Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/8034
Stereoscopy n n n n After discovering that a broadcast network in the UK was devoting a week of 3D TV pro- gramming to stereo and was looking to air ad- vertising spots in stereoscopic 3D, White Label suggested that Maxxium present the cognac in another dimension. Maxxium was sold. Te idea pitched to Maxxium was a contem- porary spot that would broaden Courvoisier’s appeal outside the stereotypical cognac con- sumer as a spirit served with a mixer. Te focus would be an exploding brandy balloon that reforms into a cocktail—a simple, straight- forward visual presentation. Accomplishing it, however, was less than simple. And the only way to maintain the necessary control over the explosion and fluid would be through the use of photoreal computer graphics. “Te project was new and exciting territory for us all: our first TV spot, the first UK TV commercial for Courvoisier, and broadcast on the first-ever night to screen 3D advertising on terrestrial TV,” says White Label’s creative director Greg Saunders. Te ad agency approached Atticus Finch, known for its animation work on videos for the Northern Irish alternative rock band Snow Patrol. Excited about the project, the produc- tion company signed on. Breaking the Model When Atticus Finch decided that the best route for the commercial would be entirely CG, the production company looked at doing all the work in-house, says Chris Richmond, the facility’s creative director. But soon after, Atticus Finch brought on Spectre VFX for the CG creation, having partnered with that stu- dio on prior projects. First, Richmond created a static previsu- alization to communicate Atticus Finch’s vi- sion for the spot that he subsequently handed over to Spectre. A basic animation test within Autodesk’s Softimage provided a taste of the type of movement he wanted for the camera and helped establish the timing of the piece. Working within Autodesk’s Maya, the group Atticus Finch, along with Spectre VFX, modeled a cocktail glass in Maya, and then shattered it using both Maya and Blast Code. The liquid was simulated using RealFlow. at Spectre modeled all the props, including the cocktail glass and bottle, and textured them, taking care with the caustics, which proved tricky because of the transparent glass. Ten they were shattered into tiny pieces. Te artists created the simulation of the explosion using a combination of Maya and Blast Code’s demolition software, a plug-in to Maya. “It took a number of iterations to get the glass simulation correct,” Richmond points out. Te liquid, meanwhile, was simulated us- ing Next Limit Technologies’ RealFlow. Once again, several simulation attempts were needed before the fluid performed the way the direc- tor and client wanted for the desired look. To render the images, the group used Men- tal Images’ Mental Ray within Maya. Te spot called for a great deal of rendering passes (highlight, spectral, ID, motion vector, and so forth) that then doubled for the stereo. Providing Depth Te models were composited into a black back- ground with Te Foundry’s Nuke. According to Richmond, Nuke proved an ideal composit- ing solution, not only because of its well-devel- oped stereo workflow, but also due to the large amount of rendering that resulted. “We were doing motion blur but only had a prime-time budget, not a feature-film budget, so we couldn’t go to a renderfarm,” Richmond says. “We did tests for a motion-vector pass, and ended up doing motion blur in Nuke rather than at the point of rendering in Maya to save time, and it worked well.” Te artists also added lighting flares to give the CG atmosphere against the black back- ground that was used in the spot. Because the action occurred in black space with no fore- ground or background objects, it was difficult to mark the Z-axis depth for the stereo. In terms of the stereoscopy, Spectre used Maya’s built-in stereo camera rigs, with each placed 64mm apart, the average separation of the human eye. “Getting the lenses and cameras set up to get the best stereo effect took a bit of experimentation. Tere are limits to where the effects work or don’t work,” says Richmond. Cheers! From his point of view, the most challenging aspect of the project, maintains Richmond, was getting the glass fragments to look right with the lighting and the fluid to move in a way that was satisfactory to everyone involved. Another consideration was the fact that the commercial had complex camera moves but retained a “one-shot” look so that the eye did not have to readjust to new scenes. To review the stereo effects, the group used anaglyph glasses. For the broadcast, the group delivered the rendered material to a company for Color- code encoding, to make it stereo-ready. Te commercial also was rendered out in HD and shown in theaters as a preview before Avatar in the UK. In both instances, the audience mem- bers, wearing 3D glasses, see a tranquil glass of cognac explode, with glass splinters and liq- uid flying toward them, before spinning into a vortex that forms a cocktail sitting next to a bottle of Courvoisier. “We challenged White Label to deliver an innovative campaign to drive reconsideration of Courvoisier as a mixable spirit, and felt the 3D TV commercial opportunity was a great fusion of message and media,” says Eileen Livingston, Maxxium’s marketing controller. “Clearly showcasing Courvoisier as a cognac with another dimension is also a perfect fit with the revolutionary spirit embodied by the brand for the past two centuries.” n Karen Moltenbrey is the chief editor of Computer Graphics World. March 2010 35