cgTantra Forums - Case Studies

Rajasekhar Buggaveeti, CEO of Dilsukhnagar Arena on the making of their 3D short film

Mansi — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:20:34 GMT

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Video Interview of Sanjiv Waeerkar, CCO MAAC, MCS on CricX

Mansi — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:44:12 GMT

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Making of Woodland Elephant TVC 2010 executed by Visual Computing Labs

Khushnaz — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:12:55 GMT

A Review of the �Making of Woodland Shoe TVC� by Visual Computing Labs

Visual Computing Labs. VCL, a division of Tata Elxsi, under the banner of animation and digital visual effects have to their credit movies like Roadside Romeo, Rang De Basanti, Taare Zameen Par, Mumbai Meri Jaan, Dhoom2, Bachna Ae Haseeno and Jodha Akbar to name a few. Apart from these remarkable films they also have churned out award winning television commercials like the Kellogs�s Honey loops, Cadbury�s Bournvita ++, Spice Telecoms Brooder Fish TVC and 3M Scot Brite.

Now to add to this admirable list of work there is the Woodland Shoe TVC. VCL seems to be having a forte with animals. It churns out the most believable cute characters of animals. In the Woodland Shoe TVC there are elephants used to accentuate the roughness and sturdiness of the Woodland shoe. The main antagonist, the baby elephant has so much character and it brings a smile on the face of the viewer with its cute antics at the same time selling the feature of the product.

Visual Computing Labs tell their story of working on The Woodland Shoe TVC. Read along as to know how they have again proved their mettle in bringing out the best in animation with the TVC.

VCL worked in tandem with Lowe Lintas who gave them a brief. Mr. Rajiv Agarwal worked on the copy of the advertisement; Mr. Mohit Arora worked on the art with animation directors Shrirang Sathaye and Suhael Merchant.

The Brief given to the Studio and VCL�s additional creative inputs

The script that came from the agency was very simple. As in all other earlier Woodland TVC's the focus has been on showing the shoe in the wilderness and some bird (wild creature) attacking it. The ruggedness /toughness of the shoe keeps it from getting damaged.
In this TVC the basic storyline brief was to show the shoe getting trampled by wild elephants. Instead, we decided to tell the story using a baby elephant as the antagonist, who discovers the shoe and while playing with it, accidentally tosses it amidst the wild herd. The shoe gets trampled upon, tossed around, kicked around by the herd. At the end as the shoe pops back into its original shape, this startles the baby elephant who quickly turns back to join the herd.

The hyper realism of the elephant as a character it�s movements and mannerisms

The demand from the client and agency was that the film had to be in the hyper real zone. It should look like a wild life documentary. We were fresh from finishing our Spice TVC and had learnt a few things about getting the hyper real feel. The big difference between the two TVCs was that Spice film was based on an underwater theme and Woodland film required an open grasslands feel.

The main thing was to get the elephant walk cycles animated precisely as this was an important part of the commercial. It was quite a challenge to make them walk realistically as their bodies stretch and squash quite a bit. The rigs had to be done in great detail with a lot of subtle movements especially to the foot as it takes a lot of weight of the elephant. Also elephants� skin has a loose feel to it so get the realism we tried using 'muscle system' in the rigs.
We did a lot of research from live footage to understand different mannerisms like how they move their trunks and ears as they walk. The baby elephant actions were especially a delight to study and animate. They have a certain innocence and friskiness in their movements which is very unpredictable. We have tried to capture these moments in this TVC.
Also a huge amount of effort was made to get the textures of the elephants and the surrounding landscape.

The Strength of the team, timeline of the project and softwares used

Maya was used for overall processes and Shake and Nuke for compositing. Total team comprising of around 15 people worked on this tvc for a period of approximately 4 weeks.

Their message to the CGTantra Community

�Keep trying to outdo yourself!�

Making of PARALLAX Teaser

Khushnaz — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:27:40 GMT

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A visual tale of Bank of Baroda TVC�s Directed and Produced by Studio EEKSAURUS

Mansi — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 12:00:42 GMT

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Brickyard VFX Builds Stellar Effects for Panasonic

Mansi — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:16:00 GMT

Brickyard�s bi-costal teams joined forces with ad agency Arnold and prodco Untitled to promote the new Panasonic 3D HD VIERA TV

06.02.2010 � Santa Monica, CA and Boston, MA � Artist owned-and-operated bi-coastal effects boutique Brickyard VFX has delivered an out-of-this-world viewing experience for �Odyssey,� a :30 ad introducing the new Panasonic 3D HD VIERA TV via ad agency Arnold, which began airing May 15, 2010.

�Odyssey�, directed by the Cronenweths via production company Untitled, transports viewers from the comfort of their living rooms into a galactic journey through outer space � complete with star fields, a collapsing sun, gamma ray bursts, meteor showers and gorgeous nebula. The :30 spot opens as a family dons their 3D glasses and turns on the Panasonic 3D HD TV, which quickly becomes a portal into an alternate galaxy. The 3D experience proves so immersive that the family is actually transported into the screen and begins to float through space. They watch incredulously as astronomical elements float past in a meteor shower and reach out to feel the surrounding planetary objects, begging the question, "With 3D this lifelike, can we still call it a TV?"

All of the CG elements in the spot including the sun, meteors, star fields, nebula and particle effects were created by Brickyard. To achieve a lifelike, 3D, space aesthetic that would showcase the television�s new 3D capabilities, Brickyard�s Santa Monica team started with test comps and then built CG models of the sun using Autodesk Maya. From there the team continued generating the rest of the planetary elements� lighting and animating each as it passed through the sequence of events� and tapped Renderman for rendering. Brickyard also constructed displacement maps and hand painted a number of textures to contribute to a stylized look to the elements. When it came time to design and animate the meteors, the team created a number of different rocks and generated realistic textures� ultimately using a combination of particle instancing and hand animation.

While designing and executing the planetary CG components of the spot proved no difficult task for Brickyard�s seasoned team of artists, animating a realistic representation of the scientific events that occur throughout the ad with a tight deadline looming overhead proved to be one of the greatest challenges.

�Constructing a lifelike depiction of a series of natural events that you can�t see physically happening before you is a difficult task,� said David Blumenfeld, CG Supervisor, Brickyard VFX. �Since we couldn�t physically view the sequence, we had to imagine the various parts in action and find ways to create an interesting visual representation, while remaining true to the science behind it� all in a short amount of time.�

To overcome these challenges, Brickyard�s Dave Waller and David Blumenfeld provided on-set supervision during the original shoot in which the Cronenweths used flying rigs to accurately capture the flying family. The team shot with a RED digital camera, which allowed Brickyard to walk away from the shoot with footage and start adding in the CG elements that very same day.

Once all of the variations and animations were completed, the Santa Monica office provided a variety of elements to Brickyard�s Boston office, where lead 2D artist Sean McLean took over. Arnold Creative Director Roger Baldacci sat side by side with Sean while he combined the 3D pieces with his own newly created 2D elements. Sean used actual Hubble imagery as reference for the final composite.

About Brickyard VFX
Located in Boston and Santa Monica, Brickyard VFX is an independent visual effects boutique specializing in top quality visual effects from 3D characters through to compositing. Artist owned and operated, the company was founded in 1999 to bring clients a level of customer service, craftsmanship and focus difficult to find at facilities today. Brickyard�s creative expertise on set and in the studio has been applied to model, animate, light, texture, track, color correct and render seamless digital effects for Pontiac, Bud Light, T-Mobile, NBA, Visa, Sprint and many other accounts. For more information, please call Brickyard VFX Pacific at (310) 453-5722, Brickyard VFX Atlantic at (617) 262-3220, or visit www.brickyardvfx.com.

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Ad Agency: Arnold
Agency Producer: Mike Lawson
Creative Director: Roger Baldacci
Art Director: Josh Tetrault
Copywriter: Sean McBride

Production Company: Untitled
Directors: The Cronenweths

Animation and Visual Effects: Brickyard VFX
Set Supervison: Dave Waller
Set Supervison: David Blumenfeld
VFX Producer: Amy Appleton
CG Producer: Carla Attanasio
CG Supervisor: David Blumenfeld
CG Artist: Carl Harders
CG Artist: Dan Gutierrez
CG Artist: Drew Daleo
Lead VFX Artist: Sean McLean
VFX Artist: Gina Downing
VFX Artist: Robin Hobart
VFX Artist: Jimi Simmons
VFX Artist: Geoff McAuliffe
VFX Artist: Dave Waller

Editorial: Cosmo Street
Editor: Aaron Langley

Audio: Soundtrack
Engineer: Mike Secher

Making of Stop-Motion USHA Commercial by Mr E Suresh

Mansi — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 08:28:59 GMT

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V, The Visitors, and Zoic Studios Join Forces

Nisha Mehta — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 10:02:32 GMT

V, The Visitors, and Zoic Studios Join Forces

StudioGPU�s MachStudio Pro invades Zoic Studios� VFX pipeline with stellar results

�The Visitors,� in spaceships hovering over every major city, captured the attention of the global population in V, the popular new television series on ABC. In much the same way, V has garnered the attention of the visual effects community, thanks in no small part to innovators at award-winning Zoic Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Los Angeles, Calif.
V, a modernized and reimagined version of the original 1983 miniseries, is filmed in Vancouver, where more than 20 Zoic artists deliver green screen and virtual sets. Additional visual effects (VFX) in V, including the series� signature motherships, are executed at Zoic�s studio in LA. �Our current big project is V,� explains Mike Romey, Pipeline Supervisor at Zoic Studios. �We are doing a sizable amount of VFX, a few hundred shots per episode.�

Artists at Zoic Studios won a 2010 Visual Effects Society (VES) Award for the outstanding virtual sets created for ABC's V television series. Zoic artists have adopted StudioGPU's MachStudio Pro for their CG and VFX work on V. (Images courtesy ABC and Zoic Studios.)

The VES Award ceremony, held February 28 in Beverly Hills, California, honored Zoic Studios� Chris Zapara, Chris Irving, David Morton, and Trevor Adams with the award for Outstanding Created Environment in a Broadcast Program or Commercial for crafting atrium and ship interiors for the V pilot.
New episodes employ a growing number of VFX and virtual sets, reveals Romey about the upcoming season. �V is bulking up with more and more VFX shots, and virtual components and locations. With the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, we did more virtual set shots because they couldn�t get on location. It is a very exciting project, and it is pushing our technology limits to the edge.�

Romey is always on the lookout for innovative workflow solutions to further refine Zoic Studios� production pipeline, which spans three locales. �My job is to look at what we do in production and find the right tools to meet our needs while balancing cost,� he says. To this end, he recently integrated a combination of MachStudio Pro software from StudioGPU and AMD�s high-end ATI FirePro V8750 graphics accelerators into Zoic�s existing workflow, which includes Autodesk�s Maya and The Foundry�s Nuke.

�The impetus for adopting MachStudio Pro in our pipeline was V,� Romey explains. �It has so many virtual set shots, and the V sets are quite robust. We wanted a new way to get a beauty render as quickly as possible. Given the volume of work and type of shots we are creating, MachStudio Pro was an ideal candidate.� Romey and his colleagues broke down a V script into two types of shots: close-up shots and establishing shots. The close-up, face-to-face shots represented 80 percent of Zoic�s production work, for which they wanted to use real-time rendering off the graphics cards. They tried Nuke�s integrated renderer at first, but found they needed more, including specular highlights and ambient occlusion�and that�s why they turned to MachStudio Pro.

�We looked at the pipeline, and there were numbers that could be improved,� Romey continues. �Specifically, we started tracking the time it took to do rendering for production. We quickly realized that we had to come up with solutions in our pipeline that are more cost-effective and faster. We installed MachStudio Pro and ATI graphics cards from AMD, and the stats are really quite amazing.� Romey, together with Zoic Studios� research-and-development and IT personnel, set upon quantifying the use of MachStudio Pro�s real-time, GPU-based rendering in production. �We put MachStudio Pro into the mix to help make all this virtual set stuff render really, really quickly. We wanted to see how much time [our traditional workflow] cost us, and what we could have saved had we used MachStudio Pro for those two episodes.� Romey and his team established a test case centered on a single asset in V, a virtual set used in two episodes, to calculate the time delta between the traditional pipeline with their traditional rendering software and the new pipeline with MachStudio Pro.

This Atrium virtual set, which appeared in 17 shots over two episodes, served as their reference. These 17 shots contain 2,589 frames, each of which was fully rendered three times for a total of 7,767 frames rendered. Initially, the set was rendered in an un-optimized fashion; it required recalculating the lighting simulation for each frame and yielded a render at four hours per frame. Zoic staffers tweaked the set and were able to optimize the render time to one hour per frame.

"With MachStudio Pro and our sets we could yield 16 minutes per frame un-optimized, versus one hour,� Romey says. �Optimized, we can probably chop 16 minutes down to four.� He and his colleagues are currently working with the developers at StudioGPU to build in some custom functionality, such as global illumination, self illuminating geometry, frame buffers, render layers, and passes more efficiently. All these features and requests will lead to a properly developed, GPU-based, frame-buffer pipeline in which multiple passes combine to rebuild the beauty render without the overhead of multiple renders. Rendering the un-optimized scene required 31,068 CPU hours in the alternate rendering software, and just 2,019 GPU hours with MachStudio Pro un-optimized rendering buffers. Romey speculates that Zoic could render all versions in a mere 466 GPU hours using a MachStudio Pro optimized rendering buffers with the features requested. �We are talking about really sizeable numbers,� enthuses Romey. �MachStudio Pro yields a 1,500 percent speed improvement immediately, and a 6,000 percent speed improvement when all the customization is done.�

Zoic Studios� head of IT Saker Klippsten, noticed another boon: GPU rendering is green technology. With MachStudio Pro, Zoic facilities employed just 20 percent of their 450 CPU-based render nodes�translating into energy savings, cost savings, and a reduced carbon footprint. �We can use fewer machines and less energy to render the same footage in higher quality and less time. Really, there are so many reasons to embrace GPU rendering in a pipeline. �The bottom line is: a MachStudio Pro pipeline will yield more versions with a better quality in a shorter period of time, giving us the added ability to provide a better product to our clients and be more competitive,� Romey continues. Real-time GPU render was once an alien concept. Today, Zoic Studios harnesses StudioGPU�s MachStudio Pro to deliver visual effects that are truly out of this world.

An interview with Rajasekhar Buggaveeti - CEO of Dilsukhnagar Arena

Mansi — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:48:41 GMT

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PrimeFocus Ltd Chennai, delivered about 1800 VFX Shots for AAYIRATHIL ORUVAN

Mansi — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:43:43 GMT

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3 IDIOTS VFX by FableFarm Studios :: Detailed & Exclusive

Abhishek — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 10:04:21 GMT

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FutureWorks contributes for vfx sequences of �Dulha Mil Gaya�

Mansi — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 12:27:15 GMT

FutureWorks contributes for vfx sequences of �Dulha Mil Gaya�

�Dulha Mil Gaya�. Directed by Mudassar Aziz starring Shahrukh Khan, Fardeen Khan and Sushmita Sen the movie released today on January 8, 2010. A film. In which Futurworks partly contributed in vfx scenes.

A total of about 36 shots was delivered by FutureWorks for the film which is set on a cruise liner.

A team of about 15 artists worked on the shots for about a month.

FutureWorks Creative Director Abhishek De said �The most challenging job in the sequences we worked for our flame and vfx team, especially to our Flame Head Deepak pais was to composite the green screen as it had lot of people in the shots which would not be the case in most of the green matte shots. The other aspect was to integrate the elements and composite the shots seamlessly.�

The key in the sequences were to blend all the elements together to make the shots look shot in real world scenario. All the shots were tracked by Murad Curawalla on Mocha after which the information was integrated into the flame workflow. With a strong flame pipeline workflow at FutureWorks along with the VFX stations completing the shots with maximum blending going through high quality control.

Futureworks CEO Gaurav Gupta while discussing regarding the future scope of studios collaborating and working together for post production added by saying:
�It was nice to work along with Tata Elxsi who has done the major VFX for the movie. I am also happy about collaborating with studios which wasn�t the case before in the industry. Studios working together on movie bring about a healthy environment in the industry�

The team at FutureWorks included Flame artists Wayne D�Silva, Manoj Sundriyal, Navneet Shergill, Arun Tripathi and Mahesh Sundriyal, Fusion artists Neha Seth and Kalyan and Chroma and Roto artists Gaurav Sharma, Abhinav Prashar, Abhijit S. Gedam, J.S. Vedhanarayan, Piyush Kankekar, Vishal Wahul, Girish Patil, Amol Partkar, Vinay V. Kedam, and Shubhangi Nikam.

Flame Head Deepak Pais said �The scene was a pleasure to work on; we went through several rounds of background creation till we achieved what was desired by the client. It wouldn�t be possible without the admirable support of the composting team here at futureworks.�

The bg�s were created using two master clips for the ocean and the sky by Flame Supervisor Deepak Pais in order to maintain continuity according to the edit. The iterations of the bg�s went through several rounds of approvals which were rendered out for VFX that were provided to the Flame artists. The tricky part of the sequences was that there were a lot of clean up work involved as well with the hair of all the people against the green screen.

FutureWorks behind the �3 Idiots�

Mansi — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 09:06:01 GMT

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Troika Design Group Teams Up with CableVision Networks MSG and MS

Sampat_Shetty — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 08:05:11 GMT

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Brickyard VFX Lends a Hand to Sprint for "Pass the Pixi"

Sampat_Shetty — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 06:30:54 GMT

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Prime Focus Delivers VFX for Kurbaan

Mansi — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:53:52 GMT

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Making of PDINGPDOONG - Awarded Best Student Short Film at Chitrakatha 09 !

Mansi — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 13:34:19 GMT

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Digital Domain�s Game Face for 'Assassin's Creed II'

Mansi — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:51:50 GMT

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Prime Focus recreates 26/7 Mumbai floods in Tum Mile with over 300 VFX shots and DI

Mansi — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:48:18 GMT

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Blur Studio Reels In Animation for Goldfish� Crackers Campaign

Mansi — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:37:31 GMT

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Future Works Delivers VFX shot for TUM MILE

Mansi — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:36:24 GMT

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Fabrice O.Joubert talks about French Toast

Rishabh Shrivastav — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:16:45 GMT

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Prime Focus delivers VFX and DI for Blue

Rishabh Shrivastav — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:29:27 GMT

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Moritz Mayerhofer talks about 'Urs'

Rishabh Shrivastav — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:28:36 GMT

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