing.net]