Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/491590
16 cgw m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 5 as the production crew used a 100-ton crane and a huge mothership-style light rig to create the effect of a hovering stadium- size UFO as it beams up components of halime. Initially, West toyed around with liing the truck in CG. "But it was important for me to have a real truck and li it with a crane on set so we would have all the interaction with the lights," he explains. An actual trailer was used on set for es- tablishing shots, but during the li, only the cab was used; the trailer was built in CG. In the studio, the VFX artists created the UFO/stadium, referencing the real University of Phoenix Stadium. They also populated the landing area with 14,000 high-res CG cars, creat- ed with an Arnold (Solid Angle) archive system which generated proxies that could be rendered quickly. Smoke, dust, and debris effects helped achieve the look of the tractor beam and con- veyed its antigravity pull, as well as the stadium's massive scale as it lands. The main digital tools used by Framestore included Autodesk's Maya (modeling and anima- tion), along with Arnold (ren- dering). Most of the texturing happened in Maya, with some work also done in The Found- ry's Mari. Compositing and last touches were handled in The Foundry's Nuke. Final "slight" adjustments and color leveling occurred in Autodesk's Flame. Science-D-Vision's 3DEqual- izer was used for tracking. The smoke and particles were pro- duced in Side Effects' Houdini. Lighting was important to selling the commercial. "We were trying to match the overall lighting on the set, which was put together by film cinema- tographer John Schwartzman (Jurassic World, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor). He used these beautiful concert-based lighting setups on set to re-enact an alien ship hovering and beaming things up," says Eckardt. A second crane on set lied the lighting rig. Meanwhile, the CG crew acquired a substantial amount of HDR references, then the artists pushed the lighting further in Arnold. The light beam, meanwhile, was coordinated between the 2D and 3D departments. Michael Ralla, the 2D lead on the project, developed the look of the light beam and integrated the effects for the live action and CG. "We didn't want a color separation between the Pepsi blue UFO beam and the rest of the scene, so the lighting rig was enhanced with volumetric lighting and particle effects for a beam with a little more solidity and opaqueness that we associate with a UFO beam," West says. The CG stadium was built in Maya; CAD data of the actual stadium was used for reference. COMPLEX PRACTICAL LIGHTING, ALONG WITH CGI, RESULTED IN THIS COMMERCIAL'S SUCCESSFUL HOMAGE TO ALIEN ENCOUNTERS.