CreditReport.com Deconstructed // Part 3 / Animation & Compositing

After nailing down the look, it was time to animate and integrate the CG letters with the cleverly shot live action footage.  Deftly handled by S&M's lead animator, each letter needed to look natural as it peeled of and fell away in the "Unreliable" spot.  To achieve this, each letter was hand animated to maintain the organic look and feel.  Once animated, the S&M Flame team took over to accomplish the final compositing and finishing.  Our lead animator utilized a similar approach for the animation of the more rigid lettering featured in the CreditReport.com "Lazy" spot.  Check out the breakdown below!

CreditReport.com Deconstructed // Part 2 / Design

Having overcome the hurdle of how to shoot the spot, the next question was one of design.  What should the lettering look like?  How should it move? In the 'Unreliable' spot, the agency was searching for a look evocative of childhood so they enlisted the S&M design and animation departments for ideas.  

Kicking off the design process with letters comprised of a complex collage of childhood relics, the look of the text evolved into a simpler hand-drawn aesthetic.  Have a look at the design evolution below:

design evolution of "unreliable"

Finally landing on the scribbled crayon appearance, the team then provided several different options for the look and motion of the scribbling within the letter outlines.  Check out the 'scribble' development options below:

Check back tomorrow for the final entry on the CreditReport.com breakdown to see what look was chosen and how the letters were integrated with the live action footage.

CreditReport.com Deconstructed // Part 1 / Devising the Shoot Method

Finding solutions is what we do.

How to have an actor interact with letters that don't yet exist:  that was the first challenge given to us by the Martin Agency to create these two spots for CreditReport.com.  Our solution was to negatively charge a piece of perspex so large  that you wouldn't be able to see the edges of it in camera and then have a non-charged medium cling to it but be movable.

We started the tests with pieces of paper.  While paper is opaque, it was a medium that we could use to quickly and easily test how easily an actor would be able to interact with the text elements while still looking to camera and also proved that used the statically charged elements would help us achieve our goal of manipulating the letters in camera.  See test below.

The next hurdle was then to find a translucent medium with which to construct the letters as that would help to minimize the clean up work that would need to happen in post. We chose heavy perspex lettering which provided the transparency we needed, but as you can see in the spots above, each commercial required letters with different properties.  "Lazy" required a rigid type of lettering while "Unreliable" needed flexible letters.   Unfortunately, this perspex lettering was a bit heavier than the static could hold.

With that we progressed a bi-pack of perspex, each with different properties. These combined properties gave us exactly what we wanted: either flexible or rigid letters depending on the commercial that would be transparent enough to camera (requiring minimal cleanup in post) but still visible to the actor for easy manipulation. See the test below.

Check back tomorrow for more on how the design process unfolded for the word 'Unreliable' in CreditReport.com's "Unreliable" spot.

Moen Deconstructed / Part 5 // Faucet Models

The final responsibility assigned to the S&M CG team for these spots was to create photo-real versions of the Moen faucets being advertised for use in both the body and end tags.  Having modeled, lit and rendered the faucets, the S&M CG and Flame team combined forces to design the look and animation of the end tags.

Moen Deconstructed / Part 4 // The Infinity Dress Shot

Creating the "Infinity Shot" shown above presented the CG team with  the task of creating a realistic, cloth-like CG dress.  To accomplish this, the team first modeled the base mesh of the dress in the standing, raised-arm position in XSI and then took that model to Mudbox where they sculpted the creasing details that would lend it an element of realism.

base model and resulting model after sculpting

 With the model in place, the team textured and lit the geometry with five different dress patterns and then animated the dress to match the motion of the woman brushing her teeth in the shot.

original and CG dresses

Finally, to create the hall of mirrors effect in the shot, the six repeated women composited with the different dresses were staggered in layers and then projected onto the CG faucet to create the reflection.  The S&M Flame team then took over to deftly integrate the reflections into the background plate to complete the shot with the effect shown below.

final "infinity shot"

Moen Deconstructed / Part 3 // Creating Reflections

Having learned from their tests, the team was ready to begin when they received the footage from the shoot.  To incorporate the running girl into the reflections of the faucet and the bowl in the clip above, the CG team needed to recreate the faucet and bowl geometry as the elements shot in camera had too many extraneous reflected images which distracted from the focus of the running girl in the shot.

original plate

recreated geometry

After modeling and tracking the scene geometry, the team then projected several plates of the running girl onto the bowl and the faucet to control the appearance of the reflected images on the chrome geometry.  The team then rendered the reflections passes and delivered them to the S&M Flame team to composite and finesse into the final shot.  Check back tomorrow for more on the "infinity dress" shot from the 'Brushing Teeth' spot.

final composite

Moen Deconstructed / Part 2 // The Shoot

In this opening shot of "Brushing Teeth", the camera follows the actress's reflection in the bathroom mirror as she approaches her Moen faucet.  Achieving this scene was not as simple as it sounds, however, as physically shooting her reflection in the mirror meant that the camera's reflection would be visible in frame as well.  Having the camera in the mirror would create a painful post-production process as the camera would have to be painted out and the desired reflection would have to be reconstructed.  To avoid this issue, the set itself was built twice, with one bathroom set built to reflect the other, leaving a hole where the bathroom mirror was meant to be.  

mirroring the 2 bathroom sets

A challenge in itself, extreme care was taken to ensure that each element on the set was meticulously placed to create the illusion of a mirror reflection.

Perfectly placed "reflected" objects

With every element in its proper place, the scene was shot through the hole in the set where the mirror should have been and then it was up to the S&M CG and Flame team to place the proper reflections back onto the faucet.  For more on how they accomplished that, check back tomorrow.

Mirrored double set

Mirrored double set

Moen Deconstructed / Part 1 // Testing the Concept

Emphasizing the passage of time and the product's longevity, we see life lived through the reflections in the shiny chrome of sink faucets in these two spots devised for Moen by the Martin Agency. Completing this work presented the S&M CG team with several exciting challenges.

The crux of the concept for these ads was, of course, to see activity reflected on the surface of the shiny faucets.  Knowing that shooting reflections in camera could produce unpredictable and uncontrollable results, the S&M team experimented with creating and manipulating these reflections in CG.

Mocking up a test faucet model, the test scene was textured and lit to give it the shiny chrome aesthetic.  Then, the team mapped an existing piece of footage onto a plane in XSI and experimented with the placement of the plane in the scene to change the size, shape and placement of the reflections in the faucet, giving them a better idea of how to control the reflections. 

Having devised a method for working with the reflections, the next step in the process was to actually shoot the spots.  Check back tomorrow for a breakdown of how these spots came together on set.

S&M Constructs a Gigapan Image to Demonstrate LG TV Picture Quality

Check out this online spot produced by the Smoke & Mirrors CG team to demonstrate the picture quality of LG TVs:

http://www.lg.com/us/tv-audio-video/picture-quality/index.jsp

A campaign devised and driven by Publicis Modem, the agency wanted to demonstrate the different, exceptional qualities of the LG TV in a video for LG’s website.   Inspired by hi-res Gigapan images that allow the viewer to zoom into extremely small details without any loss of quality, this web demo utilizes this concept to demonstrate the benefits of LG TVs.  Beginning with an aerial image of Houston Street in New York, the viewer journeys deep into the image passing through various scenes on the street level that demonstrate different technical aspects of LG TVs: cinematic visual impact, brilliant colors, stunning contrast, anti-blur action, and excellent sharpness. 

With technical guidance from S&M, Publicis Modem chose the Houston Street location in Manhattan where each of the 6 scenes could be set. Each image had to be taken with the appropriate lens, height and angle to allow S&M to seamlessly stitch them together and avoid jarring changes of perspective that would ruin the smoothness of the zoom.  With help from TAG’s re-touching team, each image was cleaned up in order to allow the S&M CG team to stitch all the images together to build one single image.  The final product is an interactive clip that leads the viewer on a pre-determined path taking them deeper into Houston Street with every click.

Electrolux Deconstructed

DDB along with director Marcus Nispel enlisted the CG and Flame contingents of Smoke & Mirrors to create the illusions in the latest installment of the Electrolux campaign starring Kelly Ripa.  Touting the speed of Electrolux's washers and dryers, the spot shows Kelly's laundry soaring into her appliances and then falling back into drawers completely folded.  Meanwhile her husband summons a candle-lit dinner from thin air with the flick of a table cloth.  

This table cloth shot required the CG team to provide a nuanced animation of suspended flatware falling gracefully into place on the table.  To help the agency creatives settle on the "look" of the falling flatware, the CG team provided them with several animation concepts illustrating how the dishware might make contact with the table.  

From this test, the agency chose an animation concept and the CG team refined the animation details. The CG team then utilized their expert tracking skills to seamlessly incorporate the animation into the live-action shot.  After creating the proper render passes, these were delivered to the S&M Flame team to composite into the final shot.  See breakdown below.

Maryland Lottery Deconstructed :: Part 3 :: Populating the Stadium

ICE tree for bespoke crowd duplication program

To populate the stadium with 80,000 screaming fans, SMNY's R&D team wrote a bespoke program in XSI based on particle systems.  Replacing the particles with the pre-shot green screen footage, the team's program provided for randomized placement of the various fans as well as  for randomized playback of the clips to allow for variation in the stands (see image right).

50 particles in <1 second / 500 particles in approx 1 second / 40,000 particles in approx 4 seconds

This flexible system allows for crowd duplication across any piece of geometry.  Fast as well as flexible, the particle-based system program generates 40,000 "fans" in less than 84seconds.

the turquoise patches tell the program where to fill the geometry with particles

To control the placement and concentration of the fans, the team incorporated into the program the ability to paint on the geometry to direct the particles on where to populate.  Rendering the entire scene to portray a realistic but stylized look that heavily incorporated the Baltimore Ravens colors (purple & gold) yielded the final result:

Maryland Lottery Deconstructed :: Part 2 :: Creating the Fans

The next step for the S&M CG team was to create the fans with which to fill newly modeled and textured stadium. To do this, S&M's TD directed a green screen shoot at Smoke & Mirrors where he captured several S&M employees acting as crazed fans.  

green screen shoot

With several clips of cheering fans, the footage was brought into Flame to key out the green screen.  

keying out the green

With several clips of crazy fans, the R&D team's next challenge was to develop a method of populating the stadium model with them.  To find out how the CG team progressed from green screen to packed stadium, check back on Wednesday September 8.

Maryland Lottery Deconstructed :: Part 1 :: Model & Texture

This most recent spot for the Maryland lottery was a unique challenge for the Smoke & Mirrors CG team.  A 5-commercial campaign, each spot features an exuberant fan singing Broadway-style about a prize he or she won and finishes with an animated end shot of M&T bank stadium filled with cheering fans.  Tasked with creating this end shot under a very tight deadline, there was not time to fully model, texture, light and render the stadium and then fill it with cheering fans, so the team devised a clever work-around.

wireframe model of stadium

model textured with photographs of actual stadium

One member of the S&M CG team traveled to Baltimore to photograph the M&T  Bank Stadium.  Using the exact perspective and focal length from those images, the team created a low-res model of the stadium (see image to the left) that was then textured using those images (see image below).

With a textured model of M&T Bank Stadium in place, the next hurdle for the S&M CG team was to fill the stadium with thousands of cheering fans.  Check back on Tuesday September 7, 2010 to find out more about how they populated the stadium with 80,000 cheering fans in under 4 seconds.