The fourth season of The Witcher marks a bold new chapter, debuting Liam Hemsworth as ‘Geralt of Rivia’ and welcoming Laurence Fishburne as ‘Regis’ a mysterious barber-surgeon whose vampiric nature complicates life on ‘The Continent’. Across eight episodes, the season expands the series’ political and supernatural tensions while laying the groundwork for the fifth and final season, filmed consecutively and set to conclude the story.
Led by compositing supervisor Ole-Aleksander Nordby, creative lead/CG supervisor Tim Kilgour and VFX supervisor Simon Carr, the Vine FX team return to ‘The Continent’ with a multi-episode VFX delivery spanning creature development, close-up FX, environment extensions, combat enhancements, and established magical effects. The team worked on seven episodes of the season, and delivered nearly 70 VFX shots across 18 sequences, combining technical innovation with seamless integration to support some of the show’s most intense and memorable sequences, while maintaining narrative continuity and franchise lore.
The tentacle creature
One of the most technically demanding sequences delivered by Vine FX for The Witcher S4 centred on a tentacle-like creature emerging from a character’s psychological fear. Building the creature entirely around a pre-shot performance, the team handled the full asset lifecycle- concept development, mood boards, sculpting, animation, Houdini-driven muscle and skin simulations, lighting, and final macro-scale compositing.
“We were given the sequence and a few early concepts, but it needed full development,” said Kilgour. “It became a collection of ideas from both sides, mixing the Netflix show team’s references with our own. We had tentacles from octopus and jellyfish motion to tree roots, ink drips and even some early AI imagery.”
Rapid alignment between client and studio allowed the asset to lock early. “There were a couple of iterations on colour, but the show team approved the first looks almost immediately. From there it just started to breathe and take on life.”
As the creature’s look became clearer, the team pushed its personality and aggression. The refinement stage focused on behavioural nuance, particularly how the creature interacted with the actress in extreme close-up. “Netflix really liked the direction we had taken and wanted us to push the performance further, asking for more tension, more anger, even moments of the tentacle forcing its way toward her mouth,” Tim explained.
Because the camera was positioned at macro distance, subtle physical cues had to be reproduced with high accuracy. “You’re watching it with a macro lens, so you can’t hide anything. We needed to find a way to make the interaction look real on the actress’s face,” added VFX supervisor Simon Carr, who worked closely with Kilgour on the sequence. “We had to track tiny indents in her cheek to generate accurate shadow passes and maintain contact fidelity.” To support the creature’s organic motion, Vine FX expanded its internal pipeline, introducing new Houdini-based muscle, skin sliding and deformation systems. “It was the first time we’d developed this part of our pipeline, and it gave us the realism we needed,” Carr noted.
Despite the technical complexity, the creature work was delivered with remarkable efficiency by an exceptionally small team. “One animator, one artist on effects, and one on lighting,” said Tim. “It was incredible to see how such a small group could deliver something so complex. A very small team of talented people doing exactly what they do best.”
Invisible worldbuilding in ‘The Continent’
Alongside the creature work, Vine FX delivered extensive invisible VFX enhancements across the season’s environments, including city extensions, sky replacements, mountain builds, clean-up work, and digital matte painting shots. One of the largest undertakings was a full chase sequence reconstructed from Lidar and practical plates into a fully integrated CG environment. “All the extensions in that chase sequence in episode two were built from the Lidar and rendered fully in CG,”said Nordby. “You wouldn’t realise all the landscape changes we made, the shots are seamless and beautifully invisible to the audience.”
Across the season, the team also handled plates ranging from partial location rebuilds to blue screens and scaffolding-heavy setups, often reconstructing and extending environments from minimal physical elements. “We had a big mix of work in our department. Some plates were blue screens, some were location, some were scaffolding,” Nordby explained. “These
became a mixture of buildings and mountains and skies, whatever the show needed to help enhance the narrative.” Several sequences relied on DMP-driven establishing shots to convey new regions, balancing specificity with anonymity to avoid recognisable real-world locations. “The clients wanted it to look like a certain landscape, but not anywhere the audience would recognise,” said Nordby. “You’re trying to make it not look too much like this place or too much like that place, so finding that balance was tricky but I’m proud of what we delivered in the end.”
Achieving believability in these varied environments of The Witcher demanded precise attention to lighting, depth-of-field and spatial logic. “In some sequences it was super dark, so even the smallest thing had to be lit right,” noted Nordby. “The comping had to be extremely precise for it to read properly or the shot would feel off.” Accurate 3D positioning also played a crucial role: “Placing everything exactly in 3D space, knowing what should fall in or out of focus was another challenge, but the team did a great job with this,” he added. Consistency across sequences was key to keeping the audience grounded. “It needed to follow the logic of the environment throughout each sequence, that’s what makes it feel real.”
Combat enhancements & maintaining the magic
The season’s combat sequences required extensive digital augmentation, including CG sword replacements, digital arrows, blood and wound simulation- including moments of blood/black ooze spurting from a character’s eyes – and retimed reactions to maintain stunt continuity. “Typical of the series, there was a lot of fighting and stabbing happening. So we added CG swords, CG wounds and blood coming out of almost everywhere. It was a big mix of combat work and it gets quite gory but it’s fun to work on.” said Nordby.
Some shots required full digital reconstruction. One of the most complex involved a warped practical sword. “We had to replace the jacket, rebuild the arm and the leather jacket with all the straps and buckles that one of the characters was wearing. That’s all CG but it’s blended seamlessly,” said Carr. “Sometimes the prop swords in the plates just didn’t behave the way swords should, bending or in unrealistic positions, so we also had to fix anything that wasn’t physically possible.” Corrective timing was also a major focus. “People were reacting too early or too late… so timing was a big part of the work too,” Nordby explained. “Sometimes you have to make the whole thing feel heavier or faster. The team had to re-time a lot of the action, adding CG arrows and making sure everyone actually fell when they were supposed to.”
Alongside combat, Vine FX continued the franchise’s signature magic effects, force-like energy bursts that interact with characters and environments. Maintaining visual continuity with previous seasons was essential. “The magic in the series has rules, it’s not just a random effect,” Nordby said. “It always needs that punch, that physical push, otherwise it’s not The Witcher.“
All eight episodes of The Witcher S4 are streaming now on Netflix.
