FIVE FWD - gadgets
complex gadgetry in record time
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Tune in to FIVE and you’ll see an ad on high rotation featuring a multitude of gadgets whizzing around the screen. It’s the launch of Five’s web based technology and gadget channel called FIVE FWD, created over 14 intense days at The House of Curves.
Once again we called upon current and ex students to help with modeling duties, but threw something new in the mix by deciding to use the recently released Maya 2009. Matt Estela began with building a virtual miniature studio set themed around FIVE’s corporate colour scheme, as well as a library of virtual materials representing a range of gadgety plastics and chromes. By ensuring the set and materials were as physically accurate as possible, they required almost no adjustments for the final render.
Estela comments ‘3d for commercials is usually fast turnaround, meaning to make things look photoreal involves a lot of artistic fudging and slight of hand. On this job I used new materials from mental images in combination with physically accurate area lights and final gathering. Knowing we had a good modeling team meant we didn’t fake surface detail with texture maps and photographs. As long as the models were micro-detailed down to the screws and rivets, everything just worked. Combining this with frequent test renders of work in progress models meant there were no surprises on a tight deadline. No questions of “why isn’t this reflected in that?” or “why isn’t that shader working on the farm?”, it was all debugged upfront.’
Meanwhile Andrew Daffy was liaising with FIVE’s Brand Director Dominic Sykes, turning a loose and sketchy storyboard into 30 second previsualisation of gadgets driving flying and transforming to the cues of a detailed voiceover, using blocky simple shapes as placeholders.
Almost as quickly as placeholders were being created, Adam Dewhirst and a team of modellers were transforming them into beautifully crafted and detailed models. The slick renders are a testament to the great modelling abilities of our students. It was Dan Princes’ last job with us before he embarks on his first fulltime job at JS3D. We wish him well on his journey.
Daffy remarks ‘I really enjoyed putting this whole thing together, seeing it through from a simple previz to the polished final that we’re really proud of. What I enjoyed the most about this project was how easily it came together in compositing. We basically rendered a background pass of light interactions and shadows, and a separate beauty pass consisting of all our props and gadgets. As I put it together within After Effects, I set off specific passes for certain sections as required. This included a depth of field pass for foreground bits, some mattes for the screens to add some flickering etc. The standard method is to render a million passes which never quite work of which half are seldom used. This ‘while U wait’ approach allowed the machines to render the bits we needed at the highest quality, and nothing was wasted.’
Credits
CGI Supervisors Andrew Daffy & Matt Estela
Modelling - Adam Dewhirst, Dan Prince, Andrew Savage and Loretta Okoh
Speaker Tripod Animation - Badruddin Badruddin
Software Maya 2009, After Effects CS3, Photoshop CS3
