Building a Digital Past – Interview with Gergely Takács

In Hungary’s expanding film industry scene, Spectral Studios has emerged as a serious contender. Founded in 2021 by Gergely Takács, the company specializes in digital scanning, asset creation, and both 2D and 3D visual effects. While Hungary is well known as a destination for international film productions, Spectral’s mission is to go further — by turning local talent and technology into export-ready services.

We sat down with Takács to talk about the founding of Spectral, the studio’s work on the recent Rise of the Raven (Hunyadi) series, and why Hungary still needs to invest in people as much as in infrastructure.

Budapest Reporter: Spectral was founded around 2021, which means you entered the market when Hungary’s international film industry was already in full swing. How did the company start, and what kinds of services do you offer now?

Gergely Takács: Our first job as Spectral was on the first season of The Witcher. We provided personnel and did 3D scans. By then, the international production scene in Hungary was already well-established — it was a fully operational ecosystem, and we joined into that. The first type of services we offered were on-set and near-set services, meaning things that happen either during the shoot or in close proximity to it, but not necessarily during post-production.

These are usually support services for the VFX department, but sometimes for the art department as well. Mostly we focus on digitization, and that can take many forms. We have several methods to scan and digitize physical objects — and I mean everything from something as tiny as a bee’s head, at macro scale, all the way up to something as large as a football stadium. At one point, we even scanned a 10-kilometer stretch of railway track.

Over time, we started doing classic VFX work as well. At first, it was very simple tasks, mostly 2D work. That could mean removing wires, or adding and removing objects from the frame. Eventually, we also started handling 3D tasks, which is a whole different level in terms of complexity.

Budapest Reporter: How different are 2D tasks from 3D tasks in VFX actually?

With 2D, often one artist can do a whole task. But with 3D, it’s broken down across many roles. One person might model the asset, another does the texturing, someone else rigs the object if it needs to move — whether it’s a person, an animal, a drone, whatever. Then you have animators. You need FX artists to simulate things like fire, smoke, or explosions. And then you still need compositors and technical directors to bring it all together. It’s a whole coordinated team effort.

Today, our main specialization is set extension and crowd duplication. We’ve refined our internal process really well for these. A big part of why we’re successful in this is because we usually have direct access to the filming location. We’re not just a studio sitting lightyears away from the shoot, trying to do VFX with material we received after the fact. That means we can scan and study the actual structures, textures, and visual motifs present on set, and later use those same patterns and forms to digitally build out or augment the scene in post.

Budapest Reporter: That on-set presence must be a major asset. Looking more broadly: when it comes to international productions, does Hungary currently have enough skilled crew to handle all VFX needs locally, or is there still a reliance on foreign teams?

Gergely Takács: That depends mostly on the size of the production. If you’re talking about something massive, like Dune — the kind of project with enormous scope and technical requirements — then no, it wouldn’t really be possible to do all of that VFX work in Hungary. The scale of manpower, and the depth of specialized knowledge needed, just isn’t here in large enough quantities.

But for something more compact in size, absolutely. Right now, for example, we’re working on the upcoming NCIS: Tony and Ziva spinoff. It’s not a procedural, not a typical “case-of-the-week” show — it’s a 10-episode miniseries with a continuous storyline. The amount of visual effects work required for that is perfectly doable in Hungary.

So it really comes down to the balance between the project’s demands and the size of the local talent pool. For mid-range or smaller international productions, Hungary absolutely has the resources to take on full VFX delivery. For the really huge ones, we’d still need outside reinforcement — but that’s true in a lot of countries.

Budapest Reporter: How would you compare the VFX workload of Hungarian productions to international ones? Is it primarily a matter of budget?

Gergely Takács: I’d rather approach that by asking why a production uses VFX in the first place. Once we look at the reasoning, we can better understand how Hungarian films compare. There are typically three main reasons why VFX gets used. 

The first, and probably the most traditional, is safety. Think about a stunt performer falling — they’re usually wired or cushioned somehow, and those safety elements will show up in the footage. These are things that need to be removed in post. Sometimes you also add protective barriers or change the environment to prevent injuries, and these also end up needing VFX work. So this is what we might call the “retouching” category, and it’s very common.

The second reason is financial practicality. There are situations where you could build a giant set, or bring in hundreds or thousands of extras, but the cost simply isn’t worth it. Especially if we’re talking about a wide shot where those extras are blurry in the background, or a portion of the set that’s only visible briefly. It’s much more efficient to do it digitally. Sometimes safety and cost-efficiency overlap, too.

And the third reason is when something is simply unshootable in the real world. Think of a Star Wars spaceship racing through the galaxy. That’s not a safety issue, and it’s not a budget issue. It’s just not possible to film that practically. These are the elements that only exist through visual effects.

Now, if we look at the frequency of these three types in Hungarian productions, the picture becomes clear. That third category — the unshootable — is extremely rare in Hungarian projects. The second category, the financial trade-off, comes up sometimes, but not often. The first one, safety and retouching, is by far the most common.

So the truth is, Hungarian films are still largely driven by practical effects. VFX comes in where it’s absolutely necessary, to ensure safety, or to extend what’s physically on set. Once a project reaches a certain scale — like, let’s say, if you need 500 cannons but they only appear in 25 shots — you won’t physically build all of them. You build a few, shoot those, and digitally multiply the rest.

Budapest Reporter: Do you think Hungary’s VFX sector could sustain itself without the continuous inflow of international productions? Could all the existing studios survive on domestic work alone?

Gergely Takács: That’s a good question. I don’t necessarily think the two need to be so tightly linked. We can absolutely work on foreign productions that aren’t filmed in Hungary. Just look at countries like Poland or Bulgaria — they may not have the same level of on-location production volume as Hungary, but they still have substantial VFX houses operating there.

The point is: you don’t have to be near the camera to do the VFX. As long as you have the source material and the brief, you can deliver from anywhere. Post-production can happen remotely. We’ve had jobs where the filming was done abroad, but we never set foot on the set.

That said, I do believe that international productions shooting in Hungary have played a huge role in giving studios like ours a reason to even exist. They helped validate this business. They created demand, opportunities, and a real incentive to invest in this kind of work.

The real bottleneck isn’t whether films shoot here or not — it’s whether we have enough people to handle the work. Do we have the pipeline of trained specialists, the mid-level artists, the seniors, the production coordinators? That’s where Hungary is still relatively thin.

That’s why we believe education and training are crucial. This is an industry that creates high-value intellectual output — much like software development. You don’t have to ship materials, build huge logistics. The final product is digital, and location-independent. If we get the know-how and the human capital right, VFX can be a prime export industry for Hungary, not tied to geography, but to expertise.

Budapest Reporter: Let’s talk about Rise of the Raven (Hunyadi). From what I understand, you worked on the series for nearly three years, from prep through post. How do you reflect on the experience, especially compared to other domestic projects?

Gergely Takács: Yes, we were on Rise of the Raven for about three years. It was a very long timeline, even the shoot itself stretched out over a full year. But more than the duration, it was the amount of material and the type of work that made it stand out.

We had all ten scripts in advance, and right from the page, it was obvious there would be a huge number of VFX tasks. Not in the fantasy or sci-fi sense — there are no dragons or spaceships — but in a historically grounded context. And that brings its own challenges. On one hand, it’s easier in some ways, because you’re not inventing something from scratch — you’re not stuck in endless feedback loops trying to get a fictional creature “just right.” But on the other hand, there’s a high bar for historical accuracy, and that can be just as demanding.

In a show like this, you’re often judged by how convincingly you’ve recreated the past. And the challenge isn’t to wow the viewer with spectacle — it’s to never break their immersion. The best compliment is when the audience doesn’t realize what’s digital. Our goal was to help the viewer sink deeper into the story, not to distract them.

Compared to any other Hungarian project we’ve done, this was in a league of its own, just in terms of volume and integration. There were simply too many elements that couldn’t be solved physically. You can’t build that many full-scale sets, or cast that many extras, or make that many costumes and swords.

Budapest Reporter: What were some of the core challenges specific to Rise of the Raven in terms of visual effects?

Gergely Takács: There were two main threads we had to keep in mind from the start. First, the show needed to transport the viewer through both space and time. The narrative moves between Buda, Hunyad, Nándorfehérvár, and other medieval locations — but these places either don’t exist anymore or look nothing like they did in the 15th century. So, we had to visually reconstruct an entire historical geography.

Sometimes we could shoot in real locations — the Salamon Tower at Visegrád doubled as various castle interiors, and the Vajdahunyad Castle in Budapest’s City Park was reused for different palatial courtyards. But those were limited. Beyond that, we relied on physical sets, which had strict constraints on how big or detailed they could be. That’s where we knew early on that digital augmentation would be essential.

We scanned extensively — not just sets, but actors, stunt performers, even animals. For crowd replication, we had our own portable scanning rig on set. During filming, we’d rotate people through it — cast, extras, anyone — to create digital doubles. At the same time, we also recorded motion capture sessions, where stunt teams or civilians performed movement cycles. Later in post, those scans and motion patterns became the foundation for large digital crowds.

We even scanned props, especially weapons. Many of the blades used around horses had to be shortened for safety, and we digitally extended them later. We scanned helmets, heads, and even a raven, which was one of the more complex tasks. Birds are hard to direct, they don’t hold still.

Budapest Reporter: Was there a specific pipeline or workflow that you had to develop just for Rise of the Raven?

Gergely Takács: Yes, particularly in the area of scan processing. The thing is, when you scan someone on set, it’s not like snapping one photo. You’re taking multiple passes to make sure the data is clean, because what if they blinked, or shifted slightly, or stood in an awkward pose? You need options. So for each person, we’d often do two or three scans to ensure we had a usable base.

Now multiply that by hundreds of people. The raw amount of data was enormous. And each scan needs to be processed into a usable 3D model. That’s a time-consuming step that usually requires manual oversight. But with that volume, we realized early on that if we didn’t find a solution, we’d still be processing scans today.

So we developed a custom-coded automation system for scan processing. It allowed us to run scan renders and conversions around the clock, 24/7, without constant human supervision. That automation was one of the most important internal developments we made on this production.

Budapest Reporter: How do you see the integration of AI tools into the VFX workflow here in Hungary? Has it already started to change things?

Gergely Takács: It depends on what kind of AI we’re talking about. Most of the major software platforms we use — things like Foundry’s or Adobe’s tools — are already implementing AI or machine learning-driven features. These are already in use, often without people even realizing it. So in that sense, yes, AI has quietly become part of the pipeline.

Then you have the generative tools, like Midjourney, DALL·E, and so on. A lot of people try these out, especially for concept art inspiration. But the truth is, they have limitations. They’re good for quick visual ideas, but if you’re a professional concept artist, they can sometimes feel like a waste of time.

For many people, the appeal lies in typing a prompt and getting a result, especially if they don’t have a visual image in their head to begin with. But for someone who’s used to thinking in images, who already sees the shot in their mind, these tools are not always helpful. In those cases, it’s often faster to sketch or block it out manually.

That said, I’ve used AI for testing ideas, especially early on during Rise of the Raven. I remember experimenting with prompts to generate imagery inspired by the Ottoman Empire, just to see what came out. A lot of the visual details weren’t usable, but I found the color palettes quite inspiring. Those ended up influencing some of the tone and mood discussions we had later.

So yes, AI will trickle into our workflow, but these tools are becoming available to everyone equally, so I don’t think they’ll create a competitive edge on their own. The difference will come from how people use them, whether they have the experience to make something valuable with them. That’s still a human question.

Budapest Reporter: Looking ahead, how long do you think Hungary’s current international momentum can last?

Gergely Takács: Right now, I think we’re approaching a limit, at least in terms of infrastructure expansion. There’s no point in building more studios if we don’t have enough people to run them. That’s the real constraint. For those already in the business, this can be an excellent livelihood. But the real challenge is figuring out how new people can enter the field and how we can train them fast enough.

We should also ask: what actually gives Hungary its international appeal? Is it quantity, as in lots of productions coming through? Or is it quality, meaning high-caliber projects choosing to shoot here? Because those are different stories. If it’s about quantity, we’re already maxed out. But if it’s about attracting top-tier directors and productions, then it’s no longer just about tax incentives.

It becomes about the total experience: do we have the crews that can run these shows? Is the local infrastructure frictionless? Do our locations offer a unique look or feel? And in that sense, I think Hungary has become a complete package. You often hear that we’re now the second-biggest service hub in Europe, after London, and I think that holds up.

But from a quality perspective, it’s harder to measure. Some people judge it by awards: Oscars, festival wins. Others judge it by box office numbers. For me, quality often comes down to how specialized departments like post-production are doing, and I think in areas like VFX, we’re still at the beginning of a real golden era.