Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/491590
18 cgw m a r c h . a p r i l 2 0 1 5 environments a "magical" feel, the CG team added particles in the air and other atmospherics. "A huge amount of the foliage was practical," says Bernier. "We didn't do much CG-rendered plant life, but we did an extend- ed bluescreen shoot of plant life because we knew we would have to augment the plates heavily. We shot branches, brush, and ferns being pushed around, so when we got back into the studio, we could add them." Although the MPC team was retelling a story in "Fable," the reality was they had to push the creative and technical envelopes and deliver a visual tale, with a large number of CG furred animals that had a lot of personality and style. Avocados om Mexico's First Dra Ever Animals and humor tend to be fantastic ingredients for a com- mercial, and the Avocados from Mexico's "First Dra Ever" spot is proof that this combination leads to successful results. The commercial, from production company Biscuit and VFX facility a52, mixes the modern (Jerry Rice and Doug Flutie behind an ESPN-like desk) with the prehistoric (a caveman co-anchor and a sparse desert/rock environ- ment). The potential draees are as unique as they can get, with countries making their selection of icons associated today with those nations. For instance, Brazil selects the sloth; Australia, the kangaroo; the US, wheat; Madagascar, the lemur; China, ginkgo biloba. And, Mexi- co selects the avocado. As each selection is an- nounced, the camera rolls to the draed animal (or object) with- in a coliseum-like environment. The animals' faces go tense as a trade is announced, with the dodo bird keeling over. The polar bear, meanwhile, is wearing a sombrero and chanting "beach" under its breath in hopes of being chosen by Mexico. "It is a fun and wonderfully ridiculous, charming, tongue- in-cheek ad," says a52 VFX Supervisor Andy Barrios. The live action was shot on stage by Siren Studios. Approx- imately 10 percent of the sets were built practically, while the rest consist of matte paintings and CG set extensions. What happens, then, when you put a snake in close prox- imity to a mouse? An alliga- tor by a lemur? A lion near a zebra? Mayhem. So, they were all filmed separately on blue- screen and then composited into the scenes. The opening shot alone contained more than 150 layers. The animals react to the dra notices, mostly with facial expressions, so a lot of the VFX work required eyelid, mouth, and ear movement in post. The artists also added some exag- gerated expressions, all using Autodesk's Flame. Some CG animals joined the dra, including the digital polar bear, brown bear, mouse, and penguin. Naturally, the animals with fur – the bears, especially – posed the biggest challenge. The wheat and avocado were shot live on stage, while the rest of the plants and objects were photographed separately from a range of angles, so when they were later composited into the shots, they filled the frame as needed. The tumbleweed, how- ever, was created in CG. "Everything starts off with a good base, and that means a rock-solid camera track," says Barrios. The group used PFTrack from The Pixel Farm for that task. Later, the crew used Auto- desk's Maya and Pixologic's ZBrush for modeling and then animating the cast as needed. All the models were run through ZBrush for an added detail pass used as displacement maps. Chaos Group's V-Ray for Maya was used for shading and rendering, which gave the artists renders with the added control layers for compositing. Because of the fur, they also used V-Ray's HairMtl3 shader. The artists sculpted the hair grooms in ZBrush using Fiber- Mesh, and then exported a re- duced number of curves to act as guides in Maya. Because of the short turnaround, they used Maya's dynamic curves to drive the simulated nHair. The ZBrush guide curves were attached to the base meshes as dynamic hairs and simulated so they moved correctly as the animals moved, explains Barrios. "By using the dynamic guide hairs as a base for a PFX hair system, we were able to replicate and achieve our final hair density at render time," he adds. A number of systems were also used to create fly- aways and randomness. The spot was cute, imagina- MOST OF THE ANIMALS IN "FIRST DRAFT EVER" WERE FILMED AGAINST BLUESCREEN. THE POLAR BEAR, HOWEVER, WAS A CG MODEL.